Nova York – Se o inverno das startups foi o período marcado pela escassez de capital, o momento atual é o início de um novo ciclo de investimentos, marcado por empresas que amadureceram, aprenderam a gerir caixa, buscar rentabilidade e manter o crescimento mesmo com escassez de recursos. “Hoje temos muitas empresas maduras, em estágio […]

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• Google and Amazon have ambitions to sell AI chips to customers.
• That could make things awkward with Nvidia, which the two tech giants also rely on.
• Taking on Nvidia won't be easy, but one analyst said the process is now "irreversible."

Two of Nvidia's biggest customers might be turning into its biggest threat.

For three years, Nvidia's stock has defied gravity on the premise that the AI industry needs its chips. On Wednesday, when Google and Amazon reported their Q1 earnings, both signaled ambitions to sell their own custom AI chips directly to customers.

So far, Google's TPUs and Amazon's Trainium chips have only been available through Google and Amazon's cloud services. Customers can pay to use them, but they don't own them.

Nvidia is the undisputed leader in AI chips right now. While that shows no sign of stopping anytime soon, recent remarks from Google and Amazon suggest they are ready to challenge Nvidia's throne.

Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon, laid down the gauntlet to Nvidia in his annual letter to shareholders earlier this month.

"Virtually all AI thus far has been done on Nvidia chips, but a new shift has started," Jassy wrote, adding that it's "quite possible" that Amazon could start selling its chips directly to customers.

He put a timeline on this plan on the company's Wednesday earnings call, saying "there's a good chance" Amazon will start offering full racks of Trainium chips beyond its own cloud "over the next couple of years."

Google gave an even stronger commitment — and a nearer timeline.

On Wednesday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai publicly said for the first time that the company plans to deliver TPU chips to a "select group of customers" in their own data centers this year, but said the "vast majority" of revenues from those sales won't be realized until 2027.

Pichai said there was a big opportunity for Google's semiconductor business, which would also help fund the next generation of chips. That flywheel could create a mammoth business for Google. Morgan Stanley said in a December research note that selling 500,000 TPU chips could add roughly $13 billion in revenue to Google's balance sheet in 2027.

The company said in its 10-Q filing that it had so far signed a "limited number of agreements" to supply TPUs to customers.

It's also where things could get awkward. Google and Amazon are also big customers of Nvidia. They purchase Nvidia's chips to lease to their customers in their own data centers. Amazon and Google have both said that they will continue to work with Nvidia.

Nvidia shares were down more thean 4% on Thursday. The company didn't immediately respond to a Business Insider request for comment.

'Concerned but not worried'

Breaking into Nvidia's chip dominance will not be easy, analysts told Business Insider.

"Nvidia should be concerned but not worried," said Alvin Nguyen, a senior analyst at Forrester. Nvidia has built a strong ecosystem of hardware, software, and support that has made it easy for customers to choose them, he said.

"Selling products is very different than access to them," he said, adding that Amazon and Google would need to provide services like education and support to enterprises looking to buy their chips.

Google and Amazon's chip racks are also "very bespoke and proprietary" and customized for their own respective data centers, said Patrick Moorhead, CEO and chief analyst of Moor Insights & Strategy. That poses a challenge for reaching mass adoption, he said.

Plus, the chip market isn't a zero-sum game. AI companies are increasingly diversifying and using chips from multiple suppliers simultaneously. OpenAI, for example, has chip deals with Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom, among others.

However, custom silicon is becoming an "increasingly important part of the AI story" for Google and Amazon, Bernstein analyst Mark Shmulik wrote in a note on Thursday. Both companies are pitching their chips as being more cost-effective than Nvidia's.

That opportunity is also opening up as the needs of the AI industry shifts. Earlier this month, Google announced a new TPU chip specifically for inference — the process of running the models once they're trained — which is becoming more critical as more companies bring AI agents online.

Beatriz Valle, a senior analyst for enterprise technology & services at GlobalData, called the decision by Google and Amazon an "extraordinary move" that will diversify the chip sector — and reduce cloud providers' dependence on Nvidia chips.

"This process will take years but it is irreversible now," she said.

• After going on over 20 cruises in the last 10 years, I've picked up some unconventional tips.
• A roll of duct tape is easy enough to pack and comes in handy for small emergencies.
• I also like to book spa appointments on port days because they tend to be cheaper.

I've been on over 20 cruises in the last decade, and always have another one on the horizon.

Throughout the years, I've accumulated an array of helpful travel tips, but my favorite hacks go beyond the usual advice like downloading the cruise line's app and packing a lanyard.

Here are five unconventional cruise tips I swear by that make life on board easier, more comfortable, and more cost-effective. 

I always pack a roll of duct tape, which can fix almost everything.

I always add duct tape to my list of things to pack because it's easy to bring and comes in handy for small emergencies.

For example, I've used it to repair a broken suitcase in a pinch or to bind flip-flops back together long enough to limp to the gift shop to buy a replacement pair.

On one recent cruise, I even used it to cover the motion sensor on the light in our room, which turned on automatically whenever someone walked between the bed and the bathroom.

Though a motion-sensor hall light was convenient in theory, we didn't want to wake each other up if we got up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. We just made sure to remove the tape before we left.

For an elevated shower experience, I like to visit the gym.

In my experience, cruise ship bathrooms are designed to be efficient, not spacious. The small shower gets the job done, but it's definitely cramped, especially if you're a bigger person.

I've found that the showers in the gym are almost always larger and sometimes have additional bathroom amenities, such as mouthwash and elevated bath towels.

Doing laundry on board makes packing for longer cruises much easier.

There's usually a laundry or ironing room tucked away on deck for guests. I always make use of these rooms, as washing clothes mid-trip is a great way to minimize how much I need to pack.

Cruise cabins are small, and storage space is limited, so doing laundry on board is the perfect solution.

Plus, I've found these rooms are a surprisingly good place to meet interesting people.

I like to book spa appointments on port days.

Port days are often quieter on the ship because most passengers are ashore exploring.

If I'm not excited about a particular stop or I've visited it before, I consider staying on board and going to the spa instead.

On sea days, it can be tough to book a facial or massage, but on port days, I've found the schedule tends to be much more open. There are often money-saving specials, too, and the relaxation rooms feel so much more peaceful.

I rarely book a room with a balcony.

In my opinion, a room with a balcony isn't essential unless you're on an Alaskan cruise, where being able to take in the scenery is important.

On my first cruise, a travel agent told me I "had" to book a room with a balcony, and that once I did, I'd never be able to cruise in an interior cabin again. However, I don't think that's true.

I love a luxe stateroom as much as the next person, but I've had just as much fun on cruises where we've booked the cheapest cabin without any windows.

This story was originally published on November 21, 2025, and most recently updated on April 27, 2026.

• Before I had kids, I didn't put much thought or prep into my travel plans.
• A few encounters while abroad have made me change my ways now that I often have kids with me.
• I now travel with apostilled copies of their birth certificates and a letter from their father.

Before kids, I traveled the world alone with nothing more than a backpack and a worn guidebook. I rarely made plans in advance and enjoyed the spontaneity and surprises that were a part of globetrotting without much advance planning.

Once I started traveling with my children, that approach seemed irresponsible and, at times, downright dangerous. Now, I put a lot more care and thought into my trips before leaving home.

As someone who has taken my kids to 30 countries on six continents, I've found that a little advanced planning goes a long way. Here are the four steps I always take before traveling with my kids to help ensure that our trips go smoothly and that we all stay safe.

I always look up the emergency number for wherever we are.

Once, while driving in Canada with my kids, I got lost in a dark, industrial neighborhood at night. No one was around, and I started to feel uneasy, unsure if anyone was lurking in the shadows.

At home, I knew I could call 9-1-1 for assistance in an emergency. However, as my panic level started to rise, I realized I didn't know who to call for help in Canada. (I've since learned the number to dial is actually 9-1-1, but that's not the case for most other countries.)

Eventually, I found my way back to civilization, no worse for wear. However, now I always look up the emergency number to call when I land.

On a subsequent trip to Paris, an Uber began veering wildly off course. It turned out the driver had detoured due to construction, but I was glad I knew to dial 1-1-2 instead of 9-1-1 if I thought my kids were in danger.

I double-check that my health insurance covers us wherever we are going

When I was young and reckless, I assumed I would never get sick or injured, especially on a trip. In hindsight, I was remarkably lucky that I never caught more than a mild case of Montezuma's Revenge abroad.

After a health scare on a trip to Jamaica, I no longer take any chances. Midway through what was supposed to be a relaxing trip, my son developed a fever and started vomiting. The resort where we were staying called a doctor who suspected appendicitis. I panicked, wondering if our insurance would cover a pricey operation or medical evacuation.

Fortunately, my son recovered quickly with an antibiotic, but now I always double-check that our health insurance will cover us abroad, including to far-flung destinations like Antarctica. If not, I will look into buying travel insurance that will cover medical care and evacuation. Before travel, I also check that my children have all the recommended vaccines for our trip.

I always pack my children's birth certificates

My first trip abroad after becoming a mother was to a destination wedding in the Caribbean. I was allowed in easily with my infant son strapped to my chest. However, leaving was not so easy. When trying to return home, a border guard questioned me extensively, asking for proof that I was the baby's mother. I managed to convince the agent that I was indeed my son's mother, but the situation rattled me.

To avoid a similar issue, I now carry official copies of my children's birth certificates when we travel abroad. For good measure, I had the documents apostilled by the Secretary of State for Washington, DC, where they were born. An apostille is a type of verification similar to notarization, but it is recognized in more than 125 countries worldwide, making it a better choice for international travel.

Although this may seem like overkill, I have been asked for proof that my children are mine twice, once when entering the United States and once when entering the U.K. Although I likely could have proven my children are mine without these documents, I don't want to take any chances, and having them on hand made the process much easier and faster.

I get a notarized letter from my children's father stating that I have permission to travel with them

Although my husband and I are happily married, his demanding work schedule often leaves me traveling solo with our kids. On several occasions, immigration officials have asked me for proof that I had my husband's permission to take my children abroad.

Once, I was asked for the same documentation when returning to the United States. Now, I always carry a notarized letter of consent signed by my husband. I use a free template I found online and update it with the specific dates and location for every trip, then I take it to my bank to have it notarized for free before we go.

Although carrying additional documents can be a pain, I remind myself that additional paperwork is for my children's protection because it helps combat child trafficking and kidnapping.

• Tokenmaxxing is all the rage in Big Tech. For startups, the trend is opening up debate.
• Some founders told Business Insider that they spent big on tokens; others used capped subscription plans.
• One founder called tokenmaxxing "extremely stupid." Another said: "You've got to spend money to make money."

Kavitta Ghai wants her startup's engineers to spend more tokens.

The 29-year-old cofounder of Nectir started setting minimum quotas for Claude Code use. First it was at least $100 in tokens a week, then $200. Now, the expectation is that her engineers each spend a couple thousand in AI tokens a month.

The strategy has been successful, Ghai said. Some of Nectir's senior engineers were previously skeptical of AI coding tools; now, they call it their "army of coders," she said.

But she doesn't think Nectir is "tokenmaxxing," the buzzword du jour for techies racing to spend as much as they can. "We don't really play into the Silicon Valley trends," Ghai said. "We live in our own world, and we're competing against ourselves."

Across Big Tech, engineers are racing to spend as many tokens as possible. A token is a measure of AI compute. The more tokens burned, the more the engineer employs AI tools. Employees at Meta reportedly competed on a token leaderboard before it was taken down.

What of the little guy? Startups are an edge case: relatively tiny teams that want to be on the cutting edge of tech but might not have the same money to spend. Some startup leaders told Business Insider that big token bills helped them succeed. Others scoffed at the idea, preferring to stick to the lower-cost subscriptions.

The startups spending big on tokens

Aron Solberg doesn't want the competition of a token leaderboard — but he does want the mindset behind it.

