• Job cuts at the National Parks could make the parks less safe and less accessible, advocates say.
• NPS employees who had positions terminated included a wide range of roles.
• Advocates say the cuts could cause "disarray," especially during the busy summer season.

Though they may be called "America's Best Idea," the national parks could be in trouble due to job cuts made by the Trump administration, National Park Service employees and advocates told Business Insider.

Thousands of employees have been terminated between the National Park Service and the US Forest Service, both of which manage public lands, according to media reports and Democratic lawmakers who criticized the moves.

"These cuts are completely non-strategic," Neal Desai, pacific regional director for the National Park Conservation Association, or NPCA, told BI. "Frankly, they're an attack on the notion of 'America First.'"

The White House did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment about the reason for the terminations. Previously, President Donald Trump has defended widespread cuts in the federal government, saying they're part of an effort to reduce fraud and waste.

An NPCA spokesperson told BI that several parks have lost significant portions of their staff, including fee collectors and administrators who process and train seasonal staff that keep the parks running in the busy season.

Workers targeted for termination represent a wide range of roles, including employees who collect entry fees, maintain park facilities, educate park visitors, and work on search and rescue operations, the spokesperson said.

The National Park Service and the Department of the Interior did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

Desai said the cuts show "a lack of awareness of how these things play out on the ground," adding that the parks were already understaffed. According to the NPCA, park staffing has already been down 20% since 2010 despite a 16% increase in visitors.

At the end of 2018, when the government shutdown affected staffing at national parks, bathrooms were locked, but because people could still enter many of the parks, visitors reported seeing piles of toilet paper near the facilities and pileups of trash. Destinations such as Joshua Tree National Park and Rocky Mountain National Park closed temporarily due to "human waste" issues, staff said on their websites at the time. Trails left unmaintained were deemed unsafe, and there were fewer emergency services to help visitors.

"People visiting are going to find their parks in disarray if the cuts are not reversed," Desai said.

The Coalition to Protect America's National Parks, comprised of current and former NPS employees and volunteers, said in a statement that the busy season is coming for many national parks and that now should be the time to recruit, hire, and train seasonal staff.

"The consequences will be severe: visitor centers will close, lines will grow longer, and basic maintenance — such as cleaning restrooms and facilities — will suffer," Phil Francis, chair of the group's Executive Council, said. "Millions of Americans who cherish their national parks may find them inaccessible, poorly maintained, or unsafe."

Beth Pratt, the California regional executive director for the National Wildlife Federation, also told BI the cuts seemed "arbitrary" and could have cascading impacts on the parks and the surrounding local communities.

She said the administration could've at least chosen to ask park managers to make budget cuts that would allow them to prioritize roles as needed, but instead opted for "indiscriminate" cuts.

Without staffing, the impacts could be swift and long-lasting, she said. For instance, park staff helps deter vandalism and prevent trash from overflowing, which can attract bears that can become a nuisance or danger to humans and must be put down.

"They need a lot of managing to ensure they stay natural," Pratt said of the national parks.

Felicia Jimenez, who worked seasonal jobs with the National Park Service from 2021 to 2023, said it's been "devastating" to witness these job cuts and see friends terminated.

"Quite honestly, I think it is so incredibly short-sighted to cut staff at these parks because they are so necessary to run them," Jimenez, who worked as a ranger at Katmai National Park and Muir Woods National Monument, told BI.

She said not only is the park service losing hardworking and highly skilled staff, but that "the public is also losing so much too."

Have a news tip or a story to share? Contact this reporter at [email protected] or via the encrypted messaging app Signal @kelseyv.21 from a non-work device.

• Egg prices have reached an all-time high, according to federal government data.
• Some people are turning to backyard chickens but experts warn it's not as easy or cheap as it seems.
• Farm rescues are bracing for people who will be trying to get rid of chickens purchased on a whim.

With egg prices reaching an all-time high in the US, the idea of backyard chickens — roaming around, grazing on grass, and producing fresh, delicious eggs — is becoming increasingly appealing.

But they may not be the budget-savvy trick some hope for.

The nationwide average price of a dozen Grade A large eggs reached $4.95 in January, a nearly 20% increase from December to January, according to federal data. The jump was driven by the bird flu outbreak, which drastically impacted egg supply, as well as inflation. The lagging egg supply has also led some grocery stores to limit how many cartons customers can buy.

Farm rescues say they're seeing an increase in interest in backyard chickens, which gained some popularity during the pandemic and when egg prices spiked in January 2023. However, they also say many people don't realize just how expensive and high maintenance backyard chickens can be, and that many consumers who buy chickens for eggs end up trying to get rid of them a short time later.

Backyard chickens can be expensive and hard to care for

"Besides pot belly pigs, calls for chickens and roosters are the most frequent calls we get," Matt Lieurance, the co-founder of Farm Animal Refuge in San Diego, California, told Business Insider. "People get chickens mainly for egg production and then a few things happen. One is they don't have the proper setup and they get a predator attack."

Chickens can be preyed upon by creatures commonly found in American backyards, such as coyotes, hawks, raccoons, or possums. Someone might buy a simple chicken coop at the same farm store from where they buy chicks, but it may be too small as the chickens grow or not adequately protective against predators.

Proper housing for backyard chickens can run anywhere from several hundred to several thousand dollars, potentially running a lot higher than grocery store eggs, even with the record-high prices.

There are also some costs associated with backyard chickens that may not be clear upfront to a first-timer, such as ongoing food costs and unexpectedly high medical bills due to chickens requiring specialty veterinarians and being at risk for health complications that could require ongoing treatment or medicine.

Farm Sanctuary, which has locations in New York state and Los Angeles, said backyard chickens make up the majority of animal placement requests they receive.

"Many guardians who reach out to us for help are new to caring for a backyard flock and are ill-prepared for the challenges of providing lifelong care. In some cases, they underestimate the challenges associated with protecting birds from predation, the expense involved, the difficulties of wintertime care, or the general level of care and commitment," Ashley Pankratz, Farm Sanctuary's senior manager of rescue and placement, said in a statement provided to BI.

Pankratz also noted that backyard chickens are not necessarily the answer for people who view it as a more humane way to eat eggs, adding chicks are often coming from the same facilities that supply factory farms.

Gene Baur, the president and co-founder of Farm Sanctuary, has also spoken out against the role of factory farming in the bird flu outbreak. "Our irresponsible factory farming system is a breeding ground for diseases like bird flu, and places both humans and other animals at risk," he told BI in a statement.

Complicated by the bird flu outbreak

Many people also don't realize that it could take four to six months for chicks, which are often purchased instead of full-grown chickens, to start laying eggs, or that they'll only produce eggs for a few years and live much longer than that.

"The same thing kind of happened in 2020, when everyone went into quarantine and decided they were going to homestead," Lieurance said of people rushing out to buy chickens and later realizing it was a bad idea.

This time around, the problem is compounded by the bird flu outbreak, as sanctuaries like Farm Animal Refuge are unable to take in new birds due to the risk of spreading the disease, meaning people looking to get rid of their backyard chickens may not have many options.

"That is another huge problem with everybody going out and buying these chicks right now — they're potentially moving around this disease to places it hasn't been before," Lieurance said.

Lieurance said he doubts any responsible farm sanctuaries will be able to take in new birds in the near future.

Some think they are buying hens and end up with roosters

Another challenge with buying backyard chickens is that you may unintentionally end up with a rooster.

Determining the sex of chicks can be difficult, and stores will often sell a group of small hens that actually contain a rooster.

"When you buy baby chicks, they tell you that they're female, and then six to eight weeks later one of them starts crowing and your neighbors complain," Lieurance said, adding that Farm Animal Refuge often hears from people looking to get rid of roosters.

Pankratz of the Farm Sanctuary also said they "receive daily requests to take in roosters who are unwanted, abandoned, or surrendered to shelters."

In addition to not producing eggs, roosters are also illegal or heavily restricted in many jurisdictions where egg-laying hens are allowed. They can be difficult to rehome for similar reasons.

Kelly Rutkowski, the founder of the Adopt a Bird Network, said the roosters represent a "big animal welfare issue." Her organization serves as an intermediary between people who want to adopt chickens, and rescues, sanctuaries, or shelters that are looking for somewhere to place them.

Rutkowski said the hens are easy to place with people who'd just like to keep them as pets, and that they are typically adopted out the same days she posts them online, but roosters are much harder.

"There are people who see them as more than just egg machines and see them for their personality," she said. But even those people may live in places that make it illegal or impractical to have a rooster around. She tries to discourage people from buying backyard chickens on a whim, to avoid having more roosters with nowhere they can go.

"It does worry me," Rutkowski said of the high egg prices and increase in people buying chicks. "I'm just waiting for all the birds to start showing up in shelters, especially the roosters."

Have a news tip or personal story to share? Contact this reporter at [email protected].

• A Delta Air Lines plane flipped with 80 people on board as it landed in Toronto Monday.
• The Bombardier CRJ900 was flying from Minneapolis, operated by Delta's Endeavor Air.
• The airline said Monday evening 18 customers with injuries were transported to hospitals.

A Delta Air Lines jet flipped with 80 people on board as it landed at a Toronto airport Monday, leaving emergency crews scrambling to reach the injured in the upside-down aircraft.

All passengers and crew were "accounted for," Toronto Pearson International Airport said. Delta Air Lines said 18 injured people were taken to hospitals. A Peel Regional Police spokesperson said the Greater Toronto Airports Authority was investigating.

