DoorDash is paying restitution after keeping tips from as many as 63,000 of its New York delivery workers thanks to a settlement with the New York Attorney General’s office, The New York Times reports. Attorney General Letitia James announced on Monday that DoorDash will pay $16.8 million, which will be spread across workers who were subjected to the company’s “guaranteed pay” model that subsidized payments against customer tips.

DoorDash will additionally pay up to $1 million in administrator costs to help make the payments happen. Some workers are expected to get several thousand dollars, others as much as $14,000, a spokesperson for the New York Attorney General’s office told The New York Times. The Office of the Attorney General will determine which workers are eligible and how much they’re repaid. DoorDash also made similar settlements with Illinois for $11.3 million in November and with Washington DC for $2.5 million in 2020.

From May 2017 through September 2019, DoorDash’s payment model would “guarantee” a certain payout to workers whether customers tipped or not. However, what the company didn’t make clear was that it was really giving a base pay of $1 and would use tips from customers before doling out money towards the guaranteed amount. For instance, if a delivery job had guaranteed payment of $10 to the worker and the customer tipped $6, DoorDash would pay the worker $1 plus the $6 tip, then fill in the remaining $3 to add up to the guarantee. If they tipped $7 or $8, the worker wouldn’t be paid anything extra — DoorDash would pocket the difference instead.

DoorDash’s model of using tips for workers’ base pay came into light in July 2019 and was met with scrutiny by the workers and customers which pushed the company to promise change in the policy. In an August 2019 response to the situation, DoorDash CEO Tony Xu tweeted that they thought they were “​​doing the right thing for Dashers by making them whole if a customer left no tip, but the feedback we’ve received recently made clear that some of our customers who were leaving tips felt like their tips didn’t matter.”

Not only was the guaranteed pay system deceitful to workers, the state complaint alleged, but it was also misleading to customers since the app promised “Dashers will always receive 100 percent of the tip,” which is only technically accurate. The New York Attorney General’s office also noted that disclosures of how tips work were buried to the point of inaccessibility during the ordering process.

During the 2021 pandemic, DoorDash and Grubhub were also sued by the city of Chicago for unfair fees and tipping policies. The case is ongoing.

• The "Shrek" franchise is returning with another sequel starring Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, and Zendaya.
• "Shrek 5" will premiere in December 2026.
• Here's what to know about the long-awaited movie. 

"Shrek 5" is heading to theaters in 2026 with a new cast member — Zendaya.

On Thursday, DreamWorks shared the first teaser for the movie, with new designs for Shrek and the main characters.

The teaser said that Zendaya is starring in the film, seemingly playing one of Shrek's daughters.

It has been 15 years since the last sequel to "Shrek," the pop culture juggernaut that turned DreamWorks into a leading film studio.

The first film won an Oscar, and the franchise made nearly $3 billion across the first four films. The "Puss In Boots" spinoff movies, released in 2011 and 2022, also made an extra billion dollars.

A "Shrek" sequel has been rumored for years, but fans were beginning to lose hope after "Shrek Forever After" provided a neat finish to the story. The decision to restart the "Shrek" franchise may be due to the surprise success of "Puss In Boots: The Last Wish," which had a slow opening but eventually made $481 million.

"The Last Wish" arrived 11 years after "Shrek," proving that there is still an audience for the films.

Here's what we know so far about "Shrek 5."

Eddie Murphy, Mike Myers, and Cameron Diaz are returning for "Shrek 5."

Eddie Murphy, who plays Donkey, told Collider in June 2024 that he had started recording his lines for "Shrek 5" and said that DreamWorks plans to release a spinoff about his character.

A month later, DreamWorks Animation finally confirmed that "Shrek 5" is in the works. It also announced that Mike Myers will return as Shrek, with Cameron Diaz as Fiona.

No word yet on Antonio Banderas, who joined the franchise in "Shrek 2" as the outlaw Puss in Boots. Banderas voiced Puss in Boots in both of the spinoff movies (the first is set before "Shrek" and the second is set after "Shrek Forever After") and has made no announcement about stepping down from the role.

This could mean that the fan-favorite feline won't show up, or Banderas hasn't been able to finalize his deal with DreamWorks yet.

Walt Dohrn will co-direct "Shrek 5" with Brad Ableson, the director of "Minions: The Rise of Gru." Dohrn was a writer and artist on "Shrek 2" and "Shrek the Third," was the head of the story on "Shrek Forever After," and the voice of Rumpelstiltskin in the latter film.

The movie's producers are Gina Shay, who produced "Shrek Forever After," and Illumination founder Chris Meledandri.

"Shrek 5" will premiere in December 2026.