The 44-year-old cofounder of Risotto sees token spending as a "force multiplier" for a small team. The company uses OpenAI and Anthropic's models, and said it spends $4,000-5,000 per month on tokens. Six months ago, Risotto says he spent one-tenth of that sum.

"It's trending up a lot," Solberg said.

"There's an old adage that rings true," he said, whether it was for hiring new employees or spending liberally on tokens: "You've got to spend money to make money."

Quang Hoang is similarly spending big. He wrote in an email that his startup, Vybe, has an "unlimited credit policy" and was thinking about minimum quotas.

Investors are also incentivizing spending — and might foot the bill.

Hoang tells founders he invests in to allocate "at least their salary amount to tokens." (Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang made headlines last month for saying he would be "deeply alarmed" if one of his $500,000 engineers did not consume at least $250,000 of tokens.)

Accelerators like Y Combinator offer free token credits to their participants. "At YC, we let our engineers let it rip," CEO Garry Tan wrote on X. Those credits help some founders to spend big. These founders aren't tokenmaxxers, but do believe that there are productivity benefits.

Traverse cofounder Lance Yan believed in Tan's message: "We usually just let it rip." The 19-year-old said he uses the best models with the maximum effort, not worrying about the costs. Between his Claude Max subscription and the credits that offered by YC, he can spend big without hitting a limit.

He's not a fan of rationing tokens. "That's stupid," he said. "You're just harming your own startup."

26-year-old Boris Skurikhin said that the YC credits helped his startup Docket get off the ground. He's mostly run through them now, except for the models he uses less frequently.

Skurikhin said he noticed a 10x increase in productivity in his own work when he used the tools. "It is expensive to build with tokens," he said, but "not as expensive as having another engineer."

Many of these startups are in the AI game, after all. Nectir's Ghai said that token spending instilled "AI literacy" — something that's especially important, given their product.

"The team itself needs to be the best versed at it first, before we try to go sell it to anyone else," she said.

The startups saying no to tokenmaxxing

Rishabh Sambare wishes he could spend more on tokens.

The 23-year-old cofounder of Gale prefers to build with Zed, an AI IDE similar to Cursor, but can't stomach the company's usage-based pricing. The subscription deals from OpenAI and Anthropic are so deeply subsidized that he uses them instead.

"It sucks, because I hate their products," he said, calling Zed "more polished and less buggy between releases."

Sambare is Gale's only engineer, though the company often has 2-3 interns. He hasn't hit a rate limit, but one of his interns has. They got him a second subscription, he said; it was still far cheaper.

These subscriptions — sending $100 to $200 to Anthropic for its "Max" tiers or $100 to OpenAI for its "Pro" plan in exchange for a stable of discounted tokens — were popular among the founders I spoke to. Hassan Ismail, the 24-year-old founder of Argos Research, said the Claude Max subscription was a "no-brainer," and that all five team members have a $200 a month subscription.

Others were more philosophically opposed to the trend. Weave's Brennan Lupyrypa didn't mince his words: "It's extremely stupid for any company to be tokenmaxxing."

Weave is still spending big on tokens because it doesn't want to "kneecap" its engineers, its 25-year-old founding engineer said. The company set up a notification for when an engineer hit $500 in token spending a month; Lupyrypa said most hit it within two weeks.

But Weave doesn't incentivize the spending itself, which Lupyrypa said was the wrong proxy. He predicted the downfall of tokenmaxxing within the next three months. "CFOs won't be happy," he said.

Still, some tokenmaxxers hold strong. I asked Risotto's Solberg about these token-hesitant founders. He said that they likely hadn't found their product-market fit yet.

"It makes complete sense to spend a lot of money on tokens, because you know that the growth is coming soon after," Solberg said. "If you're a venture-backed business, that's what you signed up for."

• The banker says he has received multiple offers from employees since posting the deal this week.
• The 13-acre Mill Valley estate features sweeping views of San Francisco, an infinity-edge pool, and a spa.
• The offer comes as Anthropic's valuation on secondary markets reached $1 trillion, and shares are scarce.

A tech banker really, really wants Anthropic shares.

The hunt for shares in Anthropic has become so frenzied in recent weeks that Storm Duncan is offering up his $4.8 million Marin County estate in exchange for stock.

"If you're going fishing, you've got to put a worm on the hook," said Storm Duncan, the founder and managing partner of Ignatious, a tech boutique investment bank, in an interview with Business Insider. "What's my other option? Not being in it?"

The offer comes as Anthropic's valuation on secondary markets soared to $1 trillion, driven by investors who have been wowed by its torrid revenue growth and momentum around its AI-powered coding assistant, Claude Code, Business Insider reported this week.

Duncan, who lives primarily in Jackson Hole, Wyo., also owns other properties, but he decided to list this one because he thought it would be especially attractive to Anthropic employees.

Duncan's 13-acre, fully furnished Mill Valley estate features sweeping views of San Francisco, an infinity-edge pool, and a spa.

"It's a 20-minute commute to the Anthropic offices in the city," he said. "No one from Anthropic probably wants my Miami or Jackson Hole place."

By offering the property, Duncan hopes to get on the radar of employees who have legitimate shares to sell and own a goldmine of Anthropic stock they can't sell until after the company goes public.

Duncan says he has received multiple offers since posting the deal this week. "Some of them are [Anthropic] employees, and some of them just happen to have invested early," he said. "I believe they're serious, but it's a complex transaction."

"There's probably a decent number of people who are sitting in a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco even though they're earning $400,000 a year and are worth a $100 million," he said. "But they can't access that because their stock is so illiquid, so this gives them an opportunity to diversify."

It's not the first time there's been an unconventional way to secure shares in pre-IPO tech companies. In 2005, artist David Choe chose Facebook stock over $60,000 in cash to paint murals at Facebook's first office. That choice led to an estimated windfall of about $200 million once Facebook went public in 2012. In the dot-com era, some real estate owners asked startups for company stock in exchange for leasing space in San Francisco.

Some on X have dismissed Duncan's offer as a publicity stunt or a sure sign of the top of a bubble. Others have made cracks about the only thing being more precious than Anthropic shares is Bay Area real estate.

Duncan insists the offer is real and he is not seeking attention. As for why he does not simply buy shares in the company, he says a small investor like him would never be able to secure stock directly.

"Anthropic can't spend time with people like me," Duncan said. "They're looking for people who can write $100 million in a single check." (The company did not respond to a request for comment.)

The alternative is to buy shares from early employees or investors on secondary markets, but Duncan says those deals are often increasingly dubious.

He said the scarcity of shares on the secondary market has made sellers offer deals that can be rife with high fees and opaque ownership structures.

Duncan already owns shares in Anthropic that he acquired in its 2024 funding round, when it was much easier to obtain shares. He says he was recently convinced he wanted to double down after being wowed by the results of his firm's implementation of Claude Code.

"It's probably going to triple our throughput and reduce our costs by 50%," he said. "As I started to implement the platform at my own firm, I said I would like to have more exposure to this."

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• A trio of journalists tried three big vibe coding apps to see how they stack up.
• We each attempted to build an app on Cursor, Lovable, and Base44.
• With the same prompt on each system, we wanted to see how far we could get.

We three writers have been handed a gift with seemingly infinite potential. A sparkling promise, from vibe coding startups, that we can build anything without understanding a word of code.

Gone are the days, these companies say, when coding novices needed to rely on their techie friends to troubleshoot mistakes.

Over a dozen firms have rolled out tools offering the ability to build apps in seconds. All you need is a good idea and the platforms' free coding credits.

With a growing wave of vibe-coding startups raising big money, questions are emerging: Are these tools meaningfully different? Is the market already crowded? And can this be a sustainable business?

We tried three of the most popular platforms — Cursor, Lovable, and Base44 — to find out what each platform really offers and where they fall short.

Our prompts

We started this experiment at different levels of proficiency.

Chong Ming had coded an app at a vibe-coding workshop. Cheryl, self-taught, had experimented with five vibe-coding platforms and made three web apps. Aditi was a true beginner.

We each set out to make an app. For Chong Ming, a writing companion in the shape of a cute creature. For Cheryl, a newsroom dashboard, a lite version of Asana to keep her team's work organized. And for Aditi, an app that acted like a newsroom photo coach, to deem whether a photo was good to publish.

First impressions

Chong Ming: When I asked Base44 to plan the app, it responded with a few questions to clarify my prompt, with cute emojis. The plan it generated wasn't as detailed as what I've seen from Cursor, but it was user-friendly.

Lovable's plan was even simpler, pared down to a few bullet points. It was just as easy to use as Base44. Within minutes, it generated a web app similar to Base44's.

Cursor's interface seemed built for serious builders looking to ship real products. Its planning questions were more advanced and thoughtful, asking if I wanted an MVP build plan, a clickable prototype, or a full product spec — the kind of distinctions a software engineer would make.

Cheryl: I've always been one for the rule of cool, and Cursor looked really cool, with its all-black dashboard. But there was some charm in logging onto Lovable, with its girlypop, pink-heavy interface, and Base44 offered some cheerful vibes on its tangerine-colored interface, too.

Base44 and Lovable felt more like signing into a website and conversing with a chatbot. With Cursor and its MacBook app, I felt like I was hacking into the mainframe, with all its complicated scrolling lines of code.

Aditi: Off the bat, Cursor looked intimidating, and the option to sync GitHub when logging in made me think it wasn't a platform for a non-technical user.

Meanwhile, Base44 and Lovable were friendly and reassuring, with their gentle prompts: "What will you build next?" and "Ready to build, Aditi?"

Learning curve

Chong Ming: Base44 and Lovable were easy to use. The app plans were written in plain language for everyday users, and the interface was beginner-friendly. It was clear where to click if I needed help or wanted to tweak something.

Cursor was a different story. There were things I had to decipher on my own, like "frontend built with Next.js, React, and TypeScript."

Cheryl: I have never felt more like a dinosaur than when I first tried using Cursor. It was embarrassing having to look up basic terms to know what I was dealing with.

On Base44 and Lovable, I consistently typed in plain English and made the app edits accordingly. I felt like a wizard, watching the app preview morph and shift into view.

Aditi: I'd never tried vibe coding, so I asked AI for help understanding AI. I asked ChatGPT to help me refine my initial prompt into something I could plonk into the vibe coding platforms.

With Lovable and Base44, the learning was intuitive, and it felt like I was talking to ChatGPT. With Cursor, I was completely lost and had no idea where to start.

Then it was time to build the apps

Chong Ming: Base44 built me a writing companion app with a cute egg. The layout felt bland, but it was a full-fledged, functional app created without using up all my credits.

Lovable's build was similar and didn't use all credits.

Both platforms could generate the app; the main variation was in aesthetics. I did appreciate that Base44 and Lovable let me edit the app directly in the interface.

The Cursor build process wasn't as hands-off. Unlike Base44 and Lovable, which ran start to finish, Cursor required me to approve commands and grant permissions to override folders on my computer. As it generated code, I could pause and review it, something that would likely appeal to developers who want control.

Cheryl: The best things in life are free, and vibe coding credits are one of them. On Base44 and Lovable, both platforms make it clear to users that they're cooking with limited credits, and that's fair — compute is costly. The mileage on each platform, however, was slightly different.

Lovable gave me good bones for the project up front and created something that was, aesthetically and functionally, closest to what I wanted. But it burned through more free credits than my Base44 project did, and some things still weren't working in the web app. I was stuck waiting for new credits to drop before I could make tweaks.

Base44 gave me something very close to a complete dashboard, but it lacked some key functionality — the option to delete tasks, or to drag and drop unscheduled tasks into the calendar frame. But that was ironed out within minutes with two additional message prompts.

Cursor's steeper learning curve and multi-step process made it far harder for me to work things out. After 10 minutes of Googling, I gave in and typed into the Cursor chat: "I'm confused. What do I do now? Give me a guide."

I was told to go to Supabase and make some adjustments to the settings, then try to ship it via a local server. At that point, I was coming up on half an hour of getting frustrated with the process.

