• 2024 may not have been as big a year for television as 2023 – but there were plenty of gems.
• Series like FX's "Shōgun," Prime Video's "Fallout," and Netflix's "Baby Reindeer" cut through the noise.
• Here are the BI entertainment team's favorite television series of the year.

Amid shake-ups in the television industry, 2024 still delivered a slate of great TV series ranging from familiar continuations to ambitious debuts.

That includes series like FX's "Shōgun," an immersive adaptation that brought top Japanese talent to American screens; the Brian Jordan Alvarez comedy "English Teacher," which turns high school culture wars into comedy fodder; and hits like "Baby Reindeer," which captivated the world with a story pulled from creator Richard Gadd's life.

Here are our favorites from this year.

"Abbott Elementary" season 4

Season four of "Abbott Elementary" picks up with Janine (Quinta Brunson) and Gregory (Tyler James Williams) officially dating after their slow-burn romance played in the show's previous seasons. At the start of this season, the pair are unsuccessfully trying to keep their relationship a secret from their Abbott Elementary coworkers when they return to school.

The writing of "Abbott Elementary" remains as sharp and culturally relevant as ever, and the latest season sprinkles in new characters that keep the show fresh and exciting — from Jacob's younger brother Caleb (Tyler Perez) and an IT guy named O'Shon (Matthew Law) whom the staff have a crush on to a lovable guinea pig named Sweet Cheeks who breaks through Melissa's (Lisa Ann Walter) tough exterior. — Olivia Singh

"Arcane" season 2

Netflix and Riot Games' "Arcane" is one of the most impressive and ambitious animated works of the past decade — and while it doesn't always find its footing, the end result is still so spectacular.

The series is adapted from Riot Games' massively popular video game "League of Legends," honing in on a small cast of characters who live in Piltover, the gleaming city of progress, and Zaun, its less-than-scintillating undercity. The conflict between the two cities has reached a critical point by season two. Unfortunately for all parties, so has the evolution of Hextech, a magic-powered technology that has spiraled out of control and turned one of its developers into a misguided messiah. Oops!

Season two is nothing if not ambitious and widens its scope while leveling up its already excellent animation, courtesy of the French studio Fortiche. In the process, it loses some of the intimate character work and tight focus that made its first season truly extraordinary. Still, the second season serves as a fitting conclusion and is a harbinger of good things to come from Riot's entertainment arm. — Palmer Haasch

Read Haasch's interview with "Arcane" showrunner Christian Linke.

"Baby Reindeer"

Few shows caused as much of a stir this year as "Baby Reindeer," starring and written by comedian Richard Gadd. Netflix and the creator himself billed the series as a true story based on Gadd's real-life experience of being stalked by an older woman. Unfortunately, the show's stalker character, Martha Scott, was quickly outed as Fiona Harvey, who took legal action against the streamer.

Despite all the behind-the-scenes controversy, "Baby Reindeer" is a work of art. Gadd lays himself bare as Donny, who's loosely based on himself. He's a powerhouse in episode four, which flashes back to explain the source of Donny's trauma before meeting Martha.

It's an engrossing watch with equally powerful performances from Jessica Gunning, who plays the disturbed but deeply sad Martha, and Nava Mau, who plays Donny's girlfriend, Teri. — Caralynn Matassa

Read about the legal drama behind "Baby Reindeer.'

"The Boys," season 4

If "The Boys" is Prime Video's NSFW answer to superhero fare like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, then season four feels like the equivalent of "Avengers: Infinity War" — minus a snap from a villain that wipes out half the universe.

Season four of "The Boys" is darker than past seasons, as the characters confront deep-seated traumas. For an aging Homelander (Anthony Starr), this means grappling with the legacy he'll leave behind for his son Ryan. For his nemesis Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), it means coming to terms with his looming death and trying to prevent Ryan from succumbing to Homelander's darkness.

It's a season filled with even more gory, jaw-dropping scenes and yet another Emmy-worthy performance by Starr, particularly in Homelander's gory homecoming episode.

The endgame is nearing, with a fifth and final season of "The Boys" likely premiering in 2026. Season four ends with the perfect foundation for all hell to break loose one last time. — OS

"English Teacher"

It's astounding that it took this long for Brian Jordan Alvarez to get a series order after the release of his excellent 2016 web series "The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo" — but thankfully, "English Teacher" premiered this year.

The series stars Alvarez as Evan Marquez, a beleaguered but idealistic Texas high school teacher who comes under fire at work when a parent complains about him kissing his ex-boyfriend in front of the students.

While "English Teacher" embraces the thorny politics of being an American educator in 2024, it doesn't spin them into saccharine teaching moments or cheap jokes. It mines them for character threads and comedy. — PH

"Fallout"

With "Fallout," Jonathan Nolan proved that prestige-y video game adaptations weren't exclusive to HBO. Rather than directly adapting one of the multiple games in the postapocalyptic "Fallout" universe, Nolan instead leverages the style, humor, and striking visual identity of the games to show us something new.

"Fallout" stars Ella Purnell as Lucy, a naive resident who grew up in an underground bunker known as a Vault, established to protect humanity from nuclear armageddon. However, after tragedy befalls her home, she ventures to the surface, only to learn it isn't as deserted or unsurvivable as she was led to believe.

The series features stellar performances from Purnell and Walton Goggins, who spends most of the season admirably noseless. And while it's set in the grim aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse, it's also irreverently funny and endearing. — PH

Read Eammon Jacobs' review of "Fallout" and Jason Guerrasio's interview with Walton Goggins.

"Hacks" season 3

The Max original "Hacks" has only gotten better with age, and in season three, it feels like the show has hit its stride.

The show follows veteran stand-up comedian Deborah Vance, who, on the coattails of a successful comedy special, is gunning for her dream: a late-night hosting gig. After cutting her young writer, Ava Daniels, loose at the end of season two, Deborah realizes that she needs Ava — and Ava craves working with Deborah again, too.

This central relationship — and all the ways Deobrah and Ava support, encourage, and mess each other up — is constantly in flux. Season three not only succeeded in being funnier and more resonant than its predecessors but also in shifting Deborah and Ava's power dynamic into something new and a bit dangerous ahead of season four. — PH

Read Haasch's interview with "Hacks" stars Carl Clemons-Hopkins and Mark Indelicato.

"Industry" season 3

Move over, "Succession" — there's another contender for the best HBO show about horny, psychopathic capitalists. "Industry," the show about London's most dedicated and depraved bankers, finally broke through to the mainstream with its third season.

Seasons one and two delivered well-written, well-acted, character-driven drama about the highs and lows of a group of young bankers trading stocks (and spit). Still, season three upped the ante, spending more time away from the office in lavish locations, such as the English countryside, a yacht in the Mediterranean, and a Davos-like conference in Switzerland.

The change in scenery enhanced the story and deepened our understanding of the series' core group of complicated characters, most of whom have greatly evolved since we first saw them sitting and sweating at their Pierpoint desks.

All of it leads to an explosive finale that's massive in both budget and sheer plot, effectively wiping the slate clean for a now-confirmed season four. It's an appropriately daring move for a show confident in its vision. It's peak TV at its peak. — Samantha Rollins

Read Rollins' interview with "Industry" showrunners Mickey Down and Konrad Kay.

"Love Island USA" season 6

There were many (many) reality dating shows that aired in 2024. Having regrettably watched most of them, I can confirm that the latest installment of "Love Island USA" blew them all out of the water.

The franchise, which spun off of the UK edition, has the secret sauce that makes this genre sing. It's largely thanks to a format that other shows have tried — and failed — to replicate, wherein participants must constantly recouple to find true love (and win a cash prize).

Season six had a particularly explosive set of personalities among its cast, leading to some serious drama, shocking betrayals, truly memorable moments, and fan-favorite standouts, including Serena Page, Leah Kateb, and Jana Craig. — CM

"A Man on the Inside"

"A Man on the Inside" is initially presented as a spy mystery series as Charles Nieuwendyk (Ted Danson), a widower who recently lost his wife, accepts a job to go undercover in a retirement home.

That's all background noise to the main event, which follows the lives of a kooky gang of residents who find community with each other after being left behind by their loved ones.

Anyone who has seen Danson in any of his other many roles would not be surprised that he is an incredible leading man. However, the show's real strength is the supporting cast, especially Margaret Avery, Stephen McKinley Henderson, and Sally Struthers, who provide so much humor and heart that they may make you shed tears.

"A Man on the Inside" proves we really need more TV shows centered on older characters, and there's ample talent out there to make those stories worth watching. — Ayomikun Adekaiyero

Read Rollins' interview with "A Man on the Inside" creator Mike Schur.

"Mr. and Mrs. Smith"

Prime Video's "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," a reboot of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's 2005 film (mostly in name only), is deeply funny, emotionally stirring, and clever.

Sure, both titles share a similar premise — a husband and wife who are both assassins — but the television series flips it on its head to create something much better.

Donald Glover and Maya Erskine play two strangers who, upon taking a new job as shady agents for a mysterious boss, are paired together as a cover story.

The 10-episode season features a laundry list of guest stars, ranging from Ron Perlman to Micaela Coel. — PH

Read Haasch's review of "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" and Jacobs' interview with guest star Ron Perlman.

"Nobody Wants This"

Rom-coms are so back.

Six years after Netflix was credited with a rom-com renaissance thanks to hits like "Set It Up" and "To All the Boys I've Loved Before," the streamer struck gold again with "Nobody Wants This," a comedy series starring Kristen Bell and Adam Brody. The show became an instant hit, proving audiences yearn for more high-quality modern rom-coms.

"Nobody Wants This," created by Erin Foster and loosely inspired by her love story, follows Noah (Brody), an attractive and newly single rabbi, and Joanne (Kristen Bell), the outspoken agnostic host of a sex podcast. Despite their different views on religion and lifestyle, they pursue a relationship.

Noah and Joanne's swoon-worthy first kiss scene went viral, people realized that Brody had been leading man material all along, and the show jumped to the No. 2 slot on the streamer's Top 10 list for English-language TV in the week of its debut. Unsurprisingly, "Nobody Wants This" will be returning for a second season, which begins filming in February. — OS

"One Day"

The second attempt at bringing David Nicholls' bestselling novel "One Day" to the screen (after a 2011 film adaptation) is a rousing success.

The novel of the same name is already beautifully tragic, relatable, and perspective-altering, but the Netflix show amplifies all these strengths with gut-punching performances from leads Leo Woodall and Ambika Mod, who play destined lovers Dexter and Emma.

With each episode set in a different year, "One Day" takes audiences on a 14-year journey as the two grow into adults and fall in love with other people and each other, but never at the right time. For romantics or young people worried about the future, this is the show to watch from 2024. — AA

"The Penguin"

Colin Farrell leads the spinoff sequel to the 2022 film "The Batman," playing the titular comic book villain Oz "Penguin" Cobb. It was fascinating how quickly it became apparent that the show had more in common with "The Sopranos" than nearly anything DC Studios has released.

Farrell utterly transforms as Cobb, the mobster clawing to the top in Gotham after the death of crime boss Carmine Falcone in "The Batman" left a power vacuum. Still, Cristin Milioti is the real standout as Sofia Falcone, Carmine's daughter and accused psychopathic serial killer, fresh out of a stay in Arkham State Hospital. — CM

Read Jacobs' interview with "The Penguin" showrunner Lauren LeFranc.

"The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives"

On its surface, "The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives" was a show greenlit solely because of a TikTok scandal where several couples in a Mormon community were implicated in an alleged swinging scandal. That premise didn't seem like it'd carry far, but turns out the swinging was possibly the least dramatic thing about these women.

After a moderately slow start, "Secret Lives" turns the dial up to 11 in episode four, a group birthday vacation where all hell breaks loose as the group of friends and frenemies start calling one another out. (Shout out to the truth box, the real MVP.)

It was hard not to root for Taylor Frankie Paul and follow her tumultuous relationship with Dakota Mortensen or to root against the deeply annoying Whitney Leavitt, who became the sleeper villain of season one. We're dying to see what becomes of MomTok when the show returns in 2025. — CM

Read Haasch's interview with Taylor Frankie Paul and Mayci Neeley.

"Shōgun"

There was no stopping "Shōgun" at the 2024 Emmys, and for good reason. Based on James Clavell's 1975 novel, the stunning historical epic focuses on an English sailor who finds himself shipwrecked in Japan and crosses paths with Lord Toranga, a powerful warlord.

With incredible performances, sweeping visuals, and mesmerizing battle sequences, it's no wonder the show set a record for the most Emmys won by a single season of television and that the creators decided to rethink their limited series plan and continue the show with second and third seasons. — CM

"The Traitors" season 2

They were the words heard 'round the reality TV-loving world: "Oh lord, not Ekin-Su."

Few shows were as memed as "The Traitors," the US iteration of the international competition series where reality stars and celebrities try to deceive one another to claim a cash prize.

Season one, which aired in 2023, was entertaining, but season two reached new heights, largely thanks to compulsively watchable characters like meme factory Phaedra Parks and "Shahs of Sunset" star MJ Javid, who gave us one of the best reaction shots of the year. — CM

Read Matassa's interview with "Big Brother" alum Dan Gheesling, who tried and failed to extend his gaming skills to "The Traitors."

"X-Men '97"

Not only did "X-Men '97" expertly capture the spirit of the original animated "X-Men" series, but it also made it feel modern and relevant to the 2020s amid some gorgeously animated action.

The performances are seamless with the original show, adding new dimensions to the Marvel Universe that fans, new and old, will appreciate.

It deserves all of the praise for easily navigating the messy Jean Grey/Madelyne Prior clone saga from the comics. Season two can't come quickly enough. — Eammon Jacobs

• Elon Musk has had a big year with Tesla and SpaceX soaring in value, supercharging his net worth.
• He helped Donald Trump win reelection and intends to transform the US government in 2025.
• Scroll down for seven charts showing how Musk's 2024 played out.

Elon Musk has had a year for the record books.

His businesses have taken off, with Tesla, SpaceX, xAI, and Neuralink all touching new valuation highs. Their success has boosted Musk's net worth to above $450 billion for the first time, putting him over $200 billion ahead of the world's second-richest person, Amazon's Jeff Bezos.

Musk has also become a power player in US politics after wielding his cash and clout to help win Donald Trump a second term in office. As one of the president-elect's closest advisors, he's now gearing up to overhaul the US government.

The situation seems worse at X, formerly Twitter, after Musk's $44 billion takeover and reshaping of the platform sparked an advertiser exodus.

Take a look at Musk's 2024 in charts (all data is accurate as of Friday, December 20):

1. Charging ahead

Tesla shares have shot up as much as 85% this year, driving the electric vehicle maker's market value above $1.4 trillion for the first time. They've since retreated but continue to trade near record levels.

The automaker has benefited from market buzz around artificial intelligence — which it's harnessing to develop self-driving cars and humanoid robots — plus a robust US economy and the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates.

Investors are also betting that Musk's businesses will benefit from his close ties to Trump, which could translate into less stringent regulations, government subsidies, tariff exemptions, and more.

2. Reaching for the stars

SpaceX's valuation nearly doubled from $180 billion at the end of last year to $350 billion this month, based on the price paid by the company and its backers for employee shares in its latest tender offer.

Musk's rocket, spacecraft, and satellite communications company made several technological breakthroughs this year. For example, it plucked the first-stage booster of its new Starship out of the air using a massive pair of mechanical "chopsticks" in October.

3. Shifting fortunes

Musk's net worth slumped in the spring as Tesla stock tumbled, dropping below $170 billion at its nadir.

But it rebounded by over $300 billion to touch an unprecedented $486 billion on December 17, as Tesla hit fresh highs and SpaceX notched a $350 billion valuation.

4. Rise of the robots

Musk's artificial intelligence company, xAI, was only founded in July 2023.

Yet it notched a post-money valuation of $24 billion in May following its Series B funding round. That rose to $50 billion in November, reports say, meaning the maker of the Grok chatbot is worth roughly as much as Monster Beverage.

5. X marks the drop

It remains tricky to gauge the health of X, the social media company formerly known as Twitter that Musk took private in 2022. One way is to use Fidelity's monthly estimates of the value of its stake in the business.

The mutual fund giant's figures imply that X's valuation has crashed since Musk's purchase. The tech billionaire laid off a large part of the company's workforce and relaxed content moderation in support of greater free speech, triggering an advertiser exodus that hammered the company's revenues.

Regardless, Musk recently posted on X that the platform has roughly 1 billion active users, although around 40% of them only log on during important world events.

6. Trump train

Musk was one of the biggest spenders in the US presidential election, deploying over $270 million to back Trump's race for president, run ads against Democrats, and promote conservative viewpoints.

His starring role in Trump's victory and emergence as one of the president-elect's closest advisors and a co-chief of the new Department of Government Efficiency suggests that his investment in the election has paid off.

7. Building brainpower

Neuralink, Musk's neurotechnology company, was valued at $8 billion this summer, up from about $2 billion three years earlier.

The developer of brain-computer interfaces wants to allow people with quadriplegia to control computers with their thoughts. Musk released footage this spring of the first patient to receive one of its brain implants.

• The Netflix drama series "Virgin River" returned this week.
• Films released in theaters earlier this year, like "Cuckoo" and "Juror No. 2," are on streaming.
• The final season of Marvel's animated series "What If….?" begins on Sunday.

As Christmas approaches, streamers have plenty of options to get in the holiday spirit.

There's the classic 2000 movie "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," starring Jim Carey as the titular cranky recluse, which hit Peacock on Friday, and the new "Simpsons" holiday special that premiered exclusively on Disney+. For some festive music, tune into Josh Groban's holiday special featuring celebrity guests.

But there's plenty of other entertainment to check out, too, like brand-new comedy specials, the latest season of Netflix's drama "Virgin River," and two films released earlier this year: Clint Eastwood's "Juror No. 2" and Tilman Singer's "Cuckoo."

If you've been following the behind-the-scenes controversy surrounding the making of YouTuber MrBeast's new reality competition show, "Beast Games," you might be inclined to check out the first two episodes of his new Prime Video series.

Here's a complete rundown of all the best movies, shows, and documentaries to stream this weekend, broken down by what kind of entertainment you're looking for.

"Virgin River" returned for season six.

Netflix's drama series about characters in a small town in Northern California returned this week. This season follows Mel (Alexandra Breckenridge) and Jack's (Martin Henderson) love story as they finally get married.

Streaming on: Netflix

Clint Eastwood's courtroom drama "Juror No. 2" hit streaming after a muted theatrical release.

"Juror No. 2" stars Nicholas Hoult as Justin Kemp, a family man summoned as a juror on a trial for a high-profile murder that he may or may not have played a part in.

Eastwood's latest film, which is believed to potentially be the last one from the 94-year-old director, received positive reviews from critics but was reportedly released in less than 50 theaters. Now that
"Juror No. 2" is available to stream on Max, you can see it for yourself.

Streaming on: Max

The horror film "Cuckoo" is available on Hulu after releasing in theaters over the summer.

After 17-year-old Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) moves from America to live with her dad and his new family at a resort in the German Alps, she becomes tortured by bloody, horrific visions.

Streaming on: Hulu

For more thrills, watch "The Inheritance."

Just before his 75th birthday, billionaire Charles Abernathy (Bob Gunton) gathers his estranged kids at his sprawling estate out of fear that something or someone is going to kill him by midnight. If the children protect him and he survives the night, he'll dole out their inheritance to them.

Streaming on: Hulu

Kerry Washington stars in "The Six Triple Eight," inspired by a moving story about barrier-breaking women.

The Netflix movie tells the story of the first and only Women's Army Corps unit of color that served overseas in World War II. "The Six Triple Eight" is directed and written by Tyler Perry, starring Washington as real-life hero and commanding officer Major Charity Adams.

Streaming on: Netflix

For comedic relief, check out Ilana Glazer's stand-up special, "Ilana Glazer: Human Magic."

In her stand-up special, the "Broad City" star shares unfiltered jokes about the awkwardness of her high school years and the joy of becoming a mom after welcoming her first child, a daughter, with her husband in 2021.

Streaming on: Hulu

Or Rose Matafeo's stand-up special, "Rose Matafeo: On and on and on."

Four years after her first Max comedy special, "Horndog," Rose Matafeo is back for more.

In her latest special, the "Starstruck" creator and star delivers musings about the differences in dating in her 20s versus her 30s and more — all with her signature self-deprecating humor.

Streaming on: Max

Oscar nominee Stephanie Hsu stars in the new dark rom-com series "Laid."

