• A South Korean F-35A that crash-landed in 2022 has been revived thanks to an intriguing new procedure.
• Engineers removed and reattached its wings so it could be moved to a maintenance site.
• This operation is now part of the F-35 program's standard maintenance protocols.

An F-35A stealth fighter jet that crash-landed on its belly in 2022 has been given a new lease of life thanks to a dramatic operation to remove and then reattach its wings.

The South Korean air force aircraft made headlines three years ago after a catastrophic mid-flight bird strike caused an F-35 pilot to make a "belly landing," or gear-up landing, at Seosan Air Base, near the country's eastern coast.

The South Korean pilot walked away from the high-risk maneuver unharmed, but the damage left the Lockheed Martin fifth-generation fighter unfit for service.

Local media reported a year after the bird-strike incident that South Korea was considering dumping the fighter after estimated repair costs to get the jet flying again following its unfortunate run-in with an eagle could be almost the price of a new F-35.

According to the F-35 Joint Program Office, a new plan was then devised with South Korea's air force to repurpose the jet as a training platform at the country's dedicated F-35 maintenance facility.

However, transporting it there would be prohibitively costly and difficult, the JPO said.

The air base and the maintenance facility are roughly 60 miles apart, making it a tough overland journey for the aircraft and its 35-foot wingspan.

The JPO, with South Korea's approval, opted for a novel approach to this problem, and US Air Force, US Navy, and Lockheed Martin personnel gathered in South Korea to work with the local military to remove the jet's wings before transfer and then reattach them on-site at the new location.

"This was a significant challenge, as it was the first attempt at removing F-35 wings as part of a concept demonstration," said Matt Trodden, the F-35 Lightning Support Team Aircraft Crash Recovery Lead Engineer, in a statement.

The process — never conducted before on an F-35A — has now been adopted as part of the F-35 program's standard heavy maintenance, repair, and reuse protocols.

The project took inspiration from an earlier repair project dubbed "Frankenbird" or "Frankenjet" which saw two damaged F-35s fused together into a fully operational aircraft.

Initiated in 2023, the project — led by engineers from manufacturer Lockheed Martin and the US Air Force — resulted in a successful test flight with the jet earlier this year.

Salvage operations of this kind could help mitigate the cost of losing an F-35, which has an estimated price tag of over $80 million for the A variant that South Korea flies. The jet comes in three different variants: the internal gun-equipped As, the Bs with a lift van for short takeoff and vertical landing, and Cs for carrier operations.

The "Frankenbird," by contrast, cost around $6 million to cobble together, and it is due back into operational service this year.

South Korea took delivery of its first F-35A Lighting II in 2019. It now operates roughly 40 of them, with a plan to have a fleet of 60 by 2028, according to the manufacturer.

• Target reported sliding sales in its first quarter to May 3.
• CEO Brian Cornell said sales "fell short of our expectations" in a "highly challenging environment."
• Cornell also said post-tariff price increases would be a "last resort."

Target sales fell sharply in the three months to May 3, in a period marked by its decision to roll back DEI initiatives in January.

In an earnings call Wednesday, Target CEO Brian Cornell said the reaction to the DEI changes was one of several "additional headwinds" that had an adverse impact on sales, but the company could not quantify the amount.

Business Insider reported in March that consumer analytics firm Numerator found customer foot traffic and market share had shifted from Target to Costco, particularly among shoppers who value DEI.

With respect to tariffs, chief commercial officer Rick Gomez said on the earnings call that "adjusting prices" was one of several steps the company was taking to manage new import costs.

Comparable sales fell by 3.8%, store traffic was down 2.4% and average transaction size decreased 1.4%.

Store-originated sales declined 5.7% and were partially offset by 4.7% growth in digital sales, led by a 36% surge in same-day delivery via Target Circle 360.

"We have many levers to use in mitigating the impact of tariffs and price is the very last resort," Cornell said.

Some alternatives to price hikes include sourcing more products from the US rather than China, negotiating with suppliers, adjusting the timing of deliveries, and eliminating products from the retail assortment, Gomez said.

Target now expects a low-single-digit decline in sales for the full year.

Stock fell more than 6% in premarket trading and was down 28% this year at Tuesday's close.

It also announced an "acceleration office" led by former CFO Michael Fiddelke aimed at speeding up strategic execution and reversing recent declines.

Amy Tu, the chief legal and compliance officer, and the Christina Henningon, chief strategy and growth officer, are both leaving the company.

Net income rose $62 million to $1.04 billion for the period.

• Sam Altman has said robots will soon take on everyday jobs in the real world.
• The OpenAI CEO told Bloomberg that society isn't prepared for the coming "humanoid robots moment."
• He said it will feel "very sci-fi," and that it is coming soon.

Sam Altman has said that, while people worry about AI replacing white-collar jobs, something else will catch them off guard.

In a Bloomberg interview that aired Tuesday, the OpenAI CEO said that "the world isn't ready for" humanoid robots walking down the street.

"I don't think the world has really had the humanoid robots moment yet," he said.

He said people could soon be walking down the street and seeing "like seven robots that walk past you doing things or whatever. It's gonna feel very sci-fi."

And he said that moment isn't "very far away."

"I don't think that's very far away from like a visceral, like, 'Oh man, this is gonna do a lot of things that people used to do,'" he said.

He said this prospect was a marked contrast to people who have "maybe abstractly thought" of AI betting at specific tasks like programming and customer support.

In February, OpenAI signed a deal with Figure AI, a startup developing humanoid robots designed to "help in everyday life." Figure said its robot, Figure-01, is built for manufacturing, logistics, warehousing, and retail jobs.

"AI is, for sure, going to change a lot of jobs, totally take some jobs away, create a bunch of new ones," Altman told Bloomberg.

He said OpenAI has "always tried to be super honest about what we think the impact may be, realizing that we'll be wrong on a lot of details."

"I think I am way too self-aware of my own limitations to sit here and try to say I can, like, tell you what's on the other side of that wormhole," he added.

• I spent two nights at the Four Seasons Tamarindo, a luxury resort south of Mexico's Puerto Vallarta.
• It was my first time staying at a Four Seasons resort.
• I was surprised by a complimentary cooking class and how the property caters to families.

"This is our 'White Lotus' moment," I whispered to my travel partner as the gates to the Four Seasons Tamarindo opened.

For the next two nights, we searched for our version of Victoria Ratliff and Rick Hatchett as we explored the enormous property on Mexico's Pacific Coast.

By the end of the trip, we feared we were becoming characters ourselves as daily fresh-pressed juices became the expectation, and golf cart rides to our suite were the norm.

I guess that's what happens when you spend too long at a luxury resort, and the Four Seasons Tamarindo in Mexico made it easy to slip into that role.

I've been lucky enough to stay at boutique luxury properties around the world, but I'd yet to cross a Four Seasons off my list.

That changed on a recent trip to Costalegre, Mexico, where I experienced the brand firsthand in a cliffside one-bedroom suite with an infinity pool. The resort's entry-level room starts at about $1,000 a night, and a cliffside suite typically ranges between $1,500 and $3,800, depending on the view and time of year. Business Insider received a media rate for the stay.

During my two-night stay, I gained a better understanding of how Four Seasons earned its reputation for luxury.

I assumed the location would be impressive, yet I was still blown away.

With 129 properties worldwide, a Four Seasons stay can feature a private island in the Maldives or a luxury safari in the Serengeti.

Impressive locations go hand and hand with the brand, so I figured the Tamarindo property would be beautiful — especially considering where the property is situated.

The Four Seasons Tamarindo is a hidden gem on Mexico's Pacific Coast and is not easy to reach. The resort is about four hours south of Puerto Vallarta and one and a half hours northwest of Manzanillo.

When guests arrive, it all starts with a dramatic entrance. I still had a 15-minute drive from the entrance gate to the resort. I navigated winding roads surrounded by thick jungle. There wasn't water in sight as I passed rows of agave and spotted birds singing from nearby trees.

Then, the property came into view. An open-air lobby featured infinity pools that stretched out to a rocky coastline.

For the next two days, I discovered striking ocean views at practically every part of the resort, from the golf course to the on-site restaurants.

It was clear that the location was a highlight of the property.

A calendar of complimentary activities was a welcome surprise.

It was tempting to jam-pack my day with activities at the Four Seasons. I eyed a morning snorkeling excursion and debated if I could make it back in time for a farm tour. Later in the afternoon, I planned to join a workshop on fermented drinks. The next day, my schedule included a cooking class.

The best part was that all these events were complimentary. While the luxury resort comes with luxury prices, it was refreshing to know that I could fill my day with experiences that wouldn't add to my travel budget.

That seems to be a common theme across a handful of other Four Seasons properties. Four Seasons Resort Hualalai offers ukulele lessons, lei-making classes, and Hawaiian quilting. At Four Seasons Resort and Residences Napa Valley, guests can join vineyard yoga sessions and cocktail-making classes.

Everything is on the property, so you never have to leave.

Alba Garcia, the director of rooms at the Four Seasons Tamarindo, and Barbara Cervantes, the property's marketing manager, told me that the resort is designed to offer an authentic Mexican experience without needing to leave the resort.

There are Mexican menus created by award-winning chefs, activities diving into traditional drinks like tepache, a fermented drink made from pineapples, and activities that explore the surrounding nature.

While I'd still argue that an afternoon trip to the seaside town of Barra de Navidad — 40 minutes away— is worth the trek, the Four Seasons made it hard to leave, offering every experience I could have wanted right on the property.

Award-winning chefs behind hotel menus proved to be some of the best bites I had during my trip.

I would typically opt to leave a resort and head into town for local foods, but the Four Seasons' menus surprised me.

Some of the best bites I had during my weeklong trip were at the property. Morning pastries came from the well-known Rosetta restaurant in Mexico City, and the tacos from the casual Nacho restaurant were incredible. I tried foods I'd never seen, like a tuna chorizo, and stuffed myself at the expansive breakfast buffet.

While the property felt ideal for couples, it also had families in mind.

A place with striking infinity pools, pastel sunsets, and private rooms screams romance.

Both Garcia and Cervantes agreed that the ideal vacationer for Four Seasons Tamarindo is likely a couple, but I was surprised by how much thought had also gone into creating an experience for families.

One of the three infinity pools is dedicated to families with giant pool floaties. There's also a daily arts and crafts session and an exclusive event for teens each evening.

