• Vinay Hiremath, a co-founder of Loom, just wrote about finding purpose after selling the company.
• Software company Atlassian acquired Loom for $975 million in fall 2023.
• The 32-year-old has climbed mountains and joined DOGE. Now, he's in Hawaii.

Vinay Hiremath is grappling with one of success's unexpected downsides.

The 32-year-old cofounded Loom, a video communication company that was acquired by Australian software company Atlassian in October 2023 for about $975 million.

In a recent blog on his website, the former chief technology officer of Loom wrote about giving up $60 million in pay when he decided not to work for Atlassian. Instead, he said he briefly evaluated building a robotics company and climbed two Himalayan peaks. Hiremath also worked for Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy's Department of Government Efficiency for a month.

"I started to realize that, although the mission of DOGE is extremely important, it wasn't the most important thing I needed to focus on with urgency for myself," he wrote. "I needed to get back to ambiguity, focus on my insecurities, and be ok with that for a while. DOGE wasn't going to fix that."

Hiremath, who broke up with his long-term girlfriend, also wrote about the challenges of tying his identity to his startup.

"When we went through our first round of layoffs, this company my ego was hitched to had suffered a massive blow, so I lost myself. This whole chapter of Loom has created a complex web of internalized insecurities I must now work hard to disentangle and free myself from."

His co-founder, Joe Thomas, remains CEO.

A Wednesday X post in which Hiremath shared a link to his blog has been viewed nearly 540,000 times. The post garnered over 500 comments, many from other tech enthusiasts and startup founders thanking Hiremath for opening up.

Hiremath wrote he is in Hawaii, learning physics and aiming to start another company "that manufactures real-world things" — even if he doesn't find as much success as he did at Loom.

And he's wrestling with philosophical questions about his identity and how he relates to others.

Hiremath did not respond to a request for further comment.

Purpose beyond the job

Hiremath is part of a wider community of suddenly wealthy people or early retirees who struggle to find purpose after decades of working. Experts in personal finance say the feeling is common.

"When we have more money than we could ever spend, most people quit their job — but the job provides many of us with structure, a sense of purpose, and a great deal of our social interaction. Remove this, and it leaves a big void," Robert Pagliarini, a financial advisor who wrote a book about sudden wealth, previously told Business Insider.

Clayton Christensen, an academic and business consultant best known for his theory of "disruptive innovation" and his views on purpose, long said that focusing on a purpose is essential for personal and professional success.

The Rhodes Scholar and Harvard Business School alumnus, who died in 2020, wrote that he had to "think long and hard" about his purpose.

"Over the years I've watched the fates of my HBS classmates from 1979 unfold; I've seen more and more of them come to reunions unhappy, divorced, and alienated from their children," Christensen wrote in a 2010 Harvard Business Review article. "They didn't keep the purpose of their lives front and center as they decided how to spend their time, talents, and energy."

• The Cybertruck that exploded in Las Vegas was rented on Turo, the car-sharing company said.
• The app was also used to rent the truck used in the New Orleans attack.
• President Joe Biden said authorities were looking into whether the two incidents were connected.

The Tesla Cybertruck that exploded on Wednesday in Las Vegas was rented on Turo, the same car-sharing app used to rent the pickup truck used in the New Orleans attack early Wednesday.

In a statement on its website on Wednesday, Turo confirmed the vehicles involved in both incidents were rented through its service.

"Our trust and safety team is actively partnering with law enforcement authorities to share any information that could be helpful in their investigations," the statement read. "We do not believe that either renter had a criminal background that would have identified them as a security threat, and we are not currently aware of any information that indicates the two incidents are related."

Shamsud-Din Jabbar has been identified as the suspect in the deadly New Orleans attack. Jabbar's criminal record, obtained from the Texas Department of Public Safety and viewed by Business Insider, shows two prior arrests in 2002 and 2005.

The first was for theft, while the other was for driving with an invalid license. Both were classified as misdemeanors.

Celebrity-backed company

Turo lets private car owners rent out their vehicles. It's similar to Airbnb or Vrbo but for vehicles instead of homes.

The San Francisco-based company offers a wide range of cars, including Toyotas, Porsches, and Teslas, and is active in the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, and France.

Investors include the venture arms of American Express, BMW, and Liberty Mutual and top venture-capital firms such as Kleiner Perkins and Google Ventures. Celebrities such as the rapper 2 Chainz and NBA and NFL players have also invested.

Turo has close to 1,000 employees and was valued at $1.5 billion in 2020, per PitchBook. The company, which was founded in 2009, registered for an initial public offering in 2021 but hasn't yet gone public.

The company had 360,000 cars listed on its platform at the end of 2023, and about 3.7 million people booked cars that year, according to a March 2024 filing. In that filing, Turo said customers' actions that result in criminal activity could affect the company's reputation and create legal liabilities — a standard line in these documents.

The company wrote that it had no control over — or the ability to predict — the actions of car renters, who it calls guests.

"We cannot conclusively verify the identity of all guests, nor do we verify or screen third parties who may be present during a trip using a vehicle booked through our platform," the March filing said. "Our trust and safety processes focus primarily on guests to reduce the risk of vehicle theft and motor vehicle accidents."

The company reported nearly $880 million in revenue in 2023, an 18% year-over-year growth. It posted $14.7 million in profits, a sharp fall from $154.7 million in 2022. Losses and high costs are common for growing tech companies, especially those that aren't yet public.

Authorities are investigating possible connections between attacks

In a press conference Wednesday, President Joe Biden said authorities were investigating whether there was any connection between the Las Vegas explosion and the New Orleans attack.

Kevin McMahill, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department sheriff, said at a press conference that the driver of the Tesla Cybertruck was killed and that seven others were injured after the vehicle exploded outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas.

"We're very well aware of what has happened in New Orleans with the event that occurred there, and the number of victims there and the additional IEDs," McMahill said, referring to the attack in New Orleans that killed 15 on Wednesday morning. "So, as you can imagine, with an explosion here on iconic Las Vegas Boulevard, we are taking all of the precautions that we need to take to keep our community safe."

Tesla CEO Elon Musk wrote on X that the explosion was "caused by very large fireworks and/or a bomb" in the bed of the Cybertruck.

This story is developing. Please check back for updates.

• Yung-Yu Lin uses Google Search alerts to stay informed about company news before interviews.
• Sarra Bounouh suggests making separate lists of questions for the hiring manager and team leader.
• Anthony Mays advises creating unique project portfolios to stand out.

In his two-decade tech career, Yung-Yu Lin worked in Taiwan and the US, in hardware, software engineering, and product management roles.

Through career and company changes, preparing for interviews has been key, the senior product manager at Google told Business Insider.

"When you get to the interview, people always get nervous — it doesn't matter who you are," Lin said. "The only thing you can control is just trying to practice and get yourself a little bit more familiar with the interview process."

He and two other tech employees from Meta and Google shared their top tips to prepare before heading into an important Big Tech interview:

Mock interviews

Lin said that one of his top strategies is to do mock interviews with peers.

He uses career-building platforms such as IGotAnOffer, where people role-play interviews with people working or applying to the same companies.

"I scheduled four different mock interviews with other candidates also trying to apply for jobs at Google," Lin said.

Lin said it was helpful because he not only got a second opinion on his own answers, but also learned from his partner.

Subscribe to company news

To have a good discussion, and to be able to ask informed questions at the end of his interviews, Lin said he sets up Google Search alerts for the company at which he is interviewing.

"Before the interview, I would take a look at whatever happening in the past week and if there is any significant or big change, I ask interviewers or ask recruiters what does that mean for the company or for the industry," he said.

That shows you are interested in both the company and trends in the domain, Lin added.

Plan a list of questions

Sarra Bonouh, a product manager at Meta who has worked at Accenture, Microsoft, and Snap, said that she prepares a list of questions to ask at the end of the interview.

Her questions change based on whether the interviewer is in a leadership position or a hiring manager.