The "Everything Everywhere All at Once" actor plays Ruby, a woman who learns that her exes are all dying in weird, mysterious, and seemingly unrelated ways. To stop more of her former loves from meeting their end, her roommate AJ (Zosia Mamet) creates a "sex timeline" so Ruby can track down her previous conquests and warn them of their impending death.

At eight episodes of about 30 minutes each, "Laid" is a no-brainer for your next binge-watch.

Streaming on: Peacock

YouTuber MrBeast is giving away $5 million as part of his latest endeavor, "Beast Games."

"Beast Games," which premiered on Thursday, involves 1,000 players competing in a variety of mental and physical challenges for the chance to win a $5 million cash prize — touted as the biggest single prize in TV and streaming history.

Streaming on: Prime Video

The third and final season of Marvel's animated series "What If….?" begins on Sunday.

If you're looking for the next follow-up to "Agatha All Along" or a palate cleanse after watching "Kraven the Hunter," look no further than season three of "What If….?"

Like past installments, the final season of the critically acclaimed animated series explores alternate timelines in the MCU's vast multiverse. "What If….?" concludes with eight episodes released daily starting on Sunday.

Streaming on: Disney+

Get into the holiday spirit with a super-sized episode of "The Simpsons."

On the 35th anniversary of the first-ever "Simpsons" Christmas special, Fox's long-running animated series debuted a 45-minute episode exclusively on Disney+ this week.

In the latest Christmas special, a famed British mentalist named Derren Brown visits Springfield and accidentally hypnotizes Homer into believing he's Santa Claus.

Streaming on: Disney+

Or the entertainment special "Josh Groban & Friends Go Home for the Holidays."

The special, hosted and executive produced by five-time Grammy nominee Josh Groban, features a combination of storytelling, comedy, and yes, plenty of music. Expect Groban and his guests, like Jennifer Hudson and James Bay, to perform classic holiday tunes, new songs, and original duets.

"Josh Groban & Friends Go Home for the Holidays" can be streamed live on Paramount+ with the Showtime plan as it airs on CBS on Friday, or streamed the following day on Paramount+.

Streaming on: Paramount+

For a classic holiday flick, watch "How the Grinch Stole Christmas."

Twenty-four years after its release, "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" still remains a quintessential holiday season watch and one of Jim Carrey's most memorable roles.

Streaming on: Peacock

Business Insider's creative team covered an array of projects this year. We brought our stories to life by incorporating animations, crafting bespoke multimedia experiences for our biggest stories, producing and commissioning hundreds of illustrations, and working with photographers around the globe.

Our visuals captured a wide range of topics, from looking into illegal lockouts in major US cities to Ozempic Scams.

We hired nearly 250 talented freelancers who helped bring our most compelling stories to life, producing over 1,500 pieces of custom art that enhanced our storytelling.

Here are some of our favorite visual creations from 2024.

For God, for country, for rain

Photos by Jett Lara

Why we don't exercise

Illustration by Timo Lenzen

Locked out

Illustration by Andrei Cojocaru, Design and Development by Rebecca Zisser, Isabel Fernandez-Pujol, Randy Yeip, and Annie Fu, Photos by Bridget Bennett, Callaghan O'Hare, Alyssa Pointer, Abel Uribe

The risky allure of WiFi Money

Illustrations by Brandon Celi

Lunar New Year traditions through the lens of three photographers

Photos by Caroline Xia, Ramona Jingru Wang, and Sam Lee

The plight of big sisters

Illustration by Gracia Lam

Albums are too damn long

Illustration by Tyler Le

Want to make money as a pop star? Dream on.

Illustrations by Chris Burnett

The American dream is shrinking

Illustration by Javier Jaén

America is facing a 'fringe friend' crisis

Illustration by Seba Cestaro

'Civilizations rise and fall'

Illustration by Hokyoung Kim

Gen Z's new status symbol

Illustration by Pablo Declan

Joseph Stiglitz on why America's appetite for Trump endures

Photos by Dina Litovsky

The Big Dumb Economic Lie of 2024

Illustration by Alyssa Powell

Scared your partner is cheating? Strangers on the internet are here to help — for a fee

Illustration by Natalie Ammari

Iran will pay for gender-transition surgery, but it comes at a cost — your dignity

Illustration by Ibrahim Rayintakath

New York City's new Gilded Age

Illustration by Carl Godfrey

The pot farm massacre

Photos by Mike Simmons

From ALICEs to DINKs

Illustrations by Jimmy Simpson

The best albums of 2024

Illustration by Natalie Ammari

A founding father of Utah's VC industry is stepping back as accusations of sexual harassment surface

Illustration by Deena So'Oteh

The death of the nuclear family

Illustration by Mark Harris

The online minefield of Ozempic knock-offs

Illustration by Jenny Chang-Rodriguez

To the manor shorn

Photos by Astrid Landon

Through the roof

Illustration by Alex Castro

The mismeasure of America

Illustration by Chris Gash

The rise of the job-search bots

Illustrations by Hugo Herrera

The world's meanest app

Illustration by Alvaro Dominguez

It's gearing up to be a hot travel debt summer for Gen Z and millennials

Illustration by Rebecca Zisser

Hot girls love book clubs

Illustration by Natalia Agatte

What an extra $500 to $1,000 a month did for 8 families

Design and Development by Kim Nguyen, Rebecca Zisser, Isabel Fernandez-Pujol, Photos by Jovelle Tamayo, Tim Evans, Helynn Ospina, Andre Chung, Brittany Greeson, Libby March

'No CCP in USA!'

Illustrations by Matt Harrison Clough

Drake Bell knows life is not a Disney movie

Photos by Ana Topoleanu

AI Power List 2024

Illustration by Karan Singh

Soup to nuts

Illustrations by Tyler Le

The professors turned porn stars

Photos by Simone Lueck

Inside the Billionaire Bunker

Illustration by Saratta Chuengsatiansup

The poisoned chalice of restaurant popularity

Illustration by Valentin Tkach

Gen Z's fading dream

Illustration by Abanti Chowdhury

China's massive stimulus misfire

Illustration by Alyssa Powell

Rob McElhenney is betting on himself

Photos by Sheryl Nields

The hidden costs of traveling while gay

Illustration by Derek Abella

The cursed inheritance

Illustrations by Nate Sweitzer

Steam loops vs. doom loops

Illustration by Sam Green

This Ramadan, queer and transgender Muslims made their own community

Photos by Ramie Ahmed

The fitness fad graveyard

Illustration by Jenny Chang-Rodriguez

Inside Microsoft's struggles with Copilot

Illustration by Chelsea Jia Feng

In celebration of Black History Month

Illustration by Loveis Wise

Why so many Americans hate their jobs

Illustration by Ricardo Tomás

The new rule of homebuying

Illustration by Sebastian König

Behind the data center boom

Illustration by Arif Qazi

MDMA therapy could be legal by summer. Why are so many advocates sounding the alarm?

Illustration by Richard A. Chance

Lunden and Olivia Stallings are TikTok's lesbian power couple. Straight people love them; queer people aren't so sure.

Photos by Kendrick Brinson

Young Chinese are looking for dupes and cheaper substitutes for everything from Hermès to travel

Illustration by Chelsea Jia Feng

The plight of the girlboss

Illustrations by Kiersten Essenpreis

America's absurd war on 'organized retail crime'

Illustration by Tara Anand

The war within Gen Z

Illustration by Tommy Parker

Priced out of America

Illustration by Juanjo Gasull

S'more! S'more!

Illustrations by Liam Eisenberg

My brain on Ozempic

Photos by David Vades Joseph

Elon Musk is fighting wars on a lot of fronts right now

Illustration by Rebecca Zisser

A trainer-heiress power couple created the fitness juggernaut Pvolve. Then came a divorce, an arrest, and Jennifer Aniston.

Illustration by Christian Northeast

The United States of Automobiles

Illustrations by Pete Ryan, Design & Development by Kim Nguyen and Randy Yeip

'Trump is going to win'

Photos by Jordan Vonderhaar

For Gen Alpha, learning to read is becoming a privilege

Illustration by Keith Negley, Photos by Momo Takahashi and Alex Welsh

My breakup with ambition

Illustration by Sophi Gullbrants

The gutting of the Eighth Amendment

Illustration by Matt Rota, Design & Development by Randy Yeip, Kim Nguyen, Dan DeLorenzo, Rebecca Zisser, and Isabel Fernandez-Pujol

• Blackstone's outlandish holiday videos have become must-see TV for Wall Street and beyond.
• Love them or hate them, they are smart marketing, and other companies are taking notice.
• Business Insider went behind the scenes to see how they're made and who's in charge.

On a Thursday in December, a small crowd stood outside the office of Blackstone's heir apparent, Jon Gray. A woman was holding a martini glass and asked the nearby film crew how she should toss its contents at her colleague.

Laurie Carlson, Gray's executive assistant, wanted to know how high she should throw the liquid and worried aloud about the office equipment, including a printer.

A member of the crew told Carlson to aim for the face — for comedic effect. A minute later, Joe Lohrer, the head of US retail sales for Blackstone Private Wealth Solutions, was dripping wet, and the head of Blackstone's video team, Jay Gillespie, called for another take.

"This is the first stunt we've ever done in a holiday video," Gillespie, who's spent his career in the film industry as a director, producer, editor, and cinematographer, told a reporter on set.

Since 2018, Blackstone has been releasing increasingly zany videos in time for the holiday season. Think of them as the house with the over-the-top Christmas lights: Some people love it, some hate it, but everyone is talking about it. It's become must-see-TV for Wall Street, and this year's video was among the zaniest. It included a series of mock reality-TV shows and ended with a country-western song-and-dance routine about leveraged loans and data centers.

Blackstone's viral holiday video is the work of Gillespie's team, which has been quietly helping to transform the public face of the private-equity giant since he joined the firm full time in 2019. The video operation now includes about 20 full-time staffers and produces an enormous amount of content, including 2,200 videos this year alone. It is the brainchild of Christine Anderson, Blackstone's global head of corporate affairs, who also oversees the team as the head of marketing.

While the holiday video is the most outlandish, much of what Gillespie and his team produce for Blackstone differs from other financial firms. Rather than focusing on how smart its employees are, the videos seek to humanize them, including by dressing them up in funny outfits and letting them sing and dance. Watching its videos, one can learn that Joe Zidle, the chief investment strategist for the private wealth group, is a Deadhead, and Kathleen McCarthy, the cohead of real estate, rocked out to indie band The Beths at the Coachella music festival in April.

It's arguably smart marketing in an era when being powerful and secretive can backfire, leading to questions and even conspiracy theories, especially for a firm as large as Blackstone, which manages over $1 trillion, making it the largest alternative asset manager in the world. On the "Today" show recently, Dan Roth, LinkedIn's editor in chief, said companies around the world are taking notice — even if some of the videos can attract haters on social media.

"They are watching to see what he's doing, and they're copying it," Roth said of a recent Blackstone video in which Gray discusses the company's earnings as colorful emojis (a handshake, a bicep, a gold medal) pop up on the screen. "We are seeing companies in Australia, companies in Europe, doing exactly the same thing," Roth said. "It's wild."

Origin story

Blackstone's holiday video tradition started in 2018 as a replacement for the New York holiday party, which was canceled because the investment firm, with more than 2,500 employees at the time, had grown too large.

Gray, together with Anderson, decided to mark the holidays instead with a video that parodied their workplace in the style of NBC's sitcom "The Office." Gray, who had just been tapped as president and COO, would play the role of the loveable but incompetent boss Michael Scott, played in the show by Steve Carell.

The video was initially intended for clients and employees, not the general public. Even as the videos have gained a wider audience, however, the company has continued in the tradition of using them to poke fun at the firm's inner-office dynamics.

One of the biggest jokes over the years was the firm's casting of Gray as the guy who drives his colleagues crazy with his special meetings and big ideas, several people who work with him said. Even the way he yells from his office for Carlson, his assistant, to jump on his latest pet project has a ring of truth to it, colleagues told BI.

"People tell me that I have an excess of enthusiasm, and many people I work with roll their eyes at it," Gray acknowledged to BI.

Other inside jokes included CEO and cofounder Steve Schwarzman's relentless hawking of his book, "What It Takes," and the head of tactical operations David Blitzer's obsession with teams he owns, including the NHL's New Jersey Devils. In 2019, the video featured Bennett Goodman, the cofounder of GSO, wearing a Hawaiian shirt in the office while sipping on a tropical cocktail — counting down the days till his retirement.

Over the years, the audience for the video has grown. In 2023, it attracted 8 million views across platforms, up from just 60,000 views in 2018, a spokesman told BI. The production has also grown more ambitious, with 200 of the firm's 4,900 employees starring in it this year compared with 20 the first year.

The video, which takes months to produce, is also popular inside Blackstone — so much so that it has raised Gillespie's profile within the halls of 345 Park Avenue. Indeed, one sign of his newfound status was his appearance in this year's video — as a reality TV show producer.

"People come up to me throughout the year, and they're like, 'My daughter is helping me rehearse so I might get a line next year,'" Gillespie told Business Insider. "People are really into lobbying to be in it."

Blackstone TV

Gillespie, 38, has been working on and off with Blackstone since 2012 but was only hired full-time after working on the 2018 holiday video. After graduating from Bard, a small liberal arts college overlooking the Hudson River, in 2008, he went straight to work in reality television, documentaries, and some corporate work. At Blackstone, he oversees both full-time production employees and outside contractors.

His team films, edits, and produces from Blackstone's headquarters at 345 Park Avenue. The company releases the content on its website and via email lists, as well as social media sites like LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and X.

Some of what they produce is traditional: an executive sitting in an office opining on the state of the economy or a growing business opportunity. Gillespie appears to have a lot of freedom, however, to get creative.

More recently, he has taken to interviewing the firm's executives using his iPhone in a series of walk-and-talk interviews the firm has dubbed "Between Two Meetings." In one recent episode, Gillespie catches the firm's head of private equity, Joe Baratta, in the hallway and asks about the company's portfolio of owned and operated companies.

As Baratta starts to answer, a black bar with the word "REDACTED" appears over his mouth, and a closed caption appears on the bottom: "NOT APPROVED BY BLACKSTONE LEGAL AND COMPLIANCE." The audio of Baratta speaking is replaced with some loungey bossa nova as he walks through the halls to the elevator.

The audience (hopefully) walks away from that video chuckling at corporate America, but also with a sense of what it is like to work at Blackstone. Before the censors cut him off, Baratta was explaining that he was coming out of the firm's "weekly private-equity Monday morning meeting," which includes the entire team from around the globe. Schwarzman had been at the meeting, Baratta says, telling them about his recent trip to Asia.

In another series, Gillespie's video team interviews a series of managing directors. It's shot with upbeat music and spiffy editing like something you might see on the Food Network's "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives." The series seems geared toward highlighting Blackstone as a place to work, with questions like," What qualities do you look for in junior employees?," and "How do you overcome a career setback?"

Gray acknowledged that the videos can help with recruiting.

"I was interviewing someone yesterday who said they wanted to work here because of the holiday video," Gray told BI while filming a scene for the holiday video. "'You guys know how to make fun of yourself.'"

Showing that you can laugh at yourself is an important "humanizing" touch, Gray said, adding, "It shows you're a human-scale place."

"Jon Gray's baby"

Blackstone declined to comment on the cost of its holiday video or its internal video team, but Anderson said the company is saving money with its approach instead of relying on outside contractors.

"We started realizing that by having an in-house team, you could produce this stuff so much more efficiently and cheaply, and then you could just use this stuff for more moments," she said.

A BI reporter watched the filming of a few scenes adding up to 45 seconds in the final video. It took more than an hour to film these scenes, with a coterie of video and marketing professionals on set.

A video professional who has worked with both Blackstone and other financial institutions confirmed much of what Blackstone's executives said about their video-production process.

This person, who asked to remain anonymous to protect career opportunities, said Blackstone differs from other financial firms in its decision to forgo a costly production studio in favor of a team that shoots from wherever they can within the office. The end product takes viewers inside the firm's hallways and executives' offices, giving the videos a documentary feel.

The video professional said too many financial firms are "trying to make one room with four walls look interesting." They also said few financial firms have realized the benefits of investing in full-time video teams.

This person referred to Blackstone's holiday video as "Jon Gray's baby" and said Gray appears to have a great working relationship with Gillespie.

"They met and had a meeting of minds and just got each other," said this person, adding, "They brainstorm very well."

Gillespie credited Gray and Anderson with having the vision to invest in video.

"It feels like if you're not fluent in video these days, you're missing something," he said. "I think Jon and Christine caught that really early."

Gray is usually the first person to come up with the idea for the holiday video, Gillespie said. Sometime in the early summer, Gray will reach out to Gillespie and Anderson with some themes. Then, Gillespie, Gray, and Anderson work together on the script before shooting starts later in the fall.

It's a far cry from the firm's first holiday party in 1985, which included just nine people, Schwarzman told BI. When asked about the new approach, the firm's billionaire founder took a philosophical view.

"This is like your home and this is where you spend more time than you do at your home," he said earlier this month while decked out in a 10-gallon hat between video shoots. "So you have to have a range of experiences from intense work stuff to more casual stuff to the theater of the absurd. So here we are, the theater."

• Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy pressured Republicans to scrap their bill to keep the government funded.
• The US government is now set to shut down early Saturday morning if Congress doesn't act.
• A shutdown would furlough thousands of federal workers, impacting programs many Americans rely on.

The US is once again on the brink of a government shutdown following intense pressure from President-elect Donald Trump and his newly created DOGE commission.

It would mean federal workers are temporarily out of work, and Americans could experience slowdowns at airport security and customer-service delays for programs like Social Security. During the last government shutdown under Trump, national parks shuttered and flights were delayed or rerouted because of limited transportation staffing.

The possibility of a shutdown starting at 12:01 a.m. Saturday comes after the House of Representatives seemed poised this week to approve a continuing resolution to keep the government funded through March. However, following intense criticism on social media from Trump and the leaders of his new Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, House Republicans scrapped the bill.

They took issue with the inclusion of a range of items in the bill that they said were not relevant to government funding, including pandemic preparedness and a pay raise for lawmakers.

Ramaswamy posted on X on Wednesday morning that the bill is "full of excessive spending, special interest giveaways & pork barrel politics."

Musk also wrote on X on Wednesday that a government shutdown is "infinitely better than passing a horrible bill."

Trump and his vice president-elect, JD Vance, released a joint statement Wednesday saying the resolution would "give Congress a pay increase while many Americans are struggling this Christmas."

Now, Congress must find a new funding solution in just over 24 hours, leaving Americans on the brink of the first government shutdown since 2018. Here's what that could mean.

What happens in a government shutdown

Every federal agency is required to prepare for a government shutdown by creating contingency plans to submit to the Office of Management and Budget. Each agency outlines how it will structure its workforce in a shutdown, including how many workers it will furlough and for how long.

This means federal workers would be affected first, with many finding themselves temporarily out of work. The longer the shutdown lasts, the more severe the consequences for Americans would be, but if federal workers are furloughed, agencies will be strained to carry out their usual daily functions.

For example, the Social Security Administration's latest contingency plan said it expects to furlough 8,103 of its 59,000 employees at the start of a shutdown. This means that while Social Security payments would still continue to reach Americans, customer service would be limited for beneficiaries dealing with payment issues.

During a government shutdown, active-duty military service members would remain on duty but may go unpaid until funding is restored. The Department of Education's latest contingency plan, from 2023, said that it would have to pause most of its grantmaking activities during a shutdown, including its review of grant applications from local school districts.

The Department of Transportation's contingency plan in 2024 said that while facility service inspections and air-traffic-controller training would cease, essential services like air travel would continue. The Department of Homeland Security's most recent contingency plan said that the Transportation Security Administration would furlough over 2,000 workers, likely resulting in longer wait times for travelers at airports.

The US Postal Service, however, would not be affected by a shutdown because it's an independent agency.

Additionally, a 2023 brief from the progressive think tank Center for American Progress said that a number of federal programs "immediately cease" during federal shutdowns, including the processing of new small business loan applications, workplace safety inspections, NASA research programs, and federal loans to farmers.

The collapse of the previous deal means the clock is ticking for both parties to come to an agreement on avoiding a government shutdown before the weekend.

Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, criticized the recent government shutdown threats in a statement Wednesday.

"Triggering a damaging government shutdown would hurt families who are gathering to meet with their loved ones and endanger the basic services Americans from veterans to Social Security recipients rely on," she said. "A deal is a deal. Republicans should keep their word."

• Lawmakers in both parties say Elon Musk played a major role in tanking a government funding bill.
• Now the government is on the brink of shutting down.
• It's an early sign of how he'll wield influence as the co-lead of DOGE.