Aditi: The development process was smooth sailing with Lovable and Base44. With one initial prompt and two additional tweaks, both platforms gave me usable apps that I thought would be handy newsroom tools.

I first tried Base44 and felt childlike wonder when it produced a clean, minimalist interface that let me drag a photo in and judge its quality.

After the initial merriment wore off, I started testing the features. One thing I had not realized was how specific my prompts needed to be, expecting it to anticipate my needs. For example, both platforms initially did not allow me to crop the image or adjust the framing, and instead automatically chose the subject for me. An easy second prompt brought the apps closer to my initial vision — although I quickly learned how to ration my prompts lest I run out of my daily free credits.

Lovable's interface had a neat little photo-scanning animation that I thought added visual interest to the otherwise simple interface.

Now for Cursor. I had to download the app on the MacBook, while the others could run in the browser. When I finally downloaded it and fed it my prompt, it ran lines of obscure code, asked for permissions to things I didn't understand, and made me lose motivation to build anything.

I eventually gave up on trying to make it work, but the app kept prodding me with pop-ups for permissions all day until I force-quit it.

I'll stick to my beginner-friendly platforms until further notice.

How the platforms stack

Chong Ming: Lovable and Base44 delivered working apps and refinements fast, but the quality didn't match Cursor. Cursor broke down what it added and made changes in detail, even if some of the jargon flew over my head.

When I refined the app, Cursor didn't just tweak surface-level things. It suggested enhancements such as adding extra animation frames or making the pet move faster. When I said I didn't want a simple egg, it flagged that a drawn mascot or pixel pet would require new assets — a level of clarity the others didn't offer.

By comparison, Lovable and Base44 suggested things like adding entrance animations, which felt more gimmicky than meaningful.

If I were building something serious, I'd go with Cursor, even if it takes more time and effort to get up to speed.

Cheryl: On both Lovable and Base44, I managed to build workable newsroom calendars and get them from first prompt to publishing within 10 minutes. Base44 gave me a complete, fully functional project I could immediately use and share with my team — and within the free credit range, too. The next day, I used my new set of credits on Lovable to make final tweaks, resulting in a publishable dashboard with all the functions I wanted.

On Cursor, however, I just couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong and why the code wasn't running as I intended. I never got my dashboard off the ground there. Cursor: It's not you, it's me.

If you have a nontechnical background, a clear vision for the app you want to build, but limited time to pick up a little more coding, a one-stop shop like Lovable and Base44 would be more your speed. If you do have more coding know-how, Cursor will give you access and oversight over the coding process within its free credit limit.

Aditi: As a colors-obsessed, minimalism-loving, non-technical person who just wants to build a simple app, here's my leaderboard: Lovable, Base44, Cursor.

The market's flooded with options, so take your pick while companies are being generous with credits

The apps we tried are just a sampling of the vibe coding offerings out there. Other companies, like Emergent and Replit, also offer one-stop-shop platforms that take ideas from conception to shipping fast.

The barrier to entry is low, particularly with free credits on entry-level plans.

So if there was ever a time to try vibe-coding, it's now.

• A large division within Meta Reality Labs is undergoing an overhaul to become fully "AI-native."
• The unit is now organized into "pods" made up of "AI builders" and "AI pod leads."
• This new push and the latest layoffs at Reality Labs are unrelated, Meta said.

Meta is rebranding some employees as "AI builders" and organizing them into AI-native "pods," according to a leaked memo obtained by Business Insider.

The memo described an overhaul of roles, titles, and team structures across a 1,000-employee team within Meta's Reality Labs. It's part of a broader, aggressive push by Meta to adopt small teams and use AI.

The pilot program was announced last month within the Reality Labs team that builds developer tools. Everyone in the division will now have one of three titles: AI Builder, AI Pod Lead, or AI Org Lead. That's to encourage a shift toward a flatter organization, a structure that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has advocated.

"Our ultimate goal is to drive a step change in engineering productivity and product quality," the memo reads. "To achieve this, we're fundamentally rewiring how we operate, how we are structured, and how we support each other."

When asked for comment, Meta referred Business Insider to comments earlier this year from Zuckerberg that 2026 is the year AI will begin to "dramatically change the way we work," with projects that once required large teams potentially handled by one, "very talented" person.

According to the memo, each pod consists of a small group of AI builders focused on specific outcomes, often working across disciplines. For example, engineers could take on design work, depending on the task. Some Meta employees have already begun referring to themselves as AI builders on LinkedIn, Business Insider previously reported.

These pods are led by Pod Leads, who oversee day-to-day operations. They are, in turn, overseen by Org Leads, who also manage performance reviews and oversee promotions — processes that will be supported by unspecified "AI systems."

The memo said that the overall team size will remain the same under the new structure.

Meta laid off hundreds of staff on Wednesday, and this cut affected staff in Reality Labs, among other teams. A Meta spokesperson said the reorganization is not related to the cuts.

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• Arm announced its own AI chip, the AGI CPU, and is partnering with OpenAI and Meta.
• The new Arm AGI CPU aims to address energy efficiency and memory constraints in AI data centers.
• Despite strong growth prospects, Arm faces competition from established players like Nvidia and AMD.

Arm has long run its business as an architect behind the scenes, designing chips that power almost all the world's smartphone and making money off royalties from the chips it designs for customers.

Now, Arm is changing it up by announcing its own AI chip, the Arm AGI CPU.

Arm CEO Rene Haas said Tuesday at a company conference that this massive pivot wasn't just an internal strategy shift—it was a direct plea from the world's most powerful AI giants. The company name-dropped OpenAI and Meta as major partners for this chip.

"The biggest reason we're doing this is that our partners have asked for it," Haas said Tuesday.

With energy constraints and memory shortages, the AI boom has created a massive bottleneck in data centers. Faced with this demand, Arm stepped up with an AI chip that it says is more energy-efficient. Arm says it sees a $1.5 trillion market opportunity as it moves into AI chips for cloud, edge, and physical AI.

Arm stock was up by more than 18% on Wednesday. Mizuho analysts wrote that they see "strong growth opportunities" for Arm in AI infrastructure and the automotive industry. Bank of America research analyst Vivek Arya wrote in a note to investors that the company's outlook could be "too ambitious."

Meta and OpenAI partner with Arm

Meta has been building out data centers at a massive scale to power its apps and its latest superintelligence ventures. Santosh Janardhan, head of infrastructure at Meta, said Tuesday onstage that its coming "Hyperion" cluster could draw 5 gigawatts of power, enough to power 50 towns the size of Palo Alto.

"If we met the performance, we couldn't get the power. If we got the power, we wouldn't get the performance," Janardhan said.

This sparked an engineering project within Meta, where engineers were "working 'round the clock" to port its systems to Arm in three months, said Paul Saab, a Meta engineer.

"I didn't even ask my boss here for permission to buy these machines or even start the project," Saab said onstage.

While Saab says he saw major performance benefits, at the time, there wasn't an Arm chip available to buy.

OpenAI faced a similar problem. Its compute demand has grown massively as it trains and runs its ChatGPT models, its AI coding tool Codex, and more.

"That is one of the most common things I hear inside OpenAI. I need more compute," Kevin Weil, vice president of OpenAI for science, said onstage, adding that it needed chips that were energy-efficient.

Arm said it expects this chip to generate $15 billion in revenue by fiscal 2031.

The chip market is 'getting very crowded'

Arm faces the risk that the CPU market is "getting very crowded," Arya wrote in his analyst note. Other competitors, such as AMD, Nvidia, and Intel, have more CPU products and more established customers. Notably, both Meta and OpenAI also work with AMD and Nvidia, which could leave "limited" opportunity for Arm's new CPU, Arya wrote.

"Moreover, the bigger AI grows, the more pressure ARM's smartphone/consumer markets would have from limited memory supplies," Arya wrote.

That said, the increasing demand has led many customers to turn to chip companies beyond Nvidia for their computing needs. Both Meta and OpenAI also work with Broadcom to build AI chips.

The rise of AI agents has also led to greater demand for inference, or how AI models draw conclusions and make predictions. While Nvidia's core AI chips, the GPUs, dominate AI training, CPUs like Arm's AGI CPU can also help with inference. Nvidia also recently made moves into this market.

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A UnblockPay, fintech de pagamentos globais e infraestrutura de tesouraria via stablecoins, anunciou na quarta-feira, 25 de março, a conclusão de uma rodada seed na qual levantou US$ 4,5 milhões (R$ 23,6 milhões) e foi avaliada em US$ 20 milhões (R$ 105 milhões). A rodada foi liderada pela Prelude, fundo de venture capital de Londres, […]

O post Gestoras internacionais “compram” tese de fintech para avançar em pagamentos via stablecoins no País apareceu primeiro em NeoFeed.

A partir de 2019, o Softbank se tornou um dos investidores mais ativos da América Latina. Com cheques grandes e uma tese agressiva de crescimento, o grupo japonês ajudou a impulsionar uma geração de unicórnios no Brasil e na região, investindo em empresas como Wellhub, Rappi, QuintoAndar, Kavak, Unico, MadeiraMadeira, Creditas, Ualá, Petlove, Merama, Omie, […]

O post IA, caixa e paciência: como o Softbank reescreveu seu “manual” para investir na América Latina apareceu primeiro em NeoFeed.

Jatee Kearsley built Je T'aime Patisserie in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, with a mission to make high-quality French desserts accessible to everyone, including customers who pay with EBT.

A self-taught pastry chef who learned from YouTube and years of industry work, Kearsley went from losing money to tripling her sales after going viral. Despite the high ingredient costs, steep New York City rent, intense pressure, and emotional burnout, Kearsley has been dedicated to prioritizing community over profits.

• As an interior-design expert, I've seen people make common style mistakes in living rooms.
• Hide cords from your TV and electronics, and don't put too much furniture in the living room.
• Accent chairs should be used sparingly, and rugs should add personality to your space.

Your living room should feel like a calm, personal retreat—not a source of visual chaos.

As a seasoned interior stylist and founder of DBF Interiors, I've seen plenty of cluttered, unintentionally designed spaces that could be improved with just a few simple tweaks.

Here are a few things to get rid of in your living room if you want an instant upgrade.

Remove furniture that makes your space feel cramped.

Placing too much furniture in a living room is a common design mistake. Poor spatial arrangements paired with large, clunky pieces just make a space feel crowded rather than cozy.

Instead of filling your living room with lots of furniture, be intentional about the items you select.

Focus on curating instead of collecting, seeking out essential pieces that are unique and functional. This will help you maintain a more open floor plan.

Replace boring rugs with ones that make a statement.

I find that many people settle for bland, uninspiring rugs that fail to add color or flavor to a space.

Since rugs make such a big visual statement, go for something exciting. Try out colorful, patterned rugs to jazz up your living room and infuse it with your personality.

Too many accent chairs can cause unneeded clutter.

A beautiful accent chair can complement and enhance a living room.

However, not all spaces have a layout and ideal seating plan that allows for one. Forcing a bulky chair into a space that doesn't fit it properly can create unnecessary clutter.

And if you find yourself needing multiple accent chairs to make a space functional, consider swapping them for a larger, more comfortable sofa.

Hide visible wires to keep your space looking neat.

Visible cords and wires can distract from a well-decorated space and make it feel cluttered.

Fortunately, there are many creative ways to hide them. For example, you can feed them through your TV console or snake them behind baseboard accessories.

You can even purchase concealing cord caps and paint them to match your wall color.

Cover your basic pillows with fresh designs and colors.

Instead of keeping the accent pillows that came with your couch or sticking with basic designs, consider upgrading.

After all, curated accent pillows are a great way to add more personality and substance to your living area.

I suggest swapping out accent pillows every six months to a year to spruce up your living room.

Instead of completely repurchasing new pillows each time, opt for covers that are easy to change and low-commitment (especially if you want to try trendy textures, colors, and patterns).

This story was originally published on May 10, 2021, and most recently updated on March 24, 2026.