For a leader:

• What is the strategy of the team and the company? How do this team's objectives and key results fit into the overall mission and strategy of the company?
• What do you have in mind for the team in the next six months and the next 12 months?
• What would make the person in the role that you're hiring for stand out?

For a hiring manager:

• Who are the people someone in this role will be working closely with?
• What does success mean for this role?
• Tell me about a project the team worked on recently and the impact it had?

"I like this question a lot because it helps me evaluate the scope of work that the team has," she said about the last question. "This one I ask actually to all of the hiring managers."

Prepare a portfolio

Anthony D. Mays, who worked at Google for eight years before becoming a tech career consultant in 2022, said that it's key to prepare a portfolio that stands out.

He said there's a big influx of talent coming from coding boot camps, where everyone is given an identical project template. "I can see that you didn't actually put in the effort to make something of your own."

He suggests creating a portfolio of coding projects on Github or other platforms that emulate what the role entails in real life and talking about them in interviews.

"Pretend that you're working for a real company with a team of other engineers," he said. "Nowadays, I encourage my clients to build portfolio projects in pairs or with a team of other people, and to think about how you build within a team, because that is the thing that hiring managers and recruiters are looking for."

• Former President Jimmy Carter has died at 100.
• Carter founded The Carter Center, won a Nobel Peace Prize, and promoted global peace.
• His leadership successes include mediation among seemingly intractable groups.

Jimmy Carter's Sunday death has reignited conversations about the former president's leadership.

Carter's term, from 1977 to 1981, was marked by an energy crisis in 1979, the Iranian hostage situation in the same year, and double-digit inflation in 1980. He is widely praised for his work after his presidency, including humanitarian work and conflict mediation.

During his presidency, Carter was best known for his foreign relations work. He facilitated the Camp David Accords — the first peace treaty between Israel and Egypt — and established full diplomatic relations between the US and China.

In 1982, the former president founded The Carter Center to focus on such issues, and he was active in Habitat for Humanity projects until the end of his life.

Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his efforts to secure peaceful solutions to international conflicts.

"God gives us a capacity for choice. We can choose to alleviate suffering. We can choose to work together for peace. We can make these changes, and we must," Carter said in his acceptance speech.

Cater was a former, governor, and Naval officer, among other jobs. He said in a 1998 interview with Harvard Business Review, that in all roles, he tried to master his specific duties and delegate as much as possible.

His death has led to an outpouring of reflections on his leadership and management successes from business and political leaders worldwide. Here are five leadership lessons Carter lived by during his lifetime:

1. Understand the other side

During his time brokering the Camp David Accords in 1978, Carter mediated between seemingly intractable sides — Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

Carter remained patient through the grueling 13-day negotiations, letting both leaders feel heard and respected. Carter helped shift the priority of the negotiations from short-term political gains to the long-term goal of peace in the region.

In the 1998 interview with HBR, Carter said that the same principles apply to business leaders.

"All negotiations, whether in government or business, require certain things," he said. "One is a proper respect for the people across from you whose opinions differ from yours. You can't be arrogant. You've got to give the people with whom you're contending your understanding—not your agreement but your understanding."

He carried on his mediation work after his presidency.

In 1999, he helped broker the Nairobi Agreement, which led to the restoration of diplomatic ties between Sudan and Uganda and the return of about 300 child soldiers.

2. Don't fear being ahead of your time

Carter was one of the earliest advocates for fighting a series of neglected diseases, including river blindness and guinea worm.

"Starting on the day he was inaugurated in January 1977, President Carter has unapologetically advocated for human rights, a stance that wasn't always popular in Washington, D.C., or in foreign capitals," Craig Withers, an executive at The Carter Center, who worked with the former President for 36 years, wrote in Fast Company article in October.

He was also one of the first politicians to fight for energy efficiency in the transport industry, despite pushback from American carmakers.

"There was a tremendous improvement in the efficient use of energy while I was there. The laws that we finally passed after four full years of tedious negotiation are still on the books," Carter told HBR in 1998.

3. Pay attention and then take action

The 39th President was a devout Christian and taught at a Sunday school in his hometown in Georgia until he entered hospice in 2022.

Carter's humanitarian work stemmed from his keenness to notice the needs of others around him and take action. A longtime letter writer on behalf of political prisoners at home and around the world, Carter was also seen as a reliable neighbor and worked on several reforestation and conservation projects, starting with tree farming on his family's land in Georgia.

"As a businessman, a church leader, and a political leader, I became intensely aware of the needs of others in the deep South during segregation, although I wasn't always as courageous as I should have been in trying to alleviate these problems," Carter wrote in 1998. "But understanding the needs and suffering of others is a vital element for successful leadership."

4. Build strong constituencies

Among the many criticisms during his presidency, such as his handling of the Iranian hostage crisis and the recession that came toward the end of his term, critics say his biggest weakness was a people management mistake.

"Jimmy Carter found that all the political skill and savvy in the world did not compensate for lacking strong constituencies," Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, wrote in an HBR column in 2008.

His inability to garner long-term support from various factions divided the Democratic Party. In 1980, Ronald Reagan won the election and the vote of many Democrats during the presidential election.

5. Be careful with the truth

Carter built his presidential campaign in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon. He called for honesty and integrity in government.

"High moral and ethical standards are essential, and they don't change from one job to another, or from one level of authority to another," Carter said in 1998. "Whenever a leader violates these basic principles, through arrogance or through ignorance, there's a derogation of duty."

Carter criticized President-elect Donald Trump for "exacerbating" racial tensions and being "careless with the truth" in a 2018 CBS News interview.

"I think I went through my campaign and my presidency without ever lying to the people or making a deliberately false statement, and I think that would be a very worthwhile thing to reinsert into politics these days," he said.

In 2022, he reflected on the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol in a New York Times Opinion essay.

He wrote: "I now fear that what we have fought so hard to achieve globally — the right to free, fair elections, unhindered by strongman politicians who seek nothing more than to grow their own power — has become dangerously fragile at home."

"For American democracy to endure, we must demand that our leaders and candidates uphold the ideals of freedom and adhere to high standards of conduct."

• A plot next to Jeff Bezos' Miami properties is on sale for $200 million.
• The land is on Indian Creek, a private island that's home to several billionaires.
• The sellers remain unknown, but their broker said they are open to negotiating the price.

A plot of land next to Jeff Bezos' properties in South Florida is on sale for $200 million.

The 1.84-acre property is on Indian Creek, a private, artificial island in Miami-Dade County that's known as the "Billionaire Bunker." The island is home to properties owned by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, Tom Brady, Carl Icahn, and a more recent arrival — Jeff Bezos.

The asking price — $200 million for the land — is more than what Bezos paid for any of his three properties on the island. In 2023, the Amazon founder purchased a $68 million mansion and an adjacent property for $79 million. In September, he made a third purchase for $90 million. Last year, Bezos said he would be moving to Miami after living in Seattle for 29 years. The listing was first reported by the New York Post.

Ilya Reznik is representing the owners, who did not want to be identified. The owners bought the land for $27.5 million in 2018, the listing states. Predesigns for a 25,000-square-foot estate on the property that would be available to the buyer, according to the listing.

Reznik told Business Insider that asking price comes down to the lot being "a very unique location." However, Bezos' purchases had an effect on the prices in the area.

Bezos "did pay the numbers, which are really high," Reznik said. "But now those prices are there and the market is there and higher."

"It's not just Indian Creek, but everywhere in Miami and on the islands," Reznik said. "And if it's new, if it's a new build house, buyers are willing to pay premium. This is just what's going on in Miami."

The listing states that the land also comes with 200 feet of Biscayne Bay waterfront, which The New York Post reported would allow the owner to build a deep-water dock for a 180-foot megayacht.

Indian Creek is about 15 miles from Miami. The highly secure island is accessible only by a single bridge connecting it to the mainland. It has about 40 homes over 300 acres and an ultra-exclusive country club. The island's police department monitors the area's only entrance and patrols the perimeter around the clock.