There are no details yet on the plot or how it will follow "Shrek Forever After."

The last movie ended with Shrek and Fiona happily raising their three triplets after Shrek learns to appreciate his life as a father.

DreamWorks initially announced that "Shrek 5" would premiere on July 1, 2026, but in their new teaser, the release date has changed to Christmas 2026.

• Elon Musk says it "might make sense" to increase pay for members of Congress.
• He said it could help safeguard against corruption — an argument Democrats like AOC have long made.
• It's a reversal from December, when he helped tank a funding bill over a modest lawmaker pay raise.

Elon Musk seems to be changing his mind about whether members of Congress should get a raise.

"It might make sense to increase compensation for Congress and senior government employees to reduce the forcing function for corruption," the Department of Government Efficiency head wrote on X on Thursday. "The latter might be as much as 1000 times more expensive to the public."

It's a far cry from December, when Musk helped tank a bipartisan government funding bill in part because it included a modest pay increase for members of Congress.

Musk's comment on congressional and government salaries came in response to a video claiming that members of Congress are enriching themselves by steering congressional funds toward non-government organizations that they're affiliated with.

Members of Congress are already prohibited by law from using their official positions for personal gain, and outside income often comes in the form of book proceeds.

Nonetheless, the argument Musk is making about corruption and salaries echoes those made by Democrats like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and good-government experts, who have warned that members of Congress may be tempted to trade stocks or be lured into employment in the private sector due to their stagnant salaries.

Rank-and-file members of the House and Senate currently make $174,000 — a figure that hasn't changed since 2009, since lawmakers have proactively blocked a cost of living adjustment every year since then.

If their salaries had kept pace with inflation since 2009, they would have been paid $217,900 last year, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Though that $174,000 salary is far higher than what most Americans make, lawmakers and experts have pointed to the cost of maintaining two residences, as well as the importance of the job, as a reason why the salary should be increased.

• San Francisco-based Breakout has come out of stealth with $3.25 million in seed funding.
• The startup has developed an AI agent to manage software companies' inbound sales.
• Check out the 13-slide pitch deck the startup used to raise funding.

An AI startup that helps software companies manage inbound sales has come out of stealth and secured $3.25 million in seed funding.

San Francisco-based Breakout, which was launched by ex-Googlers Sachin Gupta and Hitesh Aggarwal, has created an AI sales representative that can show demos and handle early-stage customer interactions.

Gupta used the analogy of walking into an Apple store and waiting in line to speak to a human sales rep. Instead, an AI sales agent would "instantly" give you all the information you needed about an iPhone and "quickly get into your buying process."

One big problem with some AI sales agents is that they can often provide scripted interactions instead of personalized responses. Breakout says its tools can answer questions and offer tailored interactions depending on each customer's needs.

"Especially as companies go through the growth stage and have a high-velocity sales process, they start facing a lot of challenges around the buyer experience," Gupta told Business Insider. "That's the problem we're trying to solve."

The startup makes its money by offering a usage-based pricing package, typically starting with 300 conversations a month and scaling up from there. Breakout says it currently has five key clients.

While there is still a lot of investor appetite for AI startups, Gupta said there was equally as much noise. That makes it "an interesting position for investors," he said, "because they want to deploy capital, but every day they also get to know another company which is building in the AI space."

He added, "Investors tend to have certain business objections. They tend to ask, do you have access to data? And in our case, we don't have a dependency on proprietary data."

Breakout's $3.25 million seed round was led by led by Village Global, with participation from Recall Capital and Z21 Ventures.

With the fresh funding, the startup plans to build out its tech capabilities so it can start serving its waitlist of customers.

Check out the 13-slide pitch deck, shared exclusively with BI, that it used to secure the fresh funds.

• LTK is relaunching its app on Thursday to add new social features and expand beyond shopping.
• Other social-commerce apps like Flip have similarly moved into general entertainment.
• The companies are stepping up efforts to blend entertainment and shopping as they chase users.

For social-shopping apps, commerce alone isn't cutting it.

LTK, a platform that lets users buy products from creator videos and posts, is relaunching its app on Thursday to encourage more everyday content from its users.

"We're moving from being a shopping app to really being a lifestyle app," Amber Venz Box, cofounder of LTK, told Business Insider.

LTK's new feed lets users discover videos by geography and topic, such as fashion, parenting, cooking, and travel. It still wants creators to tag items in videos (that's how the company and its affiliate partners make money), but it hopes they'll vlog about other parts of their lives without any intent to push products.

The app also plans to roll out more strictly social features, like the ability to connect with friends.