After a government funding bill went down in flames on Wednesday, lawmakers in both parties were in agreement about one thing: Elon Musk played a huge role in bringing Washington to the brink.

"Yesterday was DOGE in action and it was the most refreshing thing I've seen since I've been here for 4 years," Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia wrote on X.

"The leader of the GOP is Elon Musk," Democratic Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania wrote. "He's now calling the shots."

President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance put the final nail in the coffin of the bill, but their joint statement trashing the continuing resolution — and issuing a new demand for Congress to raise the debt ceiling — came after several hours of silence on the matter.

That void was filled by Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency co-lead, Vivek Ramaswamy, who savaged the bill as an example of the wasteful spending that Trump has empowered them to target for elimination during his second term. Newly galvanized by DOGE and lacking any guidance from Trump, several Republican lawmakers publicly cited arguments put forward by the two leaders to justify their opposition to the bill.

"This omnibus is the very thing the incoming Department of Government Efficiency is trying to put an end to," Rep. Eric Burlison of Missouri wrote on X. "A vote for this monstrosity is a vote against DOGE."

As Republican support for the bill dried up, passage through the GOP-controlled House became an impossibility, and the bill was scrapped.

Federal funding is set to run out at midnight on Friday. If lawmakers are unable to agree upon and pass a new bill by then, the government will shut down for the first time in six years, prompting flight delays, closures of national parks, and paycheck delays for federal workers.

In a statement to Business Insider, Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump-Vance transition, disputed the notion that Musk is the leader of the GOP.

"As soon as President Trump released his official stance on the CR, Republicans on Capitol Hill echoed his point of view," Leavitt said. "President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party. Full stop."

Musk did not respond to a request for comment.

'This bill should not pass'

Over the past several weeks, Democrats and Republicans had been hammering out a compromise bill to fund the government through March 14. After significant delays, the bill's text was released on Tuesday night.

Aside from extending government funding at current levels for another three months, the bill also included language allowing the District of Columbia to take control of a stadium that the Washington Commanders have long sought to use, a modest pay increase for lawmakers, billions of dollars in disaster relief for states affected by recent hurricanes, and other provisions that Trump and Vance later characterized as "giveaways" to Democrats.

Musk first came out against the bill on Wednesday morning, writing on X: "This bill should not pass."

Over the course of several hours, what began as a simple statement of opposition turned into something much larger, including Musk endorsing shutting down the government until January 20 and saying that any Republican who voted for the bill would deserve to be voted out of office.

Along the way, Musk made and amplified false claims about the contents of the bill, including that it included a 40% pay raise for lawmakers (it was 3.8% maximum) and $3 billion for the Commanders' stadium.

By the time Trump and Vance weighed in on Wednesday afternoon, the bill already appeared dead, and the two men had a different demand: Lawmakers shouldn't simply shut down the government but pass a spending bill without "giveaways," while raising the debt ceiling.

Musk, the 'shadow president'

It remains unclear what legislation will emerge. Democrats have insisted on moving forward with the deal they struck with Republicans, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries rejected in Thursday-morning a Bluesky post the idea of raising the debt ceiling.

The government spending bill's collapse was an early demonstration of Musk's newfound clout with Republicans on Capitol Hill, previewing how the mercurial billionaire might handle the role of DOGE co-lead under Trump.

Over the past two years, a pattern has emerged in government funding and other fiscal fights. Both parties work on compromise legislation, hard-line Republicans rail against it, and both the House and the Senate easily pass it with mostly Democratic votes.

On Wednesday, that pattern was broken, with a shutdown appearing imminent.

For hard-line Republicans who've typically opposed government funding bills, it marked a moment of elation and a sign that with the advent of DOGE, the balance of power is set to shift in their direction under Trump.

Some Democrats, meanwhile, have seized the moment as an opportunity to embarrass Trump, painting him as subordinate to Musk.

In a steady drumbeat of social media posts and TV interviews, Democrats have begun referring to Musk as the "president-elect," the "shadow president," the "copresident," and even the "decider in chief" as they've attacked Republicans for opposing the bill.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, released a fact sheet about "what Elon will cost your state" that said "President-Elect Musk's" opposition to the government funding bill had also derailed disaster-relief funds.

"It is dangerous for House Republicans to have folded to the demands of the richest man on the planet, who nobody elected, after leaders in both parties came to an agreement to fund the government and provide this disaster aid," DeLauro said in a statement. "There was no need for a government shutdown."

Musk, for his part, rejected the notion that he was the real leader of the GOP.

"All I can do is bring things to the attention of the people," he wrote on X, "so they may voice their support if they so choose."

The prisoners write in carefully lettered script or on old electric typewriters. There are sometimes grammatical errors or misspellings. But the language is direct. They describe facing Stage 4 cancer after their symptoms went undiagnosed for years. The denial of orthotic shoes to treat a diabetic condition that led to a severe wound and amputation. Nineteen years locked in solitary confinement.

Some describe beatings and sexual assaults by fellow prisoners that they say corrections officers failed to prevent. Others say they were assaulted by officers themselves.

The Eighth Amendment, which bars "cruel and unusual punishments," was intended by the founders as a bulwark against prisoner abuse. Over the years it came to mean any treatment that "shocked the conscience." But prisoners and civil-rights attorneys have said that it is now nearly impossible to win such claims in court.

To investigate whether that constitutional protection holds, a Business Insider team read tens of thousands of pages of court records for nearly 1,500 Eighth Amendment complaints, including every appeals court case with an opinion we could locate filed from 2018 to 2022 citing the relevant precedent-setting Supreme Court cases and standards. We reviewed hundreds of pages of training materials, medical records, incident reports, and surveillance footage. We read cases from prisoners convicted of violent and nonviolent crimes — some who have spent decades behind bars for murder or sexual assault, others sentenced to short stints for marijuana possession or third-degree assault. We spoke with more than 170 people, including prisoners and their families, attorneys and legal scholars, correctional staff and prison healthcare providers, and current and former federal judges.

We uncovered a near evisceration of protections for this nation's 1.2 million prisoners, largely propelled by legal standards and laws put into place at the height of the war on drugs.

In our analysis, plaintiffs prevailed in only 11 cases, including two class actions — less than 1%.

"If a right is unenforceable, then it's not much of a right," Paul Grimm, a former federal judge for the District of Maryland, said after reviewing BI's findings. "It is essentially unavailable."

One Tennessee prisoner wrote a letter to the court after failing to overcome these steep odds in his own case.

"To everyone I tried to talk to and ask to file grievances and complaints to bring the wrongs to light," he wrote, "I'm sorry that I tried to bring hope and law and order to a place that has no hope or process of order."

Failed oversight

Over decades, federal and state oversight agencies have repeatedly found that US prison systems have failed to protect prisoners in their care. Just this year, an inspector general found that staff in federal prisons had failed to adequately respond to medical emergencies, contributing to 166 prisoner deaths. The Department of Justice recently found that people held in Georgia state prisons had experienced "horrific and inhuman conditions" stemming from what the DOJ called "complete indifference" by the institutions. "Inmates are maimed and tortured," the department wrote, "relegated to an existence of fear, filth and not so benign neglect."

Some years ago, an oversight monitor found that California prisons' system for disciplining officers accused of excessive force was "broken to the core."

For prisoners inside these systems, the courts are often the only backstop left.

But in the 1980s and 1990s, as the nation's prison population exploded, a new law and a series of revised legal standards radically restricted the ability of prisoners to prevail in Eighth Amendment lawsuits.

The 1996 Prison Litigation Reform Act, passed with robust bipartisan support, effectively carved out a separate and unequal system for prisoners who seek to file suit.

It required prisoners to complete a prison's internal grievance process before filing a claim in court — and then survive a screening process. After that, their claims faced exacting Supreme Court standards. Claims that guards had used excessive force were now decided under a 1986 standard that granted broad protections to prison staff as long as their actions were not "malicious and sadistic." Claims that prison staff have failed to keep prisoners safe — whether from violence, negligent healthcare, or inhumane conditions of confinement — were now decided under a Supreme Court standard, refined in 1994, which says such failures violate the Constitution only if officials were "deliberately indifferent."

Together, the standards shifted the focus away from the underlying claims of abuse, however extreme, and onto the question of prison officials' intent.

David Fathi, the director of the National Prison Project at the ACLU, said the emphasis on mindset has become "an enormous barrier to justice for incarcerated people." If abuse or neglect exists in prisons, he said, "that should be enough to violate the Eighth Amendment."

"You shouldn't have to go looking for someone who was thinking bad thoughts."

Altogether, said Kathrina Szymborski Wolfkot, a former appellate attorney at the MacArthur Justice Center, these laws and standards have made federal courts "inhospitable places for incarcerated people." Though some attorneys turn to state courts instead, there they face another set of challenges, such as caps on damages for malpractice claims or, in some cases, weak state constitutional protections.

The Department of Justice, the ACLU, and other powerful litigators have sometimes succeeded in winning Eighth Amendment cases that usher in reforms through consent decrees or injunctive orders. But such outcomes are rare. The DOJ has secured consent decrees in just four prison cases over the past decade.

A separate and unequal system

In restricting access to the courts, lawmakers in the 1990s argued that most prisoners filed suits over "frivolous" matters. Yet only a few dozen of the claims in BI's sample were over minor complaints, such as being denied shoes to wear in a dirty shower.

Among cases that prisoners lost, we logged 161 claims that guards had failed to protect a prisoner from being beaten or stabbed, including four fatalities. We identified 42 failed cases alleging untreated cancer, heart disease, HIV, or hepatitis C. We logged 78 claims of untreated mental illness, including eight that ended in suicide. There were 21 claims of sexual assault by prison staff. There were claims of confinement in extreme filth, including exposure to poisonous spiders, black mold, and feces.

The vast majority of prisoners, BI found, are navigating all of this without attorneys, in part because of the PLRA, which prevents attorneys from recovering their full litigation costs.

In the outside world, most civil suits settle — about 73%, one study found. In BI's sample, only 14% of prisoner lawsuits did, sometimes for paltry amounts or no damages at all. One North Carolina prisoner who said guards beat him while he was in restraints settled for $250.

By the time the cases were settled or decided in favor of the plaintiffs, those in charge — the wardens and medical directors — had almost always been dropped as defendants, limiting the ability of those judgments to drive institutional change.

Billions of taxpayer dollars go to corrections contractors, to run everything from food services to healthcare to staffing to data management, and the legal obstacles introduced in the 1980s and '90s have shielded these for-profit companies as well. For example, hundreds of private prison health providers or their employees were named as defendants in BI's sample. Of these cases, 14% settled and plaintiffs prevailed in less than 1%. One law-review article concluded that the low risk of liability had influenced companies' cost-benefit analysis and "leads to dangerous, ineffective healthcare that is shielded from constitutional challenge."

More than one federal judge described prisoner claims as tragic — before going on to cite precedent or the narrow standards in deciding against the plaintiffs. Several issued fiery dissents. One was issued in an August 2019 case filed by a prisoner who was denied a transfer he said was necessary for his safety. "We do not sentence people to be stabbed and beaten," Judge Robin Rosenbaum of the 11th Circuit wrote.

"The Eighth Amendment does not allow prisons to be modern-day settings for Lord of the Flies," she went on. "The Majority Opinion condones this behavior and ensures it will occur again."

This project was supported by a grant from Columbia University's Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights in conjunction with Arnold Ventures. Data analysis and visualization were supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

If it feels like everybody's betting nowadays, it's because a whole lot of people are. 2024 was the year companies from sportsbooks to prediction markets to trading apps asked, "Wanna bet?" And Americans responded with a resounding yes.

The ground has shifted on gambling in the US in recent years as it's become easier than ever to try your luck at, well, a lot of things. In a survey conducted in July and August for the American Gaming Association, 55% of surveyed adults said they had participated in some sort of gambling over the past year, up from 49% in 2023. Americans are expected to wager some $150 billion on sports this year, up from about $120 billion in 2023. People bet tens of millions of dollars on the 2024 election, with companies such as Polymarket and Kalshi raking in big bucks. The trading platform Robinhood got into presidential-election betting, and it says it's looking into sports gambling now, too.

It's not just explicit betting, either. A lot of "investing" looks very much like gambling nowadays. There's an increasing acknowledgment that the point of bitcoin is really "number go up" (and down), that it's a speculative investment without much of a use case. Small-time investors doing options trading on platforms such as Robinhood aren't banking on a stock's underlying value; they're just guessing at where it's headed over the next little while. And the meme coins are just complete casinolike chaos, full of pump and dumps and rug pulls and meteoric rises and falls.

Even if you're not putting money on the line, it's almost impossible to escape the proliferation of gambling. There are unceasing commercials during sports games and a deluge of ads on our phones. Culturally, the broader acceptance of gambling is on the upswing — betting's positioned as cool and exciting and fun. There's not so much focus on the downsides yet. Betting is in its Marlboro Man era, and a lot of people are dealt in.

"There's definitely a younger cohort that is trying to — I don't want to say get rich fast, but they're looking for ways to get around the system," Chad Beynon, an equity analyst at Macquarie, said.

That can take a lot of formats — betting on a football game or piling into a meme coin because some guy on X said it was the next big thing. It sounds more appealing, though not more realistic, than a traditional 9-to-5 job. That's especially pertinent in an economy where people don't feel particularly optimistic about their prospects. Instead of a "vibecession," maybe what's happening is a "vibe-screw-it."

The most novel — and notable — gambling story in the US remains the explosion of sports betting. Since the Supreme Court in 2018 struck down a federal law prohibiting it, 38 states plus Washington, DC, have legalized wagering on games. The past few years have been a land grab of sorts, with companies such as DraftKings, FanDuel, Caesars, MGM, and even Disney (via ESPN) trying to get a piece of what they hope will be a very lucrative pie.

"That's the one that opened the floodgates in terms of creating a large addressable market and throwing a spotlight on the scale of the US online-gambling opportunity," Chris Grove, a sports-gambling-industry investor at Acies Investments, said.

The top two operators — DraftKings and FanDuel — have managed to amass a lot of market share and start to venture into other arenas, such as lotteries and iGaming, the industry term for online blackjack, roulette, and slot machines, which is thus far legal in only a handful of states. Adjacent products around daily fantasy sports, such as PrizePicks, have taken hold as well. It "just shows that consumers are clamoring for something," Grove said.

There's still room for growth in sports betting, though it's increasingly limited. There are some big holdout markets, such as Texas and California, and only about one-fifth of the population has bet on a sport in the past year, according to the AGA. But the holdout states are holding out for a reason, and at least some aren't likely to change course. Companies sort of have to look elsewhere to get people to open their wallets.

"For the business model to work, you probably need to cross-sell to other areas," Beynon said.

The takeoff of sports gambling has many businesses looking around and wondering just what else people are willing to bet on — and, in many cases, guessing correctly that the list of possibilities is long. Maybe sports betting isn't for you. That's fine, but what about an online lottery? Or sweepstakes casinos? Or a slot machine on your phone? Or the next Treasury secretary of the United States?

"The minute that you got widespread regulated online gambling in the US, it was inevitable that nontraditional stakeholders were going to look at getting in on the action," Grove said. "Robinhood is one example of that, and prediction markets are one of the most likely vectors for that expansion, but they're far from the only brand or the only vector that we're going to see explore online gambling in years ahead."

Beyond sports betting, 2024 was a monumental year for prediction markets and crypto. People spent millions of dollars betting on the election, despite the legal gray area around political gambling. On Polymarket, players — though not Americans — can bet whether the US will confirm aliens exist or if Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the killing of UnitedHealthcare's CEO, will plead guilty. In Cryptoland, bitcoin surpassed the $100,000 mark, and despite constant scams, the meme-coin market is as alive as ever. These are not legitimate investments; they're bets people are making that they can get out before everyone else. (Sometimes, in the pump and dump, you think you're the dumper when you're really the dumpee.) Given Donald Trump's election, it doesn't look like tough regulation is coming for the crypto space anytime soon, so hold on to your hats.

Broadly, gambling has been normalized across American culture. Sports leagues used to be anxious about sports betting and worry it would turn off fans. Now they've seen the dollar signs and embraced it. The vibe around elections betting is that it's kind of cool and smart, a wisdom-of-the-crowds way to prove your political chops. With crypto, the hope is everybody's going to get their bag sooner or later, or if not, at least they think they're in on the joke.

"Every consumer has different motivations for why they're doing it," said Steve Ruddock, a gambling-industry analyst and consultant and the author of Straight to the Point, a newsletter about gambling. "Some are doing it purely for entertainment. Some are doing it as a time sink. Some small percentage are doing it because they're addicted."

It's easy — and responsible — to worry about the harms of gambling culture. There's evidence to suggest sports betting in the US is getting people into trouble with debt collectors, leading to missed car payments, and may even cause a spike in bankruptcies. When people are betting on a baseball game, they're not putting money into long-term investments, and households that are already under financial strain are harder hit. And whatever negative impacts occur aren't limited to gamblers themselves.

"The harms radiate out into families, into the economy, into many sectors of social and cultural life," said Rachel Volberg, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who researches gambling. Most research suggests about 1% of adults develop a gambling disorder. But just because you don't meet the clinical criteria for a disorder doesn't mean all is fine and dandy, Volberg said. "To only talk about the tip of the iceberg means you miss 90% of the impacts," she told me.

Gambling companies have mechanisms in place to ensure responsible gambling. (Not to mention that some companies offering crypto and high-flying stock trading say this is not gambling at all.) Reasonable minds can question how effective those are. In the US, there's a lot of impetus placed on individual gamblers to police themselves and set their own limits, and even if you do reach your limit, you can move on to another app.

The sudden boom has pushed public health experts in the US and worldwide to sound the alarm on gambling. A recent report from The Lancet Public Health commission on gambling found that nearly 450 million people around the globe have experienced at least one behavioral symptom or negative consequence from gambling.

"The answer, globally, that the commission puts forth is, 'Come on, guys, wake up,'" said Malcolm Sparrow, a professor of the practice of public management at Harvard and one of the members of the commission. "We are in a very rapid growth period. The assumption is that legalization, which is already running a pace, is going to just continue until it's ubiquitous. And we are not paying enough attention to gambling-related harms."

Here is the thing, though: Gambling is fun. Generally, people do have a right to use their money how they please, and most can gamble responsibly. Exactly how to regulate and where to draw lines is complicated, whether you're talking about an in-game bet or an obscure penny stock or a meme coin that makes zero sense. But public health experts say it's important to figure out where to draw it.

"On many other public health issues, we are, to a degree, paternalistic," Sparrow said. "You must wear a seatbelt. We don't sell alcohol to kids."

Perhaps the weird thing about the current moment is once you start to notice the prevalence of gambling in a few places, you start to see it everywhere — I see it in my own life. I was at a New York Rangers game the other weekend, and not one but two betting apps were advertising on the ice. On a recent trip to New Jersey, I took advantage of an online casino, which is legal in the state. I lost $10 on blackjack in a matter of minutes. Beyond sports, many of my friends and family are at least dabbling in crypto and have taken note of prediction markets. One group I know is talking about organizing a party-bus trip to Atlantic City, New Jersey, just because.

It's hard not to wonder what's going on in culture now that gambling has gone from a no-no to out in the open and even hip. What's getting its claws in us, and why is it working right now in particular?

Natasha Schüll, a cultural anthropologist at New York University and the author of "Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas," told me she'd identified four shared criteria of products that hook and hold us, from betting apps to dating apps, which are a little bit like gambling. They're antisocial and solitary, so you can get lost in your own flow. They offer continuous, fast feedback, which serves as reinforcement. They're unpredictable, so you can't be exactly sure when a reward will come. And they never come to a close or resolve — you just keep going. The result is that people get pulled into what she describes as a gambling "machine zone," where the world sort of falls away, and people fall into a rhythm of go, then again, then again.

"There certainly is a cultural story to tell here too, where we're living in a context of uncertainty in the world, whether politically or environmental or economic uncertainty," Schüll said. When you gamble, you're diving into uncertainty and chance, but also in an ordered, calm, digital environment that's cordoned off from the outside world. "It might start being about thrill and suspense and imagining a big win or imagining that you're having an encounter with chance," she said. "But once you put yourself in the seat, so to speak, and start having the interaction, the formatting of it and the flow of it gives you this other thing. It gives you this way to modulate your affect and go into a zone that allows you to avoid life."

It could be the case that in 10 years, we'll look back at the current moment and realize this was all fine — it was OK that people were gambling a bunch, that even major athletes were getting caught up in it. Hey, maybe even the meme-coin stuff will work out. The likelier scenario is that we wonder what we were even doing. Or we realize we probably should've done things a little differently.