• KKR and Bain Capital bid over $5 billion for Seven & i's non-core assets.
• Seven & i's non-core assets include superstores, baby stores, and Denny's Japan operations.
• Seven & i also received a $47 billion offer from Alimentation Couche-Tard.

Some of the world's biggest private equity companies have joined the race to own pieces of 7-Eleven's parent company.

Japanese-owned Seven & i Holdings has a sprawling set of businesses, including 85,000 7-Elevens globally and a host of supermarkets. The $39.5 billion company, whose stock is up 30% this year, has been the target of numerous takeover bids in recent months — for all of the business or parts of it.

On Wednesday, Reuters reported that US private equity firms KKR and Bain Capital each offered over $5 billion in first-round bids for some assets of the company. Local private equity firm Japan Industrial Partners offered about $4.8 billion, per Reuters.

The firms are reportedly looking to buy York Holdings — Seven and i's non-core businesses, including superstores, baby goods chain Akachan Honpo, and the company that runs Denny's diner chain in Japan. All three firms were successful in the first round of bidding for these assets, according to Reuters, which cited people familiar with the matter.

Private equity firms typically buy companies or subsidiaries they see as struggling and work to make them profitable before selling them as a whole or in parts after a couple of years.

Representatives of KKR, Bain Capital, Japan Industrial Partners, and Seven & i did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Reuters reported on Wednesday that Seven & i aims to select the winning bid as early as February, and the decision could be finalized by spring.

Rival convenience store

Besides the three buyout firms, the 7-Eleven parent also received a $47 billion takeover offer from Canadian multinational convenience store chain Alimentation Couche-Tard. Couche-Tard, which has almost 17,000 stores around the world, bid for Seven & i this summer.

Unlike the private equity firms, Couche-Tard appears to want to buy the whole company, including the 7-Eleven stores.

The deal would amount to the largest-ever foreign takeover of a Japanese company and would give the 7-Eleven chain North American ownership again.

The chain partnered with Ito-Yokado, a Japanese supermarket chain founded in 1973, to build franchised locations in Japan. In the 1990s, Ito-Yokado acquired a majority stake in the company and completed a full acquisition in November 2005. That year, Ito-Yokado reorganized, becoming Seven & i Holdings. 7-Eleven had about 25,000 stores globally before the takeover in 2005, per a trade magazine.

Couche-Tard did not respond to a request for comment.

Seven & i family

The company is also contending with a management takeover to fend off the Canadian offer by going private. In November, Seven & I said it received an acquisition proposal from current vice president Junro Ito, his private company, Ito-Kogyo, and the son of founder Masatoshi Ito.

Ito-Kogyo owned 8.2% of Seven & i as of August, making it the second-largest shareholder, according to the company. Master Trust Bank of Japan is the largest shareholder, with a 14.7% stake.

The privatization offer could be worth around $58 billion, Bloomberg reported in November.

Seven & I said in November that it had formed a board of directors committee to consider Ito and Couche-Tard's offers.

• Lyft sued San Francisco, saying it was unfairly charged $100 million in taxes from 2019 to 2023.
• Lyft argues the city's tax formula unfairly includes passenger payments as revenue.
• The lawsuit highlights global gig-economy debates over worker classification.

Lyft has accused the city of San Francisco in a lawsuit of overcharging it $100 million in taxes over five years, arguing that the city used a calculation that doesn't reflect the ride-hailing firm's business model.

The lawsuit, filed at the California Superior Court in San Francisco, says the city calculated Lyft's 2019 to 2023 taxes based on the total amount passengers paid for rides. But Lyft says it makes money from what drivers pay to Lyft, not what passengers pay to the drivers. Drivers make at least 70% of what the passenger pays, according to Lyft's website.

Lyft considers drivers as customers who use its service and not employees, the company said in the state court complaint. The city's formula is "distortive and will grossly overstate Lyft's gross receipts attributable to Lyft's business activities in the city," the filing says.

The filing says the US Securities and Exchange Commission doesn't consider driver's fees as part of Lyft's revenue. Driver fees are also not recognized as income for income-tax purposes on a state or federal level. Lyft is seeking a refund for the amount it overpaid.

Lyft and the San Francisco City Attorney's representatives didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

"Lyft doesn't take operating in San Francisco for granted and we love serving both riders and drivers in our hometown city," the company said in a statement to Bloomberg on Wednesday. "But, we believe the city is incorrect with how it calculated our gross receipts tax for the years 2019-2023."

The complaint is another example of ride-hailing and quick-delivery platforms such as Lyft, Uber, and DoorDash making it clear that drivers on their US platforms are gig workers, not employees. Having drivers on a payroll would mean paying employment benefits such as vacation and overtime pay, minimum-wage protection, and health insurance.

Last year, gig-economy companies scored a big win after a California appeals court upheld a law that classified gig workers as independent contractors, not employees. But that argument hasn't always worked out for these companies in other markets: In 2021, the UK ruled that Uber drivers must be treated as company employees and not independent workers after a five-year legal battle.

• Denmark plans to invest at least $1.5 billion to enhance Greenland's defense capabilities.
• The announcement follows Donald Trump's renewed interest in purchasing Greenland for strategic reasons.
• Greenland holds strategic value because of its location in the Arctic and its resources.

Denmark's government announced a defense package for Greenland worth at least $1.5 billion after President-elect Donald Trump reiterated that he wanted the US to purchase the Arctic territory.

The Danish defense minister, Troels Lund Poulsen, told a local media outlet that Denmark would invest "a double-digit billion amount" in kroner to buy two new inspection ships, two new long-range drones, and extra sled patrols in Greenland.

"It is ironic that it coincides with the announcement from the United States," Poulsen said, suggesting that the two events aren't necessarily related and that the investment was previously planned.

On Monday, Trump wrote on Truth Social that "for purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity." A 2019 report by The Wall Street Journal said that Trump had repeatedly expressed interest in buying Greenland.

Trump's Monday comments followed a separate post suggesting the US could take over the Panama Canal. He made the comments about Greenland in a post announcing the PayPal cofounder Ken Howery as his pick for US ambassador to Denmark.

Greenland, an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, is between the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans and has a population of roughly 56,000. The island is home to the US military's northernmost base and has strategic value because of natural resources and proximity to the Arctic, where Russia and China are already increasing activity. Denmark is a US ally and NATO member.

Greenland's prime minister, Mute Egede, responded to Trump's post on Monday by saying, "We are not for sale and will never be for sale." The Danish prime minister's office echoed Egede's statement, saying Greenland wasn't for sale but open for cooperation.

• Telegram is profitable after 11 years, thanks to ads and premium subscriptions, its CEO said.
• The platform's revenue exceeded $1 billion, with $500 million in cash reserves.
• Telegram faces global scrutiny over misinformation and its lack of content moderation.

Encrypted messaging service Telegram is finally profitable about 11 years after it was founded, CEO Pavel Durov said Monday.

Durov wrote in a post on his Telegram channel that the messaging platform turned profitable this year because of revenue from ads and its premium subscription. It also paid off a "meaningful share" of its $2 billion debt, he said.

Telegram has been pushing monetization efforts this year such as a revenue-sharing model for content creators and a business-level subscription tier. The premium monthly subscription costs $4.99.

Telegram's 2024 revenue surpassed $1 billion, and the company has $500 million in cash, excluding crypto, the Russian-born founder wrote. He said the results "demonstrate that social media platforms can achieve financial sustainability while staying independent and respecting users' rights."

The milestone is a big improvement from last year's figures: Telegram lost $108 million on revenue of $342 million, according to The Financial Times in August. Losses in early years are common for growing tech and media companies and Durov even floated the idea of a public listing earlier this year.

The messaging service, which said it has about 950 million users, has faced a series of controversies, including bans and scrutiny over the spread of misinformation. In August, French authorities arrested Durov and issued preliminary charges for allowing what they deemed criminal activity on Telegram. Durov has not been allowed to leave France since.

"Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach," Durov wrote on his Telegram channel at the time.

