Author: openjargon

• Legal tech ❤️ NYC.
• To win the market, startups say they need to be where the law firms and corporate legal chiefs are.
• Legora and Harvey are expanding their footprints in New York, as Clio hunts for office space.

When Logan Brown left Cooley to start a legal tech firm this spring, she moved to New York City. She has begun recruiting lawyers to her venture.

"It's not that hard of a sell," Brown, 30, said on a phone call from her apartment in the Financial District. More junior lawyers want to help build the future, not watch it pass them by. For them, New York is the obvious place to be.

Legal tech skyrocketed this year as corporate clients pushed law firms to use tools that can lower costs and improve results. The change is playing out floor by floor in Manhattan office towers — a big reason why legal tech startups are increasingly based in the city.

Legora, a Swedish-born legal tech unicorn, said Tuesday it signed a two-floor lease at 838 Broadway, a newly renovated building just south of Union Square. The company, which sells enterprise software to Big Law firms including Goodwin and Cleary Gottlieb, is expanding after a recent funding round valued it at $1.8 billion.

Founded in 2023, Legora has been trading office rentals all year, starting in a coworking space and relocating twice as its need for desks increased. Its employees must be in the office five days a week.

The strategy is simple: To woo elite law firms and corporate legal chiefs, Legora needs to be where they are.

In 2024, the American Bar Association counted 187,656 lawyers in New York, the most of any state and just ahead of California's 175,883. Seven of the 20 largest US law firms are headquartered in New York City, and all of the rest maintain offices there.

"New York is the legal services capital of the world," Patrick Forquer, Legora's senior vice president of global revenue, said over Zoom. "If you want to win this market, you have to win this city."

Legal tech's office land grab

Harvey, one of Silicon Valley's hottest legal tech companies, said in October it secured a 10-year lease at One Madison Avenue in Midtown. The deal triples its New York office footprint to 97,000 square feet. Legora's new lease covers 27,238 square feet and lasts five years.

Fresh off a $500 million funding round, Vancouver legal-tech giant Clio has begun searching for office space in New York, according to a spokesperson. Spellbook, which sells tools for contract review to small and midsize law firms and corporates, is also looking for a New York pad, says CEO Scott Stevenson.

Crosby and Covenant, both newish startups that sell legal services directly, not software, are based in New York. So is Hebbia, the Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup serving investors and lawyers. It has 130 employees across its global offices, including a new site in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood.

George Sivulka, Hebbia's cofounder and CEO, said in an email that launching the company from New York was "the only option." The proximity means "buyers make decisions faster and feedback comes quicker," Sivulka wrote.

Being steps from clients is convenient; Legora's Forquer said he rides Citi Bike to pitch meetings. The other main draw is talent. New York puts legal tech founders within reach of the lawyers they need to help build and sell their products.

For lawyers, by lawyers

Jen Berrent built her legal career in New York, first as a corporate lawyer, then as WeWork's chief legal officer. Her startup, Covenant, reviews fund documents for private market investors, work they'd typically farm out to a law firm.

Covenant isn't training its own large language models. If it were, Berrent would be in San Francisco for the engineering talent. Instead, she has built a scrappy team of Big Law attorneys who use Covenant's software, built on top of models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, to turn legal work around faster.

"If you believe that the way you're going to win in a vertical is with the expertise, then the expertise is here," Berrent said. Covenant occupies a Midtown WeWork, of course.

As investors funnel money into legal tech, hiring is picking up. Suddenly, junior lawyers have more offers than ever to trade billable hours for a shot at shaping their industry's future.

For associates running on fumes, the startup route has perks, including stock options. Harvey, which opened its first New York office in 2023, offers free daily lunch, is rolling out wellness and fertility benefits in 2026, and grants a four-week paid leave after four years of tenure.

John Nay is also vying for candidates. His company, Norm Ai, builds no-code tools for compliance and legal teams to do their work. Last week, it announced the launch of an independent law firm that will provide services directly to clients, including Blackstone.

While other startups jostle for attention with billboards and conference booths, Nay's company is taking a different tack. It recently began hosting networking events at New York City bars, as part of a recruiting push into Big Law.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at mrussell@businessinsider.com or Signal at @MeliaRussell.01. Use a personal email address and a non-work device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• The Coast Guard is seeing record-breaking numbers of drug hauls from its interdictions.
• Leadership said the service wants more ships, capabilities, aircraft, and people to keep up with drug runners.
• Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities remain a top priority.

USCG HITRON JACKSONVILLE, Florida — The Coast Guard is pushing for more ships, aircraft, and personnel to keep pace with the record flow of drugs heading toward the US.

Recent drug offloads from Coast Guard cutters rank among the largest in the service's history, and leaders say the flow of narcotics through the eastern Pacific and Caribbean continues to rise.

"From a service perspective, I'd say we need assets," Cmdr. Chris Guy, commanding officer of the Coast Guard's South Tactical Law Enforcement Team, told Business Insider. "We need ships," he added, and "the more assets we have, the more ability we have" to "stop the flow of dangerous drugs into the United States."

Last week, the Coast Guard cutter Stone offloaded over 49,000 pounds of cocaine worth more than $362 million in Port Everglades, Florida, after a monthslong deployment in the eastern Pacific. The crew of the Stone, a Legends-class National Security cutter, completed 15 interdictions, including three in one night.

The offload was the largest amount of cocaine ever seized by a single Coast Guard ship on one deployment, but it's just the latest in a string of major busts for the service.

