Author: openjargon

• Cold Stone Creamery is facing legal action over 'pistachio' ice cream that contains no pistachios.
• The plaintiff argued that the name misled her into believing the ice cream contained real nuts.
• Last week, a judge ruled that the case can move forward. It's unclear when it will go to trial.

The parent company of Cold Stone Creamery is facing legal action after a New York woman ordered "pistachio" ice cream only to discover that it didn't contain pistachios.

In a ruling last week, Gary R. Brown, a federal judge at the Eastern District Court of New York in Brooklyn, allowed the case against Kahala Brands to move forward.

It all started when the plaintiff visited a Cold Stone Creamery in Levittown, Long Island, in July 2022, ordering what she believed was a pistachio ice cream.

In court filings, her legal team argued that she "reasonably believed" it contained the nut due to its name, but Brown wrote that "heartbreak followed."

The ruling says that upon examining the website's ingredient list, the plaintiff learned that the ice cream was made using a "mixture of highly processed ingredients" but no actual pistachios.

According to the ruling, it was instead made with pistachio flavoring, consisting of "Water, Ethanol, Propylene Glycol, Natural & Artificial Flavor, Yellow 5, [and] Blue 1."

The plaintiff's lawyers argued that had she been aware of this, she wouldn't have bought the ice cream.

In the ruling, the plaintiff compared Cold Stone Creamy's pistachio ice cream to offerings from Häagen-Dazs and Ben and Jerry's, both of which contained real pistachios.

She also compiled a survey of more than 400 US consumers, in which about 85% of participants believed a product labeled as pistachio ice cream would indeed contain pistachios, according to the ruling.

Despite Kahala Brands' efforts to have the case dismissed, including arguing that an online ingredient list was sufficient, the judge remained unconvinced.

However, he agreed that the case should focus solely on pistachio ice cream, and not other products with potentially deceptive names, and he dismissed implied warranty and unjust enrichment claims.

Kahala Brands did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It is unclear when the case will go to trial.

The lawsuit represents a broader trend of customers holding fast-food chains accountable for misleading product names or failing to meet expectations set by advertisements.

Business Insider previously reported on the rise in false-advertising class-action lawsuits against big food chains, including McDonald's and Taco Bell.

But Oren Bitan, an expert in these types of lawsuits, told BI that these types of claims face a high bar for success.

• The nation's biggest tech companies have spent more than $25 million lobbying Congress in Q1.
• Many of the tech giants have pivoted to developing AI tools in the past year.
• They're trying to make their voices heard ahead of time as Congress debates regulating the field.

The nation's largest tech companies spent more than $28 million on lobbying services in the first quarter of 2024.

Federal lobbying firms — advocates paid to try to influence legislators on Capitol Hill — were required to disclose their first-quarter earnings from companies on April 22, showing the groups they partnered with and some of the services they were lobbying for.

Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, and other industry leaders have spent billions in the past year alone developing AI tools and large language models, with each company trying to one-up the other. That is abundantly clear in federal lobbying disclosures, which reveal the companies have spent nearly $5 million more this quarter compared to Q1 in 2023, when they spent just under $23.6 million.

These companies also spend big bucks trying to persuade legislators to join their causes as they struggle to regulate the ever-changing technology industry.

Meta

After its Metaverse project cost Meta $16 billion in 2023 alone, leading the massive company to shutter some of its offices and lay off thousands of employees, the company's big focus in 2024 has been on its new open-source large language model, Llama.

Meta's spent the most on lobbying compared to its competitors, amounting to $8.5 million. The bulk of that — $7.64 million — went to Meta's in-house team of lobbyists, with the remaining $886,250 split up between 19 firms.

Amazon

In the first three months of 2024 alone, Amazon paid 29 different lobbying firms $5.85 million to lobby on behalf of its web services product, online pharmacy, and other company interests.

Amazon reported spending $4.35 million on its in-house lobbying team, which has more than 10 members, and about $1.24 million on the other 28 firms hired by the tech giant.