Photos on X appeared to show the plane upside down and at least one wing missing. More photos of the wreck trickled out later. Delta said there were 76 passengers and four crew on board.

"Initial reports indicate there are no fatalities and 18 customers with injuries have been transported to area hospitals. Our primary focus is taking care of those impacted," Delta said Monday at around 5:40 p.,m. ET.

At around 10:30 p.m. ET, the company said, "Some of the customers initially transported to area hospitals have been released."

Ornge, an air ambulance service in Ontario, told Business Insider that three people were transported to Toronto hospitals with critical injuries, including a child, a man in his 60s, and a woman in her 40s.

The Bombardier CRJ900, which was flying from Minneapolis as Flight 4819, was operated by Delta's wholly-owned regional subsidiary, Endeavor Air.

"Everything just kind of went sideways," Pete Carlson, a passenger on the flight, told Canada's national broadcaster CBC.

"One minute you're landing, kind of waiting to see your friends and your people, and the next minute you're physically upside down," he said.

Carlson described the sound of "cement and metal" as the plane crashed.

Flights to Toronto Pearson were halted due to the emergency but resumed at 5 p.m. local time. More than 330 flights were delayed on Monday, and nearly 400 flights were canceled, per FlightAware, a flight-tracking website.

"The airport remains open. Passengers are advised to check their flight status before coming to the airport," the airport wrote in an X post on Monday night.

Delta said that it is working with customers flying from, to, or through Toronto and that customers should check their flight status via the Delta app.

US Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said in an X post that investigators with the Federal Aviation Administration were traveling to Toronto and that the Transportation Safety Board of Canada would lead the investigation.

Canada's transport minister Anita Anand thanked first responders and airport staff in an X post. In an earlier post, she said she had spoken to Duffy about the crash and that the FAA was sending investigators to support the Transportation Safety Board of Canada.

A bad few months for aviation safety

The Delta incident comes two and a half weeks after an American Airlines flight collided with a military Black Hawk helicopter over Washington D.C., killing 67 people.

The event in Toronto highlights the ongoing concerns over aviation safety. Despite the incident happening in Canada, the plane was operated by a US airline regulated by the FAA.

On Monday, the Trump Administration fired hundreds of FAA staff, according to the workers' union, including people in the safety department.

Among those fired was Jason King, whose work directly involved addressessing safety concerns, the Washington television station, WUSA, reported.

He said his team's work included investigating the midair collision over D.C.

The Delta and American flights join a string of aviation safety events since December. An Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer plane crashed on Christmas Day in Kazakhstan, with some blaming Russian air defenses. Thirty-eight people died.

A few days later, a Boeing 737 operated by the South Korean budget carrier Jeju Air crashed in South Korea. 179 people died, and two people survived.

A small general aviation plane crashed in Pennsylvania a few days after the American accident, killing six on the plane and one on the ground.

And on February 6, an Alaskan regional airline crashed in western Alaska, killing 10 people.

• Japan's tourism has exploded in recent years, with a record 36.8 million visitors in 2024.
• The weak yen has drawn visitors to Japan, which is already experiencing overtourism impacts.
• Experts say Japan should learn from other travel hot spots and be proactive about managing tourism.

If it feels like everyone you know is going to Japan right now — sort of how it felt like everyone was going to Iceland back in the 2010s — that's because they are.

The iconic images of Iceland's Blue Lagoon and black sand beaches that dominated social media feeds have given way to pastel-colored images of Mount Fuji and adorable videos of snow monkeys soaking in hot springs in Japan's Jigokudani Monkey Park.

"It's become 'the destination,' especially with younger clients," Katherine Flynn, a travel planner for the New York-based travel agency Fora, told Business Insider of Japan. "This is one of the few destinations I'll have clients include TikTok links when they submit their 'must-do activities' in my inquiry form."

In 2024, the number of visitors to Japan reached a record high of nearly 37 million, a 47% increase from 2023 and a 15% increase from 2019, before the pandemic. The number of Americans alone who visited Japan in December grew more than 30% year-over-year, according to preliminary data compiled by the Japanese government.

The travel boom has been driven in part by Japan's weak currency, making a destination previously considered expensive to visit much more affordable. Lauren Joory, another Fora advisor, said the US dollar's strong position against the yen as well as Japan's closed borders for a couple years after the pandemic have fueled Americans' interest in the country.

Similarly, Iceland's tourism boom came in the wake of an economic crisis — and also helped pull the island nation out of it. But while tourists can be a welcome sight to a struggling economy, they can also bring with them a host of problems associated with overtourism, as some destinations in Japan are already experiencing.

Though the two countries are different in some key ways, sustainable tourism advocates say there are lessons for Japan to learn from Iceland, as well as other destinations that have undergone rapid tourism growth in a relatively short amount of time.

Tourism can be a lifeline for struggling economies

After the financial crisis of 2008, the value of the Icelandic krona tanked, along with the Iceland Stock Exchange. Thousands lost their homes and unemployment skyrocketed. Two years later, the eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano disrupted air travel to Europe and caused more problems for the already struggling country — but it also drew international awareness to Iceland.

Travelers from around the world — drawn in by the weak krona and creative marketing by budget airlines promoting Iceland as a desirable stopover between Europe and the Americas — started rolling in. Iceland's annual visitor numbers grew by 328% between 2010 and 2019.

"Tourism was extremely important to get us back on our feet after the crash, and it grew into our biggest export industry," Sigríður Dögg Guðmundsdóttir, then the head of Visit Iceland, told ADP in 2022.

Now Japan is facing economic challenges of its own, including a weak currency, high inflation, and shrinking GDP. Japan is also dealing with an aging population, low birth rate, and a labor shortage.

"Tourism's a quick win for many of these places," said Alan Fyall, the Visit Orlando endowed chair of tourism marketing at the University of Central Florida's Rosen College of Hospitality Management who studies sustainable tourism, said of countries with struggling economies.

"Tourism can be a very, very powerful economic and social force for good. There's no question. However, it's like everything — it's how you do it," he said.

When overtourism becomes a problem

As the travel industry news site Skift put it in 2019, Iceland became "the poster child for the positive and negative effects of the overtourism phenomenon" as tourism evolved into the country's biggest industry in a relatively short number of years. The impacts of the tourism boom included crowding at hot spots, disrespectful tourist behavior, stress on infrastructure and natural areas, and higher prices for locals and visitors, as well as a potential over-reliance on tourism as an industry.

Japan is much larger than Iceland — in size, population, and GDP — but the country is already facing some of the same overtourism problems.

Masaru Takayama, chairperson at the Japan Alliance of Responsible Travel Agencies and an expert in sustainable travel, said Kyoto, where he is based, has become "a capital of overtourism." The central part of the city has been inundated with tourists who are consuming public resources and making it difficult for local residents to go about their daily lives.

"We have a lot of elders here who can ride buses and subway for free, but there's no seats available for them," he said.

Takayama said local businesses have also changed to accommodate the tourists. He said his favorite restaurants are within walking distance but that it's difficult to actually go because tourists make reservations months in advance. The restaurants have also raised prices and switched up their menus to cater more to foreigners.

"We can literally see these places, but you cannot go," he said, adding, "So we are really losing the authenticity of what it was, what was nice about Kyoto."

A rise in rental properties has also led to higher prices and taxes for locals, many of whom don't work in tourism-related industries and therefore are experiencing the downsides of tourism without much of the benefits, he said.

Japan has already taken some measures to address issues with tourism. Last year officials in Kyoto banned tourists from certain alleyways in Gion, the popular geisha district, after complaints from locals about visitors' behavior.

Fujikawaguchiko, a small town near Mount Fuji, said last year it was building a mesh barrier to block a popular photo spot for tourists after residents complained about disrespectful behavior. Japan also announced last year new regulations and a tourist tax for climbing Mount Fuji, a UNESCO World Heritage site, due to overcrowding.

Still, the experts who spoke to BI said Japan should focus on a proactive approach to managing tourism that prioritizes the needs of the locals alongside the benefits of tourism.

Proactive measures against overtourism

Fyall said Japan is relatively new to the tourism game, only emerging as a common destination for travelers in the past 10 to 15 years. He also said the country has been relatively cautious about promoting tourism and not quite as aggressive as other destinations. But now that the yen is weak, he said it's "bonanza time" for travelers from China and the West.

Anna Abelson, an adjunct professor at New York University's Jonathan M. Tisch Center of Hospitality, said Iceland was not initially prepared for its tourism boom, but that the pandemic, while challenging for the tourism industry, allowed the country to shift its focus on fostering a sustainable travel industry.

Iceland has adopted several measures to address overtourism, including a tourism tax, which is applied to hotel rooms, cruises, and campsites and is used to support sustainability efforts and mitigate the environmental impact of tourism. The country has also invested millions in improving infrastructure at popular tourist spots, building much-needed parking lots, restrooms, and designated trails, and encouraging visitors to travel to less-explored areas.

Abelson said Japan should be proactive — rather than reactive — at addressing the problems with overtourism or risk getting to a point where locals take out their frustration on tourists. In Barcelona last summer, for instance, protesters sprayed visitors dining at restaurants in the city center with water guns during a demonstration against overtourism.