Regardless of age, it seemed hard not to enjoy a day at the resort.

The welcoming staff was a highlight as well.

Alan Reyes pulled over on his golf cart to show me a calabash tree, which grows fruit used for maraca instruments. Twenty minutes later, we were tasting honey from Melipona stingless bees.

As someone who loves the outdoors, it was thrilling to have resort staff eager to answer my pesky questions about the plants and animals living and growing on the 3,000-acre property.

Hours later, it was shocking to watch Garcia share so much joy behind her job as rooms director.

When my rental car's tire was flat, a crowd of workers arrived with an air compressor to get me back on the road.

While I expect hotel staff to be kind and welcoming at a luxury resort, I appreciated how the employees at the Four Seasons went beyond expectations.

• The FAA is reducing the number of flights at Newark Liberty International Airport.
• It comes after runway construction, technology outages, and staffing shortages have caused disruption.
• There have been four equipment outages in three weeks at Newark.

The number of flights permitted at Newark Liberty International Airport is being reduced amid rising delays, the Federal Aviation Administration announced on Tuesday.

Passengers have experienced delays of up to five hours as the airport struggles with technology outages, air traffic control staffing, and runway construction.

With runway construction continuing daily until June 15, Newark will be limited to 28 departures and 28 arrivals per hour.

After that date, construction will also continue on Saturdays until the end of the year.

Outside the construction period, the FAA ordered a maximum hourly rate of 34 departures and arrivals until October 25.

Newark, one of the three main airports serving New York City, can typically handle 77 movements an hour.

"Our goal is to relieve the substantial inconvenience to the traveling public from excessive flight delays due to construction, staffing challenges, and recent equipment issues, which magnify as they spread through the National Airspace System," said acting FAA administrator Chris Rocheleau.

Tuesday's interim order comes after the FAA spoke with airlines in one-on-one meetings last week.

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby has called for the FAA to reduce flights at Newark since the chaos began.

The airline operates about 70% of the flights at Newark, which is a key hub for United.

Kirby also backed Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy's plan to invest in technology upgrades for the airspace system and to "supercharge" the hiring of air traffic controllers.

The situation at Newark came to a head on April 28 when there was an equipment outage at Philadelphia TRACON, which guides planes in and out of the New Jersey airport.

Controllers were briefly left unable to see where planes were on the radar or communicate with their pilots.

Several controllers were put on trauma leave as a result, worsening the staff shortage. Earlier this month, there was a day with just three controllers on duty instead of the expected 14.

The target for air traffic controllers for the Newark area is 38 certified professional controllers. There are presently 24 controllers, or 63% of the target, the FAA said.

There were also four communications outages within three weeks.

• The luxury ski hub of Park City is the most expensive city in Utah.
• It's home to world-class skiing, slope-side mansions, and five-star public bathrooms.
• I spotted signs of wealth all around Park City, from the downtown area to the ski slopes.

In Park City, Utah, large estates dot world-class ski slopes on epic mountain ranges, locals are decked out in expensive winter sports gear, and the richest of residents have spas in their houses and more bathrooms than bedrooms.

The 20-square-mile ski town east of Salt Lake City has 8,000 residents, many of whom live in luxury.

According to a Realtor.com study published in April, 84060 (Park City) is the most expensive ZIP code in the state, with a median listing price of roughly $3.5 million.

I spent one day in Park City in January to get a taste of how millionaires live and vacation in this popular ski hub. Wandering from the downtown streets to the slopes, I clocked five signs of wealth.

Perhaps the most obvious sign of wealth in Park City, Utah, is the ski-in, ski-out housing.

Park City's most expensive listing on Realtor.com is a $39 million mansion with 9 bedrooms, 14 bathrooms, and ski-in, ski-out access.

Real-estate agent Derrik Carlson, who has lived in Park City for over 20 years and began selling homes in the area in 2012, told me that many of his clients buy houses in the Colony and Deer Valley, as well as the Canyons, located in Park City's 84098 ZIP code. All three neighborhoods are popular choices for incoming residents who want direct access to the slopes.

"You just go right out the door and pop on your skis, and you're on the slopes," he said.

The luxury amenities in these homes go beyond skiing. Many have lap pools, spas with saunas and massage rooms, and even movie theaters.

It might not scream wealth like a fleet of fancy cars, but the free public transit felt like a luxury you wouldn't find just anywhere.

Living in NYC, free public transportation is a luxury I'm not used to. In addition to the city's free bus system, I found another costless ride that felt like an activity.

At the St. Regis Deer Valley, a free funicular takes patrons to the slopes at Deer Valley Mountain Resort. And you don't have to be a hotel guest to use it.

I marveled at the views as the wide-windowed car trekked up the mountain. At the top, there was an outdoor lounge overlooking the slopes. From the deck with firepits and glass walls, skiers sliding down the trails looked like toy action figures in the distance.

In downtown Park City, I found more upscale public amenities.

Downtown Park City was full of shops, restaurants, and public courtyards where I found large, electric lit firepits that were round and made of stone. Wide benches surrounded each pit.

It was a pleasant place to warm up and rest.

I also saw a public bathroom in downtown Park City — a rarity for a New Yorker. Although I didn't go inside, I checked Google Maps and found that most public restrooms in Park City have five-star reviews.

I also saw private dining globes on outdoor restaurant decks.

Winters are harsh in Park City, so it made sense to me that the wealthy would want to enjoy the views without the weather. Park City has many restaurants with private, heated igloos and Alpenglobes. These enclosed spaces are designed to give guests views of the mountains and night skies while feasting with friends and family.

The experience isn't cheap. The Alpenglobes I saw at Butcher's Chop House & Bar cost about $100 to book, with a minimum dinner bill of $500, according to the restaurant's website.

If dinner in a globe isn't your vibe, you'll find plenty of fine dining establishments along Main Street.

The downtown area also housed luxury boutiques and celebrity-loved shops.

The downtown streets were lined with art galleries and upscale boutique stores selling fashion lines from international designers, locally made goods, and luxury furniture and decor.

The store I instantly recognized was Kemo Sabe — a celebrity-loved western apparel brand with other stores in Wyoming, Colorado, Montana, and Texas.

Kemo Sabe is best known for its hats that cost up to $900, as seen on icons from the Kardashians to Rihanna and Shania Twain. The hats can cost thousands with customizations like leather and diamond bands.

In Park City, it's almost impossible to forget you're in a wealth enclave.

After spending just one day in the affluent ski town, I found signs of wealth and luxury around nearly every corner.

• My sister and I moved to Las Vegas with only what we could fit in our car.
• When we moved into our Las Vegas apartment, we had no furniture, pots, silverware, or even a bed.
• We furnished our entire apartment for under $200. Here's how we did it.

When my sister, an aspiring dancer, asked me to move from North Carolina to Las Vegas with her, I didn't hesitate. "Hell yeah!" I said excitedly.

Then, reality set in.

It took exactly one afternoon for us to realize that moving companies and shipping fees would cost thousands of dollars — thousands that we didn't have.

Our best option was to leave our materials behind, except for what we could fit in our shared 2012 Toyota Camry, and embrace what Las Vegas had to offer.

We couldn't wait to begin.

Fast-forward a few months, and I'm sitting in our new apartment, which we've fully furnished for under $200 — a fraction of what it would have cost to haul everything from North Carolina. We even designed it with a cottagecore theme that I love.

There's no big secret to how we did it. We thrifted basically everything. However, I went a step further and waited for specials, scoured different locations for the best deals, and wasn't above dumpster diving.

How we used thrift store deals to stock up for cheap

Call it coincidence or divine intervention, but the Airbnb we temporarily rented until we could find a full-time apartment happened to be conveniently located close to a Las Vegas thrifting icon: the Opportunity Village Thrift Store.

We saw it on the first day we arrived in Vegas, and it became our first official stop after securing our apartment. It happened to be on a Monday, when the store had specially tagged items for $0.99.

We bought bundles of hangers, bed sheets, comforters, and pillows, all $0.99 each. We filled our entire kitchen with glasses, forks, knives, plates, pots, and pans, also $0.99 each. In the span of a few hours, we had a fully stocked kitchen for under $25.

My favorite bargain is a set of beautiful pots, adorned with strawberries. We cook in them nearly every single day.

Beyond the Opportunity Village Thrift Store, Goodwill also has a network of stores throughout Las Vegas. They have deals like 50% off specially tagged items every day of the week.

We combed through each Goodwill location, scouring for cheap furniture that could fit in our car. One of our treks rewarded us with a $5 TV stand and two $8 bar-side chairs. (We brought the TV with us from North Carolina.)

We found more deals on Facebook Marketplace

Unlike thrifting, which depends heavily on luck, I searched for exactly what I wanted on Facebook Marketplace and filtered by price and day posted.

Early on, I realized that filtering for day-of postings was the go-to strategy. Facebook Marketplace is all about being first. Sometimes, I messaged people an hour after they had posted, only for the item to be claimed.

Aside from the deals, an extra perk I discovered about Facebook Marketplace is that it led me to pockets of Vegas off the beaten path.

I found a $5 swivel office chair (essential to remote work) in one of the upscale Summerlin neighborhoods, which needed a gate code, which I got from the seller. She was a kind, elderly woman looking to downsize, and I never would have met her or glimpsed this part of Vegas, otherwise.

I also traveled up north to pick up a $10 foldable desk and spotted several must-try restaurants, like the famous Korean-Mexican fusion restaurant, KoMex. My sister and I checked them out later after we got settled.

We found our mattresses on Facebook Marketplace, too. We each paid roughly $25 for our used queen-sized mattresses, plus $10 for delivery, since we couldn't fit them in our car. While it was the most expensive secondhand item we bought, it was still a steal.

Some of my favorite finds are curbside gems

While the strawberry pots and bar stools are great, many of my favorite items were free. While exploring my new neighborhood, I quickly discovered the delights of dumpster-diving.

On my daily walks, I transform into a curbside-pirate, visiting the dumpsters in the nearby neighborhoods whenever I can.

One gem I found was a beautiful suede chair in perfect condition for my sister's desk.

I also discovered two mirrors — one with ornate wire art and a standing mirror with only a little paint damage.

Furnishing my new life in Vegas wasn't only an exercise in savvy budgeting; it taught me that building a new life takes patience and an open mind.