He acknowledged that the platform's growth spike caused "growing pains" that made it easier for criminals to abuse, but said it isn't an "anarchic paradise."

Spain, Germany, and the UK, among other countries, have considered banning the app or placing sanctions because of what they see as disinformation on the platform and a lack of response to government requests to take down some posts. Telegram differs from other social media platforms, such as Facebook and YouTube, because it has little to no content moderation. It is banned in China, Thailand, and Iran.

Telegram was banned in Russia between 2018 and 2020 after Durov denied the Kremlin access to user data. Durov left Russia in 2014 after similar problems with his previous social network venture.

Today, Telegram is popular in Russia and plays a major role in information about the war in Ukraine.

• Apple is developing smart home locks with face recognition tech.
• This move aligns with Apple's growing interest in the home devices market.
• Apple's device would compete with Google's Nest and Amazon's Ring in home security.

Apple is reportedly working on bringing its facial recognition technology to home security.

The tech giant is developing a smart lock and doorbell that would allow residents to automatically open their home doors by scanning their faces, Bloomberg reported on Sunday.

The report said that Apple's doorbell system could work with existing third-party locks or the company could partner with one lock provider to sell a complete product. The technology is still in the early stages and could be released at the end of 2025 at the earliest, the report said.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours.

The smart lock adds to Apple's growing interest in the home devices market. Last month, Bloomberg reported that Apple is working on an artificial intelligence-powered, wall-mounted tablet. The iPad-like device could be voice-operated, serve as an intercom, and control home appliances. Earlier this year, Bloomberg also reported that the company is working on building home robots.

Not all these developments may come to life. This year, Apple scrapped its car project and stopped efforts to develop a subscription model for the iPhone.

The door device could give the company an opportunity for more cross-selling with its other home products and its existing lineup of devices, like the iPhone and Apple Watch.

It could also allow the iPhone maker to compete with Google's Nest and Amazon's Ring. These devices have doorbells with a motion sensor that activates the camera and records a video of the surrounding area.

Such a product could draw the company into new debates about balancing users' privacy rights and working with law enforcement. Through emergency requests, police departments have received videos from Ring without receiving consent from the owner.

Apple and its CEO, Tim Cook, are known for prioritizing user privacy. In 2016, Cook refused to cooperate with the US government to unlock an iPhone used by a shooter in a mass shooting and attempted bombing in San Bernardino, California.

• Tech employees share their salary negotiation tips, which helped boost their pay by tens of thousands of dollars.
• Their negotiation strategies include practicing pitches, using data, and leveraging multiple offers.
• Research and transparency are key in negotiating better compensation in tech roles, they said.

Sarra Bounouh has worked at consulting giant Accenture and three Big Tech companies.

But she still deals with imposter syndrome, especially when talking compensation.

"Going into a negotiation is always, at least for me, a very uncomfortable discussion," Bounouh told Business Insider. "I just want to push through and ask for what I deserve."

She and four other tech employees from Meta, Google, and Cisco shared their salary negotiation tips before joining a company or when trying to get promoted. They have used these strategies to add tens of thousands of dollars to their original offers in recent years.

Product manager at Meta

Avoid offering the first number. If you must, back it up with research, said Bounouh, a product manager who joined Meta earlier this year.

She suggested using resources like Levels.fyi or Glassdoor and selecting your role and geography to see recent offers and compensation that makes sense for that job.

"I personally don't like having detailed conversations about level and compensation from that first call with the recruiter because I want to meet the team, I want to meet the hiring manager, I want to get excited about the role," she said.

Bounouh prefers to negotiate her level and compensation once there's an offer on the table.

She said she often gets asked about salary expectations early in the process because recruiters say they want to save time for both sides.

She politely declines to share a number by telling the recruiter: "I don't have a number for your right now. I will need to do some research before getting back to you. At this stage of the process, I'm more focused on meeting the hiring manager and team."

Rehearsal is key for conversations about promotions or raises, she said.

Bounouh said she practiced her pitch for every job after Accenture and increased all three jobs' initial salary offers: Microsoft by 32%, Snap by 19%, and Meta by 37%.

Product manager at Oracle

Internal transfers between teams or offices are also an opportunity to negotiate your compensation package.

Ketaki Vaidya, who moved from Oracle's India to California office in 2022, said she approached her negotiation with an "everything under the sun is negotiable" mindset.

First, Vaidya looked at Glassdoor and talked to people who'd made the move to gather salary data. She wanted to ensure she was getting a fair offer for the US' cost of living.

"I was being given this offer for the credibility that I had built in the organization. I felt like I had an upper hand in negotiating," she said. "I was much more confident in asking for the things that I deserve — so it ended up being a very smooth transition."

After negotiating her base salary up to $80,000, she discussed other compensation components, including the timing of her next review, sign-on bonuses, relocation costs, paid leave, and remote work. She negotiated a sign-on bonus of $15,000 and a relocation allowance of $15,000, which weren't part of the initial offer.

Now, her compensation is about $130,000 annually, including stock units and bonuses.

Product manager at Cisco

When Varun Kulkarni switched from consulting to tech to work on more artificial intelligence projects, he was careful not to come off as aggressive during his pay negotiations.

Once he had offers from Cisco and others in hand in 2022, he was transparent with recruiters and mentioned other offers, without introducing his own counter number.

He asked recruiters how high they could go and what they thought about other offers.

"You want to kind of not be too pushy" he said.

His offer from Cisco already matched the market rate and what several competitors were offering, but he managed to negotiate it by 5%, bringing his total compensation to $180,000.

Product manager at Google

During his 2022 recruitment process at Google, Yung-Yu Lin used his employer at the time, PayPal, to land better offers from both companies.

He interviewed and landed jobs at several places — but their pay did not compare with Google's offer.

Lin decided to negotiate a retention package. PayPal countered with a 10% pay bump. He then renegotiated with Google.

Google offered a 20% raise on his original compensation at PayPal, which brought his offer to the $350,000 to $400,000 range as a senior product manager, including stock-based compensation.

Software engineer at Meta

Hemant Pandey, a senior software engineer at Meta, used other offers and research in his most recent job search.

After two years at Salesforce, in 2021 he applied to Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, and two other companies. He used offers from these companies to negotiate his compensation at Meta.

"Be very transparent that you have other offers. Even if you have interviews going on, mention those, because it's also leverage," he said. It signals to the recruiter that they have to move fast and work with your parameters.

Meta's recruiters matched the base salary and restricted stock units from the highest of all offers.

Aside from being transparent, Pandey said it is important to be proactive and research how compensation works in different companies. For example, candidates should compare how stocks are refreshed, he said. A refresher is when the stock option portion of an employee's compensation is updated.

"I also negotiated my sign-on bonus and said, 'Hey, at Salesforce, I'll be leaving my $30,000 to $40,000 of annual bonus if I join you. Can you help me accommodate that?'"

Pandey was offered $520,000 in annual pay, including stock options, in that 2021 move.

"The most significant thing happened in my career when I made the move from Salesforce to Meta, which was close to almost 80 to 90% hike" in pay, Pandey said.

Do you work in tech, consulting, or finance and have a story to share about your career journey? Please reach out at [email protected].

Silicon Valley is the undisputed global tech hub. The small corner of California is the birthplace of Apple, Google, and OpenAI — companies that have, for better or worse, changed modern life.

Far away, in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, another tech hub has been finding its footing in the international market. The city of Bengaluru is the startup capital of India and shares similar DNA to California's Silicon Valley.

Bengaluru grew into an IT hub in the wake of the rapid expansion of its electronics manufacturing industry from the 1940s to the 1960s. Back in the US, Silicon Valley was home to the semiconductor industry in the 1950s and owes its name to the silicon transistors produced there in the 1960s.

By the mid-1980s, Apple, Oracle, and Microsoft had a presence in the Valley, while in Bengaluru, large companies like Infosys and Texas Instruments moved in.