Alphabet/Google

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, reported $23.7 billion in profit in their Q1 quarterly earnings, exceeding Wall Street's expectations.

CEO Sundar Pichai said in an earnings call that much of Google's profit came from its search engine, but its foray into generative AI with its Gemini model has also been lucrative.

Alphabet reported spending $3.7 million on lobbying in the first quarter of 2024, $3 million of which remained with their in-house team. The remaining $700,000 was divvied up between 18 outside lobbying firms.

ByteDance/TikTok

ByteDance — the parent company of the massively popular social media app TikTok — reported spending $2.8 million lobbying in Q1 of 2024 alone, while TikTok itself also reported spending $440,000 on similar services. The two combined to spend about $3.2 million.

Congress introduced and passed a law earlier in 2024 that's set to ban TikTok from US app stores if ByteDance doesn't divest, despite TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew personally traveling to Washington, DC, to lobby against it.

Microsoft

Microsoft bet big on OpenAI in July 2019, investing $1 billion "to build secure, trustworthy and ethical AI to serve the public." Since then, Microsoft has reportedly invested $13 billion into the startup.

The investment has been a success for the company, helping it become a leader in the AI space.

Microsoft is reportedly working on its own large language model, MAI-1, to rival Google and OpenAI, though a timeline for its release is uncertain.

The company has spent $3.2 million in 2024 lobbying the halls of the Capitol, about $2.8 million of which went to its own team of lobbyists.

Apple

Apple has yet to formally announce its foray into building large language models or publicly available AI tools, but CEO Tim Cook teased in a recent earnings call that the company would make a big announcement regarding AI in "coming weeks."

The Wall Street Journal reported May 6 that the company was in the process of developing computer chips built specifically for AI software.

In the first three months of 2024, Apple spent $2.88 million on federal lobbyists, with $2.1 million going to its own lobbying team. The rest of Apple's lobbying investment was divided between eight other firms.

OpenAI

After a meteoric rise in 2023, OpenAI has spent $530,000 lobbying on Capitol Hill. The bulk of OpenAI's reported lobbying spending — $340,000 — was to its in-house team.

OpenAI also reported paying $80,000 to the law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, $90,000 to global firm DLA Piper, and $20,000 to Hogan Lovells, which specializes in "corporate, finance, litigation, regulatory and IP law."

Tesla

Tesla reported spending $390,000 in Q1 in 2024. Seventy-one percent of that, or $280,000, went toward Tesla's personal lobbying team. The electric vehicle manufacturer also spent $80,000 on lobbying services from Cassidy & Associates and $30,000 from Pioneer Public Affairs.

CEO Elon Musk has notably been a staunch opponent of government subsidies in recent years despite Tesla and its subsidiaries getting $2,829,855,494 in federal and state loans since 2007.

X/Twitter

The Musk-owned X has spent $240,000 so far in 2024 on lobbying, with the vast majority —$170,000 — going to its in-house lobbying team. The remaining $70,000 was split between The Joseph Group and TwinLogic Strategies.

Musk notably invested resources in the past year in developing Grok, an AI-based chatbot he wants to use to summarize news on X that's had mixed success.

Nvidia

Nvidia, a company known for its GPU and computer chip manufacturing, has benefited enormously from the rapid growth of AI because its chips have become a "de facto industry standard" for developing AI models.

The company reported spending the least on lobbying of any major tech company on this list, $160,000, which was split evenly between The Nickles Group and Tiber Creek Group.

• Five people who landed jobs at Meta, Apple, Amazon, and Google share how they did it.
• A software engineer at Google said he networked with other engineers to learn about their day job.
• A former Amazon assistant prepared interview examples based on its leadership principles.

Getting a foot in the door at one of the four Big Tech companies — Meta, Google, Apple, and Amazon — can require years of training, an expensive education, and many interviews. Some spend years applying over and over and getting rejected.