Volberg, from UMass Amherst, has been studying gambling for 40 years and has seen this story play out before in other countries. Some form of gambling gets the go-ahead, it takes off, and there's a lag in realizing the consequences and getting guardrails in place appropriately.

"It's a pattern I've seen over and over again where it's after the fact," she said. "And if you don't start monitoring impacts before the actual new form of gambling is being used, you really have no idea what the baseline looked like."

The argument many companies will make is that people will gamble anyway — on sports, on elections, on whatever — and that making it legal brings that activity into the light, gets it some oversight, and generates tax revenue for the states. That's true, but also, once the government greenlights it, people who otherwise wouldn't gamble start. It's impossible to argue everyone on FanDuel right now was betting on sports on some offshore account 10 years ago. If it were that easy, sportsbooks wouldn't be investing so much in advertising to draw people in. On the meme coins, I mean, if you got bamboozled by the "Hawk Tuah" girl's crypto shenanigans, that's at least a little bit on you. But also, you probably deserve some protection next time. (But seriously, next time, maybe think that one over a bit more.)

In the meantime, may the odds be ever in your favor, because we're not getting out of gambling-palooza anytime soon.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

Many musicians struggled during the pandemic. Lil Wayne wasn't one of them. He sold master recordings from his record label's artists for more than $100 million. He was pardoned for felony gun possession in a last-minute action by then-President Donald Trump. He purchased a $15.4 million mansion in the mountains of Los Angeles.

And, as a Business Insider investigation found, he received an $8.9 million grant from a little-known pandemic-relief program that he used to cover more than two years' worth of spending on luxury hotel stays, designer clothes, and travel to and from nightclub appearances around the country.

The rapper, whose real name is Dwayne Carter Jr., spent more than $1.3 million from the grant on private-jet flights and over $460,000 on clothes and accessories, many of them from high-end brands like Gucci and Balenciaga. He billed taxpayers more than $175,000 for expenses related to a music festival promoting his marijuana brand, GKUA, including clothing for artists associated with his record label.

He also used grant money to cover nearly $15,000 worth of flights and luxury hotel rooms for women whose connection to Lil Wayne's touring operation was unclear, including a waitress at a Hooters-type restaurant and a porn actress.

On New Year's Eve 2021, he was scheduled to perform at a concert in Coachella, California.

But shortly before his set was scheduled to start, a concert employee announced that the rapper would be unable to perform "because of the wind and the flights." The crowd booed. (Wind gusts of 20 to 30 mph were reported in Southern California that night, but data from Flightradar24 indicates four other private jets flew the exact route Lil Wayne was scheduled to fly.)

Instead, posts on Instagram suggest he partied that night at a club on Sunset Boulevard with the rapper 2 Chainz.

For expenses related to the concert he never performed, Lil Wayne billed taxpayers nearly $88,000.

Lil Wayne's publicists didn't respond to numerous requests for comment on detailed questions. Reached by text, Lil Wayne made a sexually explicit overture to a reporter and did not respond to questions.

'An abuse of federal resources'

The money came from a program called the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant. Signed into law by Trump in 2020 and championed by lawmakers including Sen. Chuck Schumer, it was established as a lifeline for struggling independent venues and arts groups during the pandemic.

But pop stars used the program as a piggy bank to keep the party going, reporting by Business Insider shows.

The stars' spending took place against a backdrop of massive pandemic-relief fraud. The Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loans gave out as much as $200 billion in suspected false claims, losses that combined with false unemployment-benefit claims amount to what the FBI has called the largest fraud in history. Compared with those better-known programs, the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant had relatively strict eligibility requirements.

Still, accounting firms and money managers soon realized their stadium-filling musician clients might be eligible for grant money via their loan-out companies — corporate entities used to handle the business of touring. Grants awarded to clients of one high-powered entertainment-business-management firm, NKSFB, totaled at least $207 million, BI previously reported. NKSFB itself collected more than $7 million by helping its clients obtain the grants.

NKSFB's managing partner, Mickey Segal, didn't respond to requests for comment. The firm's lawyer Bryan Freedman said NKSFB doesn't comment on its clients' finances.

Grantees received up to $10 million that they could spend on certain "ordinary and necessary" expenses for their entertainment businesses. They had to make a good-faith statement to the Small Business Administration, which oversaw the program, that the grant was necessary to support the loan-out company's "ongoing operations" and show that the company's revenue had fallen by at least 25% between one quarter of 2019 and the same quarter of 2020.

In a statement, the SBA said it followed the law. But the law directed the SBA to examine revenue, not assets. Musicians with huge bank accounts and multiple mansions were still eligible for the awards as long as their loan-out company's revenue had declined.

Thousands of pages of accounting documents reviewed by Business Insider reveal, for the first time, how some wealthy musicians — including Chris Brown, the DJ Marshmello, and members of Alice in Chains — spent grants they received through the program.

The documents include detailed records explaining how celebrity musicians spent their grants, as well as correspondence between their accountants and the SBA. Business Insider has verified the authenticity of the documents.

They reveal how artists directed millions in taxpayer funds not toward touring crew members, but instead toward their own bank accounts, luxury purchases, and entertainment expenses — often while sitting on substantial wealth from other business ventures.

One top government-accountability expert said some of the spending Business Insider identified was questionable — but stopped short of saying it was fraudulent.

"At a minimum, it smells," said David Walker, a former comptroller general of the United States. "Whether it's legal or not is up to a lawyer or ultimately to a court. But it sure smells."

The SBA said it "implemented industry-leading fraud controls."

Sen. Gary Peters, the chair of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, said celebrity musicians' use of Shuttered Venue grants was "an abuse of federal resources." Business Insider's findings, he added, demonstrate "the need for continued oversight of pandemic-relief programs."

Pandemic relief was intended to help businesses and workers in need, the senator said — "not super wealthy celebrities."

An $80,000 birthday party

Lil Wayne wasn't the only one to engage in questionable grant spending. Chris Brown spent his grant on a big paycheck — and a big party. Of the $10 million grant Brown's company CBE Touring received, $5.1 million went to Brown personally. He also billed taxpayers nearly $80,000 for his 33rd birthday party.

The blowout, held in a luxe Los Angeles event space, featured a $3,650 LED dance floor and "atmosphere models" — nude women in body paint — who cost $2,100, according to expense reports and a blog post by the party planner. The bill included more than $29,000 for hookahs, bottle service, "nitrogen ice cream," and damages involving burn holes to rented couches.

While the grant was meant to support live entertainment, Brown also charged $24,000 to the grant for the cost of driving his tour bus from the US to Tulum, Mexico, and back in fall 2020 during a monthlong stay for him and his entourage in the resort town, where he did not perform. He spent several days in Tulum filming a video with Jack Harlow for a joint track, but it's not clear if the rest of the trip was for business or pleasure. And more than $179,000 of the grant went toward a celebrity basketball tournament broadcast on YouTube, including a $20,000 payment to the Indianapolis Colts tight end Mo Alie-Cox, who played on Brown's basketball team.

Brown, his attorneys, and managers did not respond to requests for comment. Representatives for Harlow and Alie-Cox also didn't respond to requests for comment.

Others also paid themselves, taking advantage of an SVOG spending category that Business Insider drew attention to last year: "owner compensation."

The SBA's guidance said artists could use grants paid to their loan-out company to pay themselves as long as the check was no bigger than it was in 2019.

Marshmello, whose real name is Christopher Comstock, received a $9.9 million grant. More than a year later, when the SBA asked for proof of where it went, his business manager Steven Macauley, of NKSFB, responded by saying all the money went into Comstock's pocket.

"Because the beneficiary received 2019 Officer Draws/Salary from 365 Touring International, Inc. in excess of the SVOG Grant Award, we therefore, expensed the entire Grant balance to Payroll," Macauley wrote in an April 2023 letter seen by Business Insider.

In other words, because Comstock made more than $9.9 million from touring in 2019, he was able to award himself the entire grant. In doing so, Comstock paid himself more than any other musician who received grant money.

Comstock's publicists and his manager didn't reply to requests for comment, nor did Macauley.

Artists often paid themselves far more than they paid anyone else involved in putting on their live shows.

Steve Aoki's loan-out company, DJ Kid Millionaire Touring, used $2.4 million in grant money on payroll costs, of which $1.9 million was officer pay. Aoki is the company's only officer. Aoki's publicists didn't respond to requests for comment.

Three of the four members of the rock band Shinedown split at least $2.5 million of their $8.3 million grant. On top of those distributions, Shinedown's four members paid themselves more than $100,000 each out of the roughly $1.2 million of the grant that was allocated to payroll.

The band's 15 touring-production workers, meanwhile, received a combined $650,000 of the grant money — less than a single member of the band got. Publicists for the band didn't respond to requests for comment.

Records seen by BI show that a good chunk of the $7.7 million grant to Sremm Touring, the loan-out company for the hip-hop duo Rae Sremmurd, was paid to the rappers Slim Jxmmi and Swae Lee, whose real names are Aaquil Brown and Khalif Brown. The duo's manager, lawyer, and publicists didn't respond to requests for comment.

On March 23, 2022, records show, the Alice in Chains singer and guitarist Jerry Cantrell took in $1.4 million as an "SVOG distribution." The band's drummer, Sean Kinney, received the same amount, and its bassist, Mike Inez, booked half that sum, about $682,000.

In all, $3.4 million of the $4.1 million the grant allotted for payroll went to the three musicians at the top.

Like other grant applicants, AIC Entertainment — the three band members' touring business — had to tell the government only that the money was "necessary." But the month before they took their grant payments, the band members recorded about $48 million in income from selling the copyrights on their catalog. They made hundreds of thousands of dollars more from merchandise sales and other profit distributions in 2022.

The band spent some money to pay its staff. It paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to sound-equipment-rental firms, videographers, and managers. But the precarious nature of working in the live-entertainment business didn't change for some of its employees. Scott Dachroeden, a guitar tech and tour photographer who had worked with the band for years, received a cancer diagnosis in late 2022. The band, which records show did not spend grant money on benefits like health insurance, circulated a GoFundMe page on Twitter.

"He has no health insurance and now cannot work to pay his bills," the page said. The band's lead singer said on Facebook that Alice in Chains helped out behind the scenes, but a person familiar with the situation said that Dachroeden didn't get much, if any, money from the band during the pandemic and that after his diagnosis, the band connected Dachroeden with a charity that helps with medical bills. Dachroeden died soon after his diagnosis.

Alice in Chain's publicists and manager didn't respond to requests for comment.

Supporting 'middle-class people'

The Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program was pitched to Americans as a way to ensure that arts groups would still exist after the pandemic.

In an interview with James Corden on "The Late Late Show," Chuck Schumer cast it as a way to protect "middle-class people" and "young artists" while pandemic restrictions forced closures.

Grant money would "keep these folks going" so that "these live venues will be out there bigger and better than ever" after the restrictions lift, Schumer said. Schumer's press office and chief of staff didn't respond to comment requests.

Ultimately, more than 13,000 arts groups received grants, including some who say they wouldn't still exist otherwise.

"When the shutdowns happened, it was existential. Immediate crisis," said Brandy Hotchner, the founder of Arizona Actors Academy, an acting school in Phoenix. The grant of less than $120,000 the group received, she said, "utterly saved us."

Musicians weren't explicitly categorized as eligible — and initially, the SBA interpreted the law to mean that artists' loan-out companies couldn't qualify for the grant either.

By mid-December 2021, for reasons BI was unable to determine, the agency had reversed that decision, according to an internal memo seen by Business Insider, which cleared the way for federal funding to flow to wealthy artists. The SBA didn't respond to a question about why it reversed itself.

The business-management firm NKSFB also made millions from the program.

Partners at the firm initially believed that their celebrity clients didn't qualify for the grants. At least one partner feared that applying could be perjury, and another, Rob Salzman, thought the whole thing was "bullshit," a court document said.

Later, in an interview with Billboard magazine as part of its list of "Top Business Managers," Salzman said that applying for the grants was an example of the firm's "outside-the-box" thinking.

The change of heart led to a big payday. Court documents show the firm made at least $7.5 million in fees on the grants. Salzman didn't respond to requests for comment.

"NKSFB, one of the most respected business management firms in the world, does not comment on its clients' financial information," said Freedman, the firm's lawyer. "Based on the uninformed questions that BI has asked, it is clear it has little to no understanding on this subject."

Other white-collar professionals also outearned techs and roadies. Lawyers at the celebrity-favorite firms Greenberg Traurig and Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks received up to 5% of their clients' grants. Brown's manager took 7% of his grant, and Shinedown's managers received 20% of theirs. A spokesperson for Greenberg Traurig didn't answer questions about the firm's actions. Partners at Grubman Shire didn't respond to emails or phone calls.

Over $2.1 million of Lil Wayne's grant paid off a debt to a former manager, Cortez Bryant. Another $300,000 went to a former accountant, and his manager at the time, Mack Maine, whose real name is Jermaine Preyan, took $1.7 million. All told, roughly $5.3 million went to managers, accountants, and attorneys as fees and commissions — more than 13 times the amount Lil Wayne paid the drummer, sound techs, and other contractors who helped put on his live shows.

Bryant and Preyan didn't respond to requests for comment.

A music-industry insider who learned from Business Insider about NKSFB's wave of grant applications said he was stunned the Small Business Administration approved them.

"It never crossed my mind that we should be trying to get this money for my artists," said the insider, an artist manager who was involved in lobbying lawmakers to pass the legislation and who asked not to be named because of the issue's sensitivity.

"I was in countless conversations," he said. "No one ever discussed artists collecting this money. It never came up."

Hotchner, the acting-school founder, said she was "speechless" upon learning about Business Insider's reporting on how celebrity musicians spent their grants. Though the amount of money sent to pop stars is small relative to the overall amount of money disbursed through the grant program, she said she worried it would taint the public's perception of government support for the arts — support that's still needed.

"I will never forget how hard-fought-for this funding was," she said. "It's such a disappointment."

'Shut up, sit down. Process the file.'

Soon after Congress created the program, lawmakers began pressing the Small Business Administration to get money out the door. By mid-June 2021, more than 200 members of Congress had signed two separate letters demanding the agency disburse the funds expeditiously, saying arts organizations could go out of business without immediate relief.

The SBA said congressional pressure "was not the driving factor" behind changes that sped up the grant process and merely "coincided" with changes it was already making.

The agency hoped to balance a quick release of funds with a desire to protect against large-scale fraud that had plagued other pandemic programs. Its compromise was to relax some anti-fraud controls on the front end of the grant process, a report from the SBA's inspector general said. Instead, it planned to verify whether the grantees were actually eligible and how the money was spent after distributing the grants. In its response to the inspector general's report, the agency said it disagreed with the conclusion that changes to how it evaluated applications amounted to "weakened" fraud controls.

The approach had mixed results. The Government Accountability Office said that it submitted three phony applications to the program and that all three were rejected. But some of the eight current and former SBA workers who spoke to Business Insider said they felt the agency was too permissive and ignored or misinterpreted relevant rules — for example, allowing grantees to spend federal funds on thousands of dollars' worth of alcohol.

"They were just trying to get money out. If it was fraudulent, if it was not eligible — whatever," a person who worked on the grants said. They asked not to be named because they feared retaliation, but their identity is known to Business Insider.

The SBA's inspector general criticized the agency's decision to spot problems after the recipients already spent the money, saying it "does not provide sufficient fraud prevention and comes at a point when funds are potentially unrecoverable." Some SBA employees said that as the program began to wind down, they were pressured to certify recipients' compliance with program rules rather than dig through detailed records of their spending.

The SBA said in September it had recouped $43 million worth of the grants — an amount that hadn't increased since July. It's not clear how the agency recovered that money. While the SBA has a team to recover wrongfully awarded grants, an organizational chart suggests that as of late September it hadn't assigned any staff to it. Documents obtained in a public-records request said $6 billion worth of grants remain under review for compliance with program rules.

The SBA said "some" of the grants Business Insider mentioned in its reporting "remain open due to ongoing third-party audits that the Agency is resolving." The agency spokesperson didn't respond to questions about recoupment and didn't respond to a follow-up question asking which grants remain unresolved.

Four people who worked on the program said they tried to raise concerns about grantees' eligibility and spending to supervisors, to no avail. "I was never so disappointed in my fellow man than in that program," one of the people said. "The graft was unbelievable."

Two of those people said they were frustrated the agency wasn't doing more to investigate possible misspending and recover funds.

"Everybody kept saying shut up, sit down. Process the file," said a current SBA employee who asked not to be named because they're not authorized to speak to the press.

This person said that while some issues stemmed from the dwindling number of SVOG employees drowning in documentation, other problems arose because of the way the program was administered. "It was our fault because we threw this thing together in five seconds," they said.

An SBA spokesperson defended its processes. "By design, the vast majority of processing staff did not have access to the complete results of fraud checks and, therefore, are not positioned to comment on the internal review process or its outcomes," the spokesperson said in an email.

"Where credible evidence suggests funds were misspent or a grantee misrepresented their expenditures to SBA, the agency's robust fraud and waste oversight structure reviewed such allegations," the spokesperson said. "When substantiated, SBA and its law enforcement partners vigorously prosecute suspected wrongdoing. As a matter of policy, the SBA cannot comment on specific investigations or law enforcement action, whether planned or ongoing."

Meanwhile, the government has recovered at least some money from one musician.

As pandemic restrictions faded, Chris Brown returned to performing. In early 2022, he announced a 27-stop nationwide tour and launched a variety of side projects, including a novelty cereal called Breezy's Cosmic Crunch and an NFT collection.

While the Small Business Administration was disbursing money to Brown's touring company, federal and state tax authorities were becoming very interested in his finances.

In early 2021, the IRS notified Brown that he owed $3.2 million in unpaid taxes. In 2022, the IRS determined that Brown owed an additional $2.2 million, while California's Franchise Tax Board found that Brown hadn't paid $1.3 million in state taxes.

He settled these debts in April last year — but not before American taxpayers had unwittingly paid $80,000 for his birthday party.

Have a tip? Know more? Reach Jack Newsham via email ([email protected]) or via Signal (+1-314-971-1627). Do not use a work device.

Stumped on what to get my mom for Christmas this year, I turned, desperately, to Perplexity AI's chatbot. In response to my initial broad question: "What should I get my mom for Christmas?," the robo-elf gave me links to several gift guides published on sites including Target and Country Living. Then the chatbot suggested generic favorites like a Stanley mug and a foot massager. But as I scrolled, it also dropped links directly to more esoteric gifts, including a mug with Donald Trump on it. "You are a really, really great mom," the mug read. "Other moms? Losers, total disasters." I hadn't given Perplexity any indication of political ideology among my family, but the bot seemed to think sipping from Trump's visage every morning was a gift any mother would love. Then it suggested I make a jar and stuff it with memories I've written down. A cute idea, but I did let Perplexity know that I'm in my 30s — I don't think the made-at-home gift for mom is going to cut it.

'Tis the season to scramble and buy tons of stuff people don't need or really even want. At least that's how it can feel when trying to come up with gifts for family members who have everything already. Money has been forked over for restaurant gift cards that collect dust or slippers and scarves that pile up; trendy gadgets are often relegated to junk drawers by March. As artificial intelligence becomes more integrated into online shopping, this whole process should get easier — if AI can come to understand the art behind giving a good gift. Shopping has become one of Perplexity's top search categories in the US, particularly around the holidays, Sara Platnick, a spokesperson for Perplexity, tells me. While Platnick didn't comment directly on individual gift suggestions Perplexity's chatbots makes, she tells me that product listings provided in responses are determined by "ratings and its relevance to a user's request."

There are chatbots to consult for advice this holiday season, like Perplexity and ChatGPT, but AI is increasingly seeping into the entire shopping experience. From customer-service chatbots handling online shopping woes to ads serving recommendations that follow you across the web, AI's presence has ramped up alongside the explosion of interest in generative AI. Earlier this year, Walmart unveiled generative-AI-powered search updates that allow people to search for things like "football watch party" instead of looking for items like chips and salsa individually; Google can put clothes on virtual models in a range of sizes to give buyers a better idea of how they'll look. In a world with more options than ever, there's more help from AI, acting as robo-elves in a way — omnipresent and sometimes invisible as you shop across the web.

For the indecisive shopper, AI may be a silver bullet to choosing from hundreds of sweaters to buy, plucking the best one from obscurity and putting an end to endless scrolling — or it might help to serve up so many targeted ads that it leads people to overconsume.