Abelson said one thing Japan could do is appeal to tourists directly to encourage better behavior, like the Palau Pledge, in which visitors to the island nation are required to sign a pledge "to act in an ecologically and culturally responsible way." She said Japan could also focus on spreading tourists out, as Thailand has done by promoting lesser-known regions like Chang Mai and other islands, instead of the areas that are already experiencing overcrowding.

Takayama said he thinks the Japanese government is still focusing on tourism quantity rather than quality, the latter of which he says is necessary for sustainable tourism. While there are sustainable tourism guidelines — set by the Global Sustainable Tourism Council, which Takayama is part of — he said implementation and action is another question.

He agreed that Japan could encourage tourists to visit lesser-known places, but that the government would also have to ensure those destinations are prepared and could accommodate tourists in a sustainable way. He also said the government could do more to try and attract the right kinds of tourists who are interested in traveling responsibly.

"Japan is still a very good place to visit, and there are a lot of sanctuaries that people are not aware of, which they should explore," he said. "We will love to have you as long as you obey the local rules."

Have a news tip or a story to share? Contact this reporter at [email protected] or via the encrypted-messaging app Signal @kelseyv.21.

• A judge lifted an order blocking OPM from enforcing the deferred resignation deadline for federal workers.
• The judge, who previously extended the deadline, ruled the labor unions lacked standing.
• DOGE, led by Elon Musk, is pushing for federal workforce cuts.

A federal judge on Wednesday ruled the Trump administration could proceed with enforcing a deadline on the deferred resignations being offered to federal workers.

US District Judge George O'Toole said the labor unions who sued to block enforcement of the deadline did not have standing to bring the lawsuit because they were not "directly impacted by the directive." He also said the court did not have subject matter jurisdiction over the claims.

The Office of Personal Management, or OPM, made the deferred resignation offer, described as a "fork in the road," to federal workers in an email on January 28, with an initial deadline of Febrauary 6.

Workers had until that date to decide if they would remain in their jobs, without any certainty that their role or department wouldn't be eliminated, or take the offer in which the OPM said they would receive full pay and benefits until September 30, 2025, regardless of workload.

After a group of labor unions sued, O'Toole issued a temporary restraining order on February 6 to extend the deadline until at least Monday. He extended it again on Monday until a ruling was made.

His ruling on Wednesday lifted the restraining order, leaving what happens next up to the administration and the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which is leading the push for cuts in the federal workforce.

"This Boston Buyout Ruling is the first of many legal wins for the President. The Court dissolved the injunction due to a lack of standing. This goes to show that lawfare will not ultimately prevail over the will of 77 million Americans who supported President Trump and his priorities," Karoline Leavitt, Whit House press secretary, said in a statement provided to Business Insider.

Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, one of the labor groups that sued, said in a statement to Business Insider: "Today's ruling is a setback in the fight for dignity and fairness for public servants. But it's not the end of that fight. AFGE's lawyers are evaluating the decision and assessing next steps. Importantly, this decision did not address the underlying lawfulness of the program."

"We continue to maintain it is illegal to force American citizens who have dedicated their careers to public service to make a decision, in a few short days, without adequate information, about whether to uproot their families and leave their careers for what amounts to an unfunded IOU from Elon Musk," he added.

President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, who leads DOGE, appeared together in the Oval Office on Tuesday and the president signed an executive order calling for "large-scale" cuts to the federal workforce and expanding DOGE's power over hiring at federal agencies. 

Musk defended the cuts being made by DOGE, calling them "common sense" and saying the American people are "going to get what they voted for."

Have a news tip or a story to share? Contact this reporter at [email protected] or via the encrypted-messaging app Signal @kelseyv.21.

• Elon Musk appeared with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Tuesday.
• Musk defended the cuts being made by DOGE as "common sense."
• Musk said Americans are "going to get what they voted for."

Elon Musk appeared alongside President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Tuesday to defend the cuts being made by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

Musk, who leads DOGE, said the cuts being made by the agency were not "draconian" and that they represented "common sense" changes that would make government more efficient.

Trump and Musk addressed reporters shortly after the president signed an executive order to initiate "large-scale reductions" in the federal workforce and expand DOGE's power to oversee the hiring of career officials by federal agencies.

The executive order said agencies would be required to hire "no more than one employee for every four employees that depart," adding that the cuts and hiring ratio would not apply to roles related to "public safety, immigration enforcement, or law enforcement."

The order also said hiring decisions by agency heads should be made in partnership with a "DOGE Team Lead." It said no vacancies should be filled if the DOGE member decides it's unnecessary unless an agency head determines the position should be filled.

Musk, who was joined by his son X, reiterated his stance that Americans voted for the changes DOGE is making. "They're going to get what they voted for," he said.

"And if you have the rule of the bureaucrat, if the bureaucracy is actually in charge then what meaning does democracy actually have," Musk said. "If the people cannot vote and have their will decided by their elected representatives in the form of the president, and the Senate, and the House then we do not live in a democracy."

Trump questioned why federal judges would seek to block some of DOGE's efforts.

"Now, a judge who is an activist judge wants to try to stop us from doing this," Trump said. "Why would they try to do this? I campaigned on this."

Musk previously wrote on X that a federal judge should be impeached after a ruling temporarily blocked DOGE staff from accessing sensitive Treasury Department files. Vice President JD Vance and leading congressional Republicans have said judges are exceeding their authority by reining in DOGE workers, suggesting that Trump might just simply ignore their rulings.

Reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday asked Musk repeatedly about DOGE's transparency and how the world's richest man is navigating potential conflicts of interest for his array of companies, which have collectively received billions in federal contracts over the years.

Musk said that DOGE is "as transparent as possible." He pointed to the updates the outfit posts on its official X account. He also said that DOGE posts about its activities on its official government site, though, as of Tuesday afternoon, DOGE.gov contains no new information.

"All of our actions are maximally transparent," Musk said.

A DOGE spokesperson recently declared that DOGE falls under the Presidential Records Act, meaning that Musk and his staff's work could remain private for years to come.

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman dismissed Elon Musk's unsolicited $97.4 billion takeover bid.
• Altman told media at an AI summit in Paris that OpenAI and its mission are "not for sale."
• Musk, who co-founded OpenAI, has long criticized its for-profit transition.

Sam Altman has reiterated that OpenAI is "not for sale" following an unsolicited $97.4 billion bid to buy it from an Elon Musk-led investor group.

Altman doubled down on his stance to multiple media outlets at an AI summit in Paris, telling Sky News, "The company is not for sale, neither is the mission."

Asked whether OpenAI could afford to resist Musk's bid to buy it, he responded, "The board will decide what to do there."

Speaking to Axios at the same event, Altman said, "There's been like versions of Elon trying to, you know, somehow take control of OpenAI for a long time, so, it's like, okay, here's this week's episode."

It follows Monday's back-and-forth on X between Altman and Musk over the latter's $97.4 billion bid for control of the company behind ChatGPT.

Musk and a group of investors, including his AI company X.AI, submitted the offer to the OpenAI board on Monday. Marc Toberoff, a lawyer representing the group, confirmed the offer in a statement provided to Business Insider. The statement said the offer was for "all assets" of OpenAI, Inc.

"At x.AI, we live by the values I was promised OpenAI would follow. We've made Grok open source, and we respect the rights of content creators," Musk said in the statement. "It's time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was. We will make sure that happens."

In October OpenAI was valued at $157 billion during a funding round that raised $6.6 billion. BI reported in January that SoftBank, a Japanese investment holding company, was preparing to make an investment in OpenAI in a deal that would value the company at around $300 billion.

Backers of the bid — which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal — include Baron Capital Group, Inc., Valor Management LLC, Atreides Management, LP, Vy Fund III, L.P., Emanuel Capital Management, LLC, and Eight Partners VC, LLC.

The Journal reported that the investor group bid to acquire the OpenAI nonprofit, which controls the rest of OpenAI. Altman wants to convert the startup to a for-profit company, but to do so, the charitable arm must be compensated for its assets. Settling on a fair value for these assets is complex.

The Musk investor group said in a statement on Monday that their bid for OpenAI is designed to ensure that the charitable arm's assets are fairly valued and that it gets paid appropriately before any conversion to a for-profit business. "As we understand the OpenAI, Inc. Board's present intentions, they will give up majority ownership and control over OpenAI's entire for-profit business in exchange for some minority share of a new, consolidated for-profit entity. Who on Earth would make that trade?" Toberoff, the lawyer representing the investors, said in a statement.

"If the Board is determined to relinquish OpenAI, Inc.'s assets, it is in the public's interest to ensure that OpenAI, Inc. is compensated at fair market value. That value cannot be determined by insiders negotiating on both sides of the same table," he continued.

Shortly after news of the bid broke, Altman appeared to respond in a post on X, writing: "no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want."

Musk replied: "Swindler."

In another post on X, Musk wrote, "Scam Altman" in reference to the OpenAI CEO.

Representatives for OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment from BI.

Altman and Musk co-founded OpenAI as a non-profit in 2015, but Musk left the company in 2018 and has been publicly critical of it and Altman since. Musk has especially criticized OpenAI's decision to transition to a for-profit structure.

The change, announced by OpenAI in September last year, would move its business out from under the control of its nonprofit board. OpenAI has said the move would help it attract more funding and help it become an "enduring company."

It's unclear how the Musk-led offer would impact that structural change, but the Tesla billionaire has been highly critical of OpenAI's move to for-profit status.