Bengaluru is widely referred to as the "Silicon Valley of India," producing tech unicorns and housing offices for companies like Amazon, Google, and Dell. After taking over Twitter, Elon Musk shut the company's offices in Delhi and Mumbai but kept the Bengaluru office. Earlier this year, Virgin Atlantic launched daily direct flights from London to Bengaluru.

However, the city's status as a tech metropole is under pressure as rapid growth tests the local infrastructure. Estimates place the current population at roughly 14 million, compared to 8 million in 2010.

Heavy traffic, water shortages, and rising property prices have led to online speculation that Bengaluru may be crumbling and debates about whether another city will emerge as a new tech hub in India. During a water crisis earlier this year, some tech companies in Bengaluru had to tell employees to stay home.

Business Insider spoke to four current and former Bengaluru residents in and outside the tech industry who shared their experiences of how India's "Silicon Valley" is holding up under the pressures of rapid urbanization and whether they believe it can maintain its place as a global tech hub.

Vikram Chandrashekar

Vikram Chandrashekar, 50, was born in Bengaluru and has worked at Oracle for the past 27 years. He told BI he is happy for the job opportunities Bengaluru's status as a tech hub has brought, but is nostalgic for the city of his youth.

A lake he visited when he was younger, across from a guava and mango orchard, has now been replaced by housing.

Chandrashekar said the IT boom drew people to the city, bringing a larger airport, a more diverse culture, and better internet connectivity. He is also grateful to the startup ecosystem because he has access to new services and products faster than the rest of the country.

He said local people have benefited from job opportunities, but they still complain about the issues urbanization has caused. Chandrashekar doesn't plan to leave his hometown and thinks creating other tech hubs in India to redirect the growing population is a solution.

Read Vikram Chandrashekar's full story here.

Dhruv Suyamprakasam

Dhruv Suyamprakasam grew up joining his dad on business trips to Bengaluru and Hyderabad, another large tech hub in India. When Suyamprakasam became a founder himself, he moved to Bengaluru twice.

However, the founder said the city wasn't a golden ticket to success, and Suyamprakasam decided it was better to build his startup in his local city.

Suyamprakasam first moved to Bengaluru in 2010 after launching a medical startup with his relative.

It turned out to be a mistake. Suyamprakasam said Bengaluru's tech ecosystem's "fail-fast" mentality put too much pressure on their medical startup. He also felt excluded for being from a smaller city, not speaking Hindi, or not having studied at India's top engineering school.

Suyamprakasam said access to talent and venture capital are huge advantages of Bengaluru, while smaller cities can offer lower costs and more space.

Still, Bengaluru doesn't compare to Silicon Valley's vast capital and power. The founder said Bengaluru can be great on its own merits, but it needs to start being more inclusive.

Read Dhruv Suyamprakasam's full story here.

Batool Fatima

Batool Fatima, 50, moved to Bengaluru nearly 25 years ago from Hyderabad. Like Chandrashekar, the founder of a local nonprofit organization saw the city known for greenery and lakes change before her eyes.

Fatima said she is concerned that the city may not be able to support further population growth and that residents must work on improving the city's problems.

She said more intellectuals and non-tech workers have moved to Bengaluru which has been beneficial. But there have been reports of tensions between locals and immigrants who don't speak the language.

The influx of people has also caused environmental strains, including a recent water crisis. Fatima said the shortage disproportionality impacted high-rise buildings, a telling example of the lack of planning around urban growth.

The philanthropist said she wanted companies to invest in solutions to protect Bengaluru's natural resources, like funding wetland wildlife reserves. She also said community action, like residents collecting stormwater drainage, is more helpful than complaining about the government.

Fatima said developing nearby suburbs could reduce the strain on the city's center and allow the tech hub to continue to thrive.

Read Batool Fatima's full story here.

Spencer Schneier

Spencer Schneier is from New York, but spends half his year in Bengaluru and the other half in San Francisco running a tech startup.

The pandemic opened Schenier's eyes to the idea of leaving the US. In 2020, Schneier worked with two Indian cofounders and joined them on a trip to Mumbai and Bengaluru. While traveling, he decided to launch a startup from Bengaluru to help businesses expand overseas.

Schneier told BI he chose the city because it gave him access to customers, other founders, and small businesses to learn from. He said the Indian startup ecosystem was more conservative than the US, but the next generation of investors is really promising.

Now Schneier spends half his time in San Francisco and half in Bengaluru. He loves the Indian city's moderate climate and generosity. The tech CEO said he struggles with traffic and bureaucracy in the city, but feels he is part of a larger trend of people moving to India to start businesses.

Schneier told BI he believes the appeal of Bengaluru's talent density and local generosity will gain popularity.

Read Spencer Schneier's full story here.

In the tussle between economic growth and sustainability, can Bengaluru have it all?

Bengaluru has undergone significant changes in its transition from a serene "Garden City" to the Silicon Valley of India. Residents said the rapid urbanization has brought both opportunities and challenges.

The opportunities — a booming tech and startup industry, jobs, and diversity — draw people to the city and keep locals living there. But residents BI spoke to are keenly aware of the tradeoffs, pointing to environmental degradation, rising costs of living, and traffic.

The tension between Bengaluru's growth as a tech hub and the cost for its inhabitants lies at the heart of the city's future.

Harini Nagendra, a professor at Azim Premji University in Bengaluru, said, "There's a city which is growing, and there's obviously the economic prosperity it brings, but there's also the ecological degradation that you see everywhere."

Nagendra echoed Batool Fatima's suggestion of a collaborative solution with companies and residents maintaining their local environments.

Narendar Pani, an economics professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bengaluru, said the city's growth also hinges on education – better education in urban planning and the ongoing strength of city's educational institutions.

"When people look at Bangalore's future, they think about roads and water," he said. "Water is important, but I think more than the roads, a much more critical element is education."

He, like other residents who spoke to BI, expressed a cautious hopefulness that Bengaluru would solve its problems and continue to grow.

"I belong here, so I would like to think the ideas will come," he said.

• Dhruv Suyamprakasam launched a telemedicine startup and initially moved to Bengaluru.
• Bengaluru's fast-paced culture clashed with the healthcare industry's needs and the team moved back.
• He says that Bengaluru has its own merits and should not be compared to the Silicon Valley.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Dhruv Suyamprakasam, a founder who launched his startup in Bengaluru but later moved out. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

My father was a first-generation entrepreneur and ran a thriving business in the early 1990s in Coimbatore, a small city in Southern India. I would follow him on business trips, and growing up, I spent a lot of time in Bengaluru and Hyderabad, two of India's biggest business hubs in the south.

I studied mechanical engineering. During college, I became fascinated with entrepreneurship and building something of my own.

I first considered entering manufacturing, but I'd have to focus on making one product at a time. I decided building software was the answer, but I still didn't have an idea of exactly what I wanted to use software for.

Around this time, I met my now-co-founder, a medical doctor, who was also my relative, at a wedding. We kept in touch and came up with the idea of our startup — a telemedicine company that would allow people to access doctors virtually and across local and international borders.

I was a recent graduate with a good job offer. My cofounder was worried about how our family would react to me quitting to venture out on my own. But I absconded the job offer and began working on our idea full time.

Moving to Bengaluru

We brought on another cofounder who lived in Bengaluru at the time. I had read about the city being the center of the mainstream startup ecosystem. In 2010, moving to Bengaluru felt like the best decision for me as a founder.

But it wasn't the best place for us. It's a place that expects companies to grow fast and fail fast. I didn't think it was the right pressure to put on a healthcare startup, which has no margin for errors and requires a lot of trust from people. We met investors who had expectations like getting 100 paid consultations in a day.

Around 12 years back, I also felt like there was a lot of bias from investors. I felt excluded because I didn't speak Hindi, which is the most spoken language in India, and I did not go to college at the Indian Institute of Technology, the most coveted engineering school in the country. I also got some judgment for being from a small town many people had not heard of.

A combination of those factors helped us decide to move back to my hometown after around 16 months in Bengaluru.

