Category: Business

• Rep. Jamaal Bowman's primary challenger, George Latimer, is facing accusations of Islamophobia.
• Latimer said that Bowman's "constituency is Dearborn," a city with a prominent Muslim population.
• Bowman has received very little money from Dearborn.

Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York is in the fight of his political life against Westchester County Executive George Latimer ahead of the June 25 primary.

That fight got even nastier on Monday, with Latimer facing charges of Islamophobia after he invoked Dearborn, Michigan during a virtual debate hosted by the League of Women Voters of Westchester County.

"When you get as much money as you get from outside the district, your constituency is Dearborn, Michigan. Your constituency is San Francisco, California," said Latimer. "It's not Harrison, it's not Tuckahoe, it's not Scarsdale. You're not even there to be part of the events of those communities."

Bowman accused Latimer on Tuesday morning of using an "Islamophobic dogwhistle." Progressives in general have argued that Latimer is running a bigoted campaign against Bowman, which Latimer refutes.

"George Latimer has traded in his dog-whistle for a bullhorn," said New York Working Families Party Co-Director Jasmine Gripper said in a statement, arguing that his "bigoted comments against Arab-Americans is the latest in a series of racist appeals that have only served to divide the community."

A spokesperson for Latimer's campaign dismissed the accusations of Islamophobia.

"Another day, another lie from Jamaal Bowman," said the spokesperson. "George's comments were taken out of context – because in the same breath he also mentioned San Francisco, California — another city where the incumbent has received donations from."

Dearborn is a majority-Arab city in Michigan that's home to one of the largest Muslim populations per capita in the US.

It's been the focal point of the Uncommitted movement, with Democrats withholding their votes for President Joe Biden over his support for Israel's war in Gaza.

In the course of a heated primary that's revolved primarily around Bowman's critical stance toward Israel, Latimer has long argued that the controversial congressman is not adequately attuned to the needs of the district.

He has also highlighted many of Bowman's controversies, including pulling a fire alarm at the Capitol, his past support for 9/11 conspiracy theories, and his one-time denial of sexual violence on October 7.

It's true that most of Bowman's $2.7 million fundraising haul this cycle has come from outside of New York.

But a review of the Bowman campaign's filings with the Federal Election Commission show that less than $24,000 of Bowman's itemized contributions have come from Michigan. That includes a combined $1,250 from two Dearborn residents and $6,600 from a single donor in Dearborn Heights.

Bowman also maintains a joint fundraising committee with Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who does represent Dearborn. But filings indicate that the group's roughly $30,000 sum has come entirely from New York-based donors.

Latimer has received significant financial backing from the pro-Israel group AIPAC, which has spent more than $13 million on the primary so far. Many of the group's donors are Republicans, a fact that progressives have been eager to highlight.

But Latimer's financial support is also more local — roughly 70% of his direct contributions come from New York, while less than 30% of Bowman's come from the state.

"The hard truth is that the majority of the incumbent's donors come from hundreds and thousands of miles away from the Bronx and Westchester — the communities where the electorate actually live and will be voting from starting June 15," said the Latimer spokesperson.

• Kirkland Signature, Costco's private label brand, has won the company some die-hard fans.
• Non-fuel sales reached $56 billion last year, or nearly a quarter of Costco's annual revenue.
• One way the company tries to build trust? Each new item is approved by the CEO.

Costco is well-known for offering jumbo sizes and low prices on the leading national brands.

But some customers are even more enthusiastic about a brand they can only get from the warehouse club: Kirkland Signature.

For nearly 30 years, Costco's private label brand has been winning the company some die-hard fans with products that are easily as good — or better — than their national brand competitors, and priced as much as 20% less.

Whenever analysts would ask about shoppers "trading down" to the store brand, avowed brand loyalist and CFO Richard Galanti would quickly correct them to say shoppers are "trading up" when it comes to Kirkland Signature.