More drugs, more intercepts

The Coast Guard has long been the nation’s leading force for intercepting drug shipments at sea. But as traffickers grow in number and their hauls get larger, the service is pushing to expand its fleet, adopt new technology, and boost recruiting to keep pace.

The Coast Guard's force design plan for 2028, approved by US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem earlier this year, aims to increase the workforce, acquire more ships and revamp the current fleet, add more helicopters, and invest in better intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities.

At the time the plan was unveiled, the acting Coast Guard commandant, Adm. Kevin Lunday, wrote that it came after "decades of underinvestment and severe readiness challenges."

Some of those issues, including shipbuilding and maintenance delays and years of missed recruiting and retention goals, have been tracked by the Government Accountability Office, a government watchdog agency.

Guy said the Coast Guard knows what capabilities it continues to need to meet that threat.

"We need maritime patrol aircraft, and we need persistent surveillance at sea so that we can find the drugs. We need vessels that have, whether it's a Coast Guard cutter or whether that's a US Navy ship, a Coast Guard boarding team attached to it. And then we need that end-game capability, whether that's a fast boat with a marksman that's in the back of the boat and the ability to shoot out engines, or a helicopter with a marksman that can stop the vessel," he told Business Insider.

As the force design plan takes effect, it’s expected to have a significant impact on addressing major challenges, officials said, at a time when the service is intercepting more drugs than ever before.

A mix of factors is driving those record hauls, from instability in drug-producing countries in South America and shifting trafficking routes to improved surveillance on ships like the Stone and the service’s growing ability to adapt to new smuggling tactics.

In particular, the increasing use of uncrewed aerial systems, like Shield AI's MQ-35 V-BAT, which was aboard the Stone on its recent deployment and helped the ship's crew find vessels at night, is upping the Coast Guard's ability to locate and track drug runners.

"The UAS is a game-changing capability for us," Capt. Daniel Broadhurst, the commanding officer of the Coast Guard's Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron, told Business Insider. "The number one enabler of what we do, the key to success, is ISR."

Getting more ISR capabilities for the cutters on patrol, be it better sensors onboard or drones that can be the eyes in the sky, has been a priority for the service.

Stopping drug runners

The US is intensely focused right now on stopping drug shipments at sea, relying on cooperation across multiple federal agencies.

Under President Donald Trump, the tactics have now moved beyond regular, lawful Coast Guard interdictions. This year, the administration has pursued controversial military strikes on alleged traffickers in the Pacific and Caribbean, raising concerns as the president has used wartime rhetoric. Trump has said that the previous methods of interdicting these vessels have "been totally ineffective."

Last week, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told reporters aboard the Stone that the president "has taken an all-hands approach" to stopping drug smugglers.

"He's not choosing just one line of effort but recognizes the unique capabilities that we have across the United States government to get after that promise that he made to make America's streets and communities safe again," Gabbard said.

Meanwhile, the Coast Guard continues to see substantial success in conducting its lawful, step-by-step interdiction process.

"When we say the Coast Guard is accelerating counter-narcotics operations, we mean it," Vice Adm. Nathan Moore, commander of the Coast Guard's Atlantic Area, said last week at the Stone's offload. "In fiscal year 2025, we seized the most cocaine in the service's history, nearly 510,000 pounds."

The Coast Guard estimates 80% of interdictions of US-bound drugs occur at sea, the majority of which are based in the eastern Pacific. They're coming to the US mostly on "go-fast boats," as well as fishing vessels and semi-submersibles.

The increasing number of drugs seized, particularly in the past year, reflects "the intensity and the scale and the lethality of the drugs and the threats that we face," Moore added.

• I had to book Amtrak instead of flying, and it made my holiday travel experience less of a hassle.
• A generous luggage policy and my worry about airport disruptions made train travel more appealing.
• The trip can be uncomfortably long, but flexible seating and beautiful views make it worth it.

After procrastinating to buy my flight home for Thanksgiving one too many times (sorry, Mom), I've been left with no other option but to turn to the Pennsylvanian, a 9-hour and 20-minute Amtrak train that travels from New York to Pittsburgh.

This time, I paid $316 for the round-trip ticket, and was happy to book the train instead of a flight. I've taken this train ride almost a dozen times in the past five years, and have turned into somewhat of a train enthusiast because of it.

Additionally, flying disruptions — such as the recent government shutdown — and the seemingly endless construction at my hometown airport have made me more inclined to take the train over the past few years.

It's not perfect, but from avoiding never-ending security lines at the airport to having a row to myself, here are the four reasons I prefer traveling by train.

1. There are no security lines or airport hassles

I've been stranded in too many hour-plus airport security lines to count. When I arrive at the train station, I simply wait for my track to be announced, which typically occurs 15 minutes before departure, and then board the train when it arrives.

There aren't any annoying security lines or shuttles to take between terminals, so I can get to the train station around 30 minutes before the train leaves. Plus, boarding usually goes pretty fast because the train attendants can stagger the boarding lines between train cars.

2. I don't have to worry about size restrictions or checking too many bags

Have you ever shed a tear watching TSA throw away a precious perfume or hand lotion you just bought?

One of the lovely things about traveling by train is that there are no size restrictions on liquids. This is a small win, but when I fly, I'm constantly holding my breath to see if my carry-on toiletry bag will make it through TSA, so it's another tick on the pros list for me.