Either way, AI has been completely changing the e-commerce game. "It allows a company to be who the customer wants it to be," says Hala Nelson, a professor of mathematics at James Madison University. "You cannot hire thousands of human assistants to assist each customer, but you can deploy thousands of AI assistants." Specialization comes from using third-party data to track activity and preferences across the web. In a way, that's the personalized level of service high-end stores have always provided to elite shoppers. Now, instead of a consultation, the expertise is built on surveillance.

Companies also use AI to forecast shopping trends and manage inventory, which can help them prepare and keep items in stock for those last-minute shoppers. Merchants are constantly looking for AI to get them more — to bring more eyes to their websites, to get people to add more items to their carts, and ultimately to actually check out and empty their carts. In October and early November, digital retailers using AI tech and agents increased the average value of an order by 7% when compared to sites that did not employ the technology, according to Salesforce data. The company predicted AI and shopping agents to influence 19% of orders during the week of cyber deals around Thanksgiving. And AI can help "level the playing field for small businesses," says Adam Nathan, the founder and CEO of Blaze, an AI marketing tool for small businesses and entrepreneurs.

"They don't want to necessarily be Amazon, Apple, or Nike, they just want to be the No. 1 provider of their service or product in their local community," Nathan says. "They're not worried about AI taking their job — they're worried about a competitor using AI. They see it as basically a way to get ahead."

AI early adopters in the e-commerce space benefited last holiday season, but the tech has become even more common this year, says Guillaume Luccisano, the founder and CEO of Yuma AI, a company that automates customer service for sellers that use Shopify. Some merchants that used Yuma AI during the Black Friday shopping craze automated more than 60% of their customer-support tickets, he says. While some people lament having to deal with a bot instead of a person, Luccisano says the tech is getting better, and people are mostly concerned about whether their problem is getting solved, not whether the email came from a real person or generative AI.

After my ordeal with Perplexity, I turned to see how ChatGPT would fare in helping me find gifts for the rest of my family. For my 11-year-old cousin, it suggested a Fitbit or smartwatch for kids to help her "stay active." A watch that tracks activity isn't something I feel comfortable giving a preteen, so I provided some more details. I told ChatGPT she loved the "Twilight" series, so it suggested a T-shirt with the Cullen family crest and a "Twilight"-themed journal to write fan fiction. It told me I could likely find these items on Etsy but it didn't give me direct links. (As her cool millennial cousin who has lived to tell of my own "Twilight" phase in 2007, I did end up buying a makeup bag from Etsy with a movie scene printed on it.) I also asked ChatGPT for suggestions for my 85-year-old grandpa, and it came up with information about electronic picture frames — but the bulk of our family photos are stuffed in albums and shoeboxes in his closet and not easily digitized.

I could navigate this list because these are deep contextual things that I know about my family members, something AI doesn't know yet. Many of the best gifts I've ever received are from friends and family members who stumbled upon something they knew I would love — a vinyl record tucked in a bin or a print from an independent artist on display at a craft show. AI can play a role in helping people discover new items they may never have known to buy online, but it can't replace that intuition we have when we find the perfect thing for a loved one. "We're still really wrestling with: How accurate is it? How much of a black box is it?" says Koen Pauwels, a professor of marketing at Northeastern University. "Humans are way better still in getting cues from their environment and knowing the context." If you want to give a gift that's really a hit, it looks like you'll still have to give the AI elves a helping hand.

Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.

When Zillow debuted in 2006, the fledgling site bore little resemblance to the real-estate behemoth it is now. There were no options to find an agent, get a mortgage, or request a tour — the search portal couldn't even tell you which homes were actually for sale. There was, however, the Zestimate: a "free, unbiased valuation" for 40 million houses around the US, based on a proprietary algorithm. Half the single-family homes in America suddenly had a dollar figure attached to them, and anyone could take a peek. Zillow's site crashed within hours as a million people raced to ogle at the results.

The initial rush was a sign of things to come. Nowadays, the Zestimate is arguably the most popular — and polarizing — number in real estate. An entire generation of homeowners doesn't know life without the algorithm; some obsessively track its output as they would a stock portfolio or the price of bitcoin. By the time a seller hires a real-estate agent, there's a good chance they've already consulted the digital oracle. For anyone with even a passing interest in the housing market, the Zestimate is a breezy way to take the temperature. Keep tabs on mortgage rates all you want, but they can't tell you that your house has appreciated 20% over the past year, or that your annoying coworker's property is worth more than yours.

Many industry insiders, however, regard the number as a starting point at best and dangerously misguided at worst. Real-estate agents recount arguments with sellers who reject their pricing advice, choosing instead to take the Zestimate as the word of God. One meme likens its disciples to adults who still believe in Santa. Zillow itself lost hundreds of millions of dollars during the pandemic when it relied on its algorithm to buy homes at what turned out to be inflated prices, part of an ill-fated attempt to flip homes at scale.

The Zestimate is just one of a slew of automated valuation models that are increasingly used by banks, investors, and laypeople to estimate the value of homes. No other model, however, has wormed its way into our culture like the Zestimate. The model, like other consumer-facing AVMs, is prone to errors that render it more of an amusement than a serious pricing tool. But while the algo's price-guessing skills may be suspect, it's undeniably elite at one thing: luring people to Zillow-dot-com.

The Zestimate is both everywhere and an enigma. About 104 million homes, or 71% of the US housing stock, have a little dollar figure hovering above them on Zillow's website. One of them is the house in Austin where I was raised until the age of 10. It's not for sale, but right underneath the address, in bold, is the Zestimate. Next to it is a "Rent Zestimate," or the amount the owner could probably charge a tenant each month. You can click to see a graph of its Zestimate over the past decade — the Zillow-fied value of my childhood home rose a staggering 72% from May 2020 to its peak in May 2022 but has since dropped 24% from that top tick thanks to the chill running through the Austin market. In just the past 30 days, the Zestimate has dropped by $4,455. Ouch.

Just how accurate are those numbers, though? Until the house actually trades hands, it's impossible to say. Zillow's own explanation of the methodology, and its outcomes, can be misleading. The model, the company says, is based on thousands of data points from public sources like county records, tax documents, and multiple listing services — local databases used by real-estate agents where most homes are advertised for sale. Zillow's formula also incorporates user-submitted info: If you get a fancy new kitchen, for example, your Zestimate might see a nice bump if you let the company know. Zillow makes sure to note that the Zestimate can't replace an actual appraisal, but articles on its website also hail the tool as a "powerful starting point in determining a home's value" and "generally quite accurate." The median error rate for on-market homes is just 2.4%, per the company's website, while the median error rate for off-market homes is 7.49%. Not bad, you might think.

But that's where things get sticky. By definition, half of homes sell within the median error rate, e.g., within 2.4% of the Zestimate in either direction for on-market homes. But the other half don't, and Zillow doesn't offer many details on how bad those misses are. And while the Zestimate is appealing because it attempts to measure what a house is worth even when it's not for sale, it becomes much more accurate when a house actually hits the market. That's because it's leaning on actual humans, not computers, to do a lot of the grunt work. When somebody lists their house for sale, the Zestimate will adjust to include all the new seller-provided info: new photos, details on recent renovations, and, most importantly, the list price. The Zestimate keeps adjusting until the house actually sells. At that point, the difference between the sale price and the latest Zestimate is used to calculate the on-market error rate, which, again, is pretty good: In Austin, for instance, a little more than 94% of on-market homes end up selling for within 10% of the last Zestimate before the deal goes through. But Zillow also keeps a second Zestimate humming in the background, one that never sees the light of day. This version doesn't factor in the list price — it's carrying on as if the house never went up for sale at all. Instead, it's used to calculate the "off-market" error rate. When the house sells, the difference between the final price and this shadow algorithm reveals an error rate that's much less satisfactory: In Austin, only about 66% of these "off-market Zestimates" come within 10% of the actual sale price. In Atlanta, it's 65%; Chicago, 58%; Nashville, 63%; Seattle, 69%. At today's median home price of $420,000, a 10% error would mean a difference of more than $40,000.

Without sellers spoonfeeding Zillow the most crucial piece of information — the list price — the Zestimate is hamstrung. It's a lot easier to estimate what a home will sell for once the sellers broadcast, "Hey, this is the price we're trying to sell for." Because the vast majority of sellers work with an agent, the list price is also usually based on that agent's knowledge of the local market, the finer details of the house, and comparable sales in the area. This September, per Zillow's own data, the typical home sold for 99.8% of the list price — almost exactly spot on. That may not always be the case, but the list price is generally a good indicator of the sale figure down the line. For a computer model of home prices, it's basically the prized data point. In the world of AVMs, models that achieve success by fitting their results to list prices are deemed "springy" or "bouncy" — like a ball tethered to a string, they won't stray too far. Several people I talked to for this story say they've seen this in action with Zillow's model: A seller lists a home and asks for a number significantly different from the Zestimate, and then watches as the Zestimate moves within a respectable distance of that list price anyway. Zillow itself makes no secret of the fact that it leans on the list price to arrive at its own estimate.

Other sites have their versions of the Zestimate, too — there are actually about 25 different AVMs in the market, says Lee Kennedy, the founder and managing director of AVMetrics, a company known for independently testing these models. Realtor.com will show you three estimates, each from a different AVM provider. Redfin, a Zillow competitor, also has its own model. Kennedy has been studying AVMs for more than three decades, but it wasn't until the advent of Zillow that the masses became aware of them. Consumer-facing AVMs, like the Zestimate or the Redfin Estimate (Restimate?) are meant to be used informally, he says, as casual starting points before consulting real experts. They're not supposed to be used for real pricing, which should be left to the big guys — the "business-to-business" AVMs used by banks, investors, and the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Lauryn Dempsey, a real-estate agent in the Denver area, gives similar advice to her clients.

"They're tools that provide information," Dempsey says, "but they should not be used in a vacuum to make decisions."

The business-to-business models are so costly to develop, Kennedy tells me, that they'll probably never be offered to regular people for free. But his testing indicates they're much more reliable. His firm has unveiled blind testing that looks at how models perform before taking into account the list price, a method that penalizes those aforementioned bouncy algorithms. The standard measurement breaks down how often the model can get within 10%, in either direction, of the actual selling price. In a highly urbanized area with lots of housing transactions, some of the models can correctly get close to the final selling price about 80% to 90% of the time — "not bad," Kennedy says. AVMs of all kinds work best in areas with a lot of homes that look and feel roughly the same. Cookie-cutter suburbs are heaven; areas with a wide range of home styles and ages, like Boston, pose a greater challenge. The value of a ranch home in the middle of nowhere is even tougher to peg.

So the Zestimate isn't exactly unique, and it's far from the best. But to the average internet surfer, no AVM carries the weight, or swagger, of the original. To someone like Jonathan Miller, the president and CEO of the appraisal and consulting company Miller Samuel, the enduring appeal of the Zestimate is maddening. "When you think of the Zestimate, for many, it gives a false anchor for what the value actually is," Miller says.

Miller is no unbiased observer. Given that he's an appraiser who estimates the value of homes for a living, it should come as no surprise that he's siding with the humans over the robots. But he raises real issues, highlighting the disconnect between the public's continued use of the Zestimate and its actual track record.

I could say that I virtually stalked my childhood home for "research," but let's be real: By the time I scrolled to the bottom of the page, I had fully surrendered to the voyeuristic urges that draw millions of visitors to the Zillow website each month. It's been almost two decades since I've stepped inside the house, and I can only imagine the changes its new owners have made to my old room (sadly, no pics of the interior). But with the aid of Zillow, my trip down memory lane was lined with data: I walked away with intimate knowledge of the home and its occupants. Prior to 2006, no regular person had this kind of power.

The launch of Zillow spawned a whole genre of internet snooping that, if anything, has only intensified in the years since. When I call up John Wake, a former economist and real-estate agent who now writes the newsletter Real Estate Decoded, he reveals that he, too, looked up his childhood home only a few months ago. "That part is really fun," he tells me. Keeping tabs on your own Zestimate, though, can provide less of a thrill. In December 2022, after interest-rate hikes tamped down home prices, Wake shared with his followers on X that his Zestimate was down 18% from May: "YIKES!" In a 2020 column, the Wall Street Journal editor Kris Frieswick opened up about the difficulty of quitting the algorithm: "My self-worth is defined by my Zestimate. Each day I approach Zillow.com filled with hope, and fear." The column reads mostly as tongue-in-cheek, but plenty of people take their number very seriously. As Frieswick pointed out, at least several disgruntled homeowners have actually sued Zillow over Zestimates they said were inaccurate.

Looking up other people's houses, by comparison, is a mostly harmless pastime. Bosses, neighbors, lovers, and exes — all are fair game in the all-seeing eyes of the tool. During the heat of the 2021 homebuying frenzy, a "Saturday Night Live" sendup of a Zillow ad declared: "The pleasure you once got from sex now comes from looking at other people's houses." The skit, which featured a lot of moaning and sultry mood lighting, was mostly about the fantasies of browsing homes for sale on Zillow — as one YouTube commenter observed, "They didn't even get into the naughty pleasure of looking up all your friends' Zestimate values." This kicked off a thread of others chiming in with "guilty!" and lots of cry-laughing emojis. "OMG I thought this was just my kink," another person replied. I imagine all of these people at a raucous dinner party, bonding over their exploits on zillow.com. And here I am, the buzzkill in the corner talking about median error rates.

Virtual spelunking aside, the hazards of the Zestimate are most obvious when a seller actually decides to list their home. Francine Carstensen, a real-estate agent in Alabama, says those in her line of work have a complicated relationship with the Zestimate: "We love it, and we hate it." A lofty estimate might jolt a homeowner into action — "I could sell my house for what?!" — and drive more business her way. But the number can also make it hard to do her job. A few times, she tells me, she's lost clients over a pricing disagreement involving the Zestimate. It can be difficult enough to pry a seller away from their unrealistic expectations without a number on a screen confirming their hopes for a bigger payday.

"I hate it when they tell me, 'Well, this is what Zillow tells me my house is worth,'" Carstensen says. "Because it's very rarely accurate."

Accuracy may not even be the point. It didn't appear to be in 2006, when the beta version of the Zestimate launched. "The Zestimate started out fairly inaccurate, but it didn't matter," Rich Barton, a Zillow cofounder who was then its CEO, recalled in a 2021 podcast episode. "It was provocative." Spencer Rascoff, another cofounder and former CEO, sold his own home in 2016 for 40% less than its Zestimate. The next year, the company offered $1 million to whoever could improve the Zestimate algorithm the most. The winning team, a group of three data scientists working remotely from the US, Canada, and Morocco, beat the Zillow benchmark by 13%.

No misstep appeared more damning, however, than the implosion of Zillow's homebuying business. In 2018, the company launched Zillow Offers, making all-cash offers to sellers looking to move quickly and seamlessly. In theory, Zillow could then turn around and offload the home in short order for a modest fee, plus however much the home had appreciated. The company used a combination of internal algorithms and human analysts to value the home and predict what it could sell for in a few months — in some cases, homeowners could get an immediate cash offer based on their Zestimate with just a few clicks. But the company's forecasts turned out to be way off base. Zillow Offers squandered $422 million in the third quarter of 2021 alone — a Business Insider investigation found that almost two-thirds of the homes listed by Zillow in Atlanta, Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, and Minneapolis were being marketed at a loss. Amanda Pendleton, a Zillow spokesperson, tells me it was the volatility of the market, not the Zestimate, that really led to the program's downfall. Once the losses came to light, the company swiftly shuttered the division and laid off a quarter of its staff.

I remember wondering whether this would be the death knell for the Zestimate, a kind of algorithm-has-no-clothes moment. I was wrong. Zillow and its best-known creation haven't gone anywhere — the company continues to highlight its progress, providing periodic updates as its data scientists tinker away at the formulas. As search portals like Homes.com and Redfin jockey with Zillow for dominance, the Zestimate is too valuable of an asset to give up. People still flock to Zillow for those little numbers next to each home, for the thrill of feasting their eyes upon something that, like salaries, is considered taboo to talk about in person. For Zillow, that's an unequivocal win.

"It's 100% a marketing tool," says Mike DelPrete, a scholar-in-residence at the University of Colorado Boulder who studies the intersection of tech and real estate. "Like, not even 99%. It's a marketing tool."

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

Robyn gets a kick out of being able to say she's worked at both the "good" and the "bad" Dollar Trees in her West Texas town. The stores may be only a few miles from each other geographically, but qualitywise, there's an enormous gulf between them. Shocked customers who have been to both locations remark on the stark differences "all the time," she said. The good store is clean — the floors are swept, aisles open, merchandise in its place. At the bad one, merchandise is scattered all over the place, and unpacked boxes fill the aisles. There's supposed to be a clear, wide pathway from the break room to an exit in case of an emergency, like a fire or a shooting. Instead, employees at the bad store have to turn sideways and try to shuffle through an 8-inch-wide gap between boxes piled high in the hallways.

The factors that account for the difference sound quite small. The good store has dedicated recovery staff, whose job it is to put stuff where it goes. The bad one doesn't. The good store's manager is better at pushing for more work hours for employees, which means there are more people and time for stocking and tidying up on top of cashiering. The manager at the bad store just kind of lets anything fly. Still, Robyn, which is a pseudonym, says a lot of the blame is on corporate. She was an assistant manager in the past, and she's heard what goes on in the weekly calls. Rather than try to revive struggling stores, she said, they're left out to dry.

"They look at their trend of sales, and if a store is underperforming, then instead of maybe investing a little bit more hours there to try to pick it back up, they're like, 'Oh, well, it's not worth investing in this store' because it is not making us whatever amount of money they think it should be making. It makes the problem worse," she said. Dollar Tree did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Most people have probably had experience shopping in their own version of Robyn's "bad" store. They've walked into a local dollar store or pharmacy or department store and wondered whether there's been an explosion. Aisles are filled with unopened boxes, stacks of bins, and full dollies. Merchandise is strewn about. To get to the item on the shelf you actually want, you have to climb over a pile of crates. (If you have not had this experience, congratulations, and also, here are some TikTok videos to get at what I'm describing.) It's representative of the broader decline of the in-store retail experience. Stores are slashing costs, cutting corners at every turn, and generally ignoring the consequences.

"When you cut costs, there's a very immediate and very visible impact to the bottom line. It's something that retailers do, and they're very happy to do, and investors are very comfortable with them doing it," Neil Saunders, a managing director at the retail consultancy GlobalData, said. Yes, they'll lose customers in the process, sales will fall, and loyalty will dissipate. But that's all subtle and harder to trace. "They happen more slowly and steadily over a period of time, and they build up into a bigger problem," Saunders added.

What that looks like on the ground is stores filled to the brim as boxes pile up. At Robyn's Dollar Tree stores, they can't call the distribution center and ask it to stop shipping, either, as everything continues to accumulate if they don't have time to put it away. "The truck is going to show up whether you have room for it or not," she said.

The boxes-everywhere scenario used to be largely a dollar- or discount-store problem, but now the perilous piles have spread to other types of retailers. In other words, it's not just Dollar General anymore but also Target and Duane Reade. Much of the explanation is staffing, or rather, the lack of it. Many stores simply do not have enough people working to do everything necessary, between helping customers and stocking shelves and cleaning and fulfilling pickup and e-commerce orders. It's often the case that just one or two people are on a shift at a time, and checking customers out at the register takes precedence, meaning everything else falls by the wayside.

Many retail chains had to raise wages to compete for workers over the past several years, thanks to the pandemic-induced labor shortage and as major retailers such as Amazon and Walmart upped their pay. One way some retailers have compensated is by reducing staffing. Maybe they now pay their workers $15 an hour instead of $10, but where three people used to work a certain shift, there are now two.

Adding to the staffing problems is the simple lack of space. To keep their footprints small and their rent, in turn, low, many stores don't have much backroom area for storage. Long gone are the days of loading docks where stuff could sit until it was ready to be put out, said Jason Goldberg, the chief commerce strategy officer at Publicis Groupe, a global marketing firm. "Most stores are designed to have the vast majority of merchandise out on the floor," he said.

Essentially, this is an inventory issue and a labor issue. There's no stockroom for keeping products stowed away and nobody to unpack them when they arrive. Skeleton crews are doing their best to keep up, but they're constantly being squeezed. Shipping schedules are unpredictable. Customers are demanding. And the worse the job becomes — because the pay is low, because it's hard to get shifts — the more people quit, extending the cycle of doom.