Now spanning some 550 items across dozens of categories ranging from chicken, to eyeglasses, to golf clubs, Kirkland Signature has earned a level of consumer trust and loyalty that few brands ever achieve.

Galanti said in December that sales of Kirkland Signature merchandise reached approximately $56 billion last year, or nearly a quarter of Costco's annual revenue. Including fuel, Costco attributes more than $80 billion to the brand.

One reason people may choose to stick with Kirkland? Costco is very selective about what it offers.

"We're not looking to win a trophy for the highest amount of Kirkland Signature SKUs," Costco's chief of operations for merchandising Claudine Adamo told Fortune. "You build loyalty with that brand."

Plus, all new products are thoroughly vetted before they ever see the sales floor.

"We don't just put our name on products that someone else makes," Adamo said. "Any new item goes all the way to the CEO's office for sign-off."

That reputation for quality, plus Costco's generous return policy, make it easy for shoppers to try a Kirkland Signature offering — and come back for more.

Einat Weiss has been the CMO of NICE for the last four years, and she started her career on the tech and product side. So, she has a firm understanding of how the marketing space can utilize an emerging technology like AI. 

"One of the things that we see now that is becoming better and better is the ability to use AI to understand consumer intent," Weiss tells Business Insider. "This helps us as marketeers to have a much more outside-in view when we plan campaigns, when we think about messaging, when we think about what would resonate — this really helps to create it correctly based on what customers are looking for versus sometimes what we want to market to them."

• Home prices will fall this summer as owners cave to selling pressure, according to Redfin's CEO.
• The real estate brokerage is anticipating a 1% price drop by the end of the year.
• Homes in Florida and Texas are already beginning to see "major price cuts," the firm said.

House prices will drop this summer as homeowners trying to wait out high mortgage rates are realizing they can't postpone moving any longer, according to Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman.

The chief executive of the online real estate brokerage pointed to signs that the housing market is starting to get more affordable.

Homes in key metros, like Florida and Texas, are already seeing "major price cuts," Kelman said. Meanwhile, over 6% of US home sellers issued a price cut in May, the largest proportion recorded in over a year, Redfin found in a recent report.

The decline in prices is due to homeowners giving up on trying to wait out high mortgage rates. As more owners opt to list their home after a year or more of waiting, supply of available inventory is growing and prices are beginning to budge, Kelman said.

"A lot of our customers are folks who got a divorce last year, and the husband and the wife are driving each other crazy, or they own a townhouse, and they've had a third child, and they're just bursting at the seams," he said in a recent interview on The David Lin Report. "At some point, even though people don't want to sell, they have to sell."

According to Redfin data, the supply of available homes rose to 1.6 million in April, up 13.7% from the same time last year. Meanwhile, the number of newly listed homes for sale rose to 621,000, up 17.4% from last year.

"We really saw, in the first three or four months of the year, new listing accelerate. Now there's just a large number of active listings," Kelman said. "When homes sit on the market, you start to see prices soften."

Redfin is predicting US home prices will fall 1% by the end of the year. That price decline could take time, though, Kelman said.

"Homeowners are emotionally committed to their property. They have in mind a number, and they're loathed to give it up. So that makes home prices stickier," he later added. "But still, I think it's going to be a pretty soft summer for home prices."

• Elon Musk is eyeing a possible X phone.
• Musk, who owns X, formerly Twitter, said Tuesday such a device is "not out of the question."
• Musk said he'd ban Apple devices from his companies if Apple integrates OpenAI's tech into its software.

Elon Musk is weighing the idea of building an X phone amid his threats to ban iPhones and other Apple devices from his companies.

On Monday, an X user tweeted his prediction that Musk would create an X phone, which Musk replied was a possibility. He owns the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

"Calling it now," the user wrote. "X will partner with Samsung to manufacture an X phone."

"It is not out of the question," Musk responded in a tweet on Tuesday.