Additionally, Amtrak has a really generous luggage policy. Each passenger is allowed one personal item, two carry-ons, and two checked bags free of charge. Additional checked luggage is only $20 a bag.

3. There aren't assigned seats, and I usually have a row to myself

With no assigned seats, there's usually an opportunity for me to find a row to myself. I've taken this train route five times in the last year, and there's only been one ride where I wasn't able to snag that luxury.

There's a roughly two-to-four-hour period of the train ride where I lose cell service entirely, and I use that time as a deep work block to get writing, planning, or anything else that I need to get done accomplished.

One benefit of having a row to myself, besides the obvious extra room, is that I can spread out my work in front of me and not worry about bothering anyone.

4. It's a beautiful train ride

Lastly, it's a scenic ride. Although I try to focus on getting some work done or taking stock of my priorities, both personally and professionally, I sometimes can't help but get lost in the views for hours.

My favorite part of the ride is about halfway through, when we go on the horseshoe curve in Altoona, PA. It's a 220-degree railroad curve that was finished in 1854. I've now seen the curve through almost every season and look forward to marveling at the view each time.

As much as I do love the train, the ride itself isn't always the smoothest, the café car never has consistent hours, and sometimes, by hour six, the 9-hour ride feels like it will never end.

But overall, if I have the time to spare, I'll always choose the train over flying. I've realized that having this time for myself helps me reset in between destinations.

Got a travel hack to share? Email this reporter at aapplegate@businessinsider.com.

• Pinterest CEO Bill Ready is all in on search.
• Google dominates the all-purpose search market, but rivals are making gains in particular niches.
• This story is one of a five-part series exploring the changing online search landscape.

Four years ago, Pinterest was bleeding users.

The platform known for mood boards had made a big effort to compete with TikTok — as did nearly every other social media platform at the time — with short-form video, shoppable livestreaming, and paying creators.

It didn't work. When Bill Ready took over as Pinterest's CEO in 2022, he felt the company needed a new direction.

"I didn't think the world needed a fourth or fifth best TikTok," Ready told Business Insider in an interview. Ready, who left his previous post as Google's president of commerce, decided that a search experience that was both personalized to each user and highly visual would be the platform's special sauce.

"Search is the core of the business," Ready said. "The business didn't have that clarity three years ago."

Pinterest's user growth has rebounded since Ready's takeover, steadily increasing for the past nine quarters. It recently hit 600 million monthly active users, and about two-thirds of the interactions on the platform are related to search.

Pinterest's focus on search has been a hit with users, with about 80 billion monthly search queries, according to the company.

It's also helped Pinterest win over Gen Z users.

More than half the platform's users are now Gen Z, Ready said. In a 2025 survey conducted by Adobe of 800 consumers and 200 business owners, 47% of Gen Z respondents said they used Pinterest for search.

"At the core of why we're winning with Gen Z is what we're doing with visual search and what we're doing to make it more positive than social media," Ready said.

Pinterest has more to prove. The company's share price hasn't returned to its pandemic high. While Pinterest's revenue increased 17% year-over-year in the third quarter, its stock plummeted over 20% following its earnings release, which included an earnings miss and weak guidance for the fourth quarter. Pinterest management said ad sales had been negatively affected by tariffs.

Raymond James analyst Josh Beck rated the company at a neutral "market perform" following the third-quarter earnings, but wrote he was "encouraged" by Pinterest's broader progress in shopping and "untapped" advertising opportunity.

Search will continue to play a significant role in Pinterest's advertising strategy, as Ready emphasized in its latest earnings that Pinterest search results are "highly commercial in nature."

Broadly, search has been undergoing a shake-up due to new consumer behaviors, such as using TikTok or ChatGPT to find answers. Advancements in technology, including visual search, are shifting how people — especially younger generations — search, said EMARKETER analyst Sky Canaves. (EMARKETER is a sister company to Business Insider.)

"Whatever is the easiest way to find information and has the least amount of friction will be most likely to be used for the particular search cases, whether it's voice, or text, or images," Canaves said.

How search is transforming Pinterest's business

Pinterest has rolled out a series of revamped search tools under Ready's watch, including an AI-powered tool that enables users to discover content tailored to their body type, skin tone, and hair pattern.

In May, the platform expanded its "visual search" features, allowing users to find exact products or similar items. It's a category that competitors like Google, TikTok, and new startups are also targeting.

Here's how it works: Imagine you're redecorating your apartment and save an image for inspiration to your Pinterest board. With visual search, you can shop right from that image — clicking on a lamp, for example, will surface links to similar items and sometimes an exact match.

With stronger search tools — and the data that comes with them — Pinterest has opened up more doors for advertisers and in-app shopping.

Lower-funnel ads, meaning ads that drive the user to make a purchase, make up two-thirds of Pinterest's business, Ready said.

"Search behaviors are key inputs powering its ads business," Forrester analyst Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf told Business Insider. "That intel makes Pinterest a really attractive high-intent surface for advertisers."

AI is also playing a significant role in how users shop via Pinterest by learning their tastes.

"Effectively, what we've created is an AI-powered shopping assistant," Ready said. In October, Pinterest officially launched a shopping assistant tool that users can chat with verbally or over text.

Users who visit Pinterest to search, whether for shopping or inspiration, are "more valuable" than pass-by scrollers, said Kamran Ansari, Pinterest's former head of corporate development.