• San José airport starts testing an AI robot called José to assist travelers.
• The pilot test launched on Tuesday amid travel chaos at many US airports.
• Some TSA workers have stopped coming into work due to a government shutdown.

One of Silicon Valley's main airports just made its newest hire, a robot named "José."

San José Mineta International Airport is turning to artificial intelligence to ease the strain of modern air travel, debuting "José," a humanoid robot, as some US airports grapple with staffing shortages and widespread delays.

Developed by Silicon Valley startup IntBot, José is designed to greet passengers, answer questions, and provide real-time updates while autonomously navigating busy terminals.

The robot will be stationed in SJC's Terminal B as part of a four-month pilot, "singlehandedly running his own gate," according to an email previewing the test that referred to José as the airport's "newest hire."

Airport officials said the launch highlights San José's role as a testing ground for emerging technologies to improve customer service.

"By piloting IntBot, we're exploring how artificial intelligence can enhance the passenger journey while reinforcing SJC's role as the gateway to Silicon Valley," said SJC Director of Aviation Mookie Patel.

The timing is notable. Airports across the US have been hit by long security lines and travel chaos, driven in part by many Transportation Security Administration workers not reporting to work during a partial government shutdown. With TSA agents going unpaid at the height of the spring break season, some airports have struggled to maintain normal operations.

José the robot represents a broader push to automate parts of the airport experience, from passenger assistance to information delivery.

SJC officials said the pilot will help evaluate how multimodal AI, combining vision, audio, and language, performs in real-world environments.

The future of air travel may include a robotic helping hand — and it can't come fast enough for weary vacationers stuck in long lines.

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• At law firms, the billable hour is the standard way to charge clients. But timekeeping is a pain.
• The startup PointOne says it's using AI to help lawyers auto-complete timesheets and bill more time.
• PointOne raised $16 million in a funding round led by the venture capital firm 8VC.

Tracking hours is part of how lawyers get paid. It's also the bane of the profession.

A startup called PointOne wants to eliminate the most tedious part of a lawyer's job. It says its AI-powered platform passively tracks a lawyer's computer activity and uses it to complete timesheets.

The company grew revenue tenfold since July, says PointOne cofounder Katon Luaces, after signing up dozens of law firm customers, ranging from a global 1,200-lawyer outfit to solo practitioners.

Investors are taking notice. After making a small earlier investment, the Joe Londsale-founded venture firm 8VC is leading a $16 million Series A round for PointOne, Luaces tells Business Insider. Existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, General Catalyst, and Y Combinator also participated.

Founders are flooding into legal tech, betting they can turn large language models into products law firms will trust — and competing for attention in an estimated $1 trillion industry.

Jack Moshkovich, an 8VC partner, said the market is crowded with companies trying to help lawyers do work faster. That leaves more whitespace, he said, on the operational side of the business.

Luaces isn't a lawyer. In 2019, he was a computer science major and a Google intern as the company's researchers were laying the groundwork for modern large language models.

He saw legal work as a natural target for the technology because so much of it is repetitive and text-heavy. By 2023, he and his roommate, Jeremy Ben-Meir, along with a third cofounder, Adrian Parlow, started sketching out an idea for a legal startup. (Parlow left PointOne last year and joined legal-tech giant Legora.)

When Luaces asked lawyers which part of the job they hated most, he kept hearing the same answer: timekeeping. At most law firms, the billable hour is the standard way to charge clients. Lawyers log the work they do for each client — often in six-minute increments — then tally those hours and bill accordingly. Many still track their hours in a spreadsheet or by hand on a legal pad.

PointOne's platform runs in the background as lawyers move between apps, then fills in time entries with the client, matter, a description of the work, and standardized legal codes.

Security and confidentiality are essential for law firms. Clients trust them with trade secrets and other closely held information, leaving little room for error from any software vendor.

When asked how lawyers feel about software watching them work, Luaces said their dislike of timekeeping helps overcome any discomfort. PointOne says it encrypts stored sensitive data, does not train models on firm data, and gives firms the option to use models in a private Azure environment.

For lawyers, "this is like magic beans," Luaces said.

Time savings aren't the point

Law firms are still working out how to use artificial intelligence to work faster without hurting their economics. Software that saves time can also reduce the number of hours a firm can bill.

PointOne, however, is not pitching itself as a way to save lawyers' time. Instead, it says it can help firms capture time that would otherwise go unbilled.

Some share of legal work never makes it into timesheets. Junior lawyers may undercount how long a task took, either because they're still learning or because they're embarrassed. More often, Luaces said, lawyers skip billing for small tasks because logging them takes almost as long as the work itself.

A lawyer might spend four minutes writing a client email. "I can either spend the next four minutes creating the time entry for it, or I can do more work," Luaces said. "Nine out of 10 times, everyone chooses to do more work."

He says the company's software can increase revenue by capturing billable time that would otherwise be lost.

PointOne isn't the only company making such promises. Its biggest competitor, Laurel, provides professional services firms with analytics about their operations, including time. It's raised over $150 million in funding since 2016, compared to PointOne's $20 million total.

PointOne wants to position itself for a broader shift in how legal work gets priced. Corporate clients are pushing back on soaring legal bills, and as artificial intelligence threatens to trim billable hours, firms are under pressure to test alternatives to hourly billing, including fixed fees for certain matters. Luaces said PointOne's data can help firms better understand the labor behind a matter, which in turn can help them price that work more precisely.

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• Buyers have been willing to pay a premium of up to 40% to buy Anduril shares.
• The steep markup reflects a two-tiered class for accessing stock in the hottest startups.
• Data from Caplight highlights a supply imbalance, with buyer demand surging to 97% while sellers' demand is at 3%.

Anduril hasn't even finalized its next funding round, and investors are already eager to pay up like it's a sold-out concert. As marquee venture firms Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz line up to back the defense tech startup at a reported $60 billion valuation, others shut out of the deal are scrambling to buy shares on secondary markets at steep premiums.

"Demand is so significant that buyers who have FOMO are willing to pay huge premiums for access," said Kelly Rodriques, CEO of Forge Global, a private marketplace exchange for shares of private companies like Anduril. "The company hates when this happens, but it happens."

The frenzy around investing in Anduril reflects the growing divide in private markets: access to the hottest startups is split between the VC firms that get in at a certain price and everyone else, forced to pay up on the sidelines. Anthropic has also seen a premium for secondary shares, though not as significant, said Rodriques.

Those investors shut out of the company's fundraising round are forced to buy via secondary markets, with existing stock in the company being sold by current or former employees or early investors. The rush for shares reminds Rodriques of buying tickets to see Taylor Swift on Stubhub when her concert sells out in minutes.

"It's scalping," he said.

Interested buyers have been willing to pay a premium of up to 40% above the $60 billion valuation to buy Anduril shares, according to Rodriques and Greg Martin, managing director and co-founder at Rainmaker Securities, another private marketplace exchange. The deals are not yet finalized because a willing seller and the company's blessing are still required.

"The magnitude of the premium is unusual," said Martin. "Usually we see premiums in the 5% to 15% range."

Anduril declined to comment for this story. Cofounders Palmer Luckey and Matt Grimm have loudly railed against unauthorized sales of the company's shares, publicly calling out some firms as "frauds."

"If I were an investor looking at this 'opportunity,' I'd run for the hills," Grimm posted in December. "Secondary markets are rife with fraud and bad actors, and it pains me to see these bottom feeders profiting off Anduril's growth while fleecing retail investors through unreasonable or opaque fee structures."

The founders have tightly controlled Andruil's stock, requiring would-be sellers to offer the company a first right of refusal to buy back those shares or assign the sale to a buyer of Andruil's choosing. The limited supply is a major reason shares have been among the hardest to obtain for any startup since last year, driving investor "frenzy."

Data from Caplight highlights a massive supply imbalance in the secondary market for Anduril stock, with buyer demand surging to 97% of total volume compared to just 3% from willing sellers—a stark shift from a 69-to-31 split in February.

If demand for Anduril shares is so high, the obvious question is: Why doesn't the company raise its share price to avoid leaving money on the table?

To explain, Rodriques went back to the analogy of a Taylor Swift concert or Nike shoes. Just because some people are willing to pay more does not mean the company wants to set its prices so high.

"It's the same reason Nike doesn't sell sneakers for $2000 if there's a secondary market for a hard-to-get sneaker," Rodriques said. "It's not in their best interest to charge their customers $2000 for a pair of shoes."

Similarly, Anduril would prefer to raise capital from its chosen VCs.

"The company has gotten to a $60 billion valuation by doing a very detailed and thorough job of working with some of the best investors in the world," he said.

• Target used to have one of retail's top mobile apps, but competitors are catching up.
• Over the past year, the company has quietly rolled out several AI-powered shopper-friendly features.
• I tried them out and found three ways the refreshed app makes shopping easier.

Target's mobile app has long been one of the company's not-so-secret weapons.

The retailer was an early mover among its brick-and-mortar peers to seriously invest in its digital business. The app drove Target's early success in curbside pickup and continues to serve as a hub for its membership programs.

I started shopping at Target much more often when my first daughter was born during the pandemic, and I often wished more retailers had apps as useful as the one with the Bullseye logo. The store map was a particular timesaver for me during a very busy time in my family's life.

In recent years, the competition has stepped up to narrow Target's lead, or in some cases, surpass it.

From scan-and-go self-checkout in the Walmart and Sam's Club apps, to Lowe's and Home Depot helping shoppers find and learn more about products in their stores, mobile apps have evolved into much more than a pocket-sized version of the company's website.

Not every store's app needs the same features, but it was starting to look like Target was losing its advantage.

Roughly one-fifth of Target's merchandise sales last year were made via web or app, or more than $21 billion. Beyond the e-commerce factor, good apps matter because shoppers are still very much going into stores, only now they're more likely to have a phone in hand while they fill their carts.

"About a third of our guests are using their app in the store," Target's chief revenue and digital officer, Sarah Travis, said at a meeting with investors and media at the company's Minneapolis headquarters earlier this month, which I attended.

Travis showed how Target has responded to this shift with several new, user-friendly features intended to make shopping easier. I was surprised to see these upgrades had been rolled out so quietly.

Unlike Target's flashy partnerships with Google or OpenAI, these new features involve more subtle integrations of artificial intelligence to supercharge common tasks.

"Target's unique opportunity is to think holistically about guest experience," Travis said, referring to this blended digital and physical approach to shopping. "The experience that you get today is vastly different than the experience that you would have gotten six months ago."

Once I got home, I decided to try them for myself. The features aren't all exclusive to Target, but three struck me as much-needed additions to the app experience — especially if Target wants to get shoppers to come back.

A handwritten list scanner

Like physical stores, the paper (or whiteboard) grocery list is still very much a reality for many US households.

I can't speak for everyone, but my family rarely makes grocery lists with detailed branding or package info — we list items in general terms like "milk" rather than "Fairlife 2% Organic Lactose Free Milk — 52 fl oz."

Now, in the My Target tab in the app, there's an option to "scan a paper list," which uses the phone's camera to capture handwritten text.

Once the app processes the image, it pulls up to 20 relevant product listings per list item to either add to an in-app basket or shopping list, turning your handwritten notes into an order that you or someone else can fulfill with precision.

It worked pretty well when I tried it, except when the app assumed I was looking for a women's or children's shirt and didn't show any men's options. My paper list just said "T-shirt," so I could have been more specific.

The buy it again tab

Another more prominent tool enhances a preexisting app feature and gives it prominent placement as a tab on the main screen.

Target's app has long made it easy to find past orders and add selected items to your cart. That's still an option, but now the app highlights frequently purchased items, items with active discounts, and stuff you bought a while ago that might be running low.

The tailored experience means that no two shoppers have the same experience, Travis said, adding that the feature "has essentially become a speed run for weekly essentials."

In a few taps, you can be restocked and ready to go.

A more helpful map

In my experience, one of the Target app's most useful features — by far — is its mapping tool that shows where to find a product in a sprawling store. This is especially helpful when traveling or when I have to go to a location across town.