Business Insider spoke to five people who landed jobs at Big Tech companies about how they learned the skills and experience that landed them the role — and how they showcased those skills during the interview.

Corey Griffin talked about side hustles that showcase relevant skills in an interview at Apple

Corey Griffin dreamed of working in Big Tech but felt he lacked the educational background he needed.

He learned software engineering while working in marketing and carved out a niche in marketing engineering. Griffin started a media company, C3G Media, as a side hustle and launched several marketing products, including a teleprompter product called Speakflow.

Griffin worked as a software engineer for Rotten Tomatoes, Vox, and Shopify before applying for jobs at Apple four times. Eventually, in 2021, he landed an interview.

However, he told Business Insider that he wasn't able to give details about some of his work during his interview because it was under NDA. Instead, he spoke about his side hustles, including Speakflow.

"I could show my wide skillset through my side projects, including graphic design, animation, marketing, and coding. I also had clients in a range of industries, such as the music industry and small technical clients," he said.

Griffin landed a role as a software engineer at Apple and worked at the company for two years.

tara Larsen knew Amazon's leadership policies inside out when she applied there

Tara Larsen landed a job as an executive assistant at Amazon after eight interviews.

She told BI that interviewers asked her behavioral-based questions which were based on Amazon's"leadership principles," also known as LPs.

Her advice to those interviewing at Amazon was, "Familiarize yourself with the LPs, have them in mind when you answer questions, and be ready to tell an interviewer which Leadership Principle you identify best with."

She said that interviewees should avoid trying to guess which LP the interviewer wanted to hear about for each question and instead show them how they would approach a situation using the LPs as a guide. Larsen would only say which specific LP she was referring to at certain points in the interview.

For example, she would say: "… where I did a little inventing and simplifying," or "…which reminds me of the LP, earn trust, because…" and "where I learned a thing or two about diving deep."

Sahil Gaba had learned cutting-edge software before becoming an Amazon software engineer

Sahil Gaba was working as a software engineer at a small fintech firm but knew he wanted to work in Big Tech.

Gaba told BI he felt he wasn't learning the cutting-edge technology he needed. He learned new technologies and honed his interview skills in his spare time. After two years, he landed a job as a software engineer at Amazon.

Within 18 months of working for Amazon, he landed offers from Meta, Uber, and Google, where he accepted a job with a starting salary of $300,000.

Sandeep Rao worked at Apple and Meta after working a job he thought would make him credible to Big Tech

Sandeep Rao, a software engineer who has worked at Apple and Meta, started out working in a lower-paying role at Oracle in India in 2012, where he was making 850,000 rupees a year, or $15,000.

"I took it to get my foot in the door of a Big Tech company and build credibility," he told BI.

At Oracle, he applied to graduate schools and eventually landed a place in the computer science graduate program at Carnegie Mellon University.

"Grad school was hard, but the doors it opened for me made the struggle worth it," Rao said. When he finished, he landed a job at Apple with a salary of $115,000.

Zubin Pratap networked with tech workers at conferences before getting a job at Google

Zubin Pratap had been working as a lawyer for over a decade when he decided, at 38, to pivot to tech. He told BI he didn't have a background in computer science and found it difficult to transition to a completely new industry.

Pratap focused on networking at conferences for engineers and developers and inviting people who could help out for coffee.

From asking questions about what they did he learned to "speak to engineers in their language," which he told BI was his "biggest advantage."

He started working at a small software development company and, after a year and a half, landed a job as a software engineer at Google. Before landing the role, he'd been rejected by Google four times. He said he had networked with people working in the company for insight into how things there worked and that this

He said, to land the role, he'd spent time speaking to people in the company for insight.

• Some US hospitals are demanding payment for non-emergency surgeries up front.
• It comes as hospital systems and corporate entities buy up medical practices nationwide.
• But for some patients, paying up front is not an option.