"The whole reason why Google built a $3 trillion company is search has the highest kind of intent signal of anything you can possibly do," Ansari said.

Why search is 'up for grabs' more than ever

Ready, who worked at Google for a little over two years before joining Pinterest, is well acquainted with the stakes in search.

Google still owns about 90% of the market share for traditional search, according to data from Cloudflare.

In a March EMARKETER survey, 93% of US consumers said they had used Google in the last year. There were also many players cited in the EMARKETER survey that fall outside the traditional search market, from e-commerce platforms like Amazon (56%) and Walmart (45%) to video platforms like YouTube (49%) and TikTok (29%).

"The future of search is more up for grabs than it has been in the last 25 years," Ready said.

According to a recent McKinsey survey of US consumers, about 50% said they "intentionally seek out AI-powered search engines, with a majority of users saying it's the top digital source they use to make buying decisions."

As players like ChatGPT and Perplexity aim to battle Google for the wider, all-purpose search market, Pinterest is focused on improving its visually driven niche, Ready said.

• Four-day workweek trials surged in popularity a few years ago, when employees had more power at work.
• Now that the job market has cooled, many CEOs are demanding more from workers.
• AI could help bring about longer weekends if it could sufficiently boost economic gains, one CEO said.

For a time, the four-day workweek seemed like it just might happen.

Like pandemic-era fixations we thought would last forever — looking at you, sourdough starter — the dream of working 32 hours a week for 40 hours' pay seemed within reach for some.

Now, years later, hiring is sluggish, CEOs are demanding that workers lock in, and 9-9-6 memes can feel as pervasive as 6-7 mishegoss.

The chill settling over the workplace means that many workers' hopes for four-day weeks are on ice — for now.

There appears to be "a pushback from management on the things that workers were gaining during the pandemic," said Juliet Schor, a Boston College economist who has researched shorter workweeks.

Yet the idea of permanent three-day weekends isn't dead, Schor and other backers told Business Insider. Instead, thanks to return-to-office orders and companies' relentless focus on AI, broader adoption might simply take longer than advocates might hope.

Thanks, 9-9-6

One challenge, for now, is that the four-day talk doesn't always jibe with narratives about doubling down on work. Some leaders have tired of discussions about work-life balance, and big employers, in particular, have been calling workers back to their cubicles.

In some ways, ideas like 9-9-6 — slogging from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week — are a response to the four-day workweek, Schor said.

That's even though trials from the UK to New Zealand run by Schor and other researchers have indicated that spending less time on the job can leave workers happier and less burned out — without compromising productivity.

For now, many CEOs are focused on the merits of RTO and the need to hustle. Some of that sober speech is a way for big bosses to signal to boards and investors that their employees will work harder than ever, said Vishal Reddy, executive director of WorkFour, a nonprofit that advocates for making the four-day, 32-hour workweek the standard.

"Part of it, I think, is a performance," he said of CEOs' directives.

Reddy said another reason there is less buzz about a four-day workweek is that the idea is no longer as novel as it was in 2020 and 2021, when some employers, looking to attract and retain workers, implemented the concept.

Carrying the idea forward, he said, will likely require waiting for the market to change and for workers to regain power.

Reddy said that he sees proposed legislation involving four-day workweek pilots in New York and Maine as signs that supporters haven't given up on the concept.

There are still a number of examples of companies that have adopted shorter schedules. In nearly all cases, once employers adopt the schedule, they don't go back, Reddy said.

The impact of AI

The challenges to adopting shorter weeks aren't just practical considerations, like how to meet customers' demands that someone picks up the phone on a Friday.

To make it feasible for employers to pay people the same for working one day less, the economy would have to really take off — growing in the high single digits or even double digits, said Pavel Shynkarenko, founder and CEO of Mellow, a contractor-management platform.

One factor that could help: AI.

If the technology can crank up workers' productivity enough, a shorter week could be doable, Shynkarenko said. Having only four days on the clock could also help prevent widespread unemployment due to AI by spreading work among more people.

Essentially, the four-day workweek would serve as a "safe harbor" for the economy as it transitions to one where bots take on more of the tasks that now fall to humans, Shynkarenko said.

One day, he said, AI could make it so that even a four-day workweek would be unnecessary. Workweeks might only last two days, he said. Regardless, any departure from five days as the norm would likely take years, Shynkarenko said.

Until AI can do more heavy lifting, Shynkarenko said, there will be little room for discussion of truncated weeks because employers will face too much cost pressure.

Plus, in ultra-competitive industries like tech, an abbreviated workweek could be seen as a concession to competitors.

Schor, the economist, doesn't expect that employers will be able to avoid the issue indefinitely, however. That's because although workers' stress and burnout rates have improved from COVID-19 crisis levels, progress has plateaued, and remains above pre-pandemic levels, she said.

"We're still in that level of heightened stress," Schor said.

The four-day guilt

Even if economic growth were to occur at a rapid enough pace to allow for a four-day workweek, other factors might still arise. One is that, in some cases, employees might feel a sense of shame about working less, said Dale Whelehan, an assistant professor in systems psychology at Trinity College Dublin, who supports shorter workweeks. Until January, he served as CEO of 4 Day Week Global, a nonprofit advocating for less time on the clock.

"There was such an internalized sense of guilt towards not working hard enough or not performing hard enough," he said, referring to what can happen at organizations that try out shorter weeks.