When Home Depot rolled out its own version, called Store Mode, I found myself wishing Target had something to match. Now it does, thanks to the same geolocation startup, which says it also provides the service for Dick's Sporting Goods.

With the recent upgrade (and location sharing turned on), the app now prompts in-store customers to enter "Store mode," which enables a batch of map-based features, including where to find current deals and promotions.

In the "List" tab, rather than having to hunt for items one-by-one, everything on your in-app list (that you scanned earlier) shows up as a pin on the store map, helping plan a path to get what you came in for without bouncing all over the place.

It's a win for Target as well. "When guests use store mode, their baskets grow by more than 7%," Travis said.

These upgrades show that Target's app is still in the game with one of the most useful shopping apps around, and I can see it saving time and money on my next Target run.

• Miro's CEO says the company is plowing cash into AI subscriptions to help employees level up.
• "Our L&D budget is unlimited tooling," Andrey Khusid said.
• AI adoption is accelerating, and with it come questions about the technology's ROI.

Plenty of companies are still debating whether costly AI subscriptions are worth it. Miro has gone the other way.

Andrey Khusid, cofounder of Miro, the maker of a popular online whiteboard platform, says the company gives employees essentially unlimited access to the latest AI tools as a way to speed up how quickly they learn and work.

That approach is possible, he said, because Miro has been profitable since 2016. The company has raised $476 million to date, and Khusid suggested it does not expect to need more capital.

Khusid framed the spending as a core part of more traditional workplace training. "Our L&D budget is unlimited tooling," he said.

Rather than asking employees to learn on their own time or pay out of pocket, he said, Miro wants that experimentation to happen inside the company, as a shared effort. He later added that there should still be a clear business case for buying any tool.

Miro's strategy is part of a wider shift in tech, where AI adoption is moving from optional to expected. A new study from engineering intelligence platform Jellyfish, based on data from more than 700 companies, found that 64% now produce a majority of their code with AI assistance. Tech giants like Google are pushing employees to use AI tools more aggressively, and Microsoft has begun tying AI usage to performance evaluations. As a result, AI fluency is quickly becoming a core workplace skill rather than a nice-to-have.

Still, Khusid says many executives ask the wrong question about AI ROI. Rather than judging the tools on individual productivity gains or subscription costs, he said Miro is trying to focus on whether the company is moving faster overall.

The company tracks projects through what he described as a "discover, define, deliver" process and measures how long it takes to move from one stage to the next. The goal is to compress that timeline as much as possible.

"The most important metric from my perspective is velocity of innovation," Khusid said. "If you don't innovate fast enough, you're out of the game."

Khusid said he doesn't think the way companies use AI today is necessarily the end state. He said it will take at least until the end of this year, or even next year, to see what a workplace shaped by these tools really looks like. At that point, Miro will take a harder look at which tools are worth the price tag.

For now, he said, Miro is already seeing time savings across engineering, product, and design. That's not always the case, though. Better tools speed code generation, he said, but code reviews can still bog down projects.

"Humans have to read it," Khusid said. At least for now.

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• Eight salespeople from ServiceNow have jumped ship to rival startup Serval in recent months.
• Two of the salespeople cited fears about AI as their reason for leaving ServiceNow.
• ServiceNow's stock has tumbled 40% in the last six months in the so-called SaaS-pocalypse.

Eight salespeople from ServiceNow and its newly acquired subsidiary, Moveworks, have jumped ship to rival startup Serval in recent months, Business Insider has learned.

ServiceNow is a cloud computing software company whose stock has tumbled 40% in the last six months in the so-called SaaS-pocalypse, as investors fear AI could decimate the profit margins of software giants. In an effort to stay one step ahead in the AI race, ServiceNow closed an all-cash $2.85 billion acquisition of Moveworks in December to create an "AI-native front door."

The same month, Serval closed a $75 million Series B funding round led by Sequoia Capital, valuing the rapidly growing AI-powered IT support startup at $1 billion. Sequoia was also an early investor in ServiceNow.

Eight employees represent a fraction of ServiceNow's 29,000-person workforce. Still, the exodus shows how difficult it can be for tech companies with falling valuations to retain talent when buzzy, well-funded AI companies come calling. A ServiceNow spokesman declined to comment.

The highest-level departure is Brad Patterson, who had been a ServiceNow sales VP for nearly two years.

"AI is really making serious moves," Patterson said in an interview. "In a similar way, market sentiment is responding; I think people are responding in the same way."

Every incumbent tech company is facing a similar talent drain, according to Jules Levy, ServiceNow's former head of enterprise generative & enterprise AI, who is also among those joining Serval.

"I don't think this is unique to ServiceNow," he said in an interview. "Many folks within those incumbents are looking to jump to AI-native platforms that will be able to move really fast and take advantage of this technological wave."

"I think everyone's trying to figure out what comes next," he added.

Serval is not specifically targeting ServiceNow employees, but when one employee leaves, it can have a ripple effect, according to Tatiana Birgisson, Serval's chief operating officer.

"If you hire really good people, other really good people in their network want to follow them," she said, citing Chris Comes, who became a Serval VP of Sales in November after more than three years at MoveWorks. "Multiple people got excited about seeing the announcement of his going to Servo."

Startups have usually offered less job security and lower cash compensation than public tech companies, but Birgisson says tech downsizing has made it easier to recruit candidates.

Block CEO Jack Dorsey cut roughly 40% of his workforce in February, citing the rise of AI. Meta could reportedly lay off a fifth of its staff amid skyrocketing AI costs.

"Big Tech no longer feels as safe as it once did," Birgisson said. "We are starting to see more candidates who, 5-10 years ago, would not have considered working at a startup, but are now more open to it because there isn't the clear divide between 'secure' and 'risky' jobs."

• My friends and family thought I was making a mistake when I moved states for a new relationship.
• At first, I felt homesick, but my partner supported me in a way that validated my decision.
• Now, we're married with kids, and I'm so glad I took a risk on love.

When I was 21, I fell in love for the first time.

Tim and I met online before it was cool. An avid fisherman, sports fanatic, and gifted salesman, he wasn't my usual type — but he was charming, funny, awkward, and sweet. I fell for him, hook, line, and sinker.

There was only one problem. Tim lived in Minneapolis, and I lived in Chicago.

We made long-distance work for as long as we could. On the rare weekends I wasn't waitressing, I traveled to Minnesota for ice fishing and bar hopping. When Tim's schedule allowed, he visited me at my parents' house for family dinners and nights out with friends.

Our time together was fun and exciting, but after seven months of constant travel, we knew we had some decisions to make.

When Tim and I decided to take the next step, I moved to Minnesota

After a four-year collegiate stint in Michigan, I'd sworn to myself that I'd never leave Chicago again. Not only were my family and friends there, but it was comforting and familiar. It was home.

Tim understood my love for Chicago from the moment we met. He was early in his dream career as a salesman, and I hadn't yet decided what I wanted to do professionally. Even so, he reassured me that I would never have to move — that, instead, he would find a way to relocate for me.

The more reassuring he was, though, the more I began seriously considering moving to Minnesota. Logistically, it just made sense.

My family and friends were just as charmed by Tim as I was, but they were skeptical, too. They cautioned me against moving, reminding me that Tim and I hadn't known each other that long.

The more I thought about beginning a new chapter, though, the more right it felt. Whether or not Tim and I lasted, maybe an adventure was exactly what I needed to kick off the adult chapter of my life.

Despite their warnings, I began searching for a job in Minneapolis. When I found a new job and a new roommate in the same week, it felt like fate.

I struggled with homesickness at first, but Tim supported me

My life in Minnesota wasn't what I had imagined. Living away from home was difficult, and I was miserably homesick for weeks. I was also adjusting to life in my first apartment, along with a new, very demanding job.

I was thrilled to be closer to Tim, but the struggles I was experiencing overshadowed much of my joy. Despite these difficulties, Tim remained patient, sure of our relationship, even when my confidence wavered.

On Halloween, my family's favorite holiday, Tim dressed up as a giant piece of pizza to cheer me up. When the first snow fell that season, Tim was waiting in my new apartment with a Christmas tree in tow.

By the time Valentine's Day rolled around, bringing with it chocolate-covered strawberries and three dozen white roses (my favorite), most of my homesickness had faded.

I realized that Tim was my future, wherever we lived

After six months, I finally began to find my footing. My roommate and I developed a strong bond, and I began to branch out into new social circles.

I fell in love with Minnesota in the summertime. I even learned to fish! Turns out, Tim was an excellent teacher.

Tim was my constant, in good times and bad. As the months continued to pass, I began to realize that maybe, this wasn't just the beginning of a new chapter — maybe it was the beginning of forever.

One evening, eight months after I first arrived in Minnesota, Tim invited me out for a casual dinner. I accepted, thinking nothing of it, not even questioning the fact that he wanted us to explore an antique store 15 minutes before our reservation.

I was sifting through a pile of old postcards when I realized that Tim was nowhere to be seen — until I rounded the corner and there he was, on bended knee, a tiny box in his outstretched hand.

We were married that December in Chicago. We spent another year in Minnesota after that, before returning to my hometown for good, putting down roots a few miles from my childhood home.

Thirteen years and six children later, I'm forever grateful that I ignored well-meaning warnings from my friends and family. I may have risked it all on love, but in the end, it was worth it.

• Pay for gig work varies significantly across apps, a new Gridwise report found.
• The report estimated hourly pay rates for ride-hailing, delivery, and other types of gig work.
• Taskrabbit, Walmart's Spark, and Uber ranked among the highest-paying apps, Gridwise found.

The gig economy has grown to include apps from Uber to Instacart. They don't all pay the same.

Average hourly pay on the apps varied in 2025, according to data analytics company Gridwise, which analyzed about 1 billion tasks across ride-hailing, delivery, and other gig work apps.

Workers for Taskrabbit, a platform where users hire independent contractors for yard work, home repair, and other physical tasks, earned the highest hourly pay rate at $38.

Spark, Walmart's delivery service, took second place at $23 an hour, with Uber just behind at $22.

DoorDash's hourly pay was $11, the lowest of the apps Gridwise analyzed.

Some companies say their workers earn higher hourly rates than Gridwise's estimates suggest. A Taskrabbit spokesperson said that its gig workers earn $49 an hour on average, although earnings vary by location. Uber said last year that the company's drivers earn $32 per hour while actively working on the app.

Gridwise compiled the estimates for its annual gig mobility report, released last week. The hourly pay data includes base pay, bonuses, and tips that workers received.

The data show that the best-known gig services don't always offer the best pay for workers, Ryan Green, CEO of Gridwise, told Business Insider.

Walmart launched its Spark delivery service as a test in 2018, years after competitors such as DoorDash and Uber Eats. Spark drivers pick up or shop orders at Walmart stores, helping the retailer grow its delivery business quickly.

"They just snuck up on the market and have rapidly grown into this space," he said.

Ride-hailing fares have risen faster than driver pay

Some gig workers have told Business Insider that it's harder to make money on apps like Uber and DoorDash than it was several years ago, due to higher competition and lower pay rates.

Most gig workers are responsible for their own costs, such as car maintenance. As a result, some gig workers have decided to accept only the trips that pay them the most for their time.

The price of gas, which has shot up in the past two weeks after the US started a war with Iran, is the latest cost pressure on ride-hailing drivers.

Uber and Lyft increased prices last year — and passed on a fraction of that hike to the drivers who make their businesses possible.

From December 2024 to December 2025, average customer ride prices on Uber and Lyft rose 9.6%, according to Gridwise. Over the same period, driver gross pay per trip increased 3.6%, and gross pay per hour rose 4.1%.

"We saw a modest increase on the driver side, and a much more substantial increase on the pricing side," Green said.

Last year, Gridwise found that weekly pay on most ride-hailing and delivery apps fell in 2024.

Delivery workers for services like DoorDash also saw an increase in per-hour pay last year — 3.2% — though their working hours on the platform rose about 17%, according to Gridwise.