Just like it took time to find the right pieces for the right price, it also took time to discover my go-to coffee shop, find my favorite restaurants, and make new friends. But I wouldn't trade any of my second-hand items, or the stories that came with them.

• When my kids were young, I wanted to stay home with them and be there for their firsts.
• Now that they're older, I want to return to a full-time position.
• The gap in my résumé is an obstacle, and I also want flexible hours.

Before having my first child in 2020, I worked every weekend and many holidays as an award-winning television reporter. The combination of motherhood and the pandemic inspired me to stay home with my children instead of sending them to day care as infants. Fortunately, my husband's career took off at the same time, allowing us to have that option.

Now I have two kids — a 4-year-old son and a 2-year-old daughter — and like many mothers, I've always struggled to find the right balance between spending quality time with my kids and wanting to excel in my profession.

I stayed home with my kids when they were young

Initially, I thought I'd return to work when my son was 1, but finding childcare was difficult. It was hard for me to focus on the job search without it, and shortly after starting the job search, I learned I was pregnant again. My pregnancy and a lack of suitable day care with open spots led me to continue staying home, working on occasional freelance projects.

I enjoyed spending the first two years of my son's life at home with him, nursing him around the clock and being there for his first words and steps. I wanted to give my daughter the same undivided attention. So, a few months after she was born, our son started day care. We figured he could learn how to socialize and make friends while also learning from people who've devoted their lives to early childhood education.

The years flew by. We bonded through nursing on demand, and I enjoyed witnessing her learn to walk and talk. I took her to storytime at the library and saw such joy in her eyes as she interacted with other children. By the time my daughter was 2, we decided to send her to day care as well. I knew she was ready — and frankly, I was ready to re-enter the workforce and take my career to the next level.

But finding an affordable day care with an open spot was like finding a needle in a haystack. I lucked out, and she started going to day care for about six hours a day. I've had to increase my freelance projects to pay for it, which has left me with little time to apply for jobs.

I'm enjoying the flexibility freelancing offers, but now that my kids are older, I desire higher pay, benefits, and dependable income. It's an unstable field, and it's hard to make the same amount of money freelancing as I did in my reporting career without working excessive hours, so I've started to casually look for full-time remote roles.

However, this time around, I'm prioritizing a better work-life balance. I want the flexibility to tend to my children when needed, whether they're sick, have a half-day at school, or are out for spring or winter breaks.

It's a competitive job market, and the gap in my résumé is an obstacle

With the numerous layoffs in the news industry, finding remote positions is extremely competitive, even for a veteran journalist like myself, who is bilingual, college-educated, and a Fulbright alum. Often, I'll see that positions on LinkedIn receive hundreds of applications within a day of being posted. Before quitting my previous reporting role, I don't think I fully comprehended how difficult it'd be to re-enter the workforce.

The gap in my résumé also feels daunting. Should I put stay-at-home mom on my résumé, or should I just list the freelance projects I've worked on? During the application process, I've struggled to explain the varied transferable skills and experience I've acquired since leaving my full-time position.

I've done everything from writing for national publications to self-publishing my second book. I blog about my travels and create content for Instagram. I delved into marketing by pitching and promoting my book and blog for two daytime television shows. I've also acquired management skills as chairperson of our family reunion board of directors and fundraised to host two 100-person weekend-long events. But how do I succinctly capture that and previous working experience in a résumé or during a phone interview?

I've wondered if stating I'm self-employed sends my résumé into the rejection pile. Finding full-time employment after taking a break to care for my children has been harder than I envisioned. But, I'm confident the right position will come along, one that utilizes my talents, piques my interest, and pays me at least the same salary I made before, while also allowing me to spend nights, weekends, and holidays with my children.

• Daliana Liu was a data scientist at Amazon and a startup before leaving to start her own business.
• She now works as a coach for data scientists looking to accelerate their careers and brand.
• Liu said she still gets cold DMs from recruiters at Meta and OpenAI because of her online presence.

This as-told-to-essay is based on a conversation with Daliana Liu, a data scientist and career coach. Business Insider has verified Liu's employment with documents. It's been edited for length and clarity.

After finishing my undergraduate math degree at a college in China, I moved to California to get my Master's in Statistics at the University of California, Irvine.

In January 2014, I started working at a startup, before being recruited by Amazon a little over a year later as a business intelligence engineer.

I started at Amazon in Seattle, working on an A/B testing platform for their retail website. I created various statistical analyses and reports and supported product managers.

I trained employees on how to use A/B testing to make better product decisions, eventually starting my own newsletter for Amazon employees to share experiment insights from across teams.

An internal Amazon newsletter was my first content creation

The newsletter was my initial content creation. I learned to create engaging titles and make my writing concise and interesting.

During that time, I began writing on Medium about technical data science. Once, I wrote a viral post about saving money by picking the right month to start renting an apartment. It was exciting to help people make better decisions using data.

I started posting to LinkedIn in 2019. I wanted to share the unfiltered truth about being a data scientist and getting a job at Amazon, after seeing misleading posts about the industry. A couple of my posts blew up, but the majority of my following was organic from posting regularly. I now have nearly 300,000 followers on LinkedIn.

I then started a public newsletter. I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur and thought having public channels would help me find investors in the future.

I moved up the ranks at Amazon and started a podcast

In December 2020, I moved to San Francisco to work for Amazon Web Services as a machine learning engineer. I got promoted to senior data scientist in 2021 and had to work with a lot of external customers.

I read books about communication and influencing stakeholders. I wanted learn good communication for my own leadership within the company, as well as our clients.

In 2021, I launched a podcast interviewing data scientists on their day-to-day work, how they tackle technical problems, and their career journeys.

One of the guests I interviewed invited me to a dinner with his CEO, who offered me a job to work as a data scientist for his startup, Predibase. I quit Amazon in June 2022 to work at the startup.

During the year I worked at Predibase, I continued to experiment with my podcast while also creating a career course for data scientists, teaching them essential communication and influencing skills.

Between 2021 and 2023, when I posted weekly episodes, my podcast had 50,000 subscribers across platforms. My startup job supported me in pursuing a side business, and I started making income from sponsorship and events through the podcast. I started getting sponsorship in March 2023.

I quit Big Tech to start my own business

As much as I loved working in tech, I always wanted to do something of my own. Once I got to the point I had business contracts in place for my podcast, a plan for my course, and some savings, I decided to quit my job and start my own business in September 2023.

Around the time I quit the startup, a VC firm tried to recruit me for a platform community growth role because they like my content and the podcast I built. I didn't take the job because I wanted to focus on my own business.

I now have a career accelerator course teaching data scientists communication skills, how to get promoted, and how to build their brands.

Being a thought leader opens job opportunties

While working for Amazon and the startup, I had recruiters from top companies like Apple and Netflix getting in touch. Even after leaving Big Tech, I still get messages from people at companies like OpenAI and Meta trying to recruit me.

They mention they like my experience in data science which they can see from my LinkedIn. They can also see my Medium blog and my podcast. I was able to get jobs through my podcast and recruiters often reference my content creation when they've reached out.

It's very important in this job market to be a builder, and a great way to demonstrate that is to publish blog posts or create a demo for recruiters to stand out.

I think Big Tech companies value my technical skills and industry thought leadership, which I post about on blogs and LinkedIn. Having a large following makes it easier for these recruiters to find and trust me.

Startups and VC funds seem to value both my technical skills and content creation skills, also that I've built a community.

By publishing my thoughts, I've opened myself up to data science roles, as well as developed transferable skills. If my path as a thought leader doesn't work out, I think it would be easy for me to find a job in data science, marketing, or a community role.

I'm not tempted to return to tech or startups. There's uncertainty as an entrepreneur, but I get to choose my clients and projects. I can take time off and travel. I'm not married or a parent yet, but when that time comes, I want the freedom to be fully present.

• Why does Instagram want to show you stuff it thinks you'll like instead of letting you pick for yourself?
• And why is Instagram focused on getting people to share photos and videos privately?
• The two ideas are connected, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri explains: Normal people simply aren't sharing as much in public as they used to.

Adam Mosseri's official title is head of Instagram, Meta's massive photo and video app. He also runs Threads, the Twitter clone the company launched two years ago.

Unofficially, he's become one of Meta's chief explainers, frequently jumping on social media to defend and proselytize on behalf of his employer.

So when I got a chance to interview Mosseri, I had a long list of questions about… lots of things: I wanted to know how Mosseri felt about the company's recent pivot to Trump-friendly policies, and how he looked at TikTok, and a million other things. I didn't have enough time to get to everything, but I got to a lot of it, and you can hear our whole conversation on my Channels podcast.

In the edited excerpt below, Mosseri and I go over some big-picture stuff that tells you a lot about the current state of social media: Like why Instagram, Facebook and every other social media platform rely on algorithms to show you stuff they thinks you like, instead of relying on users to program their own experience. And why the company is gung-ho on getting users to privately send each other photos and videos, instead of its initial focus — getting them to post stuff on a public feed.

And I also wanted to know about the backstory behind Threads — the text-based social network it launched just as Elon Musk was taking over Twitter. Mosseri was happy to talk about all of it.

Peter Kafka: In the first few years of social media feeds, users would see a list of everything that everyone they were following had posted, in chronological order. Now, the standard at every app is a curated, algorithmic feed. Why does everyone who runs a social media product think that's better?

Adam Mosseri: It's because it's the only way to grow these experiences.

The amount of content people post publicly in feeds is going down across the entire industry, because people are moving more and more sharing to stories — which you could argue is a different kind of feed — but even more into messaging, group chats, one-on-one chats.

On Instagram, there are way more photos and videos shared into DMs than into stories, and way more photos and videos are shared into stories than into the feed. So if the amount of content you have to rank is decreasing — how engaging the feed is is also just decreasing. It's just getting worse.

We show recommendations because you might follow 200 accounts and one in 10 of them posted. So we've [only] got 20 things [to show you]. And we can reorder those 20 things 20 factorial ways, but that's only so much upside.

Whereas if we look at the billion things posted in a given day and we find something you're interested in, there's more upside.

Instagram has been encouraging messaging. It's something you've been talking about for a while. It's something users were doing on their own, and now you guys are responding to it?

Oh yeah. It's a paradigm shift.

The thing you hear is that people are going to chats because they feel like that's safer or they can have more candor. But are regular people literally thinking about how their posts are gonna be received? Is there some other reason people are sharing more privately versus publicly?