Getting surgery is getting harder in some American hospital systems.

In the past, medical centers have broadly provided procedures first and settled the bill with patients later — something they are legally required to do in emergency cases.

Now, in non-emergency cases, some hospitals want to be paid up front before they operate, and customers — ahem, patients — are not thrilled, The Wall Street Journal reported.

A surgical center in Flordia now owned by UnitedHealth, a healthcare insurance giant, told the Journal that billing patients in advance informs them of the expected cost. However, forcing patients to pay in advance also relieves companies from the cost of having to track and bill patients later on.

This shift comes as insurers, hospital systems, and private equity firms are quietly but efficiently buying up medical practices across the country, Business Insider previously reported.

Over three-quarters of doctors in America are now employed by a hospital or corporation and, as of January, more medical practices were owned by corporations than hospital systems, according to research from the Physicians Advocacy Institute.

Some medical providers fear the corporatization of healthcare could have a detrimental impact on patients. The new "pay-first, cut-later" policies at some medical practices may be an example of that negative impact, forcing people suffering from a medical condition that's severe enough to require surgery to scramble for funds to obtain the procedure.

In Tennessee, a hospital system overcharged 59-year-old Blake Young by over $2,500 for a heart scan, Young told the Journal. He had paid up front at the hospital's request and later found out he was charged too much for the service. He wrestled with the hospital for months to secure a refund check.

"It's not unlimited funds," Young told the Journal, noting he would use the refund for future unexpected medical bills. "They do run out."

• China is trying to make its economy less reliant on the West.
• These efforts could boost the Chinese economy but also prepare it for an invasion of Taiwan. 
• Self-reliance has helped the Russian economy stay afloat amid the invasion of Ukraine. 

China is taking steps to make its economy less reliant on the West. It likely has both economic and military motivations for doing so, experts say.

In recent years, China has invested billions to boost its production of semiconductor chips, electric vehicles, batteries, and solar panels. Over the past year, Southeast Asia overtook the US and Europe as China's largest export market. The Chinese government has also decreased its holdings of US treasuries, taken steps to reduce its reliance on Western food imports, and has worked to improve its energy security.

From an economic perspective, these efforts could both provide a short-term boost to China's slumping economy and help it prepare for long-term geopolitical tensions with the West, experts told BI. But these strategies also help it accomplish another objective: preparing the country for war.

"Reunifying Taiwan with the mainland is one of Xi Jinping's clearest aspirations, and it only makes sense that, if he's trying to game it out, he would want to do so in a way that minimizes the exposure to the Chinese economy," Vivek Chilukuri, national security expert at the Center for a New American Security, a think tank, told Business Insider.

However, if an attempt to reunify by force was around the corner, some experts say there are a few other signals one might expect to see.

"China's operating under the assumption now that tensions with the United States and the West are quite severe and unlikely to recede anytime soon," Scott Kennedy, an expert on China's economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research organization, told BI. "At the same time, doing that is still quite different from preparing for an actual war and what would come after."

It's not just about war: China has several other reasons to invest in its economy

Growth in China's economy has slowed as the country grapples with a real-estate debt crisis, high youth unemployment, an aging population, and reduced demand for its exports. And while China reported GDP growth in April that beat expectations, these challenges are expected to persist. The country's big investment in clean energy technology, in particular, is intended to boost its economy. However, it's worth noting that some experts are skeptical of the accuracy of Chinese economic data.

At the same time, China is building up its military at a rapid rate and is expected to have the forces needed to seize Taiwan in a few years — China has long claimed the island as its own. In the event China does invade or blockade, it would likely have to deal with the sanctions and trade restrictions of the US and other countries, which gives the country all the more reason to shore up its domestic industries.

It's possible that China could be taking some lessons from Russia, which took steps to shore up its resources prior to its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. While Russia's economy has taken a toll since then, Russian efforts to boost its domestic food supply and diversify its trade partners have helped it stay afloat and minimize the impact of Western sanctions — and Chinese imports of Russian oil have played a key role in this. Self-sufficient production of critical commodities like oil, natural gas, and wheat has also aided Russia, in addition to a large defense sector that's helped supply its military.