Were you a gig worker in 2025? Business Insider is gathering information on gig worker earnings for a coming story.

You can contact Alex Bitter at abitter@businessinsider.com or via encrypted messaging app Signal at 808-854-4501.

• Travis Kalanick launches Atoms, a new venture aiming to build a "wheelbase for robots."
• Atoms wants to build a platform for specialized industrial robots, not humanoid designs.
• Atoms is acquiring Pronto, an autonomous vehicle startup founded by Anthony Levandowski.

The former Uber CEO is venturing into robotics.

Travis Kalanick announced that Atoms is out of stealth mode and expanding beyond food delivery infrastructure into industries such as food service, mining, and transportation.

The ex-Uber CEO published a 1,600-plus manifesto of his company on Friday.

"When I told my friends, family, and colleagues about my plans for what was next, they were really excited that I was 'coming back,'" Kalanick wrote on the website for the new venture.

"The thing is, I never left."

Kalanick did not immediately respond to a request for a comment.

In an interview on "TBPN" on Friday, Kalanick told show hosts John Coogan and Jordi Hays that he will be folding his ghost-kitchen startup CloudKitchens into the new venture, a detail that is also mentioned on Atoms' website.

Atoms' webpage says the company plans to build a "wheelbase for robots," a platform designed to power specialized machines rather than humanoid robots.

"At Atoms we make gainfully employed robots — specialized robots with productive jobs that bring abundance to their owners and society at large," Kalanick wrote on the website.

Kalanick said on "TBPN" that the company will focus on practical industrial systems instead of humanlike designs, and that the venture was just renamed as "Atoms" from "City Storage Systems" today.

"We've been in stealth mode for eight years," said Kalanick. "Employees were not allowed to put the name of the company on their LinkedIn. We have thousands of employees."

"Humanoids have their place, but there's a lot of room for specialized robots that do things in an efficient, sort of industrial-scale kind of way, which is sort of where we play," he added.

According to Kalanick, Atoms is close to acquiring Pronto, an autonomous-vehicle startup focused on industrial and mining sites, founded by his former Uber colleague, Anthony Levandowski.

Uber didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Kalanick's partnership with Levandowski would be the reunion of two of the most infamous Uber alums.

Levandowski did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Kalanick co-founded Uber in 2009 and was its CEO until 2017, when he resigned after facing immense investor pressure stemming from reports of a toxic work culture and multiple clashes with regulators.

Levandowski, an alum of Google's self-driving project that is now Waymo, was brought into Uber in 2016 after the ride-hailing giant bought his self-driving trucking outfit, Otto. In less than a year, he was fired from the company after Google sued Uber, accusing Levandowski of stealing trade secrets from the self-driving project. Uber settled with Waymo, but Levandowski was convicted in a separate criminal case in 2020 of one count of trade secret theft.

Levandowski was later pardoned by President Donald Trump before he even began serving an 18-month prison sentence.

• At the weekend reading retreat I attended, our intergenerational group bonded over more than books.
• We had thoughtful discussions, did a guided meditation, and went on a hike in the woods.
• I came home inspired by the other retreat members and our shared connection.

In my 30s, I joined a book club but soon dropped out. Between juggling work and family, the last thing I needed then was another deadline, even a read-for-fun one.

Flash forward decades: I'm in my 60s now, the kids have flown the nest, and I have more downtime and love all things outdoorsy.

So when a friend suggested All Booked, a luxe reading retreat for women in New York State's Catskill Mountains, I was excited to try book clubs again, especially this one-off weekend version.

When I signed up, I imagined lengthy chats surrounding the retreat's featured trending book: "Mother Mary Come to Me," a memoir by prize-winning author Arundhati Roy. We certainly had those.

But what made the literary getaway especially meaningful were the casual connections we shared as total strangers — eight women in our 20s to late 60s — about life, love, and living with intention.

The retreat's luxe cabin was the perfect place for book chats and a reset

Tucked among 12 wooded acres in Windham, New York, the weekend retreat's luxury log cabin was straight out of Airbnb central casting, complete with pine exposed beams, stone floors, and a dramatic great room with soaring vaulted ceilings and cozy reading nooks.

The first night, we met our host, Suzanne, a former New York City journalist who headed to the Catskills a few years ago and never left.

We introduced ourselves with a favorite book recommendation over an Indian-inspired dinner of delicata-squash salad and curry-marinated chicken, a nod to featured author Roy, who calls New Delhi home.

After changing into our PJs, we gathered on yoga mats in the cabin's loft for a guided meditation before padding off to our log beds.

Introductions continued the next morning over a breakfast of blueberry scones and homemade granola.

Among us were two 20-something bookstagrammers, each with her own daunting stack of extracurricular romantasy novels to speed-read.

Their tripods and ring lights triggered the multitasking question that seemed to trail many of us these days wherever we went: Should we turn an experience into shareable content or power down and just enjoy it, conceivably leaving likes, followers, and revenue (from somewhere) on the table?

Aside from planning to snap a few photos, I am Team Commune with Nature.

Our multigenerational group bonded over books, nature, and a lively debate

After a morning of quiet reading time, our group met at the Windham Path for an afternoon of forest bathing, which turned out to be a slow-motion hike led by Beth, our certified forest therapy guide.

Beth, who left a corporate job to embrace her calling as a forest therapist, invited us to wander off and "connect with a tree you are drawn to."

After appreciating the bark, treetops, and stillness, we reunited with a tea ceremony. Beth poured tiny cups of tea steeped from pine needles from an insulated kettle.

Before sipping the sour reddish liquid, we were instructed to pour some on the ground to give back and thank the forest for its sustenance.

During Saturday night's dinner, Suzanne moderated our discussion of "Mother Mary Comes to Me," about Roy's complicated relationship with her mother, Mary, which eventually led to this question for the group: Is it OK to go no-contact with your parents if they upset you?

The 20-somethings were Team No-Contact, while those of us in midlife and beyond disagreed because bad-parenting moments come with the territory, and well, family is family.

Our POV tracked with the memoir's theme: Roy remained stubbornly devoted to her mom despite their lifelong turbulent relationship.

The connection and community I found that weekend reminded me that life is full of possibilities

The next day, I came home intoxicated with pine-scented fresh air and nurtured by the experience.

Confession: In this chapter as an empty nester, I often feel nestless. It's almost like I'm back in my 20s, asking fundamental questions again, such as: What should I do now? Where should I live now that I don't have to be tied to a good school system?

However, spending the weekend with retreat members, including Suzanne and forest-bathing Beth, who've made bold midlife moves, reminded me that life is an open book, filled with exciting possibilities.

Meanwhile, I've been really noticing the trees during my daily walks, brushing up on my vlogging skills (inspired by the bookstagrammers' industriousness), and seeking out even more ways to meet new friends of all ages.

• Young tech startup founders are having a moment in the AI era.
• From teenagers to 20-somethings, these founders are raising millions.
• Take a look at the pitch decks some of these founders shared with Business Insider.

Tech is no stranger to young founders.

Steve Jobs was 21 when he cofounded Apple in 1976. Mark Zuckerberg was 19 when Facebook launched. Whitney Wolfe Herd was 25 when she unveiled Bumble.

Many of today's startup founders are still young and scrappy. And in the age of AI, they're even more empowered to barrel ahead.

Some are following the footsteps of tech titans before them and dropping out of college. Others are opting out of the undergraduate experience altogether, with a few ditching high school to pursue careers in tech.

Arlan Rakhmetzhanov, founder of AI coding startup Nozomio, told Business Insider that he dropped out of high school in Kazakhstan after getting accepted into the competitive startup accelerator program, Y Combinator (YC). At the age of 18, he raised $6.2 million for Nozomio.

Rakhmetzhanov isn't the only teenager finding success in AI. There's also Toby Brown, a UK teen who raised $1 million for his AI project. There's also Zach Yadegari, the teenage cofounder of Cal AI, a nutrition app.

College-aged founders are also building companies and raising capital, such as the Yale students behind Series AI, a new social networking startup.

The median age for YC participants is now 24 years old, compared to 30 in 2022, YC's Pete Koomen told The New York Times in August.

Business Insider has interviewed the founders of 12 startups who are 25 years old or younger and have raised millions in funding since 2024 about the pitch decks they used to impress investors.

Read 12 pitch decks founders who are 25 years old or younger used to raise millions:

Note: Founders were 25 or younger when Business Insider published the following articles.

Series A

• Posh, an events platform, raised a $22 million Series A when its founders were 23. Read the 12-page pitch deck it used.
• Clyx, a startup trying to connect people via in-person events, raised a $14 million Series A when its founder was 25. Read 22 pages of its deck.

Seed

• Ditto, an AI dating startup founded by UC Berkeley dropouts, raised $9.2 million when the founders were 23 and 24. Read its 12-page pitch deck.
• Lyra, an AI video call startup, raised a $6 million seed out of YC when its founder was 23. Read the 8-slide pitch deck it used.
• Nexad, an AI adtech startup, raised a $6 million seed after wrapping up A16z's Speedrun accelerator. Nexad's CEO was 25. Read the 10-page pitch deck.
• Orange Slice, a YC-backed sales tech platform, raised $5.3 million when its founders were 23. Read the 7-page pitch deck.
• Golpo, a generative AI video startup, raised a $4.1 million seed out of YC when its founders — who are also brothers — were 19 and 20. Read its 7-page pitch deck.
• Bluejay, an AI agent startup, raised a $4 million seed coming out of YC when its founders were 23. Read its 9-page pitch deck.
• Novoflow, an agentic AI startup building tools for medical clinics, raised $3.1 million when its founders were 18 and 19. Read its pitch deck.
• CodeFour, an AI police tech startup, was founded by two 19-year-old MIT dropouts and raised $2.7 million coming out of YC. Read the pitch deck.
• Cerca, a dating app that connects people with mutual friends, raised a $1.6 million seed when its CEO was 23. Read the 10-slide deck.

Pre-seed

• Series, an AI social networking startup, raised a $3.1 million pre-seed when its founders were 21.

This story has been updated with additional examples.

• A US Navy destroyer used an SM-3 interceptor to down an Iranian ballistic missile on Friday.
• It's the third time in two weeks that a Navy destroyer used the SM-3 to defend NATO airspace.
• SM-3s are among are top missile interceptors, but they come with a hefty price tag.

US Navy destroyers operating in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea have been launching SM-3s — among America's most high-end interceptors — to defend NATO airspace against incoming Iranian ballistic missiles.

On Friday, the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Oscar Austin fired at least one SM-3, or Standard Missile-3, interceptor to bring down an Iranian ballistic missile in Turkish airspace, a defense official told Business Insider.

It marked the third time since February 28, when the US and Israel started striking Iran, that a Navy destroyer has used an SM-3 to down an Iranian missile in Turkish airspace, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss military developments.

Turkey's national defense ministry said earlier that NATO air and missile defense assets deployed to the Eastern Mediterranean intercepted the Iranian missile. There were no casualties or injuries, although debris fell in the southern city of Gaziantep.

Turkey hosts several important bases for American and NATO forces, including Incirlik and Konya air bases, and an Iranian strike against those facilities could trigger a significant escalation in a war that has already spread across the Middle East.

The Oscar Austin is one of three American destroyers currently positioned in the Eastern Mediterranean. The use of SM-3 interceptors comes amid broader air defense operations across the Middle East. The US and its allies in the region have shot down thousands of Iranian missiles and drones since the start of Operation Epic Fury less than two weeks ago.

The SM-3 uses a kinetic kill vehicle to destroy short- to intermediate-range missiles during the midcourse phase of flight. It can engage targets in space, unlike the Navy's other interceptors, and is outfitted on Arleigh Burke-class destroyers and Ticonderoga-class cruisers.

There are multiple variants of the SM-3, manufactured by US defense giant RTX and, for the latest variant, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

US destroyers first used their SM-3s in combat in April 2024 to defend Israel from an Iranian missile attack, and the US Navy fired them again several months later in October after another barrage from Tehran.