It's not the only commerce platform looking to broaden its appeal in recent months. Flip, a TikTok-like app once composed purely of videos tagged with products, opened up to other content in July. It now hosts everyday videos it calls clips, which run the gamut from movie scenes to creator-on-the-street interviews and other types of content that would live on a general entertainment platform.

"The idea of social commerce over the last five years was that everyone built it to be a commerce platform where there's somebody selling you the product," Flip's CEO Noor Agha told BI.

Agha said Flip's clips feature is part of a push to merge entertainment and commerce. "If we cannot solve both, social commerce will never actually go mainstream," Agha said.

The opportunity is huge for companies in the category that can build an audience, as platforms like TikTok have shown. In a December EMARKETER forecast, the research firm predicted the number of US social-commerce buyers would hit 100 million in 2024, with sales crossing $100 billion in 2026. Social-shopping startups like Whatnot and ShopMy have pulled in tens of millions of dollars in new funding in the past few months as they chase new users.

TikTok made entertainment a must-have in social shopping

The push among shopping apps to add general entertainment is likely a response to the rise of TikTok's e-commerce platform, Shop. The app built an audience of more than a billion users globally through social entertainment before introducing commerce features.

"A lot of the social-shopping apps are trying to reverse engineer that entertainment component into their apps to make them more sticky and to keep users and audiences coming back," said Sky Canaves, a principal analyst at EMARKETER covering retail and e-commerce.

Social platforms in the US have spent years testing features to get users to buy stuff in-app, with mixed results. TikTok finally showed that consumers, if prodded enough, would get on board.

Canaves said TikTok has shown that social commerce can work, "but it needs to be grounded in content, and typically that's entertainment content and creator content."

Ultimately, that reverse engineering feat may be tough to pull off. In February, Amazon nixed its TikTok-like shopping feed, Inspire, in another sign that shopping-only video feeds lack staying power.

But relying on platforms like TikTok or Instagram for distribution is also risky for startups that don't want to be subject to the whims of Big Tech. Instagram, for example, has pulled back on commerce features in recent years.

LTK recently partnered with TikTok to integrate affiliate links within the TikTok app. But TikTok generally keeps its e-commerce features in-house. The company's future in the US is also uncertain due to a divest-or-ban law that targets the company and its owner ByteDance.

For social-shopping startups, building an entertainment platform where they can control everything may be the best path forward.

Putting social in social commerce

Making shopping feel more social is key to retaining users and growing an app's audience. Venz Box said a big part of that is tapping into the relationships users have with brands and the creators themselves.

LTK is encouraging creators to post more lifestyle content to the app so that users feel as connected to the creator on LTK as they do on larger platforms like TikTok or Instagram.

"We started investing in order to be the place that they retain, nurture, and grow their community," Venz Box said.

Community is a buzzword for social apps overall and has driven several trends in social shopping. Substack has several shopping-focused newsletters with established online and IRL communities. Meanwhile, TYB, a shopping-rewards platform cofounded by apparel brand Outdoor Voices' Ty Haney, is focused on building and maintaining communities of superfans with challenges and group chats.

Ultimately, every app is fighting for a share of the internet's most valuable commodity: consumers' time.

"I am willing to sacrifice that not every piece of content has something to buy in it because the opportunity set is so much larger if you can go deeper with people," Venz Box said.

Ferrari's newest recruit, 40-year-old Lewis Hamilton, has looked to allay any fears about his age ahead of the 2025 Formula 1 season, insisting he will "never be an old man."

Lara Trump got her Fox News show after standing down as Republican National Committee co-chair in December.

California's insurance commissioner met with State Farm executives Wednesday to discuss the emergency request for a rate hike.

Danny Boyle is back to kick off a whole new zombie film franchise.

Andrew and Tristan Tate have apparently arrived in Florida, after their Romanian travel restrictions were lifted.

"He went from 0-100 real quick! You getting on his last damn nerve," one user commented.

The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits rose to 242,000 last week.

The New York Yankees have a clear need in the infield while the New York Mets suddenly need a starting pitcher. A trade could benefit both sides.

In her tribute to the late actress, Amanda de Cadenet claimed that Trachtenberg knew 'death was a high possibility,' in a since-edited caption.

The video, which is clearly labeled 'satire,' has caused a stir online, with some users saying it is irresponsible.

A recent poll found 37 percent support for reducing or eliminating the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency.

Joe Claydon's son thought he was getting something similar to a piece of chocolate. He learned the hard way that wasn't the case.

Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz and Eddie Murphy return for 'Shrek 5,' out in 2026

William Phelps is married to 43-year-old Aurora Phelps, who is accused of operating a scheme that resulted in at least three deaths

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