The foundational reason is that there are more things that you would feel comfortable saying to somebody one-on-one than things you would feel comfortable sharing publicly.

This is a weirdly sad example, but you could think of sharing in-feed as standing on top of your roof, yelling something at a hundred people, and hoping that 20 people hear it. There's some things I would do that for. But the average thing — the amount of things I would say to you on a phone call, my wife on a phone call, my best friend on a phone call — there's a lot more of those things. I think that's the most important reason.

How does that shift affect the business of Meta?

It moves more and more of that friend content into private experiences. And then the question is, can you either make those private sharing experiences symbiotic with the ones that we monetize — like feed and stories? Or can you monetize those experiences directly?

For Instagram, the thing that has been amazing is that we have leaned into video in a way that actually grows messaging. When I worked on the Facebook app, we leaned a lot into video in 2014, 15, 16. We were very focused on trying to catch up with YouTube, and growing video grew the amount of time spent in the Facebook app — but it decreased everything else. It decreased messages, comments, likes, and revenue — because there's less ads per minute.

[But] with Reels on Instagram, because they're short and because they're entertaining… I'll see a standup comic doing a bit that I love and I'll send it to my brother, because I know he's going to enjoy it.

Or I'll see a piece on politics and I'll send it to you. Because I think you might be interested in it. And then you and I talk, maybe you look at your feed, maybe you engage with something else. Maybe you send that to somebody else.

So there is a private messaging part of the experience, [but] we've managed to build it in a way that's very symbiotic with the public context — like feed and stories and reels, which we monetize directly with ads.

We're going to show you engaging stuff, you're going engage in it, and we'll be able to monetize your eyeballs like we always have — and then you'll share it with other people.

It's a positive feedback loop. And it's important particularly for Instagram because we are about connecting with your friends over creative things. I mean, for some people, we might be a pure entertainment-based or public content-based app. But we want friend content to continue to be a core part of the experience for most users.

And this allows Instagram to stay social, but still grow as a business.

I wanted to ask you about the Threads origin story. I didn't realize that it was originally supposed to be a feature within Instagram.

We were talking about different ways to compete more directly with Twitter…

Why? I know that back around 2010, the two services were fiercely competitive. And then basically that competition stopped, because you guys just lapped Twitter over and over and you won. There were many more people who wanted to engage in a Facebook and Instagram-like experience than they did on Twitter.

So why bother going back to Twitter?

I think Twitter's a great app in a lot of ways. I use Twitter a lot, still. I think it's better for public conversations.

Even though it's not the biggest app, there's a lot of cultural relevance. There's a lot of really vibrant, amazing communities there — NBA Twitter, black Twitter there. There's these insular networks like VC Twitter and crypto Twitter.

And part of what we care about at Instagram is being a place where creatives do their thing.

And the initial thought was to bolt it onto Instagram?

Around that time we really accelerated our work on broadcast channels on WhatsApp and on Instagram and on Messenger — which by the way, are a big deal in a lot of the rest of the world, particularly popularized by Telegram. We looked at and had a bunch of designs for building something like Threads as a tab into Instagram. And we did consider and ended up building a separate app, and there were a lot of contentious debates.

What did you want to do? Where did you want what's now called Threads to live?

I was excited about channels. But Mark [Zuckerberg] made the point — and I agreed with him — that channels are not going to be a place where you keep up with tons and tons of culturally relevant people. They're going to be a place where you subscribe to the five or 10 you care about most.

I was more bullish on building something within Instagram. Mark's point was that a separate app will be harder — but if it was successful, it would be a more valuable thing to create in the world.

A lot of what Mark does is anchor us really high. And no matter how strong a year we have, the question is always — how can we do better?

It was late. I was in Italy for my anniversary with my wife, and [Mark's] like, "Well, if you were gonna do something bigger, what would you do?"

So I was riffing and I kind of pitched a version of Threads: We'll lean on Instagram's strength with creators. We'll use Instagram identity. You can bootstrap it with [Instragram's social] graph, but we'll focus on basic replies and threads. I called it Textagram as a joke. Which unfortunately stuck as a name for months before I managed to kill it.

And Mark's like, "Yeah, that's a good idea. We should do that." And I was like, "I don't think we should do that." And in the classic Mark move, he said, "OK. But if you don't do it, I'll have somebody else do it, and it'll be built on Instagram."

And I said, "OK. Sounds like I'm signed up." So he gets the credit.

• Food hall startup Wonder eliminated all delivery fees this week, the company said.
• Wonder operates its own delivery network as well as a growing list of food halls.
• Fees have long been a contentious issue among food delivery customers.

Food delivery customers often find a list of fees on their receipt when they order dinner in.

Wonder, the food hall startup helmed by entrepreneur Marc Lore, has a solution: Eliminate delivery fees altogether.

On Monday, Wonder eliminated its $1.99 fee on delivery orders, Courtney Lawrie, Wonder's senior vice president and general manager in charge of Wonder's restaurants and delivery experience, told Business Insider.

The company also waived its 12% service fee for orders placed through Wonder+, its $7.99-a-month subscription service.

Delivery fees have become common for many delivery services such as DoorDash and Uber. DoorDash, for example, says that its delivery fee covers "costs associated with getting your order directly to you."

The fees can also provoke frustration from customers when they see their delivery order's price rise as they select the delivery option.

"People are tired of paying fees across all of these marketplaces," Lawrie told BI.

Wonder operates its own food halls as well as its own delivery service, making it more vertically integrated than most of its competitors, which deliver food from an array of restaurants. The startup also acquired delivery service Grubhub earlier this year.

All that means that Wonder doesn't have to deal with middlemen when it needs to get food to customers' doorsteps, Lawrie said.

"We're uniquely positioned to be able to provide that savings to customers," Lawrie said.

Wonder has just under 50 food halls at the moment. Customers can have their food delivered, or, for a 5% discount, they can stop by one of the food halls to pick up their order themselves. Wonder's food halls serve dishes created by chefs including Bobby Flay and Marcus Samuelsson.

At Wonder's New York City locations, menu items range from a fried chicken sandwich with a side and a drink for around $12 to a 16-ounce ribeye for $37.

Its locations span city centers as well as more sparsely populated suburbs.

Wonder sees an opportunity to grow its business among suburban diners by giving them the range of choices in Wonder's food halls, Lawrie said. "They might not have access to the variety that we can provide," she said.

Many consumers are cutting back their spending, including on eating at restaurants, due to worries about a potential recession.

Even so, demand for food delivery — both restaurant orders and grocery hauls — remains steady, companies like DoorDash and Instacart have said in recent earnings reports.

Do you have a story to share about gig work? Contact this reporter at [email protected] or 808-854-4501.

• Tesla is now accepting Cybertruck trade-ins, showing owners a glimpse of its depreciation rate.
• Two owners shared their trade-in estimates, showing a roughly 37% to 38% depreciation after a year.
• EV depreciation rates tend to be higher than other cars, but the Cybertruck's seems to outpace rivals.

Tesla's Cybertruck launched with some asterisks.

Owners technically weren't allowed to resell the vehicle for a year — Tesla said that if they did, it could sue for damages and blacklist the owner from buying future Teslas. Tesla also didn't offer Cybertruck trade-ins.

Now, more than a year and a half since the first Cybertrucks were delivered, the company is allowing owners to trade in the electric pickup for credit toward a new Tesla, offering a glimpse into its depreciation rate.

Two Cybertruck owners — one who owns the all-wheel-drive model and the other who has a top-of-the-line Cyberbeast variant — shared the estimated trade-in values that Tesla offered them after they requested a quote. Despite a difference in mileage of more than 10,000 miles, both vehicles showed a similar depreciation rate of about 37% to 38%.

The all-wheel-drive owner told BI he spent about $100,000 on the Cybertruck about a year ago, including add-ons. After driving 19,623 miles with the vehicle, his trade-in estimate came in at $63,100, a roughly 37% depreciation.

The Cyberbeast owner said he purchased the vehicle in September for about $118,000 plus tax, which took the total cost to roughly $127,000.

The owner received a trade-in estimate of $78,200, also representing about a 38% decrease in value in eight months of ownership.

Tesla's trade-in estimates are just that — estimates. Tesla says in the fine print under the estimate that the value is "based on current market conditions and vehicle details" and that the estimate could differ from the final offer. In other words, the final amount Tesla is willing to credit to the owner could end up being less. The EV news website Electrek reported earlier on Tesla beginning to accept Cybertruck trade-ins.

Vehicles famously begin to depreciate as soon as owners drive them off the lot, but Tesla's trade-in estimates give a glimpse into how the company values used Cybertrucks at a time when some car dealers have shared struggles to sell used models.

The trade-in estimates shared with BI suggest the Cybertruck has a higher depreciation rate than the average vehicle. Kelley Blue Book estimates that new cars depreciate about 30% on average over the first two years and lose an added 8% to 12% each year after that.

But it's important to note that EVs tend to depreciate at a higher rate as used models have increasingly hit the market amid the EV buying slowdown in recent years. An iSeeCars study that analyzed more than 800,000 5-year-old used cars sold from March 2024 to February 2025 found that EVs lost the most value, depreciating 58.8% in five years.

The study found that trucks and hybrids retained the most value, with trucks losing 40.4% of their value in a five-year period. Still, the rates that Cybertruck owners shared appear steeper than similar models such as Rivian's all-electric 2023 R1T, which depreciated about 29% in the past two years, according to Kelley Blue Book.

Not all Tesla models depreciate at the same rate. While the iSeeCars study found that the Tesla Model S ranked among the top depreciating vehicles, with an average five-year depreciation rate of 65.2%, the Model 3 held the lowest five-year depreciation rate among EVs at 55.9%.

While depreciation rates can vary based on several factors, including market conditions and mileage, the Cybertruck's decline in value has come amid wider pressures on the brand.

With political backlash over Tesla CEO Elon Musk's involvement in the White House DOGE office, Cybertruck owners have faced harassment and vandalism. Some owners have expressed interest in selling their vehicles, with one telling BI earlier this year that he returned his Cybertruck soon after purchasing it because of concerns about his kids getting bullied.

Despite Musk saying Tesla had more than 1 million reservations prior to its release, a March recall filing disclosed that Tesla delivered fewer than 50,000 Cybertrucks. BI also earlier reported that the automaker had scaled back Cybertruck production in recent months, dropping targets for several Cybertruck lines.