These interceptor missiles don't come cheap, though. The SM-3 Block IB variant, for instance, is estimated to cost roughly $10 million on the low end, while the newer Block IIA costs around $28 million.

It's unclear how many SM-3s the Navy has expended during combat in the Middle East. Air defense doctrine can call for firing at least two interceptors for each incoming missile, so the bill for the latest engagements above Turkey could already be substantial.

Navy leadership has warned in recent years that the US has been firing its SM-3s at an alarming rate. Service officials have warned that they need a lot more of these interceptors to counter threats in the Pacific, such as China and its theater ballistic missiles.

• US forces used ATACMS to sink Iranian warships during Operation Epic Fury, the top US general said.
• Gen. Dan Caine announced that US artillery has helped to render the Iranian navy ineffective.
• ATACMS provide substantial striking power to ground forces.

The top US general revealed Friday that American troops involved in Operation Epic Fury have used a ballistic missile system to sink Iranian warships, including a submarine, offering some insight into the targets US artillery is engaging in this war.

Artillery soldiers and Marines are "sinking ships, destroying depots, and launching Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS," and "Precision Strike Missiles, or PrSMs," Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a Friday press briefing.

"From outside Iran, our Army and Marine artillerymen are hitting sites that Iran relies on to project power beyond their borders," he said.

"In just the first 13 days of this operation, our artillery forces have made history," Caine said.

"They fired the first precision strike missiles ever used in combat, reaching deep into enemy territory," he said. "They've used Army ATACMS to sink multiple ships, including a submarine."

US forces are "continuing to destroy the Iranian Navy to ensure freedom of navigation. He said that the US military is targeting mine-laying vessels and the ability to target commercial vessels.

"In less than two weeks, we've rendered the Iranian Navy combat ineffective and continue to attack naval vessels, including all of their Soleimani-class warships, which were armed with anti-ship missiles and anti-aircraft weapons," Caine said.

Other naval targets sunk include Iran's new purpose-built drone carrier.

Army Tactical Missile Systems are typically used to target land-based targets, such as enemy air defense systems and logistics hubs.

Each missile costs upward of $1 million, depending on the range and type of warhead. ATACMS missiles can hit targets out to as far as about 200 miles away and are fired using the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System or M240 Multiple Launch Rocket System launchers. The HIMARS can also fire PrSMs and much shorter-range guided rockets.

The Lockheed Martin-built ATACMS is guided by GPS and inertial navigation that tracks its flight toward a designated target, and hence cannot be used to accurately fire on moving targets. For this reason, it's likely that the ships destroyed were pierside or moored.

The ATACMS augments the strike power of Army and Marine Corps artillery, allowing land force commanders to hit critical targets without relying on air or naval forces to deliver the strike. The system was designed during the Cold War and first used in combat in the 1991 Gulf War.

The Ukrainians have also used their limited supply of US-provided ATACMS to hit Russian military facilities. With these weapons in short supply, Ukraine has since developed its own domestically built capabilities.

US forces have attacked over 6,000 targets in Iran, Caine said on Friday. As the US and Israel have established air supremacy over Iran, allowing bombers and fighters to fly overhead, they've shifted to munitions like gravity bombs, which are much cheaper to produce and more plentiful in the US arsenal than missiles.

A SpaceX, empresa de transporte espacial e de satélites fundada por Elon Musk, está lançando uma venda secundária de ações que poderia avaliar a companhia em US$ 800 bilhões, segundo pessoas familiarizadas com o assunto, relatou o jornal americano Wall Street Journal.

Se confirmado, a nova transação faria da SpaceX, mais uma vez, a startup mais valiosa do mundo, superando o recorde anterior de US$ 500 bilhões estabelecido pela OpenAI, dona do ChatGPT, em outubro.

A última oferta pública da empresa, discutida pelo conselho de diretores na quinta-feira (4) no hub Starbase da SpaceX no Texas, poderia mudar dependendo do interesse de vendedores e compradores internos, disseram as fontes, que pediram anonimato por se tratar de informações não públicas.

Sob um cenário preliminar, a SpaceX poderia incluir um preço por ação de cerca de US$ 300, o que avaliaria a empresa em aproximadamente US$ 560 bilhões, segundo duas das fontes. Os detalhes da transação ainda podem mudar antes do fechamento, podendo alcançar avaliações ainda mais altas, disse uma terceira pessoa.

Um representante da SpaceX não respondeu imediatamente a um pedido de comentário.

O último valor representaria um aumento substancial em relação aos US$ 212 por ação estabelecidos em julho, quando a empresa levantou recursos e vendeu ações com uma avaliação de US$ 400 bilhões.

O Wall Street Journal e o Financial Times, citando fontes não identificadas, relataram anteriormente que o negócio avaliaria a SpaceX em impressionantes US$ 800 bilhões, embora a Bloomberg não tenha conseguido confirmar a informação de forma independente.

A notícia sobre o valor da SpaceX fez as ações da EchoStar Corp., empresa de TV por satélite e telecomunicações, subirem até 18%. No mês passado, a EchoStar havia concordado em vender licenças de espectro à SpaceX por US$ 2,6 bilhões, somando-se a um acordo anterior de venda de cerca de US$ 17 bilhões em espectro sem fio para a empresa de Musk.

A SpaceX, lançadora de foguetes mais prolífica do mundo, domina a indústria espacial com seu foguete Falcon 9, que coloca satélites e pessoas em órbita.

A empresa também lidera o setor de serviços de internet via satélite em órbita baixa com o Starlink, um sistema com mais de 9.000 satélites, muito à frente de concorrentes como o Amazon Leo, da Amazon.com Inc.

Executivos da SpaceX já cogitaram transformar o Starlink em uma empresa separada de capital aberto — ideia sugerida inicialmente pela presidente Gwynne Shotwell em 2020.

No entanto, Musk repetidamente questionou publicamente a possibilidade ao longo dos anos, e o CFO Bret Johnsen afirmou em 2024 que um IPO do Starlink aconteceria provavelmente “nos próximos anos”.

O site The Information, citando pessoas próximas às discussões, relatou separadamente na sexta-feira que a SpaceX informou investidores e representantes de instituições financeiras que planeja um IPO para toda a empresa na segunda metade do próximo ano.

Uma chamada oferta secundária ou tender, na qual funcionários e alguns acionistas iniciais podem vender ações, oferece aos investidores de empresas privadas como a SpaceX uma forma de gerar liquidez.

A SpaceX também trabalha no desenvolvimento do novo foguete Starship, anunciado como o mais potente já desenvolvido, capaz de lançar grande quantidade de satélites Starlink, além de transportar carga e pessoas para a Lua e, eventualmente, para Marte.

Jeff Bezos assumirá o cargo de codiretor executivo de uma nova startup de inteligência artificial voltada para aplicações industriais e aeroespaciais, informou o New York Times na segunda-feira (17). A empresa, batizada de Project Prometheus, já arrecadou US$ 6,2 bilhões em financiamento — parte dele investida pelo próprio fundador da Amazon —, tornando-se uma das startups em estágio inicial mais bem capitalizadas do mundo, segundo três fontes ouvidas pelo jornal.

A iniciativa marca o retorno de Bezos a um cargo operacional formal desde que deixou a presidência-executiva da Amazon, em julho de 2021. Embora esteja profundamente envolvido com a Blue Origin, sua empresa espacial, Bezos detém ali apenas o título de fundador.

Com o Project Prometheus, o bilionário entra de vez em um mercado de inteligência artificial cada vez mais competitivo, dominado por gigantes como OpenAI, Meta, Google e Microsoft, enquanto dezenas de startups disputam espaço com produtos e modelos próprios.

O novo empreendimento será comandado por Bezos em parceria com Vik Bajaj, físico e químico que já trabalhou de perto com Sergey Brin no laboratório de inovação do Google, conhecido como X (antigo Google X).

Segundo o The New York Times, o jornal norte-americano, o Project Prometheus já contratou cerca de 100 pesquisadores vindos de empresas de IA, como OpenAI, DeepMind e Meta, em meio a uma acirrada disputa global por talentos.

A tecnologia em desenvolvimento da startup é direcionada a aplicações de IA para engenharia e produção em setores como informática, indústria automotiva e aeroespacial — áreas alinhadas ao interesse de longa data de Bezos em acelerar o acesso humano ao espaço. Ainda não está claro onde a startup está sediada nem quando exatamente foi fundada, já que a empresa manteve um perfil discreto até agora.

Vida de Bezos

Desde que deixou o comando da Amazon, Bezos tem dividido os holofotes entre seus negócios e sua vida pessoal — incluindo um casamento repleto de celebridades em Veneza neste ano. Ele também intensificou seu envolvimento com a Blue Origin e ampliou seus investimentos no setor de IA. Segundo a CNBC, todos os aportes feitos em 2024 pela família Bezos, por meio da gestora Bezos Expeditions, foram direcionados a empresas de inteligência artificial.

O lançamento do Project Prometheus ocorre em um momento de forte pressão por mão de obra especializada. Grandes empresas de tecnologia vêm oferecendo salários recordes e bônus milionários para atrair cientistas de IA — alguns chegando a valores de US$ 100 milhões. O mercado continua marcado por uma rotatividade intensa, com talentos migrando entre OpenAI, Meta, Google e startups emergentes.

Mesmo diante de uma competição bilionária, o Project Prometheus desponta como um novo peso pesado. Com US$ 6,2 bilhões já captados, a empresa tem margem para adquirir poder computacional escasso, atrair pesquisadores de elite e desenvolver conjuntos de dados proprietários difíceis e caros de produzir em ambientes industriais, segundo especialistas ouvidos pelo Times.

Em 2019, Chen Tianshi estava longe de se tornar uma das pessoas mais ricas do planeta.
O maior cliente de sua startup de chips de inteligência artificial de apenas três anos — a gigante chinesa de telecomunicações Huawei Technologies — havia abruptamente cortado quase todos os negócios, optando por desenvolver seus próprios semicondutores. Até então, a Huawei representava mais de 95% da receita da empresa.

Mas então ele teve uma sorte inesperada. A decisão dos EUA de cortar o acesso da China a chips avançados e a determinação de Pequim em fomentar tecnologia doméstica acabaram criando um ambiente de forte apoio estatal e um vasto mercado protegido para a empresa do prodígio da computação — impulsionando-o a se tornar um dos bilionários self-made mais ricos do mundo.

As ações da sua frabricante de chips, Cambricon Technologies, dispararam mais de 765% nos últimos 24 meses. Sua fortuna — quase toda derivada de sua participação de 28% na fabricante de aceleradores de IA com sede em Pequim — mais que dobrou em 2025, alcançando US$ 22,5 bilhões, segundo o Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

A ascensão meteórica de Chen destaca como o robusto apoio da China à indústria doméstica de IA está criando uma nova elite tecnológica alinhada ao Estado, poucos anos depois de o país ter reprimido seus titãs do setor privado. Com as sanções dos EUA sufocando o acesso da China a chips avançados, empresas como a Cambricon emergiram como campeãs nacionais, protegidas por políticas públicas e entusiasmo dos investidores — símbolos de uma nova ordem industrial em que o favoritismo político, e não a livre concorrência, define os vencedores.

Questionamentos sobre quanto desse avanço se deve ao protecionismo estatal — e não à competitividade dos chips — dividem analistas quanto à longevidade dessa trajetória.

“Crescimentos explosivos como o da Cambricon vêm de uma base muito baixa; sua avaliação atual pode estar inflada sem um apoio político contínuo”, disse Shen Meng, diretor do banco de investimento Chanson & Co., de Pequim.

Embora Chen ainda esteja longe da fortuna de Jensen Huang, fundador da Nvidia, ele já é a terceira pessoa mais rica do mundo com 40 anos ou menos, atrás apenas de Lukas Walton e Mark Mateschitz, herdeiros das fortunas Walmart e Red Bull, respectivamente.