While China may have been accelerating efforts in recent years to "de-risk" its economy, this process started as long as a decade ago, Chilukuri said. He pointed to the country's "Made in China 2025" policy, launched in 2015, which was intended to make China the global leader in the manufacturing of key technologies like chips and EVs.

De-risking efforts like these would ultimately leave China better-positioned in the event of an invasion or blockade of Taiwan, or an unforeseen development like a pandemic. But Chilukuri said he thinks much of China's recent manufacturing push is about getting its economy back on track after the country's zero-COVID-19 policy brought it to a halt — and caused some in China to lose trust in Xi Jinping and his government.

"The fundamental trade that China's made with its people is you give up your aspirations for human freedom in exchange for sustained historically unprecedented economic growth," he said. "And Covid, I think, shook the confidence of a lot of people in China that that deal was going to be fulfilled."

That's why, even if an invasion or blockade doesn't happen anytime soon, growing tensions and loosening trade ties with the West could give China plenty of motivation to invest in its economy.

Despite its precautions, a seizure of Taiwan could still have a 'disastrous' impact on China's economy

China already has some experience in asserting its dominance over a territory and navigating blowback from the West.

In 2020, China passed a national security law for Hong Kong that eroded the city's freedoms, autonomy, and democracy and led to the arrest of pro-democracy activists. In response, the US issued sanctions against 11 Chinese and Hong Kong officials, and some US companies left the city.

Some experts believe China's intervention in Hong Kong served as a "test case" for how it would approach a takeover of Taiwan. If China follows the Hong Kong model, it might threaten Taiwan into capitulation without having to invade.

The other ways China might try to take control include a naval blockade that circles Taiwan and cuts it off from the rest of the world. An invasion is a third possibility — experts disagree on the likelihood and timing of this option.

In recent years, China has staged provocative military exercises around the island. What's more, Xi Jinping has told the Chinese military to prepare for war and said that reunification with Taiwan is inevitable. Some experts think a war could be on the horizon.

But not everyone thinks a Chinese military move is necessarily imminent. If China was actively preparing for a near-term invasion of Taiwan, Kennedy said there are a few things he might expect to see first.

First, China would begin preparing its citizens for war.

"You would see a steady drumbeat of propaganda preparing people for conflict and for potentially substantial economic sacrifices," he said.

Second, Kennedy said he'd expect to see China invest more heavily in materials like carbon fiber, which has a variety of military applications.

Third, he'd also expect to see many Chinese diplomats, business people, and students start returning to China, as well as significant movements in Chinese financial assets in an effort to avoid future sanctions.

As long as the US and Taiwan don't cross any of China's "red lines," the chance of a war involving Taiwan is "quite low," Kennedy said. He said those red lines include a Taiwan referendum on its statehood and the placement of significant US and Western military assets in Taiwan.

If China does invade, the global economic impact would be huge, and despite its efforts to secure its economy, China would likely be far from unscathed.

"Any action against Taiwan would be disastrous for China's economy," Chilukuri said. "But China's shown that it's willing to bear a considerable cost for ideology."

• A TikTok went viral showing a woman on a Southwest Airlines plane lying in the overhead locker.
• The video was viewed over 5 million times before appearing to be deleted.
• It's not the first time this has happened, a flight attendant was spotted lying in an overhead locker in 2019.

A TikTok video recently went viral showing a woman lying in the overhead locker of a Southwest Airlines plane, leaving passengers baffled.

The video was viewed over 5 million times on TikTok, according to The New York Post. As of Friday morning, it appears to have been deleted from the platform.

"Southwest is wildn," the TikTok user @gmonique_123 captioned the video.

People in the comments were puzzled over the incident.