That's what's happening at the Walgreens where Stephanie has worked in Florida for more than a decade. When she started, there would be two cashiers, someone in photo, someone else in beauty, and two shift leads. They'd close the store with four or five people. Now when she's on, it's usually just her and another person, and they have to frantically try to get bins unloaded and put up sales tags all while working the register. They'll leave rolling carts around the store during the day to get to as they can, which is usually at the end of the shift. Bins can't be left out overnight. It's not a disaster zone — luckily, they do have some decent storage space, and the manager runs a tight ship — but it's not perfect, either.

"They basically cut a lot of positions, and now they work as minimum a staff as they can, and even with that, they're telling us, 'You're over budget, we've got to cut more hours,'" Stephanie, also a pseudonym, said. She does DoorDash and Instacart on the side, so she also gets to experience the customer end of the equation when she runs to the dollar store to pick up orders, which is much worse, boxes-in-aisles-wise, than her Walgreens. "It's not even their fault. They have one worker on all the time, and they expect that worker to put their merchandise away," she said.

When reached for comment about this story, a Walgreens spokesperson said that the company is "always working to improve our patient and customer experience by making it easier for our team members to do their job."

Good managers are able to do some triage, which is why one store might be pretty picked up while others are a mess. But sometimes, constraints make it so it's impossible to keep up.

"There will be some store managers that have very strong operating disciplines, and they will not allow things to get out of control," Saunders said. "And there will be some store managers that are much more lax."

As easy as it is to point the finger at retailers for dropping the ball on inventories and aisles, they're not operating in a vacuum. They're in a landscape where margins are razor thin, e-commerce is cannibalizing their business, and consumers are hypersensitive to prices. One response for big-name retailers, including Walgreens, CVS, and Target, is to shut down unprofitable locations across the country. US retailers have announced 7,185 store closures this year, according to the research and advisory firm Coresight, up by 58 from 2023. (By comparison, they've announced 5,581 store openings.) Among the stores that are staying open, retailers are super focused on maximizing their profitability, Claire Tassin, a retail and e-commerce analyst at Morning Consult, said. Staffing a store to have a pleasant customer experience isn't "necessarily in their budgets," she said. Moreover, the message many retailers are getting from consumers is that the sacrifice on experience is acceptable, as long as they're keeping their prices low, especially for retailers where value is the main proposition.

"Yes, it's annoying when there's boxes in the aisles and it feels bad and cluttered, but if it's in the name of lowering costs, that is what consumers are signaling to these brands that they want," Tassin said. "If the store's sort of primary purpose is value and convenience, that's what is going to matter most."

To be sure, there are limits. You trip over boxes in a store enough or wait endlessly for someone to unlock deodorant for you, and you'll probably give up, go somewhere else, or start looking online. For people with mobility issues, going to an overcrowded store isn't even an option. Retailers know people are shopping online, too, which is why the ones who are behind on e-commerce are trying to catch up — and, in some cases, why the in-store experience is even worse.

That's part of what's happening with Target, retail analysts told me. Despite the retailer's recent struggles, e-commerce has been a bright spot for it, Goldberg said. But part of the model is to use the space in the back of stores for goods that need to be shipped — space that previously would have been used for merchandise headed to the floor. "They need space to stage orders and pack orders and hand orders off," he said.

The setup also loads up associates' duties, Saunders added. "They pick orders for online delivery. They take them out to cars for curbside pickup. They have to man the desks where collections are made and then returns of online products are made," he said. "There's a lot more tasks that now have to be done day-to-day in the store, and it's distracted and taken time away from some of the basics like merchandising."

A Target spokesperson said the company's staffing model accounts for online fulfillment being part of how it operates its stores.

The dynamic is one of a race to the bottom that's turning into a race for survival. Retailers are stretching on pricing and staffing and quality, and eventually, something's got to give. But instead of trying to proactively make the in-store experience better, many continue to bury their heads in the sand.

"Rather than thinking, 'How can we differentiate ourselves to really attract shoppers to come to us?' They started competing head-on against online with price discounts," said Sharmila Chatterjee, a senior lecturer in marketing at the MIT Sloan School of Management. "The less you invest in in-store experience, the more the customers are turned off. So you are sort of pushing them away, to online."

Stuff spilling into aisles used to be a somewhat isolated problem, the sign of a particularly poorly run store. Increasingly, though, it's an everywhere problem. Some stores might be inspired to turn it around — especially after dollar stores have been hit with safety violations over blocked exits, crowded aisles, and clutter — but profit motive could prove a stronger incentive. Anecdotally, many consumers have noticed more piled boxes in more retailers lately, not fewer. And that's not just because it's the holidays.

Crowded walkways are a symptom of a much-bigger affliction hitting retail, which is that the business model isn't really working. Gone are the days when supercheap labor made adequate levels of store staffing easy, though I will note that Robyn makes just over $9 an hour and Stephanie about $15.50. Rents aren't going back to where they were. Consumers still do most of their shopping in person, but e-commerce is becoming more and more appealing, especially when brick and mortar is such a hassle. If it's no longer cheap or convenient to pop by the dollar store or drug store, what's the point? And there's always Walmart, which operationally doesn't seem to have this boxes-everywhere issue.

Cynthia, another pseudonymous Dollar Tree worker, is at a store that opened about a month ago in Virginia. When she started, she thought it was weird that customers kept commenting on how clean and organized the place was. "One of the biggest compliments was that we can walk through the aisles. I was like, what?" she said. It's already starting to turn — there's "no freaking way" she can get everything done in a shift, she said. Stuff's starting to pile up, and her coworkers are quitting because they're frustrated with the heavy workload and the lack of hours.

"Then it's more of that work falls on other people who already are burnt out and aggravated," she said. "It's a nasty little cycle."

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

• Alexis Ohanian shared three books that shaped his career in 2024.
• Ohanian cofounded Reddit with Steve Huffman and currently serves as founder of 776 VC firm.
• He said "Unreasonable Hospitality" is a must-read for anyone trying to build a brand.

Alexis Ohanian has been recognized as an innovator since cofounding Reddit in 2005 and selling it a year later to Condé Nast. That sale was reportedly between $10 to $20 million.

In the 20 years since then, Ohanian has vastly multiplied his wealth and business portfolio with investments in tech, sports, and other innovative ideas.

The tech founder and investor, who launched his venture firm Seven Seven Six in 2020 after officially leaving Reddit's leadership team, shared with Business Insider the top three books that shaped his career in 2024.

Ohanian said these are his must-reads for various reasons. His quotes have been edited for clarity.

"Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration" by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace

My founding partner at 776, Katelin Holloway, helped produce "Creativity Inc." based on her time at Pixar. This book informed a lot of how we turned around Reddit and how I'm building 776.

"Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It" by Chris Voss with Tahl Raz

Zachariah Reitano, the founder/CEO of Ro — one of my 776 investments — recommended the book "Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on it." It's a must-read for anyone, not just CEOs and founders. I re-read it every year to refresh my memory.

"Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect" by Will Guidara

Maggi from the 776 team recommended "Unreasonable Hospitality," written by Will Guidara who achieved fame as former coowner and leader of Eleven Madison Park. EMP is one of my favorite restaurants. The methods and mindset here are imperative for anyone trying to build an exceptional brand, even outside of food and hospitality.

Airbnb has its sights set on global domination. In earnings calls this year, its cofounder and CEO, Brian Chesky, mapped out what he sees as the short-term-rental giant's biggest expansion markets: Mexico and Brazil in the Americas; in Asia, Japan, India, South Korea, and China, for Chinese residents looking to travel outside the country; and further into Germany, Italy, and Spain in Europe, where it already has a stronghold.

What's connecting these scattered countries? Dave Stephenson, the chief business officer at Airbnb, says they're all places where the company's footprint is small compared to the amount of money people spend on travel there. The company is working on ways "to show up locally relevant," he says, "so that people think of why it's better to travel on Airbnb." Stephenson maintains that Airbnb, despite its name recognition, has a smaller footprint than hotels. The company says it has 8 million active listings globally, compared to, by one estimate, some 17 million hotel rooms. Airbnb aims to close that gap, continent by continent.

There's something else tying this far-flung strategy together: Airbnb is looking for new frontiers at a time when cities around the world are cracking down on the company and other short-term rental platforms, largely in response to complaints that short-term rentals draw (often unruly) tourists and displace locals. Barcelona, which has an estimated 20,000 Airbnb listings, has said it will ban all short-term rentals by 2028. Málaga will stop giving out new short-term-rental permits in dozens of neighborhoods. New York enacted a law in 2023 that wiped nearly all short-term rentals off the map. Other cities, like London and Paris, have been enforcing strict limits on the number of nights each year that a property can be listed for short-term renting.

For Airbnb, terra incognita looks more appealing as some of its terra firma becomes less firm.

When Airbnb was new and growing rapidly in the 2010s, there was little regulation on short-term rentals. Many did not anticipate how homeowners, and even renters, would turn Airbnb into overnight miniature business empires. But complaints mounted over the years. Residents reported that short-term renters often had parties that brought trash, noise, and general chaos to buildings and neighborhoods, even after the company barred guests from hosting large gatherings. Locals also blamed the lucrative rentals for pushing up housing prices. Housing costs are influenced by many factors, but in 2020, researchers found that Airbnb growth in the median ZIP code accounted for an increase of $9 in monthly rent and $1,800 in home prices, making up one-fifth of rent growth and one-seventh of property value increases. A report by the New York City comptroller found that between 2009 and 2016, 9.2% of the jump in rental rates could be tied to Airbnb.

At this point, dozens of local governments around the world have enacted laws regulating short-term rentals that are bespoke to their cities. This gives places where Airbnb is looking to expand the advantage of seeing how various regulations have started to affect housing availability elsewhere, should they want to move proactively. "Even though those places that Airbnb could be pushing into may not have a [regulatory] framework, there's at least these examples where governments have recognized the need to protect housing and implemented successful ways of regulating it," says Murray Cox, founder of Inside Airbnb, which scrapes Airbnb data to show its footprint in cities around the world. Cities could take approaches from other playbooks, such as requiring Airbnb to share data with local officials, zoning short-term rentals to more commercial neighborhoods, or allowing hosts to rent out primary residences a limited number of nights a year.

For Airbnb, the patchwork regulation around the world is both "a problem and an opportunity," says Cox. If rentals are curtailed in Paris, the company could look to expand to nearby cities or rural parts of France where there are fewer regulations. For Airbnb, that might mean moving into new countries. "They either can't grow or they're declining in cities or some parts" of their core markets, Cox says. "The only way that they can either maintain their revenues or grow is to push into other markets."

Airbnb isn't opposed to rules outright. If regulations are in place before the company expands to a new market, it could make the process simpler for hosts and guests and spare Airbnb from having to pivot and wipe tens of thousands of listings from its platform in one swoop after a new law passes. "We really do welcome sensible regulation," Stephenson tells me. "In a sensible, reasonable way, it works quite well." Airbnb is still pushing back against what it believes are overreaching regulations, like those in New York City. And despite the regulations, Airbnb is growing. Its revenue is up 10% year over year, and the number of nights booked grew, along with experiences, which include activities provided by local businesses and tour guides, by 8%.

But Airbnb's challenges don't stop at the regulations. It must also get people around the world to buy in. "Each country is going to have its own dynamics," Jamie Lane, the senior vice president of analytics and chief economist at AirDNA, tells me. In some countries, hosting strangers in your home wouldn't be culturally acceptable. Lane also says there are local competitors to Airbnb in some places "that have been impactful and made it hard for them to compete."

Those challenges are partially why Airbnb pulled out of hosting in China in 2022, wiping out 150,000 listings there. For one, the country's strict travel regulations around COVID-19 lasted longer than measures taken by most other nations, which created a drag on travel bookings. But Airbnb struggled to compete with Chinese companies offering short-term rentals long before that. The homegrown alternatives there included Tujia, which was designed to attract Chinese travelers specifically by anticipating peak travel times and rates, Melissa Yang, the company's cofounder, told CNN several years ago.

Chesky is more confident that Airbnb can win over the hearts and minds of the masses anywhere it goes. "Airbnb pretty much resonates pretty equally everywhere once there's the awareness," he told investors in a call earlier this year. "In fact, I could argue that Airbnb might resonate better in Asia because there's a younger travel population that's not predisposed to hotels, and they're on social media. And we are disproportionately on social media versus our competitors. So I'm very, very bullish about that."

While the company isn't telegraphing its expansion strategy in every country, one of its most obvious moves began in Japan this fall. Airbnb ran an ad in English last year promoting travel in Kyoto, but it ramped up its Japanese ads in October. It's looking to court young Japanese travelers who want to take weekend trips, showing photos of a family traveling to a sleek, modern cabin in a wooded area, where they sing karaoke. Stephenson says Airbnb has also learned that local travelers want proximity to onsens, Japanese hot springs and bathing facilities, so listings there now show nearby onsens.

Elsewhere, Airbnb has been implementing payment methods preferred by locals. The company recently added KaKao Pay in South Korea and Vipps in Norway, among dozens of other options. It may seem like a small step, but Airbnb thinks meeting people where and how they pay will make the service more appealing.

Researchers are closely watching Airbnb's ongoing spread. Bianca Tavolari, a researcher and member of the advisory board of the Global Observatory of Short-Term Rentals, a group of Latin American organizations focused on housing, says Brazil has lagged in regulating short-term rentals, though a court ruled last year that hosts must have explicit consent from property owners to list apartments or condos as short-term rentals. Airbnb shares some tourism trend information with local officials through its city portal, but researchers like Tavolari still have questions about Airbnb's full impact. "We are in the dark," she tells me. Yet "cities are seeing it as a great opportunity," particularly those that depend heavily on tourism dollars, she says, and thinking less about the long-term costs to residents.

Cox says he's "hopeful that some of these locations that Airbnb is planning to push to have already started thinking about" how they'll handle its growth. If Chesky's hypothesis is right, Airbnb could continue to spread rapidly once people in other parts of the world get used to couch surfing or navigating a hidden lockbox to let themselves into their rentals. Cities should be ready before more tourists start packing their bags.

Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.

• EvenUp vaulted past a $1 billion valuation on the idea that AI will help automate personal injury demands.
• Former employees told BI the company has relied on humans to do much of the work.
• EvenUp says it uses a combination of AI and humans to ensure accuracy, and its AI is improving.

EvenUp vaulted past a $1 billion valuation on the idea AI could help automate a lucrative part of the legal business. Former employees told Business Insider that the startup has relied on humans to complete much of the work.

EvenUp aims to streamline personal-injury demands and has said it is one of the fastest-growing companies in history after jumping from an $85 million valuation at the start of the year to unicorn status in an October funding round.

Customers upload medical records and case files, and EvenUp's AI is supposed to sift through the vast amount of data, pulling out key details to determine how much an accident victim should be owed.

One of EvenUp's investors has described its "AI-based approach" as representing a "quantum leap forward."

The reality, at least so far, is that human staff have done a significant share of that work, and EvenUp's AI has been slow to pick up the slack, eight former EvenUp employees told Business Insider in interviews over the late summer and early fall.

The former employees said they witnessed numerous problems with EvenUp's AI, including missed injuries, hallucinated medical conditions, and incorrectly recorded doctor visits. The former employees asked not to be identified to preserve future job prospects.

"They claim during the interview process and training that the AI is a tool to help the work go faster and that you can get a lot more done because of the AI," said a former EvenUp employee who left earlier this year. "In practice, once you start with the company, my experience was that my managers told me not even to use the AI. They said it was unreliable and created too many errors."

Two other former employees also said they were told by supervisors at various points this year not to use EvenUp's AI. Another former employee who left this year said they were never told not to use the AI, just that they had to be vigilant in correcting it.

"I was 100% told it's not super reliable, and I need to have a really close eye on it," said the former employee.

EvenUp told BI it uses a combination of humans and AI, and this should be viewed as a feature, not a bug.

"The combined approach ensures maximum accuracy and the highest quality," EvenUp cofounder and CEO Rami Karabibar said in a statement. "Some demands are generated and finalized using mostly AI, with a small amount of human input needed, while other more complicated demands require extensive human input but time is still saved by using the AI."

AI's virtuous cycle of improvement

It's a common strategy for AI companies to rely on humans early on to complete tasks and refine approaches. Over time, these human inputs are fed into AI models and related systems, and the technology is meant to learn and improve. At EvenUp, signs of this virtuous AI cycle have been thin on the ground, the former employees said.

"It didn't seem to me like the AI was improving," said one former staffer.

"Our AI is improving every day," Karabibar said. "It saves more time today than it did a week ago, it saved more time a week ago than it did a month ago, and it saved a lot more time a month ago than it did last year."

A broader concern

EvenUp's situation highlights a broader concern as AI sweeps across markets and boardrooms and into workplaces and consumers' lives. Success in generative AI requires complex new technology to continue to improve. Sometimes, there's a gap between the dreams of startup founders and investors and the practical reality of this technology when used by employees and customers. Even Microsoft has struggled with some practical implementations of its marquee AI product, Copilot.

While AI is adept at sorting and interpreting vast amounts of data, it has so far struggled to accurately decipher content such as medical records that are formatted differently and often feature doctors' handwriting scribbled in the margins, said Abdi Aidid, an assistant professor of law at the University of Toronto who has built machine-learning tools.

"When you scan the data, it gets scrambled a lot, and having AI read the scrambled data is not helpful," Aidid said.

Earlier this year, BI asked EvenUp about the role of humans in producing demand letters, one of its key products. After the outreach, the startup responded with written answers and published a blog post that clarified the roles employees play.

"While AI models trained on generic data can handle some tasks, the complexity of drafting high-quality demand letters requires much more than automation alone," the company wrote. "At EvenUp, we combine AI with expert human review to deliver unmatched precision and care."

The startup's spokesman declined to specify how much time its AI saves but told BI that employees spend 20% less time writing demand letters than they did at the beginning of the year. The spokesman also said 72% of demand letter content is started from an AI draft, up from 63% in June 2023.

A father's injury

EvenUp was founded in 2019, more than two years before OpenAI's ChatGPT launched the generative AI boom.

Karabibar, Raymond Mieszaniec, and Saam Mashhad started EvenUp to "even" the playing field for personal-injury victims. Founders and investors often cite the story of Mieszaniec's father, Ray, to explain why their mission is important. He was disabled after being hit by a car, but his lawyer didn't know the appropriate compensation, and the resulting settlement "was insufficient," Lightspeed Venture Partners, one of EvenUp's investors, said in a write-up about the company.

"We've trained a machine to be able to read through medical records, interpret the information it's scanning through, and extract the critical pieces of information," Mieszaniec said in an interview last year. "We are the first technology that has ever been created to essentially automate this entire process and also keep the quality high while ensuring these firms get all this work in a cost-effective manner."

EvenUp technical errors

The eight former EvenUp employees told BI earlier this year that this process has been far from automated and prone to errors.

"You have to pretty much double-check everything the AI gives you or do it completely from scratch," said one former employee.

For instance, the software has missed key injuries in medical records while hallucinating conditions that did not exist, according to some of the former employees. BI found no instances of these errors making it into the final product. Such mistakes, if not caught by human staff, could have potentially reduced payouts, three of the employees said.

EvenUp's system sometimes recorded multiple hospital visits over several days as just one visit. If employees had not caught the mistakes, the claim could have been lower, one of the former staffers said.

The former employees recalled EvenUp's AI system hallucinating doctor visits that didn't happen. It also has reported a victim suffered a shoulder injury when, in fact, their leg was hurt. The system also has mixed up which direction a car was traveling — important information in personal-injury lawsuits, the former employees said.

"It would pull information that didn't exist," one former employee recalled.

The software has also sometimes left out key details, such as whether a doctor determined a patient's injury was caused by a particular accident — crucial information for assigning damages, according to some of the employees.

"That was a big moneymaker for the attorneys, and the AI would miss that all the time," one former employee said.

EvenUp's spokesman acknowledged that these problems cited by former employees "could have happened," especially in earlier versions of its AI, but said this is why it employs humans as a backstop.

A customer and an investor

EvenUp did not make executives available for interviews, but the spokesman put BI in touch with a customer and an investor.

Robert Simon, the cofounder of the Simon Law Group, said EvenUp's AI has made his personal-injury firm more efficient, and using humans reduces errors.

"I appreciate that because I would love to have an extra set of eyes on it before the product comes back to me," Simon said. "EvenUp is highly, highly accurate."

Sarah Hinkfuss, a partner at Bain Capital Ventures, said she appreciated EvenUp's human workers because they help train AI models that can't easily be replicated by competitors like OpenAI and its ChatGPT product.

"They're building novel datasets that did not exist before, and they are automating processes that significantly boost gross margins," Hinkfuss wrote in a blog post earlier this year.