Are you a Tesla employee? Contact the reporter via email at [email protected] or Signal at aalt.19. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• Duolingo is the latest company to spark backlash over its CEO's excitement about AI.
• Investors and Wall Street love hearing about companies' ambitious AI plans, but many customers hate it.
• Ultimately, this may just be a messaging problem.

Imagine you're the CEO of a medium-to-large consumer tech company. You announce that you're going all in on AI — you are launching new AI features in your products, or maybe you're telling your employees they need to start using AI at their jobs more. Your investors love it. Your fellow CEOs applaud you. Thought leaders in Silicon Valley hail you. Wall Street loves it; your share price spikes.

But your customers? They haaaaaaaaate it.

You get absolutely destroyed on social media. People delete your app or vow to boycott your company.

You, imaginary CEO, would not be alone. Quite a few companies recently have dealt with this kind of blowback after announcing plans for AI use.

Duolingo is in the midst of this boondoggle. The language app's CEO, Luis von Ahn, posted a memo to LinkedIn last month describing plans to make the company "AI-first." He said the company would "gradually stop using contractors to do work that AI can handle," and "headcount will only be given if a team cannot automate more of their work."

On a recent podcast appearance, von Ahn doubled down on his ambitious vision for AI, saying that in the future, schools would exist mostly for childcare, while AI performed the actual instruction. (One guaranteed formula to get wrecked online is to disrespect teachers or nurses.)

The backlash was harsh. Tweets, TikToks, and Reddit posts exploded in outrage. Duolingo has cultivated a big social presence with its meme-loving owl mascot, and so the company was a prime target. One TikTok creator implored their fans not to allow Duolingo to return from being canceled.

As of Tuesday, the Duolingo social accounts had been wiped — no posts, no icon. Duolingo did not respond to a request for comment.

The idea that employees should learn to use AI is basically gospel now. Business leaders see that AI is the future and don't want to be left behind. But there are differences of degrees. Shopify, too, received some blowback after it announced a new policy of mandatory AI fluency, and that teams could only hire new humans if proves could prove AI couldn't do the job instead.

There are other ways that AI has drawn a backlash. Recently, Soundcloud added a new clause about AI training to its terms of service, to the ire of many artists and listeners.

Audible recently announced it will offer AI narration for audiobooks. When I posted on Threads that I thought this would be useful (there are plenty of times I've wanted to read an older book that is only available in print and wished it had an audio version), I got absolutely ratioed into the heavens by people who (rightfully!) were aghast at the idea of replacing human voice actors with subpar AI bots. Several people told me they were planning to cancel their Audible subscriptions over this.

The main issues people have with AI are simple. The models were generally trained on songs, books, and art that were used without the owners' consent. AI threatens to replace human jobs. There's an environmental impact from the energy used to power AI. These are all simply facts. Worst of all, it's often just not very good at what it's supposed to do. There's a reason it's called "AI slop" and not "AI amazing cool art."

It would be a mistake to wave off the anti-AI brigade as a bunch of Luddites or purists. Their concerns are legitimate. And for tech companies who are pushing this — the brigade includes customers. These are people who are happily using iPhones and apps like Duolingo to learn a second language, or pay for audiobooks, or listen to streaming music.

This is the tension: How do you, imaginary tech CEO, continue to impress your investors with how your company is at the bleeding edge of AI adoption, while avoiding getting shredded to bits by your customers on social media?

I asked Adam Brotman, CEO of Forum3, a consulting firm that advises brands on how to adopt AI, and author of "AI First: The Playbook for a Future-Proof Business and Brand."

"Unlike previous tech shifts, generative AI brings unique challenges," Brotman said. "While these leaked memos are coming from an authentic passion around what this tech can do to drive productivity and innovation, in my opinion, even the most passionate leaders need to communicate a balanced approach in these memos; emphasizing 'responsible' AI use and how it augments their teams rather than replaces them. Declaring an 'AI-first' strategy should be about leveraging AI's power thoughtfully while remaining a people-first company."

It's not an impossible balancing act. I suggest a reasonable solution, which is: Don't shout about it. There's a middle path, where your company can go forward with AI tools without publishing a memo about it that states some (unrealistic in practice) rules about hiring because of AI.

Duolingo made people mad not because some of its engineers are using AI for coding, but because the CEO made a grandiose statement about it — the kind that isn't going to go over well. This is a messaging problem. The kind that a friendly, human, comms person could solve.

• Walmart said last week that it planned to raise prices over tariffs, opening the door for other retailers to follow suit.
• On Tuesday, Home Depot said it didn't plan to increase prices and would instead rely on other "levers."
• Here's why the two companies are looking at the new import costs differently.

Retail giants Walmart and Home Depot are sending conflicting signals about post-tariff prices.

Walmart said during its earnings report last week that it would raise prices in the coming weeks and months — a move that also opened the door for other retailers to act.

But on Tuesday, Home Depot said it didn't plan to follow suit and would instead rely on other "levers" to manage expenses without broad-based price adjustments.

A closer look reveals four factors likely contributing to why the two companies are approaching pricing differently as they navigate new import costs.

Home Depot has more room to work with

Home Depot operates with wider profit margins than Walmart does, which means it has more flexibility to absorb any tariff-related costs.

Home Depot reported gross margins of 33.4% in the first quarter, compared to 27.5% in Walmart's US segment.

In other words, Walmart's markup is about six percentage points lower than Home Depot's, which makes sense given the different kinds of products each retailer specializes in. Higher-priced items like power tools and home appliances typically have higher profit margins than food and apparel.

Shoppers depend on Walmart for low-priced groceries

While Walmart is America's undisputed grocery king, Home Depot doesn't sell much food.

Sure, you can pick up a snack bar and a drink at the Home Depot checkout lane, but that's not the company's main category. By contrast, roughly 60% of Walmart's sales are from the food and beverage aisles.

This matters because many US shoppers have grown frustrated at inflation driving their grocery bills up, so Walmart has effectively ruled out, for now, using food price hikes to offset new costs for imported products.

"The first thing that goes through my mind is food inflation," Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said. "We've been through a number of years here where prices have gone up on food, and our customers have felt that, and they don't want any more food inflation."

For Home Depot, there's a bit more flexibility about where the company can shift costs, make some strategic pricing decisions, or make outright product cuts.

"We'll continue to use the portfolio approach that we've talked a lot about in the past, but we don't see broad-based price increases for our customers at all going forward," Home Depot's head of merchandising, Billy Bastek, said during Tuesday's call.

Walmart depends more on China

Home Depot says half of its inventory was sourced from within the US, and the company says no single country will represent more than 10% of its supply base by this time next year.

Walmart sources two-thirds of the products it sells in the US from US suppliers. A 2023 Reuters report found, though, that the company depends on China for about 60% of its imports.

While Walmart may have made tweaks to its supply chain since then, taken together, those figures would indicate Walmart has a higher exposure than Home Depot does to the 30% additional tariffs on Chinese imports, which Walmart CFO John David Rainey described as "too high."

Home Depot has more exclusive brand partnerships

Home Depot also said during the earnings call Tuesday that it plans to enlist its partner brands in its efforts to hold the line on prices for shoppers.

As avid DIYers or pro remodelers know, there are certain brands that are only available at a given national chain, so if Milwaukee Tool wants its products' sales to outperform Bosch's, it would behoove the brand to help Home Depot keep prices lower than chief retail rival Lowe's.

"It's a great opportunity for us to take share, and it's a great opportunity for our suppliers to take share as well," Bastek said.

Walmart, by contrast, is a mass retailer, which means it sells many of the same national brands that Target, Costco, or any other large company carries — so there's less incentive for, say, Energizer or Duracell to offer a better deal on batteries.

Companies have choices to make

Although President Donald Trump has said he would prefer that retailers simply "eat the tariffs," there aren't any set rules about how companies have to handle the new costs on imports.

Still, it would appear that Home Depot has a bit more flexibility than Walmart has to keep prices stable and still turn a profit.

As more companies report their earnings in the coming days and weeks, analysts will be sure to probe which path other retailers say they'll follow.

Do you work at Target or Walmart? Contact the reporter from a non-work device and email at [email protected]

• Nvidia dominates Computex Taipei thanks to CEO Jensen Huang's massive popularity.
• "Jensanity" includes shirts with Huang's face and hordes of selfie-seeking crowds.
• The Nvidia spotlight reinforces the ties among the company, the local tech industry, and the economy.

Asia's biggest tech trade show has always attracted IT insiders to Taiwan. Now, Computex Taipei is Nvidia central, with fans flocking to spot the chipmaker's leather jacket-wearing, selfie-taking CEO, Jensen Huang.

I flew to Taipei for this year's event and found that Nvidia's dominance was on clear display even outside the venue, where a striking green Nvidia banner outshone Computex's event wrap.

The theme continued inside the conference halls, where nearly 1,500 companies compete to show their most advanced gear. Over three days at the tech show, I spotted the "Nvidia partner" sign prominently displayed alongside countless exhibitors' names.

"Everyone wants to ride on Nvidia's wave," an exhibitor associated with Nvidia told me.

Taiwan's "Jensanity" isn't new. Last year, Huang signed a woman's chest at Nvidia's booth. But the 2025 Computex spotlight on Nvidia reinforces that the Taiwanese tech industry and the broader economy are ever more intertwined with one company, even as Nvidia navigates changing political winds and a rapidly evolving tech landscape.

Andrew Hou, the president of pan-Asia Pacific operations at Taiwanese PC maker Acer, said on Wednesday that interest in Computex was flagging before 2024.

Thanks to the burgeoning interest in AI tech, it has become "so crowded" at Computex since last year, Hou said at a briefing on Wednesday. He also namedropped Huang — without mentioning Nvidia — during the press event. Acer is a Nvidia partner.

The Santa Clara, California-based AI giant has so much street cred in Taiwan that even a half-name drop will do.

On Tuesday, Foxconn chairman Young Liu referred to "Jensen" in his keynote speech at Computex when he was describing a meeting about AI-powered manufacturing.

'Jensanity'

Huang arrived in Taipei on Friday afternoon.

The Taiwanese cannot get enough of the Tainan-born native who migrated to the US as a child. They camp at his hotel, outside his regular hair salon, and around restaurants. The devotees are seeking sound bites, selfies, and autographs.