"That looks way more comfortable than the actual seats. give me a pillow and close the hatch," read one comment that The Daily Mirror reported.

"Southwest does allow you to choose your own seat," another commenter joked.

The passenger was found by a flight attendant before the plane took off from Albuquerque to Phoenix, according to ABC News.

It isn't clear how long she was in the locker, or how she got in.

Southwest Airlines didn't respond to a request for comment from Business Insider made outside normal working hours.

Perhaps surprisingly, it is not the first time this sort of behavior has been seen on a Southwest flight.

Back in 2019, a Southwest Airlines flight attendant was spotted lying in the overhead lockers. A passenger on the plane, Veronica Lloyd, posted a video to social media showing the bizarre moment.

"I can't get over how weird I find this," she said. "@SouthwestAir please get it together."

The flight attendant was reportedly lying on her side in the locker for 10 minutes, Lloyd told Fox News. After she came down from the bin, the rest of the flight was compeltely normal, Lloyd added.

The overhead lockers can be a point of contention between passengers on a flight looking to secure a spot for their bags.

One travel influencer laid out etiquette rules around the overhead bins and argued that a lot of people tend to get it wrong. He said that the overhead locker directly above your seat doesn't belong to you. Instead, it's a first-come, first-serve.

Another TikToker sparked debate after telling people not to put their bags in the overhead lockers over other people's seats.

Overhead locker space is a hot-button issue for passengers, so it's probably wise to avoid using it as a seat, too.

• The US government is set to impose tariffs on key Chinese industries, Bloomberg reported.
• That means Chinese EVs, as well as solar cells and batteries, could be hit with higher taxes.
• It comes as fears grow about a wave of cheap Chinese EVs upending the US market.

President Joe Biden is taking aim at China's EV industry.

Citing people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reported that the US government is set to impose new tariffs on a range of Chinese industries, including EVs.

Targeting key strategic sectors

Reuters reported that specific details about the value or categories of tariffs were limited, but the administration seemed to be focusing on strategic competitive and national security areas.

EVs appear under the most scrutiny, but batteries and solar cells could also be targeted under the plan. All could face higher taxes, although they reportedly won't be the broad hikes that Donald Trump has pledged if he's elected.

The decision could come as early as next week, although Bloomberg reported it could be delayed. It would mark the latest salvo in the government's attempt to protect the stuttering US EV industry from a wave of cheap Chinese exports.

Chinese EV producers such as BYD have so far largely avoided the US market due to pre-existing trade barriers, such as a 25% tariff on Chinese auto imports previously touted by President Donald Trump.

Intense competition

However, fears are rising over whether this may be about to change, with Chinese automakers increasingly looking to export their vehicles abroad as competition back home gets more intense.

Reports that auto giants MG, BYD, and Chery were planning to build factories in Mexico sparked alarm from US officials and politicians late last year, with lawmakers warning that the move could allow Chinese car companies "a backdoor to the US market."

Relief for US firms

The decision to target China's EV exports will therefore come as a relief for US EV companies.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said earlier this year that Chinese EV firms would "demolish" their Western rivals if trade barriers weren't put in place.

The reported new tariffs do not go as far as those suggested by Trump, who has said he would introduce a tax of more than 60% on all Chinese imports if elected president in November.

• Neom planners are worried about The Line as costs skyrocket, The Wall Street Journal reported.
• Planners are reportedly concerned the horizontal skyscraper's design might not appeal to some people.
• The first 1.5 miles of the megaproject could cost more than $100 billion.

The cost of Saudi Arabia's Neom project seems to be spiraling — and that's not the only issue concerning planners.

According to The Wall Street Journal, they're concerned that The Line's vertical city concept will not appeal to some potential residents, given the levels of natural light likely to reach the lower levels of the parallel structures.

They will be about 1,640 feet high — not far off the World Trade Center in New York City, which is 1,776 feet. According to Neom's website, the city will have no roads or vehicles and run entirely on renewable energy.