Long hours, less automation

Most of the former EvenUp employees said a major reason they were drawn to the startup was because they had the impression AI would be doing much of the work.

"I thought this job was going to be really easy," said one of the former staffers. "I thought that it was going to be like you check work that the AI has already done for you."

The reality, these people said, was that they had to work long hours to spot, correct, and complete tasks that the AI system could not handle with full accuracy.

"A lot of my coworkers would work until 3 a.m. and on weekends to try to keep up with what was expected," another former employee recalled.

EvenUp's AI could be helpful in simple cases that could be completed in as little as two hours. But more complex cases sometimes required eight hours, so a workday could stretch to 16 hours, four of the former employees said.

"I had to work on Christmas and Thanksgiving," said one of these people. "They [the managers] acted like it should be really quick because the AI did everything. But it didn't."

EvenUp's spokesman said candidates are told upfront the job is challenging and requires a substantial amount of writing. He said retention rates are "in line with other hyper-growth startups" and that 40% of legal operations associates were promoted in the third quarter of this year.

"We recognize that working at a company scaling this fast is not for everyone," said the spokesman. "In addition, as our AI continues to improve, leveraging our technology will become easier and easier."

Highlighting the continued importance of human workers, the spokesman noted that EvenUp hired a vice president of people at the end of October.

• In a lawsuit, Elon Musk alleged OpenAI overpays as part of a pattern of anticompetitive practices.
• An analysis of salary data found that both companies offered pay well above typical industry wages for some roles.
• xAI paid one worker double the industry standard wage for the role; one OpenAI worker made over three times as much.

As the artificial-intelligence industry continues to attract attention, power, and billions of dollars in funding, two major players — Elon Musk's xAI and Sam Altman's OpenAI — are locked in a contentious battle over talent. Musk filed a lawsuit in August accusing Altman's company of offering "lavish compensation" to "starve competitors."

To examine Musk's claims about salaries, Business Insider analyzed wage data from specialty visa applications for each company from 2024. While both offered compensation well above typical industry wages for the handful of roles for which data was available, OpenAI paid some of its staff an even higher premium over standard rates.

The documentation that companies must file when hiring foreign workers on specialty visas like the H-1B provides a window into otherwise private compensation data at both firms and gives rare insight into the expensive war for AI talent.

xAI is only a fraction of the size of OpenAI; the company employs about 100 workers, compared with about 3,000 at OpenAI, PitchBook reported.

xAI reported pay data for 10 worker applications, compared with OpenAI's 86 worker applications. The companies paid 37% and 87%, respectively, above the typical industry wage — or "prevailing wage" — for the roles surveyed, based on data from US Customs and Immigration Services.

The prevailing wage is determined by the Department of Labor. It represents the average wage paid to workers in a particular occupation within a defined geographic area. Employers who hire workers on specialty visas like H-1Bs must pay them at least as much as the prevailing wage.

The data found that pay for the 10 xAI roles with specialty visa applications ranged from $250,000 to $500,000. At the top end, xAI paid one worker nearly double the prevailing wage for the role of principal machine learning engineer.

Among the 86 roles with available data on specialty visa applications, OpenAI paid between $145,000 and $530,000, with one member of the company's technical staff earning more than three times the prevailing wage for the role.

In the table above, BI compared the average salary for each job title included in the USCIS data for the two companies to the average prevailing wages for those titles.

The data offers some insight into how Musk's company approaches compensation amid a legal battle that has reignited the feud between Musk and Altman.

The pair cofounded OpenAI in 2015, and Musk was one of several Silicon Valley investors to collectively pledge $1 billion to the venture. He resigned from OpenAI's board of directors in 2018, citing a potential conflict of interest due to Tesla's work with artificial intelligence.

Since then, Musk has repeatedly bashed OpenAI and Altman, saying the company is "not what I intended at all." Musk sued OpenAI and its CEO earlier this year but withdrew the lawsuit, only to file a new suit in August. In addition to claims about OpenAI's allegedly anticompetitive practices, lawyers for Musk said that he was "deceived" and "manipulated" into cofounding the company.

"This suit is the latest move in Elon Musk's increasingly blusterous campaign to harass OpenAI for his own competitive advantage," OpenAI's attorneys wrote in motion to dismiss Musk's latest lawsuit. Since launching xAI Musk "has been trying to leverage the judicial system for an edge," they added.

Musk, Altman, and representatives for xAI and OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment.

Emails between Musk, Altman, and other OpenAI workers between 2015 and 2016 showed that Musk repeatedly emphasized the importance of recruiting top AI talent.

In the exchanges, which were included as part of Musk's most recent lawsuit, Musk wrote that recruitment should be OpenAI's "most important consideration," and the company should do "whatever it takes to bring on ace talent."

In April, Musk said xAI brought over a Tesla engineer after OpenAI began "aggressively recruiting" workers from the electric-car maker. Based on a review of LinkedIn profiles, xAI has hired at least nine former OpenAI employees, including xAI cofounder Igor Babuschkin, since Musk launched xAI in 2023.

Do you work for xAI or OpenAI? Reach out to the reporter via a non-work email and device at [email protected] or 248-894-6012

The 1988 buddy-comedy action flick "Midnight Run" had an unexpected impact on the restaurant industry. While the romp about a bounty hunter transporting an accountant across the country didn't make a box-office splash, one line stuck around.

"A restaurant is a very tricky investment," the accountant, played by Charles Grodin, tells the bounty hunter, played by Robert DeNiro. DeNiro's character dreams of opening a coffee shop with his big score, but the accountant shuts him down: "More than half of them go under within the six months."

The idea that restaurants are a bad investment predates the film, but the quote lodged in people's minds. Over the past 20 years as a cook, restaurant critic, and food writer, I've heard Grodin's risk assessment quoted repeatedly, almost verbatim. But if restaurants really are a lousy investment, then why would private-equity firms be dumping billions into the sector? Data from PitchBook found that private-equity investments into fast-casual restaurants grew from $7.7 million in 2013 to $231 million in 2023 — a nearly 3,000% increase.

In 2024 alone, Blackstone purchased 1,400 Tropical Smoothie Cafes and a majority stake in Jersey Mike's — deals that gave the chains multi-billion-dollar valuations. Sycamore Partners also bought 250 Playa Bowls locations. Before its IPO in 2023, the Mediterranean eatery Cava raised nearly $750 million from private investors. Meanwhile, SoftBank Vision Fund has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into restaurant tech over the past decade.

All that cash has led to a boom in places like Chipotle, Shake Shake, and Sweetgreen. Between 2009 and 2018, the number of fast-casual restaurants in America doubled, while sales have nearly tripled. Meanwhile, the amount of money Americans spend eating out has jumped by nearly 60% since 2009. That doesn't exactly sound like a lousy investment.

The trouble is that private equity has a knack for destroying businesses. Red Lobster declared bankruptcy earlier this year after 10 years under private-equity management, Toys "R" Us famously shut down following a private-equity takeover, and even hospitals have struggled after private equity got involved. The cash infusion to wannabe chains and franchises has also made it harder for independently funded restaurants to compete for customers, real estate, and staff. When the gravy train stops, fast-casual restaurants are going to be in trouble.

To understand why private equity is pouring money into restaurants, we have to start with the appeal of the fast-casual model. In some ways, it's the golden mean of restaurants. You can charge twice as much for a meal at a fast-casual spot as you can at a fast-food joint. In Manhattan, a Burger King cheeseburger costs $3.40, whereas a Shake Shack burger will run you $7.79. But when you look at the overhead costs, there isn't much difference. Both restaurants staff a similar number of people and rely on similar ingredients. Chipotle may offer a burrito, a bowl, a quesadilla, and a salad, but it's all more or less the same ingredients: beans, corn, salsa, cheese, and basic proteins. The limited menu enables both fast-food and fast-casual restaurants to be efficient, keep costs down, and avoid losses from food waste and labor. And since fast-casual spots appear to be the nicer restaurants — with gourmet ingredients like brioche buns, healthy-sounding options, and claims of sustainable sourcing — they can charge more. If price and speed aren't priorities, many people would prefer to grab lunch at a Chipotle than at a Taco Bell.

The model also has an edge over sit-down restaurants, which have struggled in recent years. "Casual dining proper is not doing so well," Alex M. Susskind, a professor of food and beverage management at Cornell University, says. "Fast casual has provided consumers with a better meal experience that's equal to, or in some instances better than, a casual-dining restaurant, with less of a time and financial commitment."

The food is just as good, but the service is much faster. He says that's helped make the model a better investment than a place like Applebee's. Thanks in part to those higher profit margins, one restaurant analyst said it takes 18 months for a Chipotle to pay back buildout costs, compared to five years for a Cheesecake Factory.

"PE is investing money in the fast-casual market because the economics of a fast-casual concept is much better than any other type of restaurant concept," says Chris Macksey, the CEO of Prix Fixe Accounting, which specializes in hospitality. "Profit margins are anywhere from 10% to 15% as opposed to a full-service restaurant, which is 5% to 8%. Fast casual is just a far more scalable concept."

Scalability is really the brass ring. Investors in fast-casuals aren't buying restaurants; they're buying the potential growth of restaurant brands. Susskind says the boom reminds him of the late 1990s when casual-dining brands like Applebee's, TGI Fridays, and Olive Garden were taking off. He sees the recent shutdown of some of those chains — such as TGI Fridays, Red Lobster, and Smokey Bones — as a market correction for their overexpansion.

"That's what's making the investments in these businesses attractive. Because a lot of the weaker players have been weeded out," Susskind says about fast-casual restaurants. The frenzy has also been encouraged by the successful IPOs of companies like Sweetgreen in 2021 and Cava in 2023. Seeing Cava's stock grow by nearly 250% since its IPO has left investors searching for similar success.

While Sweetgreens and Dave's Hot Chickens are popping up across the country, independent restaurateurs are often left scrambling — not even for a piece of the pie, but for the crumbs.

Tracy Goh is the chef and owner of Damaran Sara, a two-year-old Malaysian restaurant in San Francisco, home of some of the most expensive commercial real estate in America. She's experienced landlords' preferences for fast-casual chains over small businesses like hers. "Especially for me, because it's my first restaurant. I don't have data to convince them that I can stay on a lease as long as they are likely to," Goh says. "They have a preference for the franchises or the big names."

A landlord's job is to generate money from their property. Their business isn't about enriching their community; it's about finding the most reliable tenants who can pay the most rent. In the restaurant real-estate space, that often means fast-food and fast-casual brands backed by major investment firms.

"If you're Chipotle or Shake Shack, you may decide to take a lease above market. You can afford it because you're privately funded," says Talia Berman, a partner at the hospitality advisory firm Friend of Chef and an expert in New York's restaurant real-estate market. "You beat out the competition because you don't care how much money you make in that space because it wasn't meant to be profitable based on the unit economics. It's part of a larger strategy."

That strategy is all about growth, she says. The primary goal of investment-backed restaurants is to expand quickly. "They're typically barreling toward an exit. So they're looking to get purchased by Nabisco or Darden or Levy or one of these huge restaurant conglomerates. And they need to show distribution — that they're operating in many states and that they have high top line," Berman says, referring to high sales volume.

A location that can gross $2 or $3 million in a year can demonstrate to a potential buyer that the eatery is successful — even if a high rent lowers the average unit profit margin. "They're thinking short term. It's a private equity mentality," says Berman.

Investment-backed restaurants also have a timing advantage over smaller shops. When a developer begins work on a new building that might lease space to a restaurant — a strip mall, food hall, or multipurpose apartment complex for instance — it's usually working on a multiyear timeline. Moshe Batalion, the vice president of national leasing for RioCan, one of Canada's largest real-estate-investment trusts, told me the firm starts thinking about who to lease to before it even breaks ground on a new property. Leases might be signed years before the space is even ready for move-in. Independent restaurateurs typically can't plan for a restaurant that won't open for two to three years.

"For independent operators, the real disadvantage is access of capital," Susskind says. "If they have access to a decent level of capital, they can grow, open more units." For chains, that's easy to do. But, he adds, "if I'm an independent, I don't know where I'm going to get $500,000 to ink a deal and build a restaurant."

When small-time restaurants get left out of the real-estate market, diners are left with a food scene that increasingly looks and tastes the same.

Thomas Crosby, the CEO of Pal's Sudden Service, a Tennessee-based chain of 31 burger shops, is all too familiar with the downsides of private equity. It's why he has eschewed outside investment. Millions of private-equity dollars might help triple the number of Pal's locations in five years — but could the chain continue to train and retest staff to remember that the perfect french fry is 3.7 inches long?

"As soon as you start taking investments or go public, you confuse your mission," Crosby says. "It becomes, what metrics can I do to wow stockholders instead of wow customers? And I think that's how so many companies get sideways. It's kind of like cars: You drive down the interstate, and you cannot hardly tell one brand from another. It becomes so homogenous." He adds: "That's what happens in the restaurant industry."

Chasing the success of another restaurant chain means everyone just tries to copy everyone else. "To please the stockholders or investors, they've got to be all things to all people," he says. By maintaining control over his operations, Crosby says, "We don't owe people money. We don't lease land. We have zero debt."

Since the early 2000s, private-equity firms started taking on a bigger role in the companies they'd invested in; these firms didn't just expect returns down the line, they began telling companies how to achieve those goals. This was good for innovation and safety, but bad for job creation and wages, with "sizable reductions in earnings per worker in the first two years post buyout," professors from Harvard and the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business wrote in a 2014 research paper.

In the long run, private equity often leaves companies worse off. In 2019, researchers found that public companies that are bought out by private-equity firms are 10 times as likely to go bankrupt as those that aren't — a finding that complicates the argument that companies like Toys "R" Us closed simply because of market forces. Similar to the casual-dining boom before it, Susskind, the Cornell professor, believes that the investment boom in the fast-casual sector will eventually lead to a bust.

Already, the graveyard of private-equity-backed restaurants is growing. BurgerFi, which has 93 locations and 51 pizza subsidiaries, primarily in Florida, received $80 million in investments just a few years ago. But despite last year's plan to update the chain's stores, menus, and technology, the investment has largely transformed into debt. The company defaulted on $51 million in credit obligations this year, and in September, it filed for bankruptcy.

Between 2015 and 2019, Mod Pizza received a total of $334 million in private-equity investments, which enabled the brand to grow to 512 locations across Western states, with over 12,000 employees. In 2019, the firm boasted of being "the fastest-growing restaurant chain in the United States for the past four years," with a plan to hit 1,000 locations in five years. The rapid expansion outpaced realistic sales growth, and earlier this year, the company closed over 40 locations.

Similarly, Rubio's Fresh Mexican Grill, founded in 1983 in California, was acquired by Mill Road Capital in 2010 for $91 million. The new ownership updated the name (to Rubio's Coastal Grill), the interior design, and the menu. Renovations at each location cost about $200,000. The chain ended up declaring bankruptcy twice: once in 2020 and again earlier this year. Though the company attributed the first filing to pandemic lockdowns, it was already struggling to maintain its growth and stay in the green prior to 2020. When it closed more restaurants earlier this year, some employees found they were unable to cash their final paychecks.

Even some of the most visible success stories of investment-based growth haven't borne fruit. Sweetgreen, "the Starbucks of salad" that was heavily backed by venture capital before its IPO, grew from one location in 2007 to 227 this year, with plans to open another 30 a year — though the company still hasn't seen a profitable year. The chain lost over $26 million last year.

At some point, the market taps out and there isn't room for more growth. Americans are already spending 42% more money on dining out than they are on groceries.

Berman says that the high volatility creates opportunities. For one, when a cash-rich restaurant bails on a retail location, it becomes available as a turnkey space, complete with HVAC, grease traps, and floor drains. Berman's company recently made a deal for a popular food brand to build out a research kitchen. It's designed to be an experiment, but they signed a 10-year lease. "Believe me, this place is not going to be around in three years, I promise you," she says. That leaves the door open for other entrepreneurs to take over.

In other words, don't get too attached to the Sweetgreen down the street. It may take longer than six months for private-equity-backed restaurants to go under, but there's a good chance your new fave won't be around in a few years.

Corey Mintz is a food reporter focusing on the intersection between food, economics, and labor. He is also the author of "The Next Supper: The End Of Restaurants As We Knew Them, And What Comes After."

It's been decades since a titan of tech became a pop-culture icon. Steve Jobs stepped out on stage in his black turtleneck in 1998. Elon Musk set his sights on Mars in 2002. Mark Zuckerberg emerged from his Harvard dorm room in 2004.

And now, after years of stasis in Silicon Valley, we have Sam Altman.

The cofounder and CEO of the chatbot pioneer OpenAI stands at the center of what's shaping up to be a trillion-dollar restructuring of the global economy. His image — boyishly earnest, chronically monotonic, carelessly coiffed — is a throwback to the low-charisma, high-intelligence nerd kings of Silicon Valley's glory days. And as with his mythic-hero predecessors, people are hanging on his every word. In September, when Altman went on a podcast called "How I Write" and mentioned his love of pens from Uniball and Muji, his genius life hack ignited the internet. "OpenAI's CEO only uses 2 types of pens to take notes," Fortune reported — with a video of the podcast.

It's easy to laugh at our desperation for crumbs of wisdom from Altman's table. But the notability of Altman's notetaking ability is a meaningful signifier. His ideas on productivity and entrepreneurship — not to mention everything from his take on science fiction to his choice of vitamins — have become salient not just to the worlds of tech and business, but to the broader culture. The new mayor-elect of San Francisco, for instance, put Altman on his transition team. And have you noticed that a lot of tech bros are starting to wear sweaters with the sleeves rolled up? A Jobsian singularity could be upon us.

But the attention to Altman's pen preferences raises a larger question: What does his mindset ultimately mean for the rest of us? How will the way he thinks shape the world we live in?

To answer that question, I've spent weeks taking a Talmudic dive into the Gospel According to Sam Altman. I've pored over hundreds of thousands of words he's uttered in blog posts, conference speeches, and classroom appearances. I've dipped into a decade's worth of interviews he's given — maybe 40 hours or so. I won't claim to have taken anything more than a core sample of the vast Altmanomicon. But immersing myself in his public pronouncements has given me a new appreciation for what makes Altman tick. The innovative god-kings of the past were rule-breaking disruptors or destroyers of genres. The new guy, by contrast, represents the apotheosis of what his predecessors wrought. Distill the past three decades of tech culture and business practice into a super-soldier serum, inject it into the nearest scrawny, pale arm, and you get Sam Altman — Captain Silicon Valley, defender of the faith.

Let's start with the vibes. Listening to Altman for hours on end, I came away thinking that he seems like a pretty nice guy. Unlike Jobs, who bestrode the stage at Apple events dropping one-more-things like a modern-day Prometheus, Altman doesn't spew ego everywhere. In interviews, he comes across as confident but laid back. He often starts his sentences with "so," his affect as flat as his native Midwest. He also has a Midwesterner's amiability, somehow seeming to agree with the premise of almost any question, no matter how idiotic. When Joe Rogan asked Altman whether he thinks AI would one day be able, via brain chips, to edit human personalities to be less macho, Altman not only let it ride, he turned the interview around and started asking Rogan questions about himself.

Another contrast with the tech gurus of yore: Altman says he doesn't care much about money. His surprise firing at OpenAI, he says, taught him to value his loving relationships — a "recompilation of values" that was "a blessing in disguise." In the spring, Altman told a Stanford entrepreneur class that his money-, power-, and status-seeking phases were all in the rearview. "At this point," Altman said, "I feel driven by wanting to do something useful and interesting."

Altman is even looking into universal basic income — giving money to everyone, straight out, no strings attached. That's partly because he thinks artificial intelligence will make paying jobs as rare as coelacanths. But it's also a product of unusual self-awareness. Altman, famously, was in the "first class" of Y Combinator, Silicon Valley's ur-incubator of tech startups. Now that he's succeeded, he recalls that grant money as a kind of UBI — a gift that he says prevented him from ending up at Goldman Sachs. Rare is the colossus of industry who acknowledges that anyone other than himself tugged on those bootstraps.

Altman's seeming rejection of wealth is a key element of his mythos. On a recent appearance on the "All-In" podcast, the hosts questioned Altman's lack of equity in OpenAI, saying it made him seem less trustworthy — no skin in the game. Altman explained that the company was set up as a nonprofit, so equity wasn't a thing. He really wished he'd gotten some, he added, if only to stop the endless stream of questions about his lack of equity. Charming! (Under Altman's watch, OpenAI is shifting to a for-profit model.)