Nevertheless, Whelehan said, the benefits to worker well-being and companies' performance are substantial enough that the conversation about the four-day workweek, which has been dampened for now, "is going to rise again."

Do you have a story to share about your career? Contact this reporter at tparadis@businessinsider.com.

• Martin Fowler said software engineering is in a 'depression' due to a lack of investment.
• Fowler advises junior engineers to seek mentorship from senior developers.
• He said developers starting out should also be wary of the outputs when working with AI.

One of the most influential software engineers has hope for junior developers amid the industry-wide uncertainty caused by artificial intelligence.

Martin Fowler sat down on a November 19 episode of "The Pragmatic Engineer" podcast to discuss the state of the software engineering world in 2025 — a year when major tech companies aren't holding back when it comes to job cuts. Layoffs.ai has tracked around 114,000 tech employee layoffs so far in 2025, compared with nearly 153,000 in all of 2024.

The 62-year-old, who has written several books about software development and is the chief scientist at software company Thoughtworks, said the massive job layoffs in the tech world are one sign that the software development world is in a "depression." In this current era of "great uncertainty," he said, businesses aren't investing in software. And, while the tech world is pouring money into artificial intelligence, that growth seems to be a "separate thing" that's "clearly bubbly."

"While businesses aren't investing, it's hard to make much progress in the software world," Fowler said. "And so we have this weird mix of no investment, pretty much depression in the software industry, with an AI bubble going on."

The "unpredictable" AI bubble presents challenges and uncertainty for junior software engineers, in particular.

"The thing with bubbles is you never know how big they're going to grow," Fowler said. "You don't know how long it's going to take before they pop, and you don't know what's going to be after the pop."

When asked about his advice for junior software engineers, Fowler didn't discourage them from using AI for coding. However, he said, newer developers can't always identify if the output of large language models, or LLMs for short, is useful. That's where the knowledge of a more experienced coder comes in handy.

He said the best way for junior developers to learn is to find a senior engineer to mentor them. A good experienced mentor is "worth their weight in gold," he said.

Fowler is widely regarded as a pioneer in the field of software engineering. He was one of 17 authors of the 2001 "Agile Manifesto," which redefined how software is built collaboratively by teams.

He seemed confident in his industry to persevere.

Although he said the timing for software engineers starting out in tech may not be as great as it was 20 years ago, Fowler said there's "plenty of potential in the future" since the core skills required of a good software engineer remain the same today.

"I don't think AI is going to wipe out software development," Fowler said.

• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a meeting that he wants employees to use AI whenever possible.
• Huang said the company plans to continue hiring aggressively.
• Nvidia isn't alone as tech companies stress the importance of AI adoption for employees.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang wants employees to use AI whenever they can — and he insists they shouldn't worry about losing their jobs in the process.

In an all-hands meeting on Thursday, the day after the chipmaker reported record earnings, Huang responded to a question about managers instructing employees to use AI less.

"My understanding is Nvidia has some managers who are telling their people to use less AI," he said at the meeting, which Business Insider listened to. "Are you insane?"

Huang said he strongly disapproved.

"I want every task that is possible to be automated with artificial intelligence to be automated with artificial intelligence," he said. "I promise you, you will have work to do."

Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Nvidia isn't alone, as tech giants have taken measures to push employees to incorporate more AI into their day-to-day work. Both Microsoft and Meta plan to evaluate employees based on their AI usage, and Google told engineers to use AI for coding, Business Insider reported. Amazon was in talks to adopt the AI coding assistant Cursor after employees requested it, according to Business Insider's reporting.

Huang also said Nvidia's software engineers use Cursor. And if AI does not work for a specific task, "use it until it does," he added. "Jump in and help make it better, because we have the power to do so."

Though fear of job loss has been a constant drumbeat amid the rise of AI, Huang suggested Nvidia employees shouldn't worry. He said that while other tech companies have conducted layoffs, Nvidia had hired "several thousand" people last quarter, which he joked was putting a strain on office parking spaces. He added that hiring is still ramping up.

"Frankly, I think we're probably still about 10,000 short," Huang said, "but the pace at which we hire should be consistent with the pace at which we can integrate and harmonize the new employees."

Nvidia has significantly expanded its workforce, increasing from 29,600 employees at the end of fiscal 2024 to 36,000 employees at the end of fiscal 2025.

As Nvidia grows, its physical footprint is expanding. Huang said at the meeting that the company has recently moved into new offices in Taipei and Shanghai and is constructing two additional sites in the US.

Nvidia has become the world's most valuable company, with a market cap of over $4 trillion. The company reported last Wednesday that it generated $57.01 billion in revenue in the last quarter, up 62% from the same period last year.

Recently, investor Michael Burry of "The Big Short" has been taking aim at Nvidia, voicing skepticism about the AI boom. Nvidia pushed back on these criticisms in a memo to Wall Street analysts, Business Insider reported Monday.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at gweiss@businessinsider.com or Signal at @geoffweiss.25. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• Microsoft's senior leadership team includes Satya Nadella and 16 executives.
• Nadella has made changes in the past year to the company's top ranks.
• A leaked organizational chart reveals the CEO's closest lieutenants.

Microsoft's transition to AI could be one of the most pivotal moments in its 50-year history, and CEO Satya Nadella is making changes to the company's top ranks to seize the moment.

A leaked organizational chart showing Nadella's 16 direct reports, along with other internal documents, show how he's reshuffled executives and their duties over the past year to compete in the AI race.