There were challenges back home, too. We faced issues with our internet connection, which we never had in Bengaluru, and there was no established startup community. But it gave us the space to grow at our own pace.

Since then, we have onboarded about 4,500 doctors to the platform and have patients from all over the world. The company has grown to around 200 employees, and we have expanded to include health content on the platform, too.

Heart of India's startup scene

We even moved back to Bengaluru for a second time in 2016 because we had grown a lot more as a company and thought things might be different this time around.

We thought that maybe the first time around, we hadn't understood how Bengaluru worked and how things were done. We were ready to give it a second chance.

The inclusivity had improved because of the push for diversity, equity, and inclusion, but not much had changed for the healthcare industry like the speed at which we were expected to show results. We ended up coming back to my hometown after a year and a half.

The city has tons of advantages, like proximity to venture capital, a massive pool of tech talent, and more opportunities for networking, which can be helpful in the early days.

But building a business outside the tech hub is also a good option, especially because of lower costs. While employee salaries are usually on par, founders can save a lot on office space and home rent if they build from smaller cities and travel to Bengaluru as needed. I also think we need more tech hubs in India outside Bengaluru.

It's no Silicon Valley

I don't think Bengaluru should be compared to Silicon Valley at all. Since 2018, I have also spent time in the Bay Area growing our business. Now, our company is headquartered in the US, and I spend four to five months of the year in the US.

Bengaluru has an amazing tech crowd, but Silicon Valley is Silicon Valley for a reason — people are far more open-minded and inclusive about giving opportunities to those from different backgrounds, which has allowed it to become a sponge. The city just sucks up anyone with talent from across the globe.

It would have made me incredibly happy if the first large language model came from India, but it didn't. It came from OpenAI and Silicon Valley, where Sam Altman's team was allowed to burn cash for years before ChatGPT came to fruition.

It would be easier for anyone trying to build a software company that aims to have global customers move to the Bay Area for better access to funding and talent.

We call Bengaluru the Silicon Valley of India, but that is just another way Indians are comparing themselves to the West.

I think the way to go is to be great on our own account. One step in that direction is to be more inclusive and start seeing people for their talents rather than their educational or cultural backgrounds.

• Boeing has delayed its Air Force One delivery to 2029.
• That means the new planes likely won't be delivered until after the end of Trump's second term in office.
• The $3.9 billion deal with Boeing has faced multiple setbacks since 2018.

Boeing's delivery delays are hurting President-elect Donald Trump's dreams of flying on a new Air Force One jet.

The project to build two new jets is so behind schedule that Boeing has told the US Air Force it expects to deliver the planes in 2029 or later, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. This means the planes may be ready only after the conclusion of Trump's second term.

In 2015, the Air Force chose Boeing to build two new planes to replace its aging 747 presidential fleet. In 2018, the planemaker and the Trump Administration agreed to pay $3.9 billion for the planes.

Boeing initially expected to deliver the first new 747 in late 2024. But problems including a bankrupt supplier forced the company to reschedule its first plane delivery to 2026, and the second for early 2027. Both deliveries have now been pushed to 2029.

Trump is frustrated with the delays and has been asking his team about the status of the planes, the Journal reported.

The current Air Force Ones are white and light blue, as has been tradition since the John F. Kennedy administration.

In 2019, Trump said the "baby blue doesn't fit with us" and said he wanted a dark blue, white, and red plane. The design was rejected after a thermal study found the dark blue color could emit additional heat and would need more tests.

A difficult time for Boeing

The agreement Trump and Boeing signed in 2018 is a fixed-price agreement, which makes the planemaker responsible for any cost overruns. Trump negotiated the deal and threatened to cancel the contract if it went above $3.9 billion.

The delays have cost Boeing over $2 billion and have raised total project costs to around $5.3 billion.

In 2022, then-CEO David Calhoun called the Air Force One project a "very unique set of risks that Boeing probably shouldn't have taken."

Boeing has faced a series of challenges in recent months.

In September, 33,000 Boeing workers went on strike. The walkout lasted nearly two months and left Boeing with a backlog of around 5,400 commercial aircraft worth roughly $428 billion. The strike ended in early November after the planemaker agreed to raise wages by 38% over four years. The manufacturer is also hurting from Federal Aviation Administration shutdowns after a series of accidents and complaints.

To recover from those losses, Boeing on Thursday said that it plans to spend $1 billion over the next five years to increase production of its 787 Dreamliner and meet an earlier output target of 10 planes a month by 2026.

Representatives for Boeing, the US Air Force, and Trump's transition team did not respond to a request for comment.

• Spencer Schneier moved from the US to Bengaluru, India, to launch a tech startup in 2022.
• He was inspired by challenges faced by local founders in navigating overseas expansions.
• He finds Bengaluru similar to Silicon Valley and its collaborative ecosystem.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Spencer Schneier, who moved from the US to Bengaluru, India, to launch a tech startup in 2022. It has been edited for length and clarity.

The first time I thought about leaving the US was in mid-2020. I was frustrated with how the pandemic was handled and was looking for a reason to leave the country.

I was born in New York and grew up around the East Coast. I attended college in North Carolina, where I studied math and economics, but dropped out in my third year in 2017.

Around the time, I became interested in Silicon Valley — it felt like a meritocratic place where people could take their own path. After leaving college, I worked as a baseball analyst and traveled between Seattle and San Francisco.

When the pandemic hit, I dropped plans to move to San Francisco. I thought the city was declining, and I preferred my lifestyle in Seattle. I was working for a startup with two Indian cofounders. When they decided to pursue the business full time, they faced visa challenges and had to move back to India. So, in 2021, I tagged along to visit India for the first time, traveling to Mumbai and Bengaluru.

On that trip, I met my wife, an American teacher in India. I also stumbled upon the idea for what would eventually become Commenda — the company I cofounded.

I came up with the idea for my company in India

I was talking to local founders in Mumbai who faced challenges registering or expanding their businesses in other countries. There are hundreds of multilateral trade agreements between countries and thousands of bilateral trade agreements, and no tool for businesses to navigate them.

I returned to the US about a month later and pitched a friend and investor at an early-stage venture-capital firm my idea: a platform that would become a one-stop compliance solution for companies looking to expand overseas.

I didn't have a concrete product, but they liked the idea and wanted to invest $100,000. The investors asked me to go back to India and figure things out. It seemed like a great opportunity. I convinced my cofounder to leave his job at Google, and we both went to Bengaluru without an explicit plan.

Being my own boss was tough in some ways, but I liked being able to do things on my own without the pressure of having a manager. I've been fired from jobs twice, and starting my own company was almost relieving.

In early 2022, we began building our company in India and wanted to provide solutions to both Indian and overseas businesses. We picked Bengaluru because it's where a lot of startups and multinalitional companies are that could use our service.

We developed enterprise software so that users could answer questions they had about local tax laws and ensure they incorporated and stayed compliant in any country they wanted to expand to.

Bengaluru is similar to Silicon Valley in some ways

Bengaluru felt like Silicon Valley in many ways. It's listed as a sister city of Silicon Valley at a train station in San Francisco.

During my first visit, driving through south Bengaluru reminded me of Palo Alto, and talking to people confirmed it. The city is a tech and business hub with many small businesses and startups, so it gave us access to customers.

The city has an amazing pool of talent and is home to really open and collaborative founders. There are some great startup advisors and angel investors driving the ecosystem forward here.

Being in Bengaluru means we learn from local startups. There are cultural differences between the startup markets in the US and India. I've had to learn things about India and unlearn aspects of how business is done in the US.

One difference was that India is a less trusting ecosystem — we have had investors ask questions after agreeing to invest and completing diligence processes, even for a small check size.

Sometimes I wish the ecosystem was moving more quickly away from venture-capital funds operating more like private equity. But the new generation of fund managers is really promising.

Splitting my time between Bengaluru and San Francisco

Since we launched the company in 2022, we have faced some hiccups with immigration, but registering and operating in India has never been much of an issue.