In March 2024 Musk sued Altman and OpenAI, accusing the company of betraying its founding principles, before dropping the lawsuit months later. In August 2024 he filed another lawsuit against Altman and OpenAI, accusing them of "manipulating" him into co-founding the company as a nonprofit.

OpenAI has dismissed Musk's accusations. In response to the criticism last year, OpenAI published emails in March 2024 that it said showed the SpaceX CEO was previously interested in moving the company to a for-profit model and wanted it to merge with Tesla.

• Consulting firms have become a destination for some companies looking to make the most out of AI.
• AI leaders at these firms use tools like GPT Enterprise and internal chatbots like McKinsey's Lilli.
• BI asked AI leaders at several large companies to share tips for using the technology.

Working with artificial intelligence can sometimes feel more like an art than a science.

That's why many companies are turning to consulting firms for guidance on how to maximize the technology.

Top firms are not only helping companies develop AI tools, upskill their workforces, and identify potential security weaknesses, but they are also creating chatbots and agents to organize their firm's knowledge and streamline routine tasks. As a result, AI leaders at consulting firms tend to have a handle on AI strategies that can work for a broad range of tasks.

Business Insider asked AI execs at five top consulting firms — Deloitte, EY, KPMG, McKinsey, and PwC — to share their best tips for using AI in everyday work.

The AI leaders said they regularly used various AI tools, including models from OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Anthropic, as well as tools built internally, like McKinsey's Lilli, EY's EYQ, and ChatPwC, PwC's internal version of ChatGPT.

Here's how they use AI and some of their advice for getting the most out of it. Responses are edited for brevity.

How do you use AI in your work?

Dan Priest, US chief AI officer at PwC: I do a lot of research with it. For instance, I was doing some analysis on labor productivity and how AI will improve labor productivity. The typical search would produce labor statistics. Well, AI, the big powerful foundation models, it'll grab those labor facts and statistics, it'll do analysis, it'll show you trends, discontinuities, or cause analyses. It is much more robust. In terms of research and analysis, it emerges as a thought partner versus just a search engine.

You discover blind spots in your thinking. I was writing a policy and I thought it was pretty comprehensive, and I ran it through GPT Enterprise, and it found two other points in the policy that we should be adding.

Todd Lohr, head of ecosystems at KPMG: Part of my job as a leader is being able to synthesize information. AI is very helpful in that it has allowed me to understand trends and the marketplace and has enabled me to have a broader view as a leader and synthesize and ingest a lot more information.

It has also been helpful for communications in terms of preparing for meetings, follow-up from meetings, as well as correspondence.

Rodney Zemmel, global leader for McKinsey Digital and firmwide AI transformation: I've found it to be excellent at "level one" creativity and coming up with things you generally will not have thought of. It's an excellent aid to brainstorming for our teams. I haven't yet seen it as having true unbounded creativity, i.e., a new way of looking at the world. That won't be far behind, though.

What are your go-to AI prompts or advice you have for writing good prompts?

Dan Priest, PwC: I'll give some context about what I'm trying to do, a short, punchy question, and then ask follow-ups that make them increasingly specific, and then you can adjust based on what you're seeing.

During the week, I travel a lot, and if I get 100 or 200 emails in a day, it's just really hard to keep up with every single one of them. I go into Microsoft Teams, activate Copilot, and ask it to review all messages in Teams and email and find the actions for me. I'll just spend 15, 20 minutes at the end of the day, do the prompt "Identify emails that are addressed to me directly or that have an action for me," and it produces the list. It's not perfect, but it's good at it.

I like to cook, and I don't like to waste food in the refrigerator. So I will prompt, "Create a recipe with these ingredients," and I'll just list the things that I want to get rid of in the refrigerator.

Rodney Zemmel, McKinsey: Too many people are still using it to look something up. The trick is to have a dialogue with it and to get comfortable building agents that can execute simple tasks. Let AI handle the 80% of tasks we're mediocre at, so we can excel at the exciting 20%, as one of my colleagues likes to say.

Matt Barrington, Americas chief technology officer at EY: Context management is paramount. I keep separate AI "workspaces" for different focus areas — such as technical Q&A or drafting client communications.

I also give the AI clear instructions about the style and depth of response I want, like "Provide a concise, bullet-point summary," or "Act as a finance expert," or "cite credible sources or references and provide links."

What challenges are there with using AI?

Dan Priest, PwC: It is changing muscle memory.

I've spent a lot of years developing a certain writing style, a certain research technique, and I had to change that. And I am better for having changed it, but it doesn't happen overnight.

It was just like anything that you learn, you have to be disciplined about learning it, and then it sticks.

Todd Lohr, KPMG: The biggest challenge is connecting all my individual data sources that are disparate. If I want to build my own personal AI, the challenge is having access to the right information and knowledge.

I have been deliberate about addressing this challenge when I took over in my current role. I put everything in one folder and personally curated the content that I agreed with and liked.

Matt Barrington, EY: The main challenge is keeping pace with the innovation. There's a constant flow of new models, tools, and capabilities, and it can be tough to pinpoint which option is best for a given task. I follow newsletters, participate in AI-focused events, and learn from AI practitioners — but in my view, hands-on experimentation is the most effective way to stay informed and find what genuinely works.

Also, it is important to remember that while these models are confident and impressive, they can be wrong. Always validate the information and output before you utilize it.

What do your clients want to know about incorporating AI into their business?

Dan Priest, PwC: The questions have sort of shifted. A year ago, they were asking, "What's the killer use case?" "What's the most industrialized use case?" "What's the use case that's going to produce the most savings or the greatest deficiencies?" Now, the questions we're getting are less about those technical use cases and they're much more about "How do you evolve the business strategy to take advantage of AI capabilities?"

Rodney Zemmel, McKinsey: They want to understand how AI agents can integrate with their workforce, acting like talented interns who need proper training to be effective. We've also seen the conversation move from just productivity to growth and productivity, and to finding ways to do things better and faster than humans to doing things that no human could possibly do.

Do you have something to share about what you're seeing in consulting? Business Insider would like to hear from you. Email our consulting team from a nonwork device at [email protected] with your story, or ask for one of our reporter's Signal numbers.

• A federal judge blocked Trump's attempt to dismantle the US Agency for International Development.
• The Friday ruling followed a lawsuit by government employee unions against USAID cuts.
• USAID spent $32.5 billion in 2024 on global humanitarian aid.

A federal judge has partially blocked the Trump administration's attempt to dismantle the US Agency for International Development.

Judge Carl Nichols said in a Friday order he would temporarily block the Trump administration from placing 2,200 USAID employees on paid leave until midnight on February 14.

"Many USAID personnel work in 'high-risk environments where access to security resources is critical.' No future lawsuit could undo the physical harm that might result if USAID employees are not informed of imminent security threats occurring in the countries to which they have relocated in the course of their service to the United States," Nichols wrote in his order, preventing the layoffs from taking place.

"The government argued at the TRO hearing that placing employees on paid administrative leave is a garden-variety personnel action unworthy of court intervention. But administrative leave in Syria is not the same as administrative leave in Bethesda: simply being paid cannot change that fact," the judge's order added.

The judge's order partially grants a temporary restraining order requested by two labor groups representing federal workers in a lawsuit against the Trump administration filed Thursday. In their initial request, the labor groups asked the judge to block the Trump administration from placing any additional USAID workers on leave or from firing any additional workers, court records showed.

They also asked the administration be blocked from "taking further actions to shut down USAID's operations in a manner not authorized by Congress until further order of this Court." Nichols' order on Friday did not grant the labor groups' request to block a funding freeze implemented by the Trump administration, allowing the freeze to go into effect.

Prior to the judge's order, many USAID workers were set to be placed on leave Friday just before midnight.

The judge's ruling comes one day after the American Federation of Government Employees and the American Foreign Service Association filed a lawsuit against the administration's cuts to USAID.

"These actions have generated a global humanitarian crisis by abruptly halting the crucial work of USAID employees, grantees, and contractors. They have cost thousands of American jobs. And they have imperiled US national security interests," their lawyers wrote.

The lawsuit, filed on Thursday, named President Donald Trump, State Secretary Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the State Department, the Treasury Department, and USAID as defendants.

"Not a single one of defendants' actions to dismantle USAID were taken pursuant to congressional authorization. And pursuant to federal statute, Congress is the only entity that may lawfully dismantle the agency," the lawsuit argued.

The humanitarian aid agency has been under fire since Trump took office. Elon Musk said in an X post on Monday that he "spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper."

On Tuesday, USAID said nearly all staff would be placed on administrative leave starting on February 7 at midnight. The announcement came just a day after the agency shut down its headquarters on Monday and told staff to work remotely.

"With regards to the USAID stuff, I went over it in detail, and he agreed that we should shut it down," Musk said of a conversation he had with President Donald Trump during an X Spaces conversation on Monday.

Established in 1961 by then-President John F. Kennedy, USAID oversees the US's aid programs worldwide.

The agency spent nearly $32.5 billion in fiscal year 2024, channeling aid to countries like Ukraine, Jordan, and Ethiopia. The US is the world's largest provider of humanitarian aid.

The turmoil surrounding USAID occurs amid a wider upending of the federal bureaucracy during Trump's second term, with the federal judiciary increasingly stepping in.

Last month, the Trump administration gave federal employees from January 28 to February 6 to accept a buyout offer and resign from their jobs, but a judge extended the deadline to Monday.