Here are Nadella's direct reports:

Brad Smith, vice chair and president

Brad Smith is the face of Microsoft when it comes to public affairs.

He's built a reputation as "the statesman of the technology industry," and become one of the most influential voices on tech policy, particularly on issues related to AI, cybersecurity, data privacy, and human rights.

Smith's diplomatic approach has at times kept Microsoft out of regulators' crosshairs. He runs the Corporate, External, and Legal Affairs, or "CELA," team in charge of legal and regulatory matters, government affairs, and corporate responsibility.

Smith's role is especially crucial for Microsoft now as the company navigates regulation, geopolitics, data-governance and reputational risks to expand its cloud and AI global footprint.

Smith is also often the executive called upon to publicly address the company's toughest controversies, such as internal protests over government contracts.

Kevin Scott, chief technology officer

Kevin Scott is one of the most influential AI executives at Microsoft.

As chief technology officer and executive vice president of AI and research, it's Scott's job to define the company's long-term technology strategy.

Nadella named Scott CTO in early 2017. His mandate was initially broad, and he remained relatively low-profile at Microsoft.

By the next year, he started focusing on AI and brokered Microsoft's initial investment in OpenAI, which became one of the most consequential partnerships in the tech industry.

Takeshi Numoto, chief marketing officer

Microsoft Chief Marketing Officer Takeshi Numoto runs the company's global marketing efforts.

Numoto's bio on Microsoft's website calls out his role in creating new business models and modernizing Microsoft's marketing by making it more data-driven.

Recently, Numoto and his team joined a new organization under Judson Althoff, whom Microsoft just named as its CEO of commercial business. Numoto now reports to Althoff in his duties as chief marketing officer, but to Nadella on companywide matters.

Nadella described those matters as "all-up business models, planning, consumer marketing, and corporate brand and communications," according to an internal memo viewed by Business Insider.

Judson Althoff, Microsoft commercial CEO

Microsoft recently promoted longtime sales chief Judson Althoff to an expanded role as CEO of the company's commercial business.

Althoff's new organization combines sales, marketing, and operations into one unit for all of Microsoft's commercial products. He also leads a new commercial leadership team that includes executives from engineering, sales, marketing, operations, and finance.

Althoff's promotion is intended to give Nadella and the company's engineering leaders more time to focus on AI, according to an internal memo viewed by Business Insider.

"This will also allow our engineering leaders and me to be laser focused on our highest ambition technical work—across our datacenter buildout, systems architecture, AI science, and product innovation—to lead with intensity and pace in this generational platform shift," Nadella wrote.

Carolina Dybeck Happe, chief operations officer

Microsoft hired Carolina Dybeck Happe, previously GE's finance chief, in August 2024 in a newly created role of chief operations officer.

Nadella explained in an email announcing Dybeck Happe's hiring that her role would be to partner with Microsoft's leadership team to accelerate the company's AI transformation.

When Althoff was named commercial CEO, Dybeck Happe's operations organization moved to report to Althoff.

"Carolina Dybeck Happe will continue to report to me, as she works on our overall company transformation and continues to closely partner with Judson," Nadella wrote in the memo.

Amy Hood, chief financial officer

Amy Hood is Microsoft's longtime finance chief and an influential figure in the company's AI strategy.

Hood works closely with Nadella and is the gatekeeper of Microsoft's multibillion-dollar AI infrastructure buildout. The company reported a record $34.9 billion in capital expenditures during its most recent quarter and said spending will increase.

Hood also recently told employees in an internal email viewed by Business Insider that the current fiscal year 2026 will demand "intensity, clarity and bold execution," signaling her role in setting the tone for Microsoft's culture.

Scott Guthrie, Cloud + AI executive vice president

Scott Guthrie is one of Nadella's top lieutenants and the executive who has led Microsoft's cloud business since at least 2011.

Known for his signature red polo, Guthrie runs the Cloud + AI group, which Nadella created through a reorganization in 2018. That business unit is one of Microsoft's largest and most important, including the Azure cloud-computing business.

Nadella recently tapped one of Guthrie's reports as a new advisor to "rethink the new economics of AI," according to an internal memo.

Amy Coleman, EVP, Chief People Officer

Amy Coleman, a longtime Microsoft HR executive, took over as the company's chief people officer in March.

Coleman's promotion came after nearly 2,000 employees deemed low-performers were fired by Microsoft as part of a overhaul of its performance review and management process. She also took the role amid an overall shift in the tech industry toward more rigor and less coddling of employees.

Under Coleman, Microsoft introduced a new three-day return to office policy. She made the case for the new policy in a recent internal meeting reviewed by Business Insider, saying in-person staff are "thriving" based on internal data.

Kathleen Hogan, EVP of strategy and transformation

One of Nadella's first big leadership moves after he became CEO in 2014 was to name Hogan as Microsoft's chief people officer.

In her more than 10 years in that role, Hogan helped Nadella craft a new workplace management system around the concept of a "growth mindset."

Nadella announced Hogan would leave the chief people officer position in March and take on a new role as executive vice president of the "Office of Strategy and Transformation."

"As we've seen time and again throughout our 50-year history, times of great change for the world and for our industry require us to have a mindset that enables us to continually adapt and transform ourselves," Nadella wrote an internal email announcing the change. "There's no question that we are at the forefront of another such moment, with the rapid changes across every industry and business function in this AI era."