I had an e-business visa to work in India. The visa office struggled to coordinate with India's Ministry of Corporate Affairs to ensure I was cleared to open a business in the country, which dragged the process out by a few months.

I wish the roads were better, and the traffic makes it hard to get around. I have also been rejected from renting an apartment because the landlord didn't like that I was a college dropout. Getting a permanent phone number was challenging, too, but knowing other foreigners had been through some of our problems made it easier.

The year-round moderate weather and air quality are perks. I love how hospitable the people of India are. It's one of the most fun countries I have lived in because there are tons of festivals and parades. My wife and I enjoy traveling, and we can stay in nice hotels because they are more affordable in India. We are also close to Southeast Asia, which would have been very expensive to travel from California.

I have apartments in San Francisco and Bengaluru and spend about half my time in each place. My wife and I bought our San Francisco apartment this summer, but I have not had an official residence in the US since 2021. About one-third of our team is in Silicon Valley, while the rest are in Bengaluru. Since we launched in 2022, we now have 250 customers in around 30 countries.

I know other foreigners who have also moved to India to launch businesses. My sense is that moving to India is going to become more of a trend. I don't know if you're going to see a Little America in Bengaluru anytime soon, but there are just so many appealing things about it, such as the talent density and the generosity of the locals.

As more Americans consider leaving the "college to cubicle" paradigm, moving to a foreign country to work for a business or start a business will become more appealing.

• GM is halting Cruise robotaxi development, merging it with its own technical team.
• The decision follows safety issues, regulatory challenges, and intense competition in the field.
• Cruise competes with Alphabet's Waymo, Zoox, and potentially with Tesla's Cybercabs.

General Motors is giving up on Cruise's robotaxi focus after eight years of pouring money into the commercial business.

GM said on Tuesday that it will no longer fund Cruise's robotaxi development work because of increasing competition and the resources needed to scale the business. Instead, GM will combine Cruise with its own technical team to advance autonomous and assisted driving.

GM agreed with other Cruise investors that will raise its ownership from 90% to more than 97%, the company said on Tuesday. The restructuring is expected to lower GM's annual spending by more than $1 billion after the plan is completed in the first half of next year.

"GM made this decision to refocus our strategy because we believe in the importance of driver assistance and autonomous driving technology in our vehicles," GM's CEO Mary Barra said on a call with media and analysts on Tuesday.

The US automaker acquired the self-driving startup in 2016 for $1 billion. It has poured billions in investments, including from industry heavyweights like SoftBank and Microsoft, into the company to develop a robotaxi business — a service where a driverless car picks and drops passengers, through an Uber-like app.

String of troubles

The GM subsidiary got in hot water with regulators last year after several safety accidents.

In August 2023, an empty Cruise AV drove into wet concrete at a construction site and got stuck. Before that, a Cruise robotaxi blocked emergency vehicles on their way to respond to a mass shooting. The company also admitted to submitting a false report to the government during an investigation of a crash and paid $500,000 in a criminal fine.

The company lost its permit to operate in California after a pedestrian was dragged for 20 feet beneath one of its driverless vehicles last October. After that incident, the company paused testing in other states and laid off 900 employees — about 24% of it workforce.

Cruise cofounder and former CEO Kyle Vogt, who resigned a month after the incident, criticized GM's decision on Tuesday.

"In case it was unclear before, it is clear now: GM are a bunch of dummies," Vogt wrote on X.

Vogt stepped down after GM and the board of Cruise increased scrutiny of his leadership, including appointing GM's general counsel as Cruise's chief administrative officer and hiring a third-party expert to assess safety.

'Increasingly competitive' market

Cruise's biggest competitors are Amazon-backed Zoox, Alphabet's Waymo, and Tesla, which introduced its own robotaxi — the Cybercab — in a highly-anticipated event in October.

At the time, Vogt weighed in to lay out the challenges that Tesla would face.

"It takes a non-trivial amount of work to go from making a car mostly drive without interventions to safe, robust, and legally compliant robotaxi network that meshes well with local communities," he wrote in a post on X before Tesla's launch event.

Waymo is much further ahead of its competitors in bringing robotaxis to the masses. It has opened its service to the public in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix, providing over 100,000 paid rides a week as of October, the company said.

• Eman and Kristine Vergara embraced minimalism to achieve financial independence.
• They shifted from high spending to saving 75% of their income by reducing expenses.
• The couple aim to travel with their kids while maintaining a frugal lifestyle at home.

Seven years ago, Eman Vergara came across a book that had long collected dust on his shelf. He realized neither he nor his wife, Kristine, had read it, so he dived into "Early Retirement Extreme."

He couldn't put it down or ignore the racing thoughts that followed. The investment banker spent all night playing with online tools, calculating their net worth. He figured out that if they saved more in their jobs — his wife was an accountant — they could retire early, or at least achieve financial independence.

The book catalyzed a realization — and a lifestyle overhaul for the Australian couple.

"We were definitely living a maximalist life, earning big incomes but spending just as big — sometimes bigger," Eman told Business Insider about their 2016 life.

The couple said they were making up to 400,000 Australian dollars. "But at the same time, we were spending most of the money that we were getting," Eman said.

Shift to minimalism

A couple of more books and podcasts later, they turned to minimalism and cutting back on "frivolous" expenses, starting with a two-bedroom central Sydney apartment that cost AU$5,500 a month.

They sold their car and picked up rentals as needed, swapped brand-name supermarkets for Aldi, and cut back on travel and dining out. The lifestyle changes allowed them to pay off AU$24,000 in credit-card debt and about AU$26,000 in student loans.

The couple moved from saving 50% to 60% of their earnings in their first few years of minimalism to as much as 75% after moving from Sydney to Toowoomba, a city close to Brisbane, where the cost of living is lower than in big Australian cities. They bought a car after the move.

After about a year of focusing on debt repayment, they started fully investing their savings, Kristine said.

They have a combined net worth of about AU$3 million, or about $2 million. This is the couple's portfolio breakdown:

• Property in Australia and the Philippines: AU$1.5 million
• Stocks: AU$900,000
• Superannuation account, a mandatory retirement plan in Australia: AU$500,000

The rest of their portfolio is in cash. Business Insider has verified their net worth and breakdown.

FIRE with children

Since they started working toward financial independence, the Vergaras have had two children: a 3-year-old daughter and a 6-month-old son.

The early motivation behind moving to a more frugal lifestyle was having more autonomy — not being tied to a job or mortgage, and traveling as a family before their children are old enough for school.

"We want to raise our children as global citizens," so they can have friends all over the world, Eman said. "That, to me has been the driver of coming onto this journey."

Kristine retired from her full-time accounting role about three years ago, and Eman works in funds management with a flexible working arrangement. The couple refer to themselves as "coast FIRE," a type of Financial Independence, Retire Early scenario in which a person saves up enough money for retirement and needs to make only enough money for ongoing expenses, which for them is about AU$120,000 a year.

Eman, 38, plans to take a sabbatical when he turns 40 and eventually travel nine months of the year while homeschooling the children. They already take about 12 trips a year and are hoping to increase their travel expenses to 40% of their income, from 35%.

Their expenses have increased since having children, primarily for their toddler's extracurricular lessons and flight tickets. But they continue to save where they can, including using hand-me-down toys and clothes.

Their location helps, too.

"The health system is amazing, and I think this is a key nuance between Australia financial independence and American financial independence," Eman said. "Health insurance is just not even something that we think about."

Raising kids with a hunger for work

Since they plan to be partially or fully retired in the next few years, the couple have strategies meant to ensure their children understand the value of work.

"We certainly don't want them to see their parents just sitting at home doing nothing," Eman said about his plans to work part time and volunteer.

"You want to raise kids with that hunger for an ambition," Eman said. "I know what it was like being a first-generation migrant to work hard to succeed in my career and then be able to understand the power of compound interest and saving to be in a position where I am right now."

Kristine said it was important to her that the children be involved in volunteering and community work and pick a trade skill from a young age.

There are three main money lessons they want to teach the children: saving at least half of their income, putting savings into an investment that allows compounding, and staying away from credit cards.