The Trump administration's freeze on federal grants and loans was announced on January 28 and rolled by within days, with a federal judge issuing a restraining order on January 31.

A federal judge also issued an injunction against Trump's executive orders on ending birthright citizenship, calling them "flatly unconstitutional."

A spokesperson for the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees the federal workforce, said on Thursday that over 40,000 employees have accepted the offer. The federal government employs more than 2 million people.

• Erica Roach, the CFO of the US Office of Personnel Management, resigned this week.
• The OPM manages $1.1 trillion in assets for federal workers' benefits.
• Roach's departure is the latest in a string of changes in federal agencies.

Erica Roach, the chief financial officer of the US Office of Personnel Management, resigned this week.

Roach confirmed the news to Business Insider on Wednesday. She declined to comment further.

The Office of Personnel Management, or OPM, is the chief human resources agency for the federal government. The office manages $1.1 trillion in assets under the Earned Benefits Trust Funds, which funds finance retirement, health, and life insurance benefits for millions of federal workers.

Roach worked at the OPM for eight years, her LinkedIn shows. She served as the CFO for just under a year and a half.

The ABC News reporter Ben Siegel first reported Roach's resignation in an X post on Wednesday evening, citing unnamed sources who said she was pushed out.

OPM did not respond to a request for comment from BI.

Roach's departure comes as the federal workforce is undergoing a massive shakeup under President Donald Trump's second term in office.

Last month, the Trump administration gave federal employees between January 28 to February 6 to accept a buyout offer if they did not want to work for the administration.

Those who took the buyout will receive full pay and benefits through September. The offer was extended to all federal employees except those working in military, postal, immigration, and national security roles.

More than 20,000 workers have accepted the buyouts, a White House spokesperson told BI in a story published on February 4. A spokesperson for OPM said the agency is expecting a spike of resignations to come 24-48 hours before the deadline.

The federal government employs more than 2 million people.

Have a news tip or a story to share? Contact this reporter at [email protected] or via the encrypted-messaging app Signal @kelseyv.21.

• Perceptis has raised $3.6 million to automate tedious consulting tasks with generative AI.
• The startup was founded by a former McKinsey consultant and former Apple engineer.
• The cofounders said AI could lead to a lot of growth for small- and midsize consultancies.

Consulting has long relied on manpower, but a new generative AI startup co-founded by a former McKinsey consultant says its software can take over some of the industry's most tedious tasks.

"A lot of the internal processes are extremely manual labor heavy," Alibek Dostiyarov, cofounder and CEO of Perceptis, told Business Insider of consulting workflows, which he said "lend themselves almost perfectly to what GenAI is capable of doing."

He co-founded Perceptis with CTO Yersultan Sapar, a former engineer at Apple, to help consulting and professional services firms automate monotonous tasks, freeing up people at those firms to serve more clients and focus on solving their problems.

"Perceptis is an operating system for the consultants designed to help them win more business and make consulting — their day job — even more enjoyable and focused on the core of their service," Sapar said.

Perceptis has raised $3.6 million in funding led by Streamlined Ventures, along with The House Fund, Tekton Ventures, FEBE Ventures, MOST Ventures, and Silkroad Innovation Hub. They've also gained some prominent angel investors, including Charlie Songhurst, a member of Meta's board of directors and former Microsoft executive; AJ Shankar, founder and CEO of Everlaw, and Peter Kazanjy, author of "Founding Sales" and co-founder of Atrium.

Advancements in generative AI have disrupted the broader consulting industry, with major firms making huge investments in the technology and establishing dedicated AI units, such as McKinsey's QuantumBlack. A senior partner at McKinsey told BI last year that he thinks AI is "going to be most of what we do in the future."

How AI helps consultants land jobs

Perceptis is currently focused on the business development side of consulting, or helping firms secure jobs. The AI can do industry research for companies that Perceptis clients are interested in, identify what opportunities there are, and match that up with the clients' specific skills and backgrounds. It then creates a detailed, custom proposal that the client can use to try and secure a job.

Dostiyarov said an average proposal, meaning the work put in before the consulting firm is even hired for a job, can take 20 hours of work or more, adding that with AI it can take a fraction of the time.

Dostiyarov used an analogy for their message to clients: "We are going to find the house on fire for you, and then we are going to help you show up as the perfect firefighter for the job by giving you the perfect proposal."

"Because of all the data and all the capabilities that we have with our AI, we now can tell a perfect story as to why you are the great company to solve this problem," he said.

The co-founders said Perceptis clients are often able to double or triple the number of proposals they send each month and experience higher conversation rates as well as increases in revenue soon after getting started with the program.

Perceptis primarily serves small- to medium-sized firms, which typically don't have the same manpower as the biggest firms nor do they build their own internal AI tools.

The startup saw its biggest growth yet in November and December, doubling its annual recurring revenue, the cofounders said.

AI can't replace human consultants

The Perceptis co-founders said they see AI as supplementing human consultants, not replacing them, and that the technology still has its limitations. They said AI can't replace human judgement, at least for now, or the human-to-human interaction that is needed in consulting.

But they think it could make the industry overall a lot more productive. AI could also potentially help smaller consultancies and even independent consultants compete more seriously in the space by taking over the tedious but necessary work that the bigger firms have more than enough employees to handle.

"Perceptis therefore democratizes access to consulting as an industry," Dostiyarov said.

As a result, they said the consulting industry could become a lot larger, more fragmented, and more specialized — and that the MBBs and Big Fours of the world could become a bit less dominant.

"There are, of course, the goliaths in the industry. We don't think that they're going to go away," Dostiyarov said. "Still, we think that the majority of the growth is actually going to come from these much smaller firms."

Do you work in consulting and have insights to share about the industry? Contact this reporter at [email protected]or via the encrypted messaging app Signal at kelseyv.21.

• Palantir CEO Alex Karp said he's optimistic about the disruption brought about by Elon Musk's DOGE.
• Karp said he thinks it will be good for the US and Palantir, which has large government contracts.
• CTO Shyam Sankar said Palantir's real competition was "lack of accountability in government."

Alex Karp, the cofounder and CEO of software company Palantir, said he thinks Elon Musk's Department of Governmental Efficiency will disrupt the US government — and that it will be good for Americans and the company he leads.

"We love disruption, and whatever is good for America will be good for Americans and very good for Palantir," Karp said in response to a question about DOGE during the company's quarterly earnings call on Monday.

"Disruption, at the end of the day, exposes things that aren't working," he said. "There will be ups and downs. There's a revolution. Some people are going to get their heads cut off. We're expecting to see really unexpected things and to win."

Two weeks into President Donald Trump's second term, the DOGE-induced disruptions have included moves to dismantle USAID, the agency that handles US foreign aid, and buyouts for federal workers.

Palantir has contracts with government organizations, both in the US and abroad, many of which use its software for military operations and intelligence. In the US, Palantir has contracts with the US Army and the Department of Defense, including some worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Palantir's earnings report on Monday beat analyst expectations, with US revenue for the quarter growing 52% year-over-year. The company said its US government revenue for fiscal year 2024 grew 30% year-over-year to $1.2 billion. Palantir shares were up almost 24% after-hours amid earnings news.

Palantir has a close, and at times complicated, relationship with the US government. In 2016, Palantir sued the US Army, accusing it of bias in its bidding process. Palantir won the case and has since secured several contracts with the Army. In December, Palantir announced it secured a contract with the Army for more than $400 million.

The stated priority of DOGE, now a White House office led by Musk, is to make the government more efficient by cutting spending and reorganizing some federal agencies. In its first week, DOGE said it canceled $420 million worth of federal government contracts.

Karp recently defended Musk against criticism that a gesture he made resembled a Nazi salute. He told CNBC that calling Musk a Nazi was "completely absurd and a complete rewrite of history."

Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar also said on Monday's earnings call that DOGE would be good for the company.

"Palantir's real competition is a lack of accountability in government," Sankar said. "DOGE is going to bring meritocracy and transparency to government."

• Stephen and Joanna Vargha moved to Ecuador from North Carolina after retiring early.
• The moved to Cuenca for its lower cost of living, vibrant culture, and welcoming expat community.
• They recommend retiring abroad but said anyone thinking about it should do a lot of research.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Stephen and Joanna Vargha, a married couple who moved from North Carolina to Cuenca, Ecuador, in 2020 after retiring early. Cuenca is located in the Andes mountains and has a population of about 600,000 people. Their interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Stephen: I heard about Cuenca, Ecuador, as a place to retire way back in 2010. I checked it out for a week in 2011 and visited some people I knew there. But I was only 53. So I put it in the back of my head.

In early 2019, my work was taking a toll on me physically and mentally. I had worked at a television station in North Carolina for over 37 years. We already had a retirement house in a small mountain town in North Carolina, so we decided to move there. The plan was to leave my job and look for a one at half the pay because we could afford it. But after several months I couldn't get a job.

We also realized the Affordable Care Act coverage was going to cost around $1,900 a month for the two of us and we were too young for Medicare. I didn't work my butt off for four decades to give my hard-earned money to the insurance companies.

Then Joanna goes, "Let's move to Cuenca." This is a woman who had never been there, doesn't like big cities, grew up in a town of maybe 75,000 people when she left. I was like, "Are you sure?" But that's what we did. So I decided to retire at 61 when we moved to Ecuador.

Joanna: I retired around the same time at 56, and before that worked for an auto insurance website.