Some have already raised questions about The Line's design.

Leonard Chan, chair of the Hong Kong Innovative Technology Development Association, cast doubt on the city's practicality after attending Neom's roadshow in China last month.

"I'll visit for fun, but I won't live there. It's like something out of SimCity," he told news agency AFP.

Another attendee, Plato Yip, chair of the environmental group Friends of the Earth in Hong Kong, told the outlet he worried the city would feel isolated. The concept of the mirrored city "feels like being caged inside, even though it may be very comfortable," he added.

Even architects working on The Line have questioned the feasibility of the project.

Last year, British architect Peter Cook, who is involved in the project, called the city an "amazing absurdity," adding that the proposed height was "a bit stupid and unreasonable" in comments reported by the Architects Journal.

The cost of Neom could also prove to be an issue.

Saudi Arabia's official estimate for the project is $500 billion, but recent reports have claimed that funding for the futuristic megacity could skyrocket to more than $1.5 trillion.

According to the Journal's report, executives working on Neom have dismissed the $500 billion figure as unrealistically low. The first 1.5 miles of The Line alone is expected to cost more than $100 billion, two unnamed sources told the newspaper.

Neom employees expect the true cost of the mirrored city to be more than $2 trillion, per the Journal.

Saudi Arabia has been trying to counter reports that the project has suffered recent setbacks. Last month, the Saudi economy minister told CNBC there was "no change in scale."

This week senior Saudi officials were withdrawn from the Milken conference in Los Angeles to brief Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on the progress of Neom, Semafor reported.

Representatives for Neom declined to comment.

• Microsoft's Mustafa Suleyman and Google's Demis Hassabis were childhood friends.
• In 2010 the pair cofounded DeepMind, which was later bought by Google.
• The two are on opposite sides of an AI arms race between Big Tech's oldest rivals.

Google's Demis Hassabis and Microsoft's Mustafa Suleyman first met in London when the latter was still at school.

Suleyman, the son of a taxi driver, and Hassabis, a chess child prodigy, both grew up in different parts of north London.

The pair are separated by eight years, and Hassabis had already begun a computer science degree at the University of Cambridge when he met Suleyman in the mid-1990s.

By 2010, the two had cofounded DeepMind along with fellow researcher Shane Legg. Less than four years later, Google acquired it for more than $500 million.

With Hassabis at the helm, the Google DeepMind is at the forefront of Google's AI push.

Meanwhile, Suleyman, who left Google in 2022, is heading up Microsoft's AI efforts.

From childhood friends to two of the most important players in AI, the two Londoners have found themselves on opposite sides of an increasingly tense race between Big Tech's oldest rivals.

Deep rivalry

Hassabis and Suleyman seem to view their relationship somewhat differently.

The younger cofounder spent much of his career in Hassabis's shadow — first at DeepMind and later at Google after it acquired the AI startup.

Speaking to The New York Times, Suleyman called his relationship with Hassabis "a friendly and respectful rivalry."

In a separate interview, Hassabis dismissed the idea of a rivalry with his former business partner altogether. Speaking about Suleyman, Hassabis told the newspaper: "Most of what he has learned about AI comes from working with me over all these years."

The pair spent more than nine years working together at DeepMind. During that time, Hassabis acted as the company's public face and CEO, largely leading the company's high-profile acquisition deal with Google.

Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO at the time of the acquisition, last year told Fast Company he only got to know Suleyman after spending considerable time with Hassabis.

"I didn't understand at the time how good a technologist he was because Demis sort of overwhelmed him in that sense — he was sort of in Demis's shadow," Schmidt said. "But I think in the past few years, he's emerged from that shadow."

At DeepMind, Suleyman was initially chief product officer and later head of applied AI. In 2020, he finally joined DeepMind's parent company, Google, as a vice president of AI product management and policy.

But Suleyman's attempt to step decisively out of Hassabis's shadow came when he left Google and cofounded Inflection AI in 2022.