Much of Huang's story resonates with the Taiwanese public, including his rise from humble immigrant beginnings to building a three-trillion-dollar business from scratch. His consistent dad-biker style also helps.

On Tuesday, much of the chatter at Computex centered on business, not Nvidia — but that didn't stop attendees from mobbing Huang when he showed up on the exhibition floor.

"I want to take a photo with him," a woman squealed as other excited fans thrust pen, paper, and their mobile phones into Huang's path.

Chenbro Micom, a storage and server chassis maker, seized the moment by blasting a man saying "Chenbro, Chenbro, I love you!" on repeat as Huang walked past its booth. The Taiwanese firm is an Nvidia partner.

Folk AI hero

Huang also made a guest appearance at Taiwanese chip firm MediaTek's CEO keynote on Tuesday.

On stage, MediaTek boss Rick Tsai gifted Huang a bag of fruits from his favorite night market fruit stall and spelled out "Jensen's" appeal to the Taiwanese: He's authentic and approachable.

On Monday, I found people patiently queued up to buy Nvidia merch from a van parked in front of Taipei Music Center, where Huang gave his keynote speech. By lunch, after Huang's speech ended, there were about 80 people in line, even though the mercury was hovering around 88 degrees.

KJ Hsieh, a Taiwanese who works in business development, endured the blistering sun in his suit to snag a bag of merch. He told me he plans to wear the T-shirts on his coming vacation to Dubai.

"I was interested in what Jensen Huang had to say because I used to be an engineer," Hsieh told me.

The merch sold well, a salesperson told me. Some products — including a backpack and play cards — were already sold out for the day.

Some buyers, like 26-year-old engineer Jim Wu, did not even attend the keynote.

A self-professed Huang and Nvidia fan, Wu took time off work on Monday morning to snap up the merch — shirts and a thermal cup — in case they sold out.

It took real effort. Wu works in Hsinchu, a 30-minute high-speed rail ride away. He declined to be photographed as his manager did not know what he was up to with his last-minute time-off request.

"Nvidia is a really successful company that I hope to work with one day," Wu told me.

Boosting Taiwan's tech stardom

Huang has leaned into his roots in the US, showcasing Taiwanese night markets at March's GTC in San Jose, California, and paying tributes to his heritage.

On Monday, he greeted the keynote audience in Mandarin Chinese and gave a shout-out to his parents sitting in the back of the concert hall. On Tuesday, he cracked jokes onstage with Foxconn and MediaTek's decidedly more staid executives.

It's good PR, and it works both ways.

The Nvidia boss consistently champions and highlights Taiwan tech, from chips to hardware. It's a far more upbeat narrative for the island compared to the international headlines highlighting a potential invasion by China, which claims Taiwan as its territory.

On Monday, Huang announced a joint initiative to build an AI supercomputer with the Taiwanese government, TSMC, and Foxconn. He also announced a big new headquarters in Taipei.

For the many under-the-radar Taiwanese companies that are the backbones for household names from Apple to Microsoft, Huang's showmanship and Nvidia's dominance in AI are helping them shine, too.

During Huang's keynote speech, he paid a video tribute to Nvidia's many Taiwanese partners of Nvidia. The reel showcased the journey of a basic TSMC chip to an Nvidia Blackwell GPU, and beyond.

"That was pretty incredible, right? But that was you, that was you. Thank you," Huang said to a rapt audience, who broke out in appreciative applause.

• Keith Anderson secured a role at Meta in 2018 after beating 2,000 other candidates.
• He applied after feeling drained in his previous Big Tech roles at YouTube and Google.
• Anderson used a five-part strategy, including a 'value project,' to stand out and get the offer.

When Keith Anderson, 36, came across a job posting at Meta (then Facebook) while scrolling LinkedIn in 2018, he was feeling completely drained.

He was in his third Big Tech role — working as a program manager at YouTube — after spending two years at Google and two years at Uber since breaking into the industry with no tech experience in 2015.

"I'd hit a wall," Anderson, who now runs Career Alchemy, told Business Insider. "I was physically exhausted and emotionally depleted."

A few months later, he beat out 2,000 candidates for the Meta role.

He wanted a dramatic career shift

Anderson wanted something new and resonated with Meta's mission, so he applied for the role on the global education team.

After three months of silence, he was invited to an in-person finalist event at the company's headquarters. The hiring manager at Meta told him he'd been selected as one of 300 top candidates from 2,000 applicants.

He said that email alone felt like a win, but it was short-lived when he realized the stiff competition he'd need to one-up to actually land the job. He decided he'd try something different to stand out from the crowd.

Here's the five-part strategy that Anderson used to ultimately win the job offer from Meta.

1. Using curiosity and connection points to overcome imposter syndrome

When Anderson first arrived at the event, his excitement turned to anxiety. As an employee who came from a background in teaching, imposter syndrome started to grip him.

"I reminded myself that curiosity is more powerful than self-doubt," Anderson said. "Instead of trying to impress anyone, I approached team leaders and engaged them in meaningful, peer-level conversations."

Anderson said the event started with 30 to 45 minutes of networking. Next, five team leaders presented on the state of the team, explaining their goals. The team leaders then spread out around the room to talk to candidates.

"There were like 15 to 20 folks swarming around each of them, awkwardly trying to get their chance to ask a question," Anderson said.

Anderson worked the room, saying things like, "I just learned about the project your team's been working on, and I'm impressed by what you've achieved! My team's facing a similar challenge, and I'm curious: how has your team approached that balance?"

He said the goal wasn't to deliver a pitch but instead create a conversation rooted in genuine interest and shared experience.

2. Following up with a warm, non-pushy message

Anderson initially didn't get a callback, so he sent a warm, friendly voice note to the recruiter.

"I thanked her for inviting me and reflected on how humbling it was to be in a room with such incredible talent," he said. "I mentioned my conversation with one of the team members and even included a helpful tool we used on my current team at the time, asking her to pass it along." Anderson believes that the most important part of his message wasn't what he offered — it was how he framed it.

"I told the recruiter, 'I know your plate is full juggling candidates for multiple roles and navigating the needs of different hiring managers. If this role doesn't work out, no worries. I just wanted to say thank you,'" Anderson said.

Within 48 hours, the recruiter called Anderson back to schedule a formal screening for the role.

3. Turning the screening into a strategy session

Anderson viewed the phone screening as an opportunity to gather intelligence about both the company and role.

"I wanted to understand the team's internal goals and pain points before I ever stepped into a formal interview loop," Anderson said. He asked questions like "What are the top priorities for this team over the next quarter?" and "How does this role contribute to those broader goals?"

The recruiter provided valuable insight into the team's dynamics and signaled that he understood how to contribute at a high level.

4. Building a 'value project' to show understanding of team pain points

After the phone screening, Anderson sent a warm follow-up email that led to an invitation to speak with the hiring manager. To prepare, he created a four-slide 'value project,' — a mini case study based on a challenge faced by the team he was trying to join.

"I gathered intel on the main pain points the team was facing," Anderson said. "From those, I took the one that seemed the most pressing and created a simple project from that."

Anderson's value project included:

• A short overview of what he understood about the team's current structure
• A breakdown of one key challenge, informed by conversations with the recruiter and event contacts
• Examples of how other companies were solving similar problems
• His personal experience addressing this kind of challenge
• A few practical, creative solutions tailored to Meta's ecosystem

Anderson invited the hiring manager and others who interviewed him into a conversation to discuss it.

"I framed it with, 'I'd love to get your thoughts on this,'" he said. "Suddenly, I wasn't just a candidate answering questions. I was a collaborator helping solve problems."

5. Making yourself easy to remember

The recruiter sent Anderson an email with the names of the people he was going to meet with. Anderson sent brief, friendly email introductions to each of his future interviewers, expressing his excitement about speaking with them.

During the actual interviews, Anderson made a personal connection with the hiring team. "At the start of each call, I asked, 'What's been the highlight of your day so far?' he said. "It's warm, it's disarming, and it instantly transforms the tone of the conversation."

About five months after applying, Anderson received a job offer from Meta for an instructional designer role — his entry position that he later parlayed into a management role as head of learning, global agencies, over his three years at Meta.

Anderson's manager told him something he'll never forget

"After I started, my manager told me, 'If you hadn't accepted, we would've restarted the entire hiring process — no one else came close,'" Anderson said. "That kind of validation reminded me that thoughtful risk-taking really does pay off."

Anderson said that this hiring experience taught him you don't have to follow the traditional script to be taken seriously in Big Tech.

"Throughout every step of the process, I anchored my message: I'm someone who notices problems early and works toward clear, communicative, creative solutions," he said. "My goal was always to show, not tell, who I was through every interaction."

• Elon Musk says he's pulling back from political spending.
• That's a big reversal from what he said he'd do months ago.
• Now, the GOP is going to have to make up the gap somehow.

Elon Musk once seemed primed to be an unlimited piggy bank for President Donald Trump and the GOP, keeping the party afloat while quashing internal dissent with the threat of an avalanche of money.

Now, that's all been thrown into doubt.

The world's richest man — by far the biggest political donor in America in 2024 — said on Tuesday that he'll be spending "a lot less" on elections in the future. "I think I've done enough," he told an interviewer. "If I see a reason to do political spending in the future, I will do it. I do not currently see a reason."

It's something of a reversal for the DOGE leader, who once said that his super PAC, America PAC, would "play a significant role in primaries." He'd even pledged to go after Democrats and get involved in local district attorney races.

Both his supporters and critics within the GOP expected him to throw around his weight. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said that any senator who voted against Trump's nominees would "have to deal with Elon Musk and his great new PAC," while Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska mused about Musk spending "the next billion dollars that he makes off of Starlink" against her.

It's unclear now exactly how much his political spending will decrease, and a spokesman for America PAC declined to comment. Musk could also change his mind or choose to route his fortune through "dark money" non-profit groups that don't have to disclose their donors.

"He's just trying to hide in the shadows," said Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, saying that Republicans "realize he's a liability, and they just want to put him in the back closet."

Musk spent nearly $300 million in 2024, and it wasn't just on Trump. He also spent more than $19 million on House races and gave more than $12 million to GOP super PACs that spent in Senate elections.