Rajesh Jha, EVP, Experiences + Devices

Rajesh Jha runs Experiences and Devices, a major unit within Microsoft responsible for products including Office, Windows, and Teams. He's one of Nadella's most influential lieutenants.

Jha is also one of Microsoft's longest-serving executives. He rose through the ranks from software engineer to a top executive who led Office through its transition to the cloud-based Microsoft 365 suite of applications, and now into AI.

Jay Parikh, CoreAI and engineering manager

In January, Nadella put Jay Parikh in charge of a new AI unit called CoreAI, central to Microsoft's ambition to help developers build digital assistants capable of taking over tasks from human workers.

Parikh joined Microsoft in October 2024 after running cloud-security company Lacework. He previously was vice president and global head of engineering for Meta. Mark Zuckerberg credited Parikh for many technological achievements during his 11-year tenure at the social-media company.

Business Insider recently wrote about Parikh's internal weekly update memos, which revealed his goals for the CoreAI unit, its early accomplishments, and his advice to address what he sees as problems within the company.

Parikh's internal org chart, recently revealed by Business Insider, shows who's helping him run the new AI unit. Parikh recently shared a plan to ward off AI coding rivals by overhauling GitHub in an internal meeting reviewed by Business Insider.

Charlie Bell, EVP, Microsoft Security

Charlie Bell, considered a cofounder of the cloud giant Amazon Web Services, joined Microsoft in 2021 in a move that shook the industry.

Nadella put Bell in charge of a new $20 billion, 10,000-person cybersecurity group called Security, Compliance, Identity, and Management, and made security the company's No. 1 priority.

Microsoft recently expanded its Secure Future Initiative, making security the top priority for every employee, including making security a metric on which employees are evaluated during performance reviews.

The company has had some security struggles. The Department of Homeland Security, for example, last year condemned Microsoft for what it called "a cascade of security failures" that allowed Chinese hackers to access emails from thousands of customers.

Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft AI CEO

Last year, Microsoft appointed Mustafa Suleyman—cofounder of AI pioneer DeepMind and former head of startup Inflection AI—as CEO of a new Microsoft AI division. The organization is responsible for consumer AI products such as Microsoft's Copilot chatbot and the Bing search engine.

Suleyman recently unveiled a superintelligence team at Microsoft focused on building a "world-class, frontier-grade research capability in-house," he told Business Insider in a recent interview.

Suleyman has added nine direct reports in the past year or so, according to internal organization charts viewed by Business Insider. Five of those previously worked for Google or DeepMind.

Jason Zander, Microsoft Discovery & Quantum executive vice president

Zander previously ran Azure since 2012, overseeing everything from product management to engineering within Azure, under Guthrie.

After that, he started running a team called Strategic Missions and Technologies. The organization was formed to house initiatives like quantum computing and space technologies. These days, Zander's team focus includes AI.

"Our clear focus as a company is to define the AI wave and empower all our customers to succeed in the adoption of this transformative technology," Zander wrote in an internal email viewed by Business Insider last year.

Zander's current job title suggests he's running Microsoft Discovery, its new AI agent platform.

Ryan Roslansky, LinkedIn CEO and EVP of Office

Ryan Roslansky has been CEO of the Microsoft-owned professional social network LinkedIn since 2020.

Microsoft recently expanded Roslansky's role to include Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and the Microsoft 365 Copilot application, according to an internal announcement from Nadella in June.

Roslansky started reporting to Jha for his new duties as executive vice president of Office, and to Nadella in his capacity as LinkedIn CEO, according to organizational charts viewed by Business Insider.

Phil Spencer, Microsoft Gaming CEO

The gaming business became so important to the company that Nadella made gaming boss Phil Spencer one of his direct reports in September 2017, and the executive started regularly speaking at all-employee town hall meetings.

Spencer runs Xbox, Xbox Game Studios, ZeniMax Media, and Activision Blizzard. Those last two businesses were acquired through multibillion-dollar deals. Microsoft's Activision Blizzard acquisition was the largest in its history.

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• OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, face a growing number of lawsuits.
• Elon Musk, The NYTimes, and the parents of a boy who committed suicide are among those seeking damages.
• Business Insider breaks down the top legal challenges facing the maker of ChatGPT.

OpenAI is disrupting almost every industry in its path. But moving fast comes with costs.

In its journey to transform from an AI research lab to one of the most valuable companies in the world, OpenAI — and its CEO, Sam Altman — faces significant legal challenges. Everything from OpenAI's transition to a for-profit business model to how it trains its large language models has been fodder for lawsuits.

These cases could cost Altman many millions of dollars, impact how all of AI trains its large language models, and potentially even alter how companies and partnerships are organized.

Some, like the two court battles waged against Altman by partner-turned-rival Elon Musk, have an added appeal: as sheer, popcorn-worthy Clash-of-the-Tech-Titans entertainment.

Here's the latest on the most significant cases. OpenAI did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

The dispute over OpenAI's for-profit shift

The issue: Elon Musk sued Altman last year, accusing his onetime friend and OpenAI cofounder of betraying their original, 2015 nonprofit mission: to develop AI for the public's benefit, not for private gain.

Musk says he invested $38 million in that early mission only to see OpenAI enter into a multibillion-dollar exclusive licensing deal with Microsoft, creating what his lawsuit calls "a $157 billion, for-profit, market-paralyzing gorgon." Musk added Microsoft as a defendant to the lawsuit this year.