We started talking about moving to Cuenca in May of 2019. We visited in September and looked at places. We moved in January 2020 and just barely missed the pandemic lockdown.

Cuenca is a great city with a lot of expats

Stephen: You make friends so easily here. I've visited 29 countries, and I can emphatically say that the people in Cuenca are the friendliest people I have ever met.

Joanna: We have made so many dear friends here that we would never have back home. We would've had to stay working and been too busy. Now we do three-hour lunches here just catching up and having fun.

There are so many things to do here, including art events and going to restaurants. There are lots of musical events. We have a free symphony and it's fabulous.

Stephen: Cuenca is becoming more of an international city. It's considered the arts capital of Ecuador and is called the "Athens of Ecuador" because of its culture and education.

We speak a little Spanish, so we try to respect their culture and speak Spanish when we can, but some people here also speak English.

Stephen: There are an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 foreigners living in Cuenca, mostly from the US and Canada, with Europe at a distant number three. Facebook groups are a great way to meet people and the expat community is very helpful.

Joanna: You rely on each other.

The cost of living is so much lower

Stephen: It's a fraction of the cost of living compared to a good portion of the US, like with housing and food. Our electric and water bills are much lower. Healthcare here is very affordable and good.

Joanna: There are some health things that you can't get done here. You have to go to Quito, about one hour away, or back to the states. But there's a lot of things here that you can get.

A pallet of 30 farm-fresh eggs is like $4.25 here. Fresh produce at the market is also affordable. To ride a bus is 31 cents. A taxi across the city could cost you $6 including tip.

A lot of expats don't even own cars because it's very walkable. We walk everywhere. It's the healthiest we've ever been.

Stephen: We average 35 miles a week. It didn't take long for me to lose my American weight, as I call it. I went from 192 to 168 — just by the fresher food, better food, and walking all around.

There is also a great respect for older folks, and it's not just a cultural thing, it's part of the country's laws. There are discounts for older people, including on taxes, and even separate lines at the bank.

Stephen: One drawback about Cuenca is there's not an international airport. We usually have to fly to Quito.

Communication can be terrible with vendors and government entities. Finding real estate listings is a little more difficult here, but we went to a real estate agent and she found our place for us.

There are certain things you just can't buy here.

Joanna: When we go back to the US to visit we load up our suitcases with stuff to bring back with us. But that's changing literally every day. They're offering more stuff here.

We recommend retiring abroad but do your research

Stephen: For people thinking about moving abroad, research is the most important thing. Facebook, blogs, get more than one source and make sure they're reliable. Definitely visit here.

Joanna: Try to make some local contacts who you can talk to because they'll help you ease into local life.

And we would never suggest doing the visa process on your own. You need a visa lawyer or a facilitator to help you because the rules can change quickly. It wasn't hard to do with the help. We used a group in Ecuador called Visa Angels.

Joanna: We don't plan to leave Ecuador soon, but we are researching end-of-life continuous care right now.

Stephen: We may eventually have to move back to the US despite the high healthcare costs because they just don't have the same assisted living facility options here. But right now, we're very happy here.

Joanna: In the five years we've been here, we've had a pandemic, national protests, and one of the worst droughts in Ecuador's history.

There's good and there's bad in any place that you live, but I like to say that when we knew we had to leave our home, we didn't make lemonade out of lemons. We made Limoncello and lemon pound cake.

It's been such a wonderful adventure. I would've never dreamed that we would be able to do this.

Have a news tip or a story to share? Are you an American who has moved abroad? Contact this reporter at [email protected].

• Executives are increasingly fielding analyst questions about the business impact of DeepSeek.
• Business Insider is keeping a running tally of CEOs who have talked about DeepSeek on earnings calls.
• In spite of the market disruption, the early outlook is generally optimistic about the tech.

If there was a bingo card for company earnings calls this quarter, DeepSeek would deserve its own square.

Stock market surprises have a way of echoing through subsequent earnings calls, and the impact of DeepSeek is reverberating on Wall Street.

On recent analyst calls, executives have increasingly fielded questions about the Chinese AI upstart and what its more cost-effective model means for their businesses.

The name DeepSeek was mentioned in at least nine earnings calls last week, according to an AlphaSense search, with only a single mention prior to the company's bombshell announcement about its AI models. That number has grown as major tech companies including Alphabet, AMD, Palantir, and Amazon report their earnings.

But in spite of the market disruption that saw wild swings in Big Tech share prices, the early outlook is generally optimistic about the tech.

Here's what business leaders are telling analysts:

Airbnb

Airbnb's CEO, Brian Chesky, said AI and low-cost models like DeepSeek will have a "profound impact on travel."

In a fourth-quarter earnings call on February 13, Chesky said that it will use AI to improve its customer service and transform Airbnb's search engine into a "travel and living concierge."

"I think it's a really exciting time in the space because you've seen like with DeepSeek and more competition with models is models are getting cheaper or nearly free, they're getting faster, and they're getting more intelligent and for all this purpose, starting to get commoditized," he said to investors.

He added that the best platforms and applications moving forward would be those that "most accrue the value from AI," and Airbnb would be the travel platform that does that.

ARM

DeepSeek is "great for the industry," said Rene Haas, the CEO of ARM, on the chipmaker's February 5 earnings call.

"It drives efficiency, it lowers the cost. And by doing that, it expands the demand for overall compute. So, just from a general standpoint, it's a good thing," he said.

Haas referenced the controversy over how DeepSeek created its latest model — OpenAI is investigating whether the company trained on the Microsoft-backed company's technology. Haas called DeepSeek's approach "creative."

He also compared the product to Grace Blackwell architecture, highlighting that while Nvidia's product is "wonderful," it couldn't go in a cellphone, earbuds, or other smaller electronics that ARM targets.

"When you think about the application to ARM, given the fact that AI workloads will need to run everywhere and lower-cost inference, a more efficient inference makes it easier to run these applications in areas where power is constrained," Haas said.

AMD

Lisa Su, the CEO of AMD, said DeepSeek is driving innovation that's "good for AI adoption" in an earnings call on February 4.

"The fact that there are new ways to bring about training and inference capabilities with less infrastructure actually is a good thing, because it allows us to continue to deploy AI compute and broader application space and more adoption," Su said.

She added that AMD is a "big believer" in open source.

"And from that standpoint, having open source models, looking at the rate and pace of adoption there, I think, is pretty amazing," Su said. "And that is how we expect things to go."

Google

Google's CEO Sundar Pichai said in an earnings call on February 4 that DeepSeek had done "very good work."

"Look, I think there's been a lot of observations on DeepSeek. First of all, I think a tremendous team," he said to investors. "I think they've done very, very good work."

He said that for Google, it had "always been obvious" that frontier models could be made to be more efficient over time.

But he downplayed DeepSeek's threat, saying that he thinks Google's Gemini model is the "Pareto frontier of cost, performance, and latency."

He added that Google's recent 2.0 Flash Thinking models are "some of the most efficient models out there, including comparing to DeepSeek's V3 and R1."

Palantir Technologies

Shyam Sankar, CTO of Palantir Technologies, fielded a question about DeepSeek during the company's earnings call on February 3. He said DeepSeek demonstrated that AI models are "commoditizing."

"But I think the real lesson, the more profound one, is that we are at war with China," Sankar said, adding, "We are in an AI arms race."

He also criticized the explanation that "the Chinese just copy and we're the only innovators," an apparent reference to reports that DeepSeek may have copied OpenAI.

He said the engineering in DeepSeek's R1 model was "exquisite" and that "the optimizations that they've done are really impressive."

"We have to wake up with the respect for our adversary and realize that we are competing," Sankar said, adding, "We have to realize that the AI race is winner take all."

"The time to mobilize has come," he said.

Apple

An analyst asked Apple CEO Tim Cook for his perspective on the "DeepSeek situation" during the company's quarterly earnings call on January 30.

"In general, I think innovation that drives efficiency is a good thing," Cook said. "That's what you see in that model."

The CEO said he thought the company's "tight integration of silicon and software" would continue to serve them well.

"From a CapEx point of view, we've always taken a very prudent, deliberative approach to our expenditure, and we continue to leverage a hybrid model, which I think continues to serve as well," Cook said, referring to Apple's AI strategy.

Meta

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged DeepSeek as a "new competitor" during an earnings call on January 29. An investor asked him about the competitive dynamic in the open-source field.

"In light of some of the recent news, you know, the new competitor, DeepSeek from China, I think it's also one of the things that we're talking about, is there's going to be an open-source standard globally, and I think for our own national advantage, it's important that it's an American standard," Zuckerberg said to investors.

He added that the emergence of DeepSeek has "only strengthened our conviction that this is the right thing for us to be focused on."

Later in the call, he said that DeepSeek did "a number of novel things" to train its model fast and cheaply, which Meta was "still digesting." He added that DeepSeek has made advances that Meta hopes to implement in its systems.

Microsoft

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella mentioned DeepSeek twice in his prepared remarks during an earnings call on January 29.

He said that the Copilot+ PC laptops, which Microsoft has called the "fastest, most intelligent Windows PCs ever built," would soon be able to run DeepSeek's R1 distilled models locally.

When asked about DeepSeek by an investor, he said, "I think DeepSeek has had some real innovations. And that is some of the things that even OpenAI found in o1."

IBM

IBM's CEO Arvind Krishna fielded a DeepSeek question during an earnings call on January 29.