A diminished Musk is by no means the death knell for the GOP. The tech titan only started spending big on elections last year, and there are other sources of money for Republican campaigns. Republicans who spoke with BI generally dismissed concerns that Musk's step-back would have an impact.

"I don't think it's a major factor," Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota told BI. "I mean, to be honest, large-donor donations aren't really the recipe for success anyway these days. It's more small ones."

"I gotta be candid with you, I really don't care," said Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, who benefitted from more than $864,000 in spending by Musk's PAC last year.

But it's still a massive financial gap that the party would have to make up somehow.

For now, Republicans' House and Senate campaign arms are remaining mum on what it all means: A spokesperson for the National Republican Campaign Committee declined to comment, while the National Republican Senatorial Committee did not respond to a request for comment.

On both sides of the aisle, lawmakers said that Musk's move is likely a response to the intense blowback that he and his businesses have endured over DOGE, with Democrats managing to turn the tech titan into a boogeyman.

"I get it," Republican Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee said of Musk's pull-back. "He suffered the consequences. The left came at him pretty hard."

Democrats have felt especially vindicated after a Wisconsin Supreme Court election in April, where Musk spent millions of dollars backing a Republican candidate who ultimately lost by ten points.

"This proves that that an anti-billionaire, pro-worker strategy works," Democratic Rep. Greg Casar of Texas told BI. "Republicans have thought that people having infinite money to spend for them is an asset. Democrats can make Musk's, and other oligarchs' money, toxic in elections if we're willing to make the case to the American people."

• The Trump administration plans to receive a gifted Boeing 747-8 from Qatar.
• The jumbo jet previously served as a luxurious private business jet.
• The plane currently sports multiple bedrooms, a salon, a private living room, and a kids' playroom.

The luxurious Qatari jumbo jet that may soon get a promotion to Air Force One is chock-full of the glitz and grandeur President Donald Trump has shown a penchant for over the years.

First delivered to the Gulf state in 2012, the Boeing 747-8 is one of the most opulent private jets in the world and is much newer than the current fleet of jets that serve as Air Force One. Flight records show the plane flew to Mar-a-Lago, Trump's private club in Florida, in February.

The exact cost of the jumbo jet isn't clear, but a new 747-8 can fetch a cool $400 million.

Trump has said he would be "stupid" to turn down the gifted Boeing 747, especially as he has been vocal about his disappointment in the delays for a replacement that Boeing might not be able to deliver until 2028.

Its cockpit may look like any 747, but behind it is where the opulence is revealed.

The gift has raised ethical concerns among both Democrats and Republicans, which the White House has dismissed.

An iteration of the luxurious aircraft — designed by French interior design firm Cabinet Alberto Pinto for its previous life serving a Middle Eastern businessman — gives us a peek inside the opulent plane as it may look upon delivery to the Department of Defense as the potential future Air Force One.

The interior is sectioned into several rooms, akin to a traditional home.

Think a foyer, couches, touchscreen light switches, and bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms.

The primary bedroom takes the most advantageous and private location.

The spacious bedroom is perched in the nose of the aircraft, under the cockpit. It's a relatively quiet space, located furthers from the engine. And in lieu of two first-class seats, as the nose is often reserved for, the bedroom has a cozy loveseat.

The bedroom operates like that of a conventional residence.

Bedside tables and reading lights flank the mattress, perched across from the TV and loveseats. However, the walled cupholders still remind you that you're in an aircraft.

Otherwise, the en-suite bathroom looks quite orthodox, finished with a walk-in shower and a bright vanity.

Showers, which aren't a staple fixture in commercial aircrafts, are a key selling point for Boeing and Airbus' private jets.

Guest bedrooms accommodate additional guests.

Don't worry, they get their own bathrooms, too.

No need to stay tied down to a small passenger seat.

The aircraft has private offices and dining areas. Or, use the salon as both.

Its couches are great for lounging, while the circular table can be used for work, dinners, or a round of poker.

It's an aircraft — of course, the plush leather seats can recline via switches in the armrest.

Additional passengers and crew can be seated in a separate, smaller section with tables and in-flight entertainment systems.

The crew also has their own quarters, located up the foyer's staircase.

If the salon is the Oval Office, the upper deck is the executive residence.

In addition to the crew quarters, the second floor has a living room and a separate children's play area.

Yves Pickardt, the designer of this particular 747-8i and all of its homey amenities, previously told Altitudes Magazine that the aircraft took four years to design and complete — an indication of what the Secret Service may in for when it sets out to upgrade security, communications, and other systems if the President it to use the plane while in office.

An earlier version of this story was written by Taylor Rains and Tom Pallini.

Chelsea Atkinson understood, at least in theory, that her father's house might one day be hers. She just didn't expect that day to arrive so soon.

The death of her father in 2019 came as a shock: He was just 58, but complications from an earlier bout with lung cancer led to a quick decline. "It was like, 'Boom,'" Atkinson says. She was 28, an only child, and had already purchased a house in Austin, where she'd grown up. Grief aside, the inheritance of her childhood home, with the mortgage fully paid off, might seem like a winning lottery ticket. But the property came with an endless stream of dilemmas that Atkinson was entirely unprepared to resolve.

She and her father hadn't been on speaking terms in his final years, and she had no desire to move back into a home weighted with memories. She briefly considered turning it into a rental, only to conclude that she had zero interest in becoming a landlord. That left Atkinson to sell, but the 40-year-old house was showing its age. She would have to choose between pouring thousands of dollars into upgrades or offloading the house for well below what it might be worth. There was also the conundrum of what to do with all the stuff inside: sentimental artifacts, antique furniture, and worthless clutter. She would have to pay someone to haul literal truckloads away.

"All those questions start popping up," Atkinson tells me. "Like, 'What are you going to do with this thing that you really didn't know you were going to be getting so soon?'"

Millions of millennials will soon have to wrestle with similar choices. The US is on the precipice of a colossal wealth transfer, with the oldest baby boomers set to turn 80 next year. As they find spots in nursing homes, move in with younger relatives, or die, members of the once-largest generation will leave behind a staggering heap of real estate. This Great Boomer Bequeathment will pose unique questions and challenges for their millennial offspring. Aside from the ever-present family drama and arcane tax considerations, baby boomers are staying in their homes far longer than previous generations, which means many of their homes will likely demand extensive renovations. Their inheritors, if they choose to sell, may find themselves thrust into a weaker market as housing demand slows due to sluggish population growth. It also remains to be seen how much of those real estate riches will actually make it to millennials' bank accounts after years of retirement spending and eldercare.

That's not to say that these inheritances will be all burden and no bounty. Far from it. Handing down real estate can extend a financial lifeline to the next generation, offering an immediate windfall, a potentially lucrative investment, or a homeownership cheat code. But to pull off that smooth transfer, boomers will need to have some frank conversations about their futures.

"I think most people just don't like to think about dying," says Scott Westfall, a 33-year-old real estate broker in Virginia Beach, a popular landing spot for the retirement crowd. "You've got to face that you will die someday, or your parents will die someday, and so it's better to have a conversation now than be surprised by it."

Baby boomers dominate America's housing market. They own roughly $19.7 trillion worth of US real estate, or 41% of the country's total value, despite accounting for only a fifth of the population. Millennials, by comparison, make up a slightly larger share of the population but own just $9.8 trillion of real estate, or 20%. The disparity is a product of both their relative youth and the stark advantages enjoyed by their elders. Flush with cash from prior home sales and burgeoning stock portfolios, boomers can afford to win bidding wars and upgrade, downsize, or collect rental properties like Monopoly pieces. Even last year, with millennials solidly in their peak homebuying years, baby boomers gobbled up the lion's share of the market. They accounted for 42% of buyers between July 2023 and June 2024, data from the National Association of Realtors found, well outpacing millennials' measly 29% share.

Boomers are a big reason Americans are stuck in place: People are staying in their homes almost twice as long as they used to, a Redfin analysis found, with nearly 40% of boomers having lived in their homes for at least 20 years and another 16% staying put for 10 to 19 years. A survey of 1,000 boomers by Leaf Home and Morning Consult found that 68% lived in homes that were at least three decades old, "with many never having done renovations or replacing major appliances, and most having no plans to move or make any type of home improvements." Their motivations for staying put range from lifestyle preferences to financial savvy. A number of surveys indicate that many boomers want to age in place rather than retreat to a nursing home or move in with family. They're also more likely to own their homes free and clear, with no pesky mortgage payments each month. Even if they do pull up stakes, they might hold onto their old place as a rental property rather than sell.

Soon, though, Father Time will force the generation to either pass along those homes to lucky inheritors or dump them on the market. While demographers emphasize that this will be more of a glacial shift rather than the well-publicized, instantaneous "silver tsunami," this changing of the guard will happen. Between 2025 and 2035, boomers' numbers are projected to decline by 23%, or about 15.6 million people, according to an analysis of Census data by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. Between 2035 and 2045, their numbers are expected to drop by another 47%, or 23.4 million people.

While a horizon of a decade or two may seem a long way off, financial planners and real estate agents warn against kicking the can down the road. By the time millennials actually inherit a house from their parents, Westfall tells me, it'll be "too late" to figure out the best way to set up that transfer. In many instances, questions around the fate of a house will crop up long before its owner dies. An aging baby boomer may be forced out of their home and into a nursing home, leaving their progeny to figure out how to balance paying for upkeep on the house, a mortgage if there is one, property taxes, and the necessary healthcare. Without money set aside for these things, along with clear instructions for what to do with the house in those final years and beyond, the situation can easily devolve into chaos. Unprepared millennials may end up with their hands tied. Ari Rubin, the founder and CEO of Flock Homes, a company that bills itself as a "retirement solution" for landlords and regular homeowners, warns that they could wind up inheriting responsibility for the home years before they actually assume the title.

"I think the biggest problem is in the year or 10 years before inheritance," Rubin says.

Millennial inheritors are often eager to climb the housing ladder, but they may not be prepared for all the monthly costs that go into paying off and maintaining a home that's a few rungs above their current costs. That's not to mention the big-ticket upgrades or repairs that are often required after someone has lived in a home for several decades. And even if your boomer parents move into a nursing home or the granny flat in your backyard, there may be good reasons, tax-wise, for waiting to sell or transfer the old home until they die, especially if the house's value has appreciated a lot (more on that later).