A day prior, Musk had threatened to ban the use of Apple devices across his companies if the tech giant went through with plans it announced at WWDC to integrate OpenAI's technology into its software.

Apple had said it'd partner with OpenAI to give users the option to integrate ChatGPT into Siri, as well as iOS 18, iPad OS 18, and macOS Sequoia later this year.

Musk called the integration "an unacceptable security violation" and said if it went through, visitors to his companies "will have to check their Apple devices at the door, where they will be stored in a Faraday cage," referring to a container that blocks some electromagnetic radiation.

Though Musk cofounded OpenAI along with CEO Sam Altman and others in 2015, he's been a vocal critic of the ChatGPT maker since stepping down from its board in 2018.

• Russia opened up a new front in the northern Ukrainian region of Kharkiv last month.
• At the time, things were bleak for Ukraine. Even so, Russia's attack appears to have stalled.
• The attack, while not over, produced a major strategic misfire, experts told Business Insider.

Russia is fumbling a golden opportunity in Ukraine as its latest offensive stalls, experts told Business Insider.

A month ago, an estimated 30,000 Russian troops began pouring over Ukraine's northern border into the Kharkiv region, opening up a new front for Ukraine's already-stretched defenses.

Ukraine was in a particularly weak spot. Yet four weeks later, Russian forces have stalled, and White House National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby declared the offensive "all but over."

Looking back, what's remarkable is "how little so far Russia has actually achieved," Patrick Bury, a military analyst at the UK's University of Bath, told BI.

Not only that, the offensive has backfired strategically, prompting the US to allow Ukraine to strike targets on Russian soil using its weapons.

A dangerous moment

Rewind one month, things were looking grim for Ukraine.

The seeds had been sown much earlier. The monthslong Republican delay over a new tranche of US military aid had left Ukrainian forces desperately short of ammo and equipment.

Months of back-and-forth by Ukrainian parliamentarians over the terms of conscription had resulted in a backlog of fresh soldiers reaching the battlefield.

And in Russia, President Vladimir Putin was changing up his military leadership, readying to promote a technocrat to Minister of Defence, in a sign that he was getting serious about the needs of a long war, as Business Insider's Jake Epstein reported.

Russia had also begun pressuring Chasiv Yar, a strategic town in the eastern Donbas region, probing for a breach in an exhausted front line, while Ukraine was scrambling to build defensive fortifications, leaving its soldiers dangerously exposed.

When Putin's forces spilled over the border into the Kharkiv region on May 10, the defenses were so poor that one soldier told the BBC that they "just walked in."

Ukrainian soldiers also found that their Starlink-powered communications were jammed, The Washington Post reported.

Twenty miles away was Ukraine's second-largest city: Kharkiv.

A smattering of villages quickly fell, and soon Russian forces were claiming they had reached the strategic town of Vovchansk, which straddles a key highway. They didn't get much further.

Russia wouldn't reach it

Putin likely never had the means to capture Kharkiv city, RAND geopolitical strategist Ann Marie Dailey told BI, and the Russian leader himself soon claimed he had no plans to do so.

The goal of the offensive, Putin said, was to create a buffer zone on Ukrainian territory to shield the border region of Belgorod from Ukrainian attacks.

But it's likely Putin had other goals — and he may have succeeded in some of them, Bury told BI.

"It had a whole dynamic of panic, a new front close to Kharkiv. Could it rattle the Ukrainians?" he said.

The approach might have been one of "suck it and see," he added. "If there is some sort of collapse, if there is a success, we'll reinforce it," he said, describing the likely thinking.

Putin also likely wanted to draw off Ukrainian forces from elsewhere.

Ukraine had to move badly needed units from Chasiv Yar to repel the attack, Foreign Policy Research Institute Senior Fellow Rob Lee told the Chain Reaction podcast soon after the offensive was launched.

"They have to use their most elite units to plug holes," he said.

Even so, it looks like Russian forces were quickly overextended and poorly protected, The Telegraph reported.