Altman didn't get where he is because he made a fortune in tech. Y Combinator, where he started out, was the launchpad for monsters like Reddit, Dropbox, Airbnb, Stripe, DoorDash, and dozens of other companies you've never heard of, because they never got big. Loopt, the company Altman founded at 20 years old, was in the second category. Yet despite that, the Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham named him president of the incubator in 2014. It wasn't because of what Altman had achieved — Loopt burned through $30 million before it folded — but because he embodies two key Silicon Valley mindsets. First, he emphasizes the need for founders to express absolute certainty in themselves, no matter what anyone says. And second, he believes that scale and growth can solve every problem. To Altman, those two tenets aren't just the way to launch a successful startup — they're the twin turbines that power all societal progress. More than any of his predecessors, he openly preaches Silicon Valley's almost religious belief in certainty and scale. They are the key to his mindset — and maybe to our AI-enmeshed future.

In 2020, Altman wrote a blog post called "The Strength of Being Misunderstood." It was primarily a paean to the idea of believing you are right about everything. Altman suggested that people spend too much time worrying about what other people think about them, and should instead "trade being short-term low-status for being long-term high-status." Being misunderstood by most people, he went on, is actually a strength, not a weakness — "as long as you are right."

For Altman, being right is not the same thing as being good. When he talks about who the best founders are and what makes a successful business, he doesn't seem to think it matters what their products actually do or how they affect the world. Back in 2015, Altman told Kara Swisher that Y Combinator didn't really care about the specific pitches it funded — the founders just needed to have "raw intelligence." Their actual ideas? Not so important.

"The ideas are so malleable," Altman said. "Are these founders determined, are they passionate about this, do they seem committed to it, have they really thought about all the issues they're likely to face, are they good communicators?" Altman wasn't betting on their ideas — he was betting on their ability to sell their ideas, even if they were bad. That's one of the reasons, he says, that Y Combinator didn't have a coworking space — so there was no place for people to tell each other that their ideas sucked.

"There are founders who don't take no for an answer and founders who bend the world to their will," Altman told a startups class at Stanford, "and those are the ones who are in the fund." What really matters, he added, is that founders "have the courage of your convictions to keep doing this unpopular thing because you understand the way the world is going in a way that other people don't."

One example Altman cites is Airbnb, whose founders hit on their big idea when they maxed out their credit cards trying to start a different company and wanted to rent out a spare room for extra cash. He also derives his disdain for self-doubt from Elon Musk, who once gave him a tour of SpaceX. "The thing that sticks in memory," Altman wrote in 2019, "was the look of absolute certainty on his face when he talked about sending large rockets to Mars. I left thinking 'huh, so that's the benchmark for what conviction looks like.'"

This, Altman says, is why founding a startup is something people should do when they're young — because it requires turning work-life balance into a pile of radioactive slag. "Have almost too much self-belief," he writes. "Almost to the point of delusion."

So if Altman believes that certainty in an idea is more important than the idea itself, how does he measure success? What determines whether a founder turns out to be "right," as he puts it? The answer, for Altman, is scale. You start a company, and that company winds up with lots of users and makes a lot of money. A good idea is one that scales, and scaling is what makes an idea good.

For Altman, this isn't just a business model. It's a philosophy. "You get truly rich by owning things that increase rapidly in value," he wrote in a 2019 blog post called "How to Be Successful." It doesn't matter what — real estate, natural resources, equity in a business. And the way to make things increase rapidly in value is "by making things people want at scale." In Altman's view, big growth isn't just a way to keep investors happy. It's the evidence that confirms one's unwavering belief in the idea.

Artificial intelligence itself, of course, is based on scale — on the ever-expanding data that AI feeds on. Altman said at a conference that OpenAI's models would double or triple in size every year, which he took to mean they'll eventually reach full sentience. To him, that just goes to show the potency of scale as a concept — it has the ability to imbue a machine with true intelligence. "It feels to me like we just stumbled on a new fact of nature or science or whatever you want to call it," Altman said on "All-In." "I don't believe this literally, but it's like a spiritual point — that intelligence is an emergent property of matter, and that's like a rule of physics or something."

Altman says he doesn't actually know how intelligent, or superintelligent, AI will get — or what it will think when it starts thinking. But he believes that scale will provide the answers. "We will hit limits, but we don't know where those will be," he said on Ezra Klein's podcast. "We'll also discover new things that are really powerful. We don't know what those will be either." You just trust that the exponential growth curves will take you somewhere you want to go.

In all the recordings and writings I've sampled, Altman speaks only rarely about things he likes outside startups and AI. In the canon I find few books, no movies, little visual art, not much food or drink. Asked what his favorite fictional utopias are, Altman mentions "Star Trek" and the Isaac Asimov short story "The Last Question," which is about an artificial intelligence ascending to godhood over eons and creating a new universe. Back in 2015, he said "The Martian," the tale of a marooned astronaut hacking his way back to Earth, was eighth on his stack of bedside books. Altman has also praised the Culture series by Iain Banks, about a far-future galaxy of abundance and space communism, where humans and AIs live together in harmony.

Fiction, to Altman, appears to hold no especially mysterious human element of creativity. He once acknowledged that the latest version of ChatGPT wasn't very good at storytelling, but he thought it was going to get much better. "You show it a bunch of examples of what makes a good story and what makes a bad story, which I don't think is magic," he said. "I think we really understand that well now. We just haven't tried to do that."

It's also not clear to me whether Altman listens to music — at least not for pleasure. On the "Life in Seven Songs" podcast, most of the favorite songs Altman cited were from his high school and college days. But his top pick was Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2. "This became something I started listening to when I worked," he said. "It's a great level of excitement, but it's not distracting. You can listen to it very loudly and very quietly." Music can be great, but it shouldn't get in the way of productivity.

For Altman, even drug use isn't recreational. In 2016, a "New Yorker" profile described Altman as nervous to the point of hypochondria. He would telephone his mother — a physician — to ask whether a headache might be cancer. He once wrote that he "used to hate criticism of any sort and actively avoided it," and he has said he used to be "a very anxious and unhappy person." He relied on caffeine to be productive, and used marijuana to sleep.

Now, though? He's "very calm." He doesn't sweat criticism anymore. If that sounds like the positive outcome of years of therapy, well — sort of. Last summer, Altman told Joe Rogan that an experience with "psychedelic therapy" had been one of the most important turning points in his life. "I struggled with all kinds of anxiety and other negative things," he said, "and to watch all of that go away — I came back a totally different person, and I was like, 'I have been lied to.'"

He went into more detail on the Songs podcast in September. "I think psychedelic experiences can be totally incredible, and the ones that have been totally life-changing for me have been the ones where you go travel to a guide, and it's psychedelic medicine," he said. As for his anxiety, "if you had told me a one-weekend-long retreat in Mexico was going to change that, I would have said, 'absolutely not.'" Psychedelics were just another life hack to resolve emotional turmoil. (I reached out to Altman and offered to discuss my observations with him, in the hopes he'd correct any places where he felt I was misreading him. He declined.)

AI started attracting mainstream attention only in the past couple of years, but the field is much older than that — and Altman cofounded OpenAI nearly a decade ago. So he's been asked what "artificial general intelligence" is and when we're going to get it so often, and for so long, that his answers often include a whiff of frustration. These days, he says that AGI is when the machine is as smart as the median human — choose your own value for "smart" and "median" there — and "superintelligence" is when it's smarter than all of us meatbags squished together. But ask him what AI is for, and he's a lot less certain-seeming today than he used to be.

There's the ability to write code, sure. Altman also says AI will someday be a tutor as good as those available to rich people. It'll do consultations on medical issues, maybe help with "productivity" (by which he seems to mean the speed at which a person can learn something, versus having to look it up). And he said scientists had been emailing him to say that the latest versio of ChatGPT has increased the rate at which they can do "great science" (by which he seems to mean the speed at which they can run evaluations of possible new drugs).

And what would you or I do with a superintelligent buddy? "What if everybody in the world had a really competent company of 10,000 employees?" Altman once asked. "What would we be able to create for each other?" He was being rhetorical — but whatever the answer turns out to be, he's sure it will be worth the tremendous cost in energy and resources it will take to achieve it. As OpenAI-type services expand and proliferate, he says, "the marginal cost of intelligence and the marginal cost of energy are going to trend rapidly toward zero." He has recently speculated that intelligence will be more valuable than money, and that instead of universal basic income, we should give people universal basic compute — which is to say, free access to AI. In Altman's estimation, not knowing what AI will do doesn't mean we shouldn't go ahead and restructure all of society to serve its needs.

And besides, AI won't take long to give us the answer. Superintelligence, Altman has promised, is only "thousands of days" away — half a decade, at minimum. But, he says, the intelligent machine that emerges probably won't be an LLM chatbot. It will use an entirely different technical architecture that no one, not even OpenAI, has invented yet.

That, at its core, reflects an unreconstructed, dot-com-boom mindset. Altman doesn't know what the future will bring, but he's in a hurry to get there. No matter what you think about AI — productivity multiplier, economic engine, hallucinating plagiarism machine, Skynet — it's not hard to imagine what could happen, for good and ill, if you combine Altman's absolute certainty with monstrous, unregulated scale. It only took a couple of decades for Silicon Valley to go from bulky computer mainframes to the internet, smartphones, and same-day delivery — along with all the disinformation, political polarization, and generalized anxiety that came with them.

But that's the kind of ballistic arc of progress that Altman is selling. He is, at heart, an evangelist for the Silicon Valley way. He didn't build the tech behind ChatGPT; the most important thing he ever built and scaled is Y Combinator, an old-fashioned business network of human beings. His wealth comes from investments in other people's companies. He's a macher, not a maker.

In a sense, Altman has codified the beliefs and intentions of the tech big shots who preceded him. He's just more transparent about it than they were. Did Steve Jobs project utter certainty? Sure. But he didn't give interviews about the importance of projecting utter certainty; he just introduced killer laptops, blocked rivals from using his operating system, and built the app store. Jeff Bezos didn't found Amazon by telling the public he planned to scale his company to the point that it would pocket 40 cents of every dollar spent online; he just started mailing people books. But Altman is on the record. When he says he's absolutely sure ChatGPT will change the world, we know that he thinks CEOs have to say they're absolutely sure their product will change the world. His predecessors in Silicon Valley wrote the playbook for Big Tech. Altman is just reading it aloud. He's touting a future he hasn't built yet, along with the promise that he can will it into existence — whatever it'll wind up looking like — one podcast appearance at a time.

Adam Rogers is a senior correspondent at Business Insider.

Kevin Weil showed no sign of the heat when he took to the stage at the Marriott Marquis in downtown San Francisco on an unseasonably sweaty early October morning.

Trim and tan, outfitted in the de rigueur Silicon Valley uniform of a slim-fit gray tee, stonewashed blue jeans, and an Apple Watch Ultra, the chief product officer of OpenAI talked easily about the ambitious artificial intelligence-powered future his red-hot employer was building.

"You could imagine a world where you ask it a hard question about how you cure some particular form of cancer, and you let it think for five hours, five days, five months," Weil prophesied in response to a question about the "reasoning capabilities" of AI.

But neither he nor his onstage interlocutor, Anyscale cofounder Robert Nishihara, ever acknowledged the elephant in the room: Weil wasn't supposed to be there.

The event, the AI infrastructure conference Ray Summit, had originally booked OpenAI's chief technology officer, Mira Murati, to speak. Just days before, the high-profile executive had abruptly quit, prompting the last-minute swap. Murati's exit added to a long list of recent departures from OpenAI, one of the world's most valuable and hyped startups, even as it closed a historic $6.6 billion funding round on the day Weil spoke.

If Sam Altman is the starry-eyed visionary of OpenAI, Weil is its executor. He leads a product team that turns blue-sky research into products and services it can sell, putting him at the center of a philosophical rift that has caused spectacular upheaval at the company, which was recently valued at $157 billion.

In two years, OpenAI went from a nonprofit lab nominally working to develop digital intelligence for the public good to a world-famous startup that puts out shiny new products and models every few months. The company is now attempting to become a for-profit operation to lure would-be backers to write bigger checks, which it needs to scale its business. Altman recently announced that the company's flagship product, ChatGPT, now has 300 million weekly users, triple the number it had a year ago.

Along with this astronomical growth, OpenAI has succumbed to a brain drain: Its chief research officer, head of AGI readiness, co-lead of its video-generation model Sora, and the list goes on. While this has sparked alarm bells in some corners of the tech industry, it has also elevated the profile of the senior leaders who have remained. That includes Weil, a relative OpenAI newcomer who joined in June and rapidly became one of its most notable ambassadors.

At a point when employee voices of dissent were growing louder, 41-year-old Weil arrived as a steady-handed product guru with a Midas touch. He was a longtime Twitter insider who created products that made the social media company money during a revolving door of chief executives.

At Instagram, he helped kneecap Snapchat's growth with competitive product releases such as Stories and live video. (Not everything he touched turned to gold, though. Weil also led Facebook's headlong charge into financial services as a cofounder of Libra, its ill-fated stablecoin.)

Weil declined to be interviewed for this article, which is based on conversations with five former senior colleagues, four of whom spoke on the record, and his past public interviews.

Twitter and Facebook were no strangers to chaos and scandal, but even their most challenging times are rivaled by OpenAI's workplace turmoil. There was a failed coup last year, bitter feuds among some workers, and an ongoing existential arms race to build "digital gods."

Weil's peers are certain he's the man to promote harmony. He's spent the better part of 15 years cranking out products that mostly delighted users and made money. He also has something his new employer desperately needs: The ability to pursue the company's best interests and balance human emotions at the same time.

Kevin Weil isn't a household name. But for those in the know in Silicon Valley, he's something better: "He's the get-shit-done guy," said James Everingham, who worked with Weil at Instagram and Facebook.

Sarah Friar, OpenAI's new head of finance, has long admired Weil's product chops. Former Twitter boss Adam Bain called Weil "Twitter's secret weapon" for driving ad revenue. Everingham also described Weil as a workhorse who never shrank from a deadline.

"He brings that stamina, that dogged focus on the outcome," said April Underwood, a venture capitalist who worked closely with Weil on Twitter's ad products.

Weil's relentless work ethic and people skills are recurring themes among former colleagues. At Facebook, two colleagues said he would often badge into the office first and fire off messages late into the night.

One colleague from Planet, a satellite imagery company where Weil worked as president until May of 2024, recalled how he started each week by posting in Slack the top three things on his mind. According to Everingham, Weil's a rare breed of product manager who codes almost as well as he writes memos. That endeared Weil to the engineers he needed to build products.

Weil shrugs off the pressures of work with long runs and Diet Mountain Dew. Every birthday, he runs his age in miles and, in June, marked his 41st year with a 41-mile jaunt near his home in the posh California suburb of Portola Valley, according to a public Instagram post. Weil lives with his venture capitalist wife, Elizabeth, and three children.

"He is a little bit superhuman in just the sheer amount that he works and works out," said Ashley Johnson, chief financial officer and now president of Planet.

Weil set aside a Stanford doctorate in theoretical particle physics to cave out a path in tech, according to a 2017 speech he gave at his alma mater. In 2009, Weil landed at Twitter as a data scientist. At the time, Twitter had little revenue, never mind profit, to show for its many millions of users. That left investors wondering how Twitter would translate its popularity into money.

When Twitter began developing ads a year later, Weil stepped up to lead it. Katie Jacobs Stanton, a venture capitalist who overlapped with Weil at Twitter, said employees debated how to show ads in a way that didn't degrade the user experience, pitting engineers against marketers. Weil threaded the needle. Under his oversight, Twitter launched ads that looked like tweets inside the feed. AdAge reported in 2011 that hundreds of brands had embraced the format, helping to establish the cash flow that made Twitter's IPO possible in 2013.

Then, in early 2016, Instagram cofounder Kevin Systrom asked Weil to dinner as Snapchat was nipping at the Facebook-owned photo app's heels.

Instagram needed to get users, especially teens, to post more; Systrom wanted a pinch-hitter to get new features designed and added to the app and into the hands of Instagram users. Weil told CNBC in 2017 that he had already resigned from Twitter with plans to train for a 50-mile ultramarathon snaking the American River in California's Central Valley. He took the Instagram job and, a month later, finished fifth in the race.

The product leader wasted no time in the photo-sharing battle. In just a few months, Instagram rolled out a feature similar to Snapchat's disappearing photos and videos, then added popular face filters and also introduced a feed-ranking algorithm to highlight more relevant content. According to Instagram, its user base doubled within two years of Weil's arrival, reaching 1 billion monthly users by 2018; Snapchat's earnings statements during the same period indicated that its user growth had flatlined.

Everingham, his former colleague, recounted how Weil identified Stories as Instagram's killer feature and assembled a nimble team of engineers under the CEO's supervision to build it.

"He had this clarity of thinking I haven't seen in anyone else," said Everingham, now an engineering leader of developer infrastructure at Meta.

Weil's tenure at Instagram was defined by a controversial strategy: borrowing liberally from the competition. The features that became Instagram staples had their genesis in a rival's playbook, which neither Systrom nor Weil denied in interviews with Vox and TechCrunch over the years.

This strategy is particularly poignant as Weil steps into his new role at OpenAI, a company navigating a thicket of copyright lawsuits. New outlets, authors, and celebrities have sued OpenAI over using their work to train its large language models.

That's far from the only struggle the product chief faces. He's positioned as one of Altman's top lieutenants at a time when OpenAI's famed brain trust is leaving in droves, often to start competitor companies that may threaten OpenAI's early dominance in the space.

Former OpenAI employees and siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei founded Anthropic, one of OpenAI's most notable competitors, in 2021. Former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever has raised $1 billion for his new venture, Safe Superintelligence. Ex-researcher Aravind Srinivas is working on an AI-powered search engine, Perplexity. In early December, Murati, the former CTO, told Wired she was "figuring out" what her new venture would look like, though it's unclear if her startup will directly compete with OpenAI.

Another threat comes from open-source AI models championed by the likes of Meta. If these free-to-use systems prove good enough for most users, it will make it far harder for OpenAI to effectively monetize its AI models and, ultimately, turn a profit.

Because with over $20 billion funding, according to PitchBook data, and only an estimated $3.7 billion in revenue in 2024 plus losses of $5 billion, according to leaked documents obtained by The New York Times in September), OpenAI still faces a long road to prove that it can deliver a return on the unprecedented volumes of capital plowed into the company. And that's without even getting into the growing concern that improvements in AI models are slowing.

Onstage at the Ray Summit in October, Weil shrugged off the threat of competition. When asked about whether the current gap in quality between open-source models and OpenAI's premium AI products will shrink, he quipped: "I mean, we're certainly going to do our best to make it grow."

In theory, a proven leader like Weil could help guide the operation past the power struggles and talent losses toward a more steady state. By all accounts, he's a deft conciliator who can empathize with the needs and concerns of multiple stakeholders.

"He's somewhat of a diplomat," said Jacobs Stanton, his former Twitter colleague.

At Facebook, where Weil helped develop a stablecoin backed by a basket of international currencies, he had to mediate between crypto natives, the product purists who wanted to take a more user-friendly, less decentralized approach, and policymakers, according to two former Facebook colleagues. The project ultimately couldn't overcome regulatory roadblocks and an exodus of corporate partners; Meta shuttered the project in 2022, selling $182 million worth of assets to Silvergate Bank.

How Weil's experience maps onto his current role remains to be seen. With its several thousand employees, regulators scrutinizing its every move, and 300 million weekly active users of ChatGPT, OpenAI is more complex than any company Weil's stepped into before. In just six months since his arrival, OpenAI has rolled out a large language model that can solve more complex problems via a process the company calls "reasoning," and a search engine within ChatGPT.

Additionally, OpenAI launched a voice mode to talk to ChatGPT, which Weil personally tested as a "universal translator" during recent trips to Seoul and Tokyo. Reflecting on the release, Weil shared on LinkedIn, "It feels normal to me now, but two years ago I wouldn't have believed it was possible."

Last week OpenAI announced an ambitious "12 days of shipmas," a festive product sprint likely to keep Weil working long hours. While he's managed to keep the proverbial plates spinning in his professional life, there's been one noticeable casualty: his workout routine. App data from Strava shows that he's been logging fewer hours of cycling and running each month since he joined OpenAI.

Asked about Weil's exercise, OpenAI spokesperson Niko Felix said Weil recorded 96 minutes of physical activity a day in November. "I would say he's doing quite alright," Felix said.

Melia Russell is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, covering startups and venture capital. Her Signal number is +1 603-913-3085, and her email is [email protected].

Rob Price is a senior correspondent for Business Insider and writes features and investigations about the technology industry. His Signal number is +1 650-636-6268, and his email is [email protected].