Flock Homes offers one answer to this common predicament. The company, which recently raised a $20 million Series B, gives aging homeowners (or their inheritors) the chance to exchange their burdensome homes for a stake in a diversified real estate fund — while deferring taxes — through a little-known maneuver known as a 721 exchange. That's far from the only option, though. There's a whole cottage industry devoted to greasing the handoff of homes from one generation to the next, offering products designed to minimize Uncle Sam's ability to put his hand in your coffers.

There's no "correct" way to pass down a home. For some families, a simple beneficiary deed, which transfers the title upon death, will do the trick. Others will need to make more complex arrangements. Setting up the house in a trust — a set of legal documents that define exactly who gets it and when, what they can (and can't) do with it, and maybe even set aside money to fund its upkeep — can provide a road map for inheritors and nip intrafamilial squabbling in the bud.

"It helps provide a structure with specific direction on how those assets are treated after they're gone," says Jeremy Taylor, who manages real estate advisory services at Commerce Trust.

On the other hand, overly restrictive trusts could leave millennial inheritors in a bind. Taylor cites examples in which the parents dictated that their house be held in the family for a set number of years, but underestimated the amount of money they'd need to leave behind in order to keep up the place during that time. "There's a trust with no cash and property to be maintained," Taylor tells me, "and not a lot of flexibility for the trustee to sell." The inheritors may end up stumbling through the court system for months to get permission to offload the property. And, of course, trusts can't completely solve the family tension that often arises when valuable assets need to be divvied up.

Then there's the tax question. One of the preoccupations among the investment management crowd is helping clients dodge what's known as the capital gains tax, which applies to the profits made from selling assets, like homes or stocks, that have grown more valuable over time. If your boomer parents sell a house while they're alive, they'll have to pay taxes — as much as nearly 40% — on the amount the home has appreciated since they bought it. Sure, the first $250,000 to $500,000 of those gains are tax-exempt, depending on your filing status, but given that many boomers have held onto their homes for decades, their profits may well exceed those thresholds. The IRS offers a nifty hack, though, called the "stepped-up cost basis," that allows inheritors to sell the property with a minimal tax bill. When a homeowner dies and passes along their property, the starting point used in those capital gains calculations gets bumped up to the house's current value, instead of the value at which it was purchased.

Let's take a theoretical example: Say your father bought a home back in 2010 for $400,000. He's a smart guy, picked a good neighborhood in an up-and-coming city, and did a little touching up of the home, so 15 years later the house is worth $1.1 million, which comes out to a hefty $700,000 gain. If he sold it before dying, he'd have to pay taxes on $450,000 of those gains after subtracting the aforementioned exemptions. But if he hands it down to you in his will, the starting point value of the house gets adjusted to $1.1 million — in other words, if you sell for that price, or even a little more, the government doesn't consider you to have "gained" any value since the inheritance, so your tax bill is nothing.

Joe Metz, a Bay Area real estate agent and the founder of Senior Homeowner Solutions, has built an entire second career out of helping people pull maneuvers to avoid the capital gains tax. But for people who decide to keep their deceased parents' home, he says, there's another bill that people often don't consider: property taxes. People just don't think about the ongoing costs of homeownership as much as they should. Data from the real estate analytics firm Cotality found that the median annual property tax bill has jumped 42% since 2019, to more than $3,000. The tax hits can be especially jarring in Metz's home base of California, where they typically spike once a house is passed down. In San Francisco, for instance, property taxes on a $3 million home could stretch past $30,000 a year. And again, that doesn't include insurance, a mortgage, and the random repairs that often crop up.

"So many parents want their kids to have the house, and so many kids want to inherit the parents' house — until they hear about the property tax," Metz tells me.

Laura de Vera, a 35-year-old chef in Washington, DC, found that handling an inheritance can be tough even when all the specifics have already been accounted for. When her mother died from cancer in 2020, she left behind a trust with stipulations that detailed how long de Vera's stepfather could live in her old house and how the proceeds from a sale would be divided among him, de Vera, and her sister. She also accounted for every belonging, down to the jewelry inside the place. "She was very candid and just very practical," de Vera says of her mother. De Vera's stepfather opted to sell the home quickly for a handsome gain, which was fortunate — de Vera says she was lost in a fog of grief for months, and had to devote time to all the other logistics that come with death. Years later, she's still grateful for the steps her mother took ahead of time.

"We were as prepared as you possibly can be in that situation," de Vera tells me. "There's nothing my mom could have done better, and it was still just devastatingly difficult to slog through, because of how emotional the situation is."

For some millennials, stressing over what to do with their parents' assets may turn out to be a moot point. My colleagues at BI have thoroughly reported on all the outlays that eat into inheritances: living expenses during retirement, senior care for aging parents, home repairs, and the hundreds of other day-to-day costs that put a dent in our wallets. Given the rising expenses of growing old and the locations that boomers have chosen to spend their golden years, Daryl Fairweather, the chief economist at Redfin, says she's skeptical of the idea that all this wealth will trickle down to the next generation.

"I think some of it is going to kind of evaporate, because the homes are not the kind of homes that younger people want," Fairweather tells me. "Maybe the insurance costs are too high because they're in climate-risky areas, or they had to take out reverse mortgages to pay for all their eldercare" — which, in the most extreme cases, could mean little or no equity left in boomers' homes.

That won't be the case for all those millions of homes scattered around the country, though. Westfall, the broker in Virginia Beach, says homeowners in his area are keen to learn how they can protect their wealth for the next generation — so much so that he's begun hosting informational sessions in which he and a lawyer field questions from the silver-haired set. As for the young'uns, Westfall tells me the best way for millennials to prepare for the future is to simply have a conversation with their parents. You don't have to frame it as "I expect something," Westfall says, but it's the cleanest way to make sure that what should be a blessing doesn't turn into a nightmare.

Atkinson, the homeowner in Austin who inherited her father's house, eventually decided to sell to a neighbor who had helped care for her father late in his life. The price totaled $200,000 — well below the going rate in the area, Atkinson admits. But she was happy to leave the house in the hands of someone who felt like family, rather than a developer intent on tearing it down and erecting a McMansion. By the time she sold, in 2020, she'd spent about a year combing through the clutter and assessing her next move. She says she was glad to have the time to contemplate her decision instead of making a harried choice in the weeks after her father's death. She's even more grateful for the conversations she's had with her mother in the aftermath.

Atkinson's mother lives in a small Texas town, in a house she owns. Ever since her ex-husband died, she's been "very open about talking about death, which I think is really nice coming from a parent," Atkinson says. Her mother has gone through her possessions in detail, explaining the sentimental value of certain objects, the worthlessness of others, and her hopes for what will become of them after she dies. And, of course, she has a will.

"My dad had never really talked about dying and what happens after the fact," Atkinson tells me. "I think having that open communication with my parent will at least make the burden of what happens afterward easier."

James Rodriguez is a senior reporter on Business Insider's Discourse team.

• Gen Z and millennials are delaying homebuying, and more older adults are renting.
• High home prices and maintenance costs are making renting more appealing than buying for many.
• Wealthy people are also choosing the flexibility and amenities that come with renting.

Gen Zers and millennials are postponing buying their first home, a growing number of older people are renting, and tenants are staying in their rentals for longer. This adds up to a record-high number of renters and an increasing share of those renters in older generations.

"Renting today isn't just for young adults starting out," said Nadia Evangelou, a senior economist for the National Association of Realtors. "It's actually a much more mixed picture. Over the past decade, we have seen more older millennials and Gen Xers staying in rentals longer, and even some boomers, for example, opting to rent later in life."

The overall number of renters has grown over the last several years. There were 45.6 million renter-occupied housing units in the US in 2023, up from 39.7 million in 2010, based on the Census Bureau's American Community Survey.

Are you renting a home longer than you thought you would, or have you become a renter again later in life? Share your experience with these reporters at [email protected] and [email protected].

The US is also seeing an uptick in older tenants. An Urban Institute projection found that the share of people 65 and older who rent their homes will grow from 22% in 2020 to 27% in 2040 — an additional 5.5 million renting households. Older Black renters will see the biggest jump, doubling in number between 2020 and 2040.

A smaller share of US renter-occupied housing units were headed by people under 35 years old in 2023 than in 2010. Meanwhile, the share of rental households headed by someone 65 or older grew over that period.

Renters are staying in their homes longer as well, per a Redfin analysis of Census Bureau data.

"Renting is becoming less of a short-term stop and more of a long-term reality for many households," Evangelou said.

Renting could be a smart financial move

The main reason people are renting for longer: the surging cost of homeownership. Home prices have soared across the country amid a housing shortage. At the same time, property taxes, home insurance, and home repair and maintenance costs are on the rise.

All of that has made renting a better deal than buying in many places — a reversal of the historic norm. Indeed, homebuyers purchasing starter homes in 50 major cities in 2024 spent over $1,000 more on housing costs each month than tenants do.

To be sure, many renters are struggling, too. Tenants' incomes aren't keeping up with rising housing costs, and a rising share of renters are cost-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on housing.

Some Americans are renting for longer by choice. Rich renters are on the rise. Many millionaire millennials and boomers with healthy savings, who could afford to buy a home, are opting instead to rent. They like the flexibility of a lease, the convenience of having a landlord handle home maintenance, and the amenities luxury rentals offer, like in-building doggy day care, dry cleaning, and yoga classes.

"I think of renting as paying for a service, and liken it to a hotel," start-up founder Tori Dunlap, a 30-year-old multimillionaire, told BI last year. "Renting is flexible, and I don't have to worry about things that homeowners worry about, like committing to a particular place or neighborhood or dealing with a burst pipe."

Some of these affluent renters opt instead to keep their money in the market or other more flexible, higher-return investments.

"People are reevaluating whether or not they want their homes to be their asset wealth-builder," Doug Ressler, an analyst at Yardi Matrix, part of the property-management software firm Yardi, said. He added that higher-income tenants "want to have the freedom and mobility of time, and they don't want to be saddled with the things that a house brings with it."

Some financial advisors are also challenging the conventional wisdom that buying a home is a smarter financial decision than renting.

"You've been lied to about buying property," Ramit Sethi, a popular financial advisor and star of the Netflix show "How to get rich," said in a 2023 video titled "Why I Don't Own a House as a Multi-Millionaire."

Sethi recommends that those who buy a home take into account the "phantom" costs of maintenance, repairs, insurance, and buying and selling fees, and urges them to maintain diverse investments.