"I know people do credit-card hacking, but it's just the temptation of having that card," Eman said, referring to credit-card points and miles. "We simplified by just cutting all our credit cards when we found financial independence."

• Intel says it needs to move to be thriftier and approach production with a zero-waste model.
• Execs said the company needs to prioritize efficiency over "no wafer left behind."
• Intel has lost ground to AI king Nvidia, Samsung, and several Taiwanese and American players.

Intel says it needs to be thriftier and approach production with a zero-waste model.

Days after CEO Pat Gelsinger's sudden departure, Intel executives said the company must prioritize efficiency.

"We are very driven toward 'no wafer left behind,'" Naga Chandrasekaran, the chief global operations officer, said at the UBS Global Technology and AI Conference on Wednesday.

But Intel needs a "no capital left behind" mindset, he added.

Chandrasekaran, who joined Intel this year after two decades at Micron, said that Intel's strategy of producing excess wafers in the hope that there will be demand may have worked when it was closer to a monopoly.

Intel was Silicon Valley's dominant chipmaker in the 2000s. But it has lost ground to AI king Nvidia, Samsung, and several Taiwanese and American players over the years, missing out on skyrocketing artificial intelligence demand. Companies like Microsoft and Google have been designing their own chips, further limiting Intel's market.

Intel's share price has dropped almost 50% this year as it has faced multiple challenges, including billions in losses, sweeping layoffs, and buyouts.

Chandrasekaran and Intel's interim co-CEO David Zinsner, who also participated in Wednesday's fireside talk, said that the company needs to be more mindful of capital spending and operating expenses.

"We're going line by line through this stuff and he's challenging everything and we're picking off things," Zinsner said of Chandrasekaran's strategy. "You've got to absolutely think about every dollar going to capital and scrutinizing it for sure."

The company said in its most recent annual report that it expects continued high capital expenditures "for the next several years" amid an expansion. Intel spent $25.8 billion on capital expenditures last year, up from $18.7 billion two years ago.

On Wednesday, the execs also said that Intel would stick to its current financial forecast and that they were not worried about the impact of the incoming Trump administration.

The company is set to get a $7.9 billion CHIPS Act grant, which is mostly awarded in tax credits, as part of a government program to boost the American semiconductor industry. The Commerce Department told The New York Times that Intel was receiving less than the $8.5 billion originally promised because it also received a separate grant of $3 billion to produce chips for the military.

Trump's tariff threats are not publicly ruffling the Intel executives.

"We have good geographic dispersion of our factories. We can move things around based on what we need," Zinsner said.

Bloomberg and Reuters reported Wednesday that the chipmaker is considering at least two people to replace Gelsinger, who abruptly retired on Sunday after clashing with Intel's board over turnaround plans. Candidates include Lip-Bu Tan, a former Intel board member, and Matt Murphy, the CEO of Marvell Technology.

• Intel is reportedly considering Lip-Bu Tan and Matt Murphy for CEO after Pat Gelsinger's exit.
• Gelsinger's departure follows Intel's struggles in the global chip market and stock decline.
• Murphy leads Marvell, while Tan is a former Intel board member.

The contest to become Intel's new CEO is on — and two possible candidates' names have already leaked.

The American chipmaker is considering at least two people from outside the company to replace former CEO Pat Gelsinger, who abruptly retired on Sunday. Candidates include former board member Lip-Bu Tan and Marvell Technology CEO Matt Murphy, Bloomberg and Reuters reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

After a clash over Gelsinger's plan to gain ground against rival chipmaker Nvidia, Intel's board gave the CEO the option to retire or step down, Bloomberg reported. Gelsinger, who joined the role three years back, has been temporarily replaced by co-CEOs: David Zinsner, who has been Intel's chief financial officer for nearly three years, and Michelle Johnston Holthaus, the new CEO of product.

His departure follows Intel's yearlong struggle to keep up with the global chip race. Intel has seen its share price drop almost 50% this year as it has faced multiple challenges, including billions in losses, sweeping layoffs, and buyouts.

Gelsinger's plans to revitalize the company included ambitions to build more factories in the US and Europe to scale its production capacity. He also wanted the company to design its own line of AI chips, named Gaudi, to take on Nvidia.

However, these efforts have proven expensive and have produced poor results. Last month, Gelsinger said the company was set to miss its target of $500 million in 2024 sales for Gaudi 3 due to software-related issues.

One board member and one outsider

The two CEO contenders reported so far have strong chipmaking backgrounds.

Semiconductor veteran Tan served on Intel's board between 2022 and this year, where he was on the mergers and acquisitions committee. He left the board in August, citing "demands on his time."

Tan is currently the chairman of Walden International, a venture capital firm. His prior board seats include SoftBank Group and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Murphy, meanwhile, does not have a public prior connection to Intel. He is the CEO of Marvell, an American semiconductor manufacturer that produces chips for data centers and service providers. He worked in sales and marketing for circuits producer Analog Devices for over two decades before joining Marvell and has served on the boards of eBay and the Global Semiconductor Alliance.

Marvell gained over 10% in after-hours trading on Tuesday after forecasting fourth-quarter revenue above estimates as it benefits from strong artificial intelligence chip demand. Its stock is up 59% this year.

"As the chairman and CEO of this company, I'm 100% focused on Marvell," Murphy, who has been in the position for eight years, said on Tuesday in an earnings call, when asked about being offered other opportunities.

Marvell has an $83 billion market capitalization and about 6,500 employees, as of 2024. Intel has a $97 billion market cap and about 131,000 employees, according to its website.

Representatives of Intel, Murphy, and Tan did not respond to requests sent outside business hours.

• Reed Hastings is applying a Netflix management technique to his latest venture: a Utah ski resort.
• Hasting bought a controlling stake in Powder Mountain last year and is overhauling its model.
• He uses the "Keeper Test" to evaluate employees, similar to what he introduced at Netflix.

Reed Hastings says he is bringing his famous management technique to his post-Netflix venture: one of the largest ski resorts in the US.

The Netflix cofounder and former CEO said that running the streaming giant and Powder Mountain, a ski resort in Utah in which he bought a controlling stake last year, can be similar.

On a Monday episode of the Prof G podcast, he said the businesses share a subscription model — monthly for Netflix, seasonal for skiers. And he's using some of his signature management philosophies with Powder Mountain, chiefly the "keeper test" and high compensation.

"The 'Keeper Test' is: If someone was going to quit, would you work hard to keep them to change their mind?" Hastings said on the podcast. "It's using that as the firing criteria rather than the traditional, 'Have they screwed up so egregiously that we should fire them?'"

Netflix publicly embraces the "Keeper Test" along with other principles on its careers page.

Hastings served as Netflix's CEO from 1998 to 2020 and as co-CEO until 2023, and he is now the executive chairman. As CEO, he and other leaders used the "Keeper Test" to evaluate employees and fire underperformers. Hastings reportedly used it to fire his product chief and longtime friend who worked at the company for 18 years.

If an employee doesn't hit the "keeper" threshold, they're "promptly and respectfully given a generous severance package so we can find someone for that position that makes us an even better dream team," Netflix has previously described.

A 2018 Wall Street Journal investigation into the company's culture found that the principle made some employees uneasy because they worried they would lose their jobs daily and felt pressured to fire others.

At the time, Netflix said that the test allowed the company to maintain a high-performance culture and that "fewer controls and greater accountability enable our employees to thrive." In June, the company updated its culture memo to add a disclaimer to a line about the "Keeper Test," BI previously reported.

Over in Utah, Hastings is remaking a ski resort about 80 miles north of Park City.

Last year, he invested $100 million, inking a 10-year development deal to reinvigorate the financially struggling resort. Part of the ski resort, which has been around since the 1970s, was closed off to the public in favor of homeowners and private skiing. New residents can purchase a lot of raw land starting at $2 million per lot, The New York Times reported in March.

The company's jobs start at $20 an hour with benefits, per Powder Mountain's website.