Altman counters that OpenAI is still controlled by OpenAI's nonprofit arm. (Altman also says Musk himself tried to restructure OpenAI into a for-profit — under his exclusive control — back in 2017, before severing ties with the company. Musk denies that's the case.)

What's at stake: Musk is demanding a return of "wrongful gains" from the OpenAI and Microsoft partnership — plus damages — in an amount to be set by a jury and potentially in the many millions of dollars.

What's next: The case is currently mired in pretrial evidentiary battles and litigation surrounding motions to dismiss filed by both Altman and Microsoft. A Phase I trial, limited to Musk's claim that OpenAI was unlawfully converted into a for-profit, is set for a federal jury trial in March.

Musk's suit over 'poached' staffers

The issue: Last month, Musk sued Altman again, this time accusing OpenAI of stealing his trade secrets and luring staff at his rival startup, xAI.

OpenAI has "engaged in a deeply troubling pattern" of recruiting xAI employees to gain access to insider intel relating to Musk's flagship chatbot, Grok, the lawsuit says. OpenAI denies any such pattern.

What's at stake: The lawsuit seeks a jury verdict that would force OpenAI to halt its "anti-competitive practices" and return "any ill-gotten confidential information." A jury could also order Altman to pay cash penalties.

What's next: Musk said in his lawsuit that he may seek a preliminary ruling halting what he calls xAI's "unlawful" poaching of his employees and intellectual property.

The case has been assigned to US District Court Judge Rita F. Lin in San Francisco. She has set an initial case management hearing for January 8, 2026.

A groundbreaking copyright infringement lawsuit

The issue: In December 2023, The New York Times became the largest US news outlet to sue OpenAI and Microsoft over the use of millions of copyrighted news articles in training its automated chatbots. The lawsuit argues that this has provided ChatGPT users with a backdoor to verbatim Times content.

Similar lawsuits were also filed by The Center for Investigative Reporting and a coalition of eight papers owned by Alden Global Capital — including the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, and Orlando Sentinel.

OpenAI counters that it only scraped Times articles to train its chatbots, and that this is a fair use under copyright law. OpenAI further argues that it's rare for ChatGPT to serve up verbatim Times content — an error they are working to fix.

What's at stake: These news organizations seek unspecified cash damages and a jury verdict that permanently bars OpenAI from scraping their content.

If successful, the news organizations' lawsuit could result in a multimillion-dollar verdict and clearer guardrails for AI's future use of published content.

What's next: In April, these separate news organization cases were combined. Their next joint court date is in January in Manhattan, with evidentiary hearings set for February.

More copyright infringement claims

The issue: In April, the news organizations' complaints were combined with a series of lawsuits by major authors and creators who have also sued OpenAI for copyright infringement.

Those plaintiffs include the comedian Sarah Silverman, the Authors Guild, and novelists George R.R. Martin, Jodi Picoult, and John Grisham.

What's at stake: As with the news publishers' suit, a verdict that could upend the future of AI development. These cases could also force AI companies to disclose closely held training information, although the extent to which that information would be made public is unclear.

What's next: In October, US District Judge Sidney H. Stein ruled against OpenAI's motion to dismiss the combined lawsuits, finding that ChatGPT's responses to user questions were sufficiently similar to the original works.

Stein also said the consolidated cases had shown "a prima facie claim of copyright infringement based on ChatGPT's outputs." The judge's ruling, however, did not address the question of fair use, which lawyers on both sides say will be the subject of considerable future debate.

The parties are scheduled to appear in court in January and further hash out discovery-related issues in February.

Wrongful deaths, mental breakdowns blamed on ChatGPT

The issue: The parents of Adam Raine sued OpenAI, Altman, 10 employees, and 10 investors in state court in California in August, blaming ChatGPT for their 16-year-old son's death by suicide.

The suit alleges that OpenAI's chatbot encouraged Adam to kill himself by detailing methods of suicide and discouraging him from seeking support from family members.

As of November, OpenAI has said it is rolling out age-verification features and working with mental health professionals to improve ChatGPT's responses when a user shows mental distress.

The stakes: In addition to financial restitution, Raine's parents are asking for significant changes to ChatGPT, including quarterly compliance audits by an independent monitor.

What's next: The Raine family's case is still in its early stages. In November, four similar wrongful death suits were filed against OpenAI in California state court.

As with the Raine case, the new suits concern OpenAI's GPT-4o, a now-outdated model that Altman has previously said acted "too sycophant-y" in its responses.

They were filed by the Social Media Victims Law Center and the Tech Justice Law Project, which has filed a similar lawsuit against Character.AI, plus three additional lawsuits claiming ChatGPT contributed to plaintiffs' mental breakdowns.

A video trademark infringement case

The issue: Cameo, the company known for personalized celebrity videos, filed suit in federal court in California in October, accusing OpenAI of trademark infringement for naming one of the core features of its Sora app "cameo."

"We disagree that anyone can claim exclusive ownership over the word 'cameo,'" an OpenAI spokesperson said in a previous statement to Business Insider.

The stakes: OpenAI could have to change the name of the core feature of Sora, which is used as the basis for the app's AI-generated content. OpenAI has also expanded the feature beyond humans, covering pets and objects.

What's next: US District Judge Eumi K. Lee granted Cameo a temporary block on OpenAI using the term "cameo" through December 22. Days before the deadline, both sides are due in court to argue over whether Lee's order should be made permanent.