When asked about what implications DeepSeek could have for IBM or the industry at large, Krishna said, "Look, DeepSeek, I think, was a point of validation."

"We have been very vocal for about a year that smaller models and more reasonable training times are going to be essential for enterprise deployment of large language models," he said.

The tech giant's chief added that IBM has been going "down that journey" itself "for more than a year" and that it has seen "as much as 30 times reduction in inference costs" with those approaches.

"As other people begin to follow that route, we think that this is incredibly good for our enterprise clients," Krishna said.

AT&T

AT&T CEO John Stankey said the newer, lower-cost AI "is going to open up and facilitate new applications and business models."

"This is a seminal technology cycle," Stankey said on January 27 of generative AI. "It's going to be every bit as big as the founding of the Internet when it's all said and done."

Stankey added that new breakthroughs like DeepSeek that use less processing capacity, consume less power, work more effectively in particular domains, or can be run on local devices instead of in the cloud will ultimately lead to new applications and business models.

"We're all going to have to stay on our game to make sure we use it effectively so none of us are in a disadvantaged position relative to our competitors on cost-structure effectiveness," he said.

Corning

Wendell Weeks, CEO of glassmaker Corning, which produces fiber optics that are increasingly critical in high-speed networking, said the technical community has been watching DeepSeek for the last few months.

"What's super important to understand is that we need dramatic improvement in training and inference cost to make GenAI into a highly sustainable business model, and more importantly, the productivity driver that we all hope it will be," he said.

"All of us in the space are counting on many more innovations to come," he continued, adding that AI models of the future will continue to need improvements in computation and communication technologies.

Flex

Revathi Advaithi, CEO of mid-cap datacenter company Flex, acknowledged "a lot of noise this week," but said DeepSeek itself doesn't represent anything new in terms of demand for AI infrastructure.

"At the end of the day, compute density is still a big deal," she said. "We think lower cost in applications like DeepSeek is a good thing for the industry as a whole because it's going to drive a stronger growth in terms of the market itself."

In addition, Advaithi said lower barriers to entry could spur more widespread innovation in AI, driving additional demand for infrastructure providers like Flex.

"We haven't seen enough growth from non-Mag Seven companies and we'll start to see a lot more of that," she said. "It actually accelerates the move towards AI."

Amazon

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said on Thursday that leaders at the company "were impressed with what DeepSeek has done."

Different AI models will challenge and pass each other when it comes to capabilities, he said on Amazon's earnings call.

"Different customers are going to use different models for different types of workloads," Jassy said. "You're going to provide as many leading frontier models as possible for customers to choose from."

He also said that DeepSeek's cheaper costs aren't a problem for the industry. When technologies become less expensive, some people say "that somehow it's going to lead to less total spend in technology," he said.

"We have never seen that to be the case," Jassy added.

• Mark Zuckerberg says it's too soon to gauge DeepSeek's impact on Meta's AI spending.
• DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup, says it can build powerful models at a fraction of US costs.
• Zuckerberg calls for an open-source AI standard that is "American."

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, says it's too soon to tell what kind of impact DeepSeek will have on the company's AI spending.

During Meta's earnings call on Wednesday, Zuckerberg was asked by an analyst how DeepSeek — the Chinese AI startup that sent Silicon Valley into a tailspin by building powerful models at a reported fraction of the cost — will impact Meta's own investments in AI.

"They have advances that we will hope to implement in our systems, and that's part of the nature of how this works, whether it's a Chinese competitor or not," Zuckerberg said, adding DeepSeek had done "a number of novel things" that Meta is "still digesting."

But he said that probably won't change how Meta is investing in AI, at least for now.

"It's probably too early to really have a strong opinion on what this means for the trajectory around infrastructure and capex and things like that," Zuckerberg said.

Zuck says major AI infrastructure will still be needed

Meta and other US tech companies have recently faced questions on when their heavy investments on AI would start paying off. That scrutiny hit new levels this month when DeepSeek said it trained its AI models for a fraction of the cost that its US rivals spent, causing some tech stocks to tumble.

Last week, Zuckerberg said Meta planned to spend between $60 billion to $65 billion in capital investments in 2025.

During the earnings call on Wednesday, he defended those investments, saying that while the use of Meta's AI computing infrastructure could change, the need for it will not disappear.

"If anything, some of the recent news has only strengthened our conviction that this is the right thing for us to be focused on," he said, adding: "At this point, I would bet that the ability to build out that kind of infrastructure is going to be a major advantage for both the quality of the service and being able to serve the scale that we want to."

Open source, but American

On the earnings call, Zuckerberg also reaffirmed his commitment to open-source AI with a notable caveat: It should follow American standards.

"There's going to be an open-source standard globally, and I think for our own national advantage, it's important that it's an American standard," Zuckerberg said. "We take that seriously, and we want to build the AI system that people around the world are using."

Earlier in the call, he highlighted a shift in the relationship between Big Tech and Washington, pointing to a more supportive US administration that backs American companies in the global AI race.

"We now have a US administration that is proud of our leading companies, prioritizes American technology winning, and that will defend our values and interests abroad," he said. "I am optimistic about the progress and innovation that this can unlock."

Yann LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist, previously said that the lesson to take away from DeepSeek's success wasn't that China's AI is "surpassing the US," but rather that "open source models are surpassing proprietary ones."

• Trump settled his lawsuit against Meta for about $25 million, his lawyer confirmed.
• The lawsuit followed Trump's 2021 Facebook suspension after the January 6 riot.
• Most of the settlement funds will support Trump's presidential library, his lawyer said.

President Donald Trump has signed an agreement in which Meta would pay $25 million to settle a lawsuit he brought against the company and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg after being suspended from Facebook in 2021 following the January 6 riot.

Trump signed the settlement papers Wednesday in the Oval Office, his attorney John Coale confirmed to Business Insider. He said much of the $25 million settlement paid by Meta would go toward Trump's presidential library.

A Meta spokesperson also confirmed the settlement to BI.

The settlement agreement was first reported by The Wall Street Journal just as Meta was due to report their quarterly earnings. Meta leaders were uncharacteristically late to the call.

Zuckerberg did not address the settlement, but said during the earnings call that this would be a "big year for redefining our relationship with governments."

"We now have a US administration that is proud of our leading companies, prioritizes American technology winning, and that will defend our values and interests abroad," Zuckerberg said. "And I am optimistic about the progress and innovation that this can unlock."

It's the latest in a string of efforts by the company and its CEO to stay in Trump's good graces. Trump had previously threatened to throw Zuckerberg in jail.

Following Trump's election win, Meta donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund. Zuckerberg and his wife also attended Trump's inauguration, sitting up front alongside other tech moguls.

Meta isn't alone in its donations to the future Trump library. ABC News agreed to pay $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by Trump. Court documents said the money would go toward the president's library.

In addition to Meta, Trump also sued other tech companies in 2021, accusing them of censorship. Meta banned Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts following January 6, citing policy violations, including posting false claims about the 2020 election.

Trump also sued Twitter, now called X, and YouTube as well as their leaders, for suspending his accounts. A federal judge dismissed Trump's lawsuit against Twitter in 2022. The suit against YouTube appeared to have been "administratively closed" in 2023, according to court records.

• The Trump administration is offering buyouts to members of the federal workforce.
• Employees who resign from in-office work will have full pay and benefits through September, officials said.
• Some exclusions apply to military, postal, immigration, and national security roles.

President Donald Trump is offering buyouts to federal workers who don't want to stick around under the new administration, according to a letter sent to government employees on Tuesday.

The letter, which was shared by the US Office of Personnel Management, said federals employees had from January 28 to February 6 to decide if they would like to resign under this program.

Those who resign will receive full pay and benefits regardless of their daily workload and are exempted from "all applicable in-person work requirements until September 30, 2025," the memo says.

The webpage listed a deferred resignation letter that specifies that employees would complete "reasonable and customary tasks and processes to facilitate" their departure.

The resignation offer was available to all full-time federal employees except for military personnel, US Postal Service employees, those in immigration enforcement and national security roles, and other positions that were specifically excluded by an agency.

The letter said a recent order issued by Trump meant there would be significant reform in the federal workforce, which it said would be "built around four pillars." Those pillars were: Return to Office, Performance culture, More streamlined and flexible workforce, and Enhanced standards of conduct.

The memo also said that for those who choose to stay, the administration could not guarantee that their role or agency will not be eliminated.

Read the OPM’s full memo.

The White House did not respond to BI's request for comment.

After taking office on January 20, Trump signed several executive orders impacting the federal workforce as his administration, including the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, seeks to cut government waste.

Trump has ordered federal employees to return to the office, and moved to end diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts at government agencies, ordering DEI-focused staff be placed on leave.

In an op-ed about DOGE published in The Wall Street Journal in November, Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who temporarily co-led the effort with him, wrote that requiring federal employees to return to the office full-time would lead to "a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome."

"If federal employees don't want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn't pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home," they wrote.

Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat from Virginia, said Tuesday evening that the president did not have the authority to offer the deferred resignation to federal workers and warned them not to take the offer.

"There's no budget line item to pay people who are not showing up for work," he said, speaking from the Senate floor.

• The US tried to limit China's AI advancements through export limits on semiconductors.
• The limitations may have inadvertently fueled the innovation behind DeepSeek instead.
• China's DeepSeek disrupted the AI industry with more efficient computing at scale.