Just two years later, Inflection was bought by Microsoft, and Suleyman was installed as the company's CEO of AI.

'Pretty relentless'

Suleyman's time at DeepMind was not without controversy, and in early 2022 the DeepMind cofounder left Google to join venture capital firm Greylock Partners.

In a podcast interview on Greylock's website, Suleyman said he'd "really screwed up" when asked about complaints regarding his management style.

Suleyman described himself as "very demanding and pretty relentless," adding: "I think that at times that created an environment where I basically had pretty unreasonable expectations of what people were to be delivering and when, and ended up being pretty hard-charging, and that created a very rough environment for some people."

London calling

One of Suleyman's first moves as Microsoft's newly installed AI chief was to launch an AI hub in London, which is also home to Google DeepMind.

The move is part of a wider AI talent war between tech companies and sets the stage for a wider battle with Suleyman's old company.

"There is an enormous pool of AI talent and expertise in the UK, and Microsoft AI plans to make a significant, long-term investment in the region as we begin hiring the best AI scientists and engineers into this new AI hub," Suleyman wrote in the announcement.

The move could prove savvy for Microsoft as major tech companies eye up Google's high-quality pool of AI talent.

Microsoft already has a presence in London, but the fact that the new hub is focused on AI and run by a DeepMind cofounder will not have escaped Hassabis' attention.

Representatives for Hassabis and Suleyman didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

• Chinese leader Xi Jinping is courting trade and influence in Europe.
• But European firms in China report dwindling confidence in their operations.
• A key challenge EU businesses face is in attracting international talent to China.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is in Europe, trying to charm his way to more trade, investments, and influence in France, Serbia, and Hungary.

Despite the pomp and hype over Xi's trip, European firms in China say they aren't quite convinced about their prospects in the country, according to a European Union Chamber of Commerce in China report released on Friday. Its survey of 529 respondents was conducted in January and February.

According to the business chamber's survey, just 13% view China as a top investment destination — a record low. It's also much lower than the 27% of EU firms who viewed China as a top investment destination in 2021, when the country was still in the midst of on-off pandemic lockdowns.

China's economy is in a painful transition from its reliance on lower-cost manufacturing and real estate to what Xi's administration calls the "new three" sectors of electric vehicles, lithium batteries, and solar cells.

The economic drag on business sentiment was evident from the survey results, with more than two-thirds of respondents saying that doing business in China became more difficult in 2023 — the highest proportion on record.

EU firms' China operations are 'decoupling' from their headquarters

It's not just the gloomy economy and slowing demand that are weighing on investor confidence. EU firms have also started to "decouple" their operations in China as the number of foreign nationals employed locally falls.

"There are worrying signs that some European companies are either silo-ing operations or scaling down their ambitions in China as the challenges they face start to outweigh the benefits of being here," Jens Eskelund, the chamber's president, said at a press conference, per Reuters.

More than a third of respondents face challenges attracting or retaining international talent in China, with 70% citing a lack of willingness among potential candidates to relocate as the key issue, according to the survey.

"Members report that a drop in the number of Europeans employed by their China operations has been a key factor behind the trend of decoupling between HQs and China operations, as it has led to a decrease in mutual understanding and trust," according to the report.

It also makes it increasingly difficult for the China operations of the EU firms to get approval from their headquarters.

This decoupling — which was reported by two-fifths of respondents — means local Chinese operations and their headquarters now have less understanding of on-the-ground realities — "a dynamic that is being exacerbated by the fact that more and more restrictions are being placed on access to reliable information about China's economy," per the report.

The European business chamber called for "full access to legitimate and trustworthy sources of economic data" in its report.

"Without this, many CEOs will continue to feel they simply do not have the transparency and legal certainty they need to justify to their boards that there is a need to increase — or in some cases even maintain — their investments," it added.

A record low 42% of EU companies said they plan to expand their operations in China this year.