As ações da Cambricon — e, por extensão, o patrimônio de Chen — dispararam em agosto, quando Pequim instruiu empresas locais a evitarem usar os processadores H20 da Nvidia, especialmente em projetos governamentais.

A empresa tentou esfriar o frenesi dos investidores, advertindo em documento à Bolsa de Xangai que ainda enfrenta sanções dos EUA e ressaltando as dificuldades de escalar tecnologicamente. Também desmentiu rumores sobre produtos inexistentes em desenvolvimento.

Relatórios de corretoras mencionavam seu próximo chip Siyuan 690, embora se acredite que ainda esteja anos atrás do produto equivalente da Nvidia.

“É cedo demais para dizer se Cambricon ou Huawei, as líderes em chips de IA na China, se tornarão a ‘Nvidia chinesa’, porque o ecossistema completo da Nvidia, incluindo o CUDA, é extraordinariamente difícil de replicar rapidamente”, disse Sunny Cheung, pesquisador no think tank Jamestown Foundation, em Washington.

A Cambricon não respondeu aos pedidos de comentário da Bloomberg.

Apesar das dúvidas sobre a avaliação da empresa, a trajetória de Chen tornou-se um caso de estudo do pipeline acadêmico apoiado pelo Estado que também impulsionou o avanço surpreendente da startup DeepSeek e de seu fundador millennial, Liang Wenfeng.

Aluno superdotado

Nascido em 1985, filho de um engenheiro elétrico e de uma professora de história na cidade de Nanchang, sudeste da China, Chen teve seu talento identificado cedo. Ele e seu irmão mais velho, Chen Yunji, foram escolhidos para um programa de alunos superdotados na prestigiosa Universidade de Ciência e Tecnologia da China, em Hefei, onde obteve PhD em ciência da computação em 2010.

Depois, juntou-se ao irmão como pesquisador no Instituto de Computação da Academia Chinesa de Ciências — centro das ambições científicas do país e financiado pelo Estado.

Foi ali que os irmãos ganharam atenção com artigos acadêmicos de prestígio internacional sobre seu acelerador DianNao, em 2014. Um ano depois, apresentaram seu primeiro chip — um processador inspirado no cérebro para deep learning, batizado de Cambricon, referência à explosão Cambriana, simbolizando um ponto inicial de evolução para a IA.

Em 2016, o projeto virou empresa, com a Academia como uma das primeiras investidoras.

O primeiro grande avanço veio em 2017, quando a Huawei usou a tecnologia de processadores de IA da Cambricon para melhorar fotografia e jogos no smartphone Mate 10. A parceria terminou em 2019, quando a Huawei começou a desenvolver soluções próprias. Desde então, a Cambricon migrou gradualmente para projetar e vender chips de IA para servidores de nuvem e dispositivos de borda.

Ela abriu capital em 2020, no STAR Market, em Xangai, mas permaneceu no vermelho até registrar lucro trimestral pela primeira vez no quarto trimestre de 2024.

A empresa sofreu um revés em 2022, quando o Departamento de Comércio dos EUA a colocou na “entity list”, por supostamente buscar itens de origem americana para apoiar a modernização militar da China — restrição que limita o acesso da Cambricon a tecnologias ocidentais.

Mas as limitações não frearam as perspectivas da empresa. Quando Washington endureceu os controles e impediu Nvidia e AMD de vender chips avançados à China, criou um enorme vácuo de suprimentos. Pequim reagiu exigindo que empresas domésticas “comprassem local”, o que significa que companhias chinesas agora precisam adquirir ao menos parte de seus chips de fabricantes nacionais como Huawei ou Cambricon.

A demanda explodiu. A receita da Cambricon cresceu mais de 500% nos últimos 12 meses, mesmo competindo com a Huawei e várias outras startups chinesas.

Embora hoje seja um dos principais investimentos domésticos em IA, investidores podem voltar-se a outras rivais à medida que Moore Threads e MetaX avançam rumo a IPOs na China. Enquanto isso, as fabricantes de chips Biren Technology e Iluvatar CoreX estariam preparando aberturas de capital em Hong Kong.

“O crescimento delas é diretamente causado pela necessidade urgente de países terem infraestrutura de hardware”, disse Shuman Ghosemajumder, cofundador e CEO da Reken, startup de IA de São Francisco. “Assim como a Nvidia, acredito que elas devem enfrentar grande volatilidade nas ações, à medida que o mercado tenta determinar quanta infraestrutura realmente é necessária para modelos de IA generativa úteis — e quanto dessas expectativas foi exagerado.”

Poucos países reagem tanto às decisões do Federal Reserve, o Banco Central dos Estados Unidos, quanto o Brasil. Quando os juros americanos caem, o dólar tende a perder força e investidores passam a buscar mercados onde há melhores opções de retorno. Nesse cenário, com a Selic ainda em 15%, o Brasil se torna um destino atrativo para parte desse capital. E, como consequência, a bolsa brasileira também ganha.

O efeito acontece em cadeia:

• O Fed corta juros, o que diminui a atratividade dos produtos de renda fixa nos Estados Unidos.;
• Em busca de melhores oportunidades de retorno, investidores estrangeiros trazem recursos para o Brasil e compram títulos de renda fixa, como títulos públicos, que pagam mais;
• Com mais dólares chegando ao país, o real se valoriza e, ao mesmo tempo, melhora a percepção de risco do país no mercado;
• A inflação sente o alívio do real mais valorizado e, com isso, o Banco Central brasileiro pode ganhar espaço para reduzir a Selic nos próximos anos;
• Juros mais baixos no Brasil tendem a estimular consumo e investimentos, o que ajuda a impulsionar a bolsa.
• Em 2025, o real já se valorizou cerca de 11% frente ao dólar, que hoje gira em torno de R$ 5,20. Essa força da moeda reforça o interesse de investidores em ativos locais e reduz pressões inflacionárias internas.

A experiência de outros ciclos reforça esse ponto: em períodos de queda de juros, o Ibovespa subiu em média 10% nos seis meses seguintes ao primeiro corte. Agora, o mercado projeta que a Selic siga elevada até o fim de 2025, mas comece a cair em 2026. E que termine o próximo ano em 12,25% e atinja 9,75% em 2027, segundo estimativas do Goldman Sachs.

Do lado externo, o Goldman também projeta que o Fed faça mais dois cortes em 2025 e outros dois em 2026, levando a taxa americana para algo entre 3% e 3,25% até meados de 2026. Essa trajetória define o ritmo de desvalorização do dólar e o tamanho do fluxo que pode chegar a emergentes como o Brasil.

Esse pano de fundo recoloca a bolsa brasileira no radar de grandes investidores globais. E cria oportunidades em diferentes setores. Analistas dividem essas ações brasileiras em dois blocos:

• Cíclicas domésticas: companhias ligadas a crédito e consumo, como Localiza, Cyrela, BTG Pactual, Nubank, GPS e Smartfit.

• Defensivas sensíveis a juros: empresas que mantêm receitas estáveis, mas aumentam margens com custo de financiamento mais baixo, como Eletrobras e Equatorial em energia, Copel e Sabesp em saneamento, Multiplan em shoppings e Rede D’Or na saúde.

Mas é bom lembrar que essa dinâmica positiva não elimina os riscos do cenário: as contas públicas brasileiras seguem pressionadas, a economia chinesa dá sinais de enfraquecimento e o ambiente geopolítico pode atrapalhar o fluxo de capital para emergentes.

Mesmo com essas incertezas, a combinação atual de Selic alta, bolsa negociada a múltiplos baixos e real mais valorizado coloca o Brasil em posição de destaque. Se a dinâmica observada em ciclos anteriores se repetir, o país pode novamente estar entre os maiores beneficiados pelo movimento de cortes de juros iniciado pelo Federal Reserve.

No início do ano, uma empresa de infraestrutura distante dos holofotes chamada Aligned Data Centers conseguiu arrecadar US$ 12 bilhões — mais do que algumas das principais startups de inteligência artificial do mundo conseguiram em uma única rodada. O objetivo: expandir drasticamente sua presença para atender à crescente demanda pelas instalações que alimentam os sistemas de IA.

Nove meses depois, com grande parte dessa expansão ainda em andamento, a Aligned está em negociações avançadas para ser adquirida pela Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), fundo da BlackRock, em um acordo de US$ 40 bilhões. A transação está a caminho de ser uma das maiores do ano e, potencialmente, a maior já realizada por uma empresa de data centers. 

As negociações de aquisição, noticiadas pela Bloomberg na noite de quinta-feira (2), citando pessoas familiarizadas com o tema, são indicativas de quanto dinheiro os investidores estão dispostos a investir em empresas consideradas essenciais para o boom da IA. De acordo com um relatório do Goldman Sachs, empresas relacionadas à IA responderam por US$ 141 bilhões em emissões de crédito corporativo até agora neste ano, superando os US$ 127 bilhões em dívida total do ano passado.

À medida que as empresas de tecnologia se dizem preparadas para investir centenas de bilhões, senão trilhões, em infraestrutura física para IA, há uma demanda crescente por empresas como a Aligned, que prometem atender a essas necessidades. Isso é verdade mesmo que a maior parte da capacidade do data center da Aligned – e a receita esperada com ele – ainda esteja em fase de planejamento. 

“Eles têm muita atividade planejada”, disse Ari Klein, analista da BMO Capital Markets, sobre a Aligned em particular. “Você provavelmente está vendo empresas pagando por essa atividade planejada, ou pelo que pode vir a acontecer.”

Fundada em 2013, quase uma década antes do boom da IA ​​generativa, a Aligned há muito tempo se concentra em fornecer data centers personalizados para empresas, com ênfase em eficiência e sustentabilidade. A empresa conta com o apoio da Macquarie Asset Management e possui 78 data centers sob gestão ou em desenvolvimento nas Américas, de acordo com seu portal. 

Assim como outros provedores de data centers, a Aligned tem enfrentado novas pressões nos últimos anos para construir mais e maiores data centers para IA. Em janeiro, a Aligned anunciou ter levantado US$ 12 bilhões em capital e dívida para acelerar seus planos de construir 5 gigawatts de capacidade de data center, o suficiente para abastecer metade da cidade de Nova York em um dia quente.

O investimento tinha como objetivo ajudar a Aligned a “aproveitar oportunidades impulsionadas pela crescente demanda por infraestrutura preparada para IA”, disse Andrew Schaap, CEO da empresa, em uma publicação nas redes sociais na época. “A Align está pronta para enfrentar este momento.”

O único desafio é que os data centers — e toda a infraestrutura, incluindo as fontes de alimentação para apoiá-los — levam tempo. Atualmente, a Aligned tem pouco mais de 600 megawatts de capacidade de data center em operação, com outros 700 megawatts em construção, de acordo com a DC Byte, empresa de inteligência de mercado que monitora o setor. Ainda assim, a capacidade combinada torna a Aligned uma “operação de tamanho razoável”, segundo o fundador da DC Byte, Edward Galvin. 

A Coreweave, provedora de nuvem que fechou acordos com a OpenAI e a Nvidia, possui 470 megawatts de capacidade ativa, de acordo com documentos públicos , com muito mais planejado. A CoreWeave reportou pouco mais de US$ 1,91 bilhão em receita em 2024. E embora a Aligned esteja em negociações para ser vendida por potencialmente US$ 40 bilhões, a Coreweave tem um valor de mercado de mais de US$ 65 bilhões.

A Aligned não divulgou publicamente seus números de vendas. Se cobrasse cerca de US$ 210 por quilowatt por mês, o padrão do setor para preços de data center, segundo a empresa de serviços imobiliários comerciais CBRE, a receita anual da Aligned seria de quase US$ 1,6 bilhão. Esse valor subiria para US$ 3,4 bilhões, incluindo a capacidade em construção. 

Representantes da Aligned não responderam a um pedido de comentário. 

A Aligned também está desenvolvendo um novo data center no Texas para a Lambda, uma empresa de infraestrutura em nuvem apoiada pela Nvidia . O projeto ainda está em construção.