The US government has for years actively tried to curb China's access to semiconductor chips, a key component in generative AI models. Instead, those export limits may have fueled the innovation that led to DeepSeek's R1 — a large language model that's disrupting the domestic AI industry and the booming economy built around it.

Brian Colello, a tech analyst for Morningstar, said the quote "constraints lead to creativity" came to mind.

"These Chinese models were processor-constrained, so it led to some creative techniques in training, and the DeepSeek model has come out with better-than-expected performance given the processors that it's been trained on," he told Business Insider.

DeepSeek disruption

DeepSeek, a China-based AI startup, dropped the app version of its R1 model last week. The model appeared to rival those from major US tech companies, like Meta, OpenAI, and Google — but at a much lower cost.

DeepSeek said it spent nearly $6 million in computing power to train its new system, a fraction of what US tech companies have spent on their models.

DeepSeek said its models were trained with fewer and less powerful semiconductor chips than their competitors typically use.

Since 2022, US sanctions have made it illegal for manufacturing leader Nvidia to sell some of its chips to China, including its most advanced chips. The sanctions aimed to limit China's advancements in AI and military technology.

"Sanctions forced DeepSeek to use H800s, which were less powerful than H100s," Patrick Moorhead, the CEO of Moor Insights and Strategy, told BI of the Nvidia chips DeepSeek has used.

"In a roundabout way, sanctions initiated in the Biden administration motivated DeepSeek to be more creative in how it trained and ran models," he added. "No one should be surprised, as 'necessity is the mother of invention.'"

Murky training and computing costs

Some experts and analysts who spoke to BI expressed skepticism over DeepSeek's claims about the cost of the models and the number and type of chips they were built on. However, it remains unclear exactly what semiconductors were used to train and deploy DeepSeek.

Still, some analysts said the startup showed that it's possible to do more with less when it comes to AI.

Deutsche Bank analysts Adrian Cox and Galina Pozdnyakova wrote of DeepSeek in a research note published Monday: "They've had to squeeze more value out of their software and methods such as chain-of-thought reasoning and using several models at once, instead of just throwing more computing power at the problem."

Chris Miller, author of the 2022 book "Chip War," told BI the DeepSeek models are impressive but that costs in AI have come down dramatically since 2023, so he did not find the company's latest paper especially surprising.

He also said the idea that DeepSeek was working on a "shoestring budget" was not true, saying the company used a "very narrow definition of training costs." Miller said it's "pretty clear that the training cost is an order of magnitude higher" than DeepSeek suggested.

Ineffective chip restrictions

Alexandr Wang, the CEO of Scale AI, said during a January 23 CNBC interview that DeepSeek had 50,000 H800s, which Miller said would be a "substantial number. " While that number is still much less than what US firms have, Miller said, it's likely a lot more than US export officials would've wanted a single Chinese firm to accumulate.

Zongyuan Zoe Liu, a senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, told BI that the developments at DeepSeek suggest AI development in China "seems to be at least on par with the US."

However, she said, "we're still at the beginning of the race" for AI dominance.

"It certainly serves as a good reminder for American policymakers that technology restriction may not work, depending upon what the end goal is," Liu said.

Several experts said they thought the latest developments with DeepSeek could lead to even more semiconductor sanctions on China but would not necessarily stop further innovation.

"The US could put sanctions on China all day long," Colello said, "but there's always the threat: What if China comes up with some breakthrough anyway?"

• President Donald Trump addressed the rise of DeepSeek, a Chinese AI app, on Monday night.
• He said the ability to train AI cheaply, which DeepSeek said it has done, is a good thing.
• Experts told BI that DeepSeek challenges the idea of US tech dominance, but that may be positive for AI.

President Donald Trump said the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek's ability to train AI more cheaply is a "positive" development and should be a "wake-up call" for tech industries.

Trump's comments followed DeepSeek's ascension to the top of Apple's free downloads chart, which sent shockwaves through the US tech market on Monday morning.

"So you won't be spending as much, and you'll get the same result hopefully," Trump said Monday evening in a House Republican members conference meeting. "The release of DeepSeek, AI from a Chinese company, should be a wake-up call for our industries that we need to be laser-focused on competing to win."

China has been heavily investing in its tech sector, with state-backed initiatives to boost domestic chip production and AI capabilities, aiming to reduce reliance on US technology.

Meanwhile, the US has expanded the existing export controls on advanced semiconductor technology to China, adding dozens more types of chips and 140 entities to the restriction list.

Last Tuesday, Trump announced the launch of the Stargate Project, a joint artificial intelligence venture with OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank, and investment firm MGX. The initiative plans to invest up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure across the United States by 2029, with the first data center already under construction in Texas.

Last week, Trump called the project a "monumental undertaking" in a press conference with Larry Ellison and Sam Altman, and touted that it will create 100,000 jobs.

Experts told Business Insider that DeepSeek challenges the idea of US tech dominance, but that may be positive for the future of AI.

Chris Tang, a UCLA professor and global supply chain scholar, called this moment a "trigger" that may motivate OpenAI or Gemini to open up their source code to allow more people to participate in AI development.

"It's still very much early in the game," said Zongyuan Zoe Liu, senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, "but it certainly serves as a good reminder for American policymakers that technology restriction may not work."

Gadjo Sevilla, a senior tech analyst for AI and tech briefings with BI's sister site EMARKETER, wrote that there is potential for "a race to the bottom for AI pricing and adoption in the coming months," which "runs counter to US Big Tech initiatives where we have Microsoft ($80 billion) and Meta (65 billion) looking to spend on hardware, data centers, and sustainable energy for AI."

"China is not going to slow down. They will do as much as they can with what they can," said Brian Colello, an equity strategist for Morningstar. "It's just such a fast-changing space. Nobody has a clear, sustainable lead, so there will be more breakthroughs and they could come from anywhere. It could come from the US, it could come from China."

• Consultant starting salaries have remained flat since 2023, a new report found.
• Management Consulted found salaries were largely stagnant at boutique, MBB, and Big Four firms.
• The industry has been impacted recently by slowing demand and AI-fueled productivity increases.

Starting salaries for consultants at both top firms and boutique consultancies largely remained flat for the second year in a row, according to a new report from Management Consulted, a company that provides online resources and career coaching to professionals trying to land jobs in consulting.

The report found that starting pay has remained stagnant since 2023 as the consulting industry reels from a slowdown in demand for services, despite some recent signs of improvement. Previously, annual increases of 5 to 10% were standard for the industry, according to Management Consulted.

The company's 2025 Consulting Salaries Report included over 100 firms and was based on submissions and offer letters shared by its readers and clients who work in consulting. Management Consulted said it does not include salary information that it is unable to verify.

The report found that starting total compensation at the Big Four professional services firms — Deloitte, PwC, KPMG, and EY — has not increased since 2023. This was true for new hires coming out of undergraduate programs as well as the higher paid ones coming out of MBAs or PhDs.

The same was largely true for new hires at MBB firms — McKinsey & Company, Bain & Company, and Boston Consulting Group — which are widely considered the most prestigious strategy consulting firms and are known for their competitive pay packages.

Do you work in consulting and have insights to share about the industry? Contact this reporter at [email protected] or via the encrypted messaging app Signal at kelseyv.21.

The report said that Management Consulted expected salaries to remain flat despite some increases in demand for consulting services in 2024, which came after a couple years of a downturn that saw major firms conducting layoffs or delaying start dates for new hires.

The plateau is notable given that consulting compensation surged in 2022 and 2023, according to Management Consulted's 2023 salary trends video. The last major increase before that was in 2019.

In 2023 post-MBA hires earned a base salary of $192,000, a performance bonus of up to $60,000, and a signing bonus of $35,000 at the top tiers. Pre-MBA hires earned a base salary of $112,000, a performance bonus of up to $30,000, and a signing bonus of around $5,000.

However, salaries and performance bonuses rose across the industry in 2023, with several firms enhancing benefits like profit-sharing, paid leave, and retirement contributions. Boston Consulting Group even overhauled its compensation structure in a bid to attract new talent and retain existing talent.

One reason salaries remained the same in 2024, according to the report, is productivity advancements sparked by generative AI and remote work. The report also said fewer consultants were leaving the industry due to limited opportunities elsewhere, meaning the stagnant salaries could be another potential side effect of the so-called white-collar recession.

"AI enablement is enabling consulting firms to accomplish more with fewer hires. Productivity gains, combined with slower attrition, reduce the need for new hires and stall salary growth," Namaan Mian, chief operating officer of Management Consulted, said in comments shared with Business Insider.

Mian also said the perception of the value of hiring MBAs, who typically make a higher starting salary than consultants coming out of undergrad, varies widely.

"Firms historically pay MBAs twice as much, but don't get twice the value from them. This doesn't fly in an efficiency oriented environment," Mian said. "This is why we're seeing less hiring from MBA programs and more from undergraduate ones."

Some firms also used changes in their variable compensation — in which pay is partially determined by performance via bonuses — to make their pay packages look more attractive, the report said, adding that only 5 to 10% of consultants typically earn the maximum amount of their bonus.

Management Consulted said it expects an increase in hiring as demand for consulting services and attrition are expected to increase in the coming years. However, it said salaries for new hires could remain stagnant.

Do you work in consulting and have insights to share about the industry? Contact this reporter at [email protected] or via the encrypted messaging app Signal at lvaranasi.70.