Nick Reynolds, a land warfare research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, told BI that if Russia had waited until it was able to bring better-trained units to the fore, its forces might have been able to at least begin to encircle Kharkiv and control key highways.

But the Institute for the Study of War said that Putin may have rushed the offensive in an attempt to get ahead of incoming Western aid — fielding "an understrength force" in the process.

A strategic misstep

By mid-May, renewed Western aid appeared to be filtering through to Ukraine — with an influx of Howitzer shells starting to ease desperate ammunition shortages, the Kyiv Post reported.

On May 25, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that his forces were killing eight Russians for every Ukrainian lost in Kharkiv — a figure that both Bury and Dailey told BI was plausible given the advantages of defensive action, as well as Russia's notoriously cavalier attitude to its own soldiers.

As for Putin's stated goal of creating a buffer zone protecting Belgorod from Ukraine — in effect, he achieved the exact opposite.

Belgorod has long been vulnerable to cross-border attacks and had seen an increase in drone and rocket attacks throughout the spring, which Russia blamed Ukraine for.

But in gaining a small amount of cover for Belgorod, Putin has opened up a far more significant set of possibilities for Ukraine.

"The problem was strategically, it helped increase the Western understanding of how perilous the situation was getting," Bury said.

On May 30, Politico reported that President Joe Biden — prompted by the alarming news of the Kharkiv offensive — had quietly shifted on one of his long-held red lines.

The White House was now open to allowing Ukraine to strike inside Russian territory using US-made weapons, according to unnamed sources.

While Politico said this is only allowed to protect Kharkiv, Dailey said that as far as US red lines go, it's one of the most significant ones crossed so far.

Reynolds believes that ultimately, this step was coming anyway. "All the conditions were set for this," he said.

But as it stands, the primary goal of Russia's Kharkiv offensive has backfired, Bury added. "The US response has now put Belgorod under fire of better artillery."

The attack is far from over

While Russia is not banking on a dramatic breakthrough, it still has the initiative, Bury said — especially with its tendency to simply "grind it out" until something gives.

"That window of opportunity will not close for a while," he added.

Ukraine is likely to remain vulnerable for some time, as further military aid slowly arrives.

"I think that there's a broader offensive effort that you'll see from Russia later in this summer," Dailey told BI. "And so it is very possible that this was a probing attack — theater-setting operations for a larger push later in the year."

On Sunday, Russia's forces attacked border towns in Ukraine's northern Sumy region, some 100 miles west of Kharkiv, the Kyiv Post reported, in a sign that more attacks are to come.

"The Kharkiv offensive, even if it wasn't what the Russians have hoped for, ultimately in many ways it served its purpose," said Reynolds. "It placed increasing pressure on Ukrainians."

He added: "The Ukrainian situation is very worrying."

• Hunter Biden was doomed to lose his criminal gun trial.
• He's laid the groundwork for appeals, arguing he's charged only because he's the president's son.
• Experts told Business Insider before the verdict that he may have a point. 

For all the drama, the trial against Hunter Biden was always pretty simple.

When the president's son bought a .38 mm Colt Cobra handgun on October 12, 2018, he was required to fill out a government form that asked whether he was "an unlawful user of, or addicted to" a "controlled substance."

He marked "no" on the form and then paid $900 in cash.

Given the mountain of publicly known evidence that Biden did use cocaine in that time period, federal prosecutors brought an indictment against him. They accused him of lying on the form and unlawfully owning a firearm.

In his opening statement at the trial, Biden's lawyer Abbe Lowell urged jurors in the Wilmington, Delaware, federal court to acquit his client. He argued that terms such as "user of" and "addicted to" were open to interpretation.

Prosecutors got straight to the point once opening arguments concluded. One of the first pieces of evidence they presented to the jury was a section of Biden's memoir. They played portions of the audiobook — narrated by Biden himself — where he described struggling with addiction over a four-year period that overlapped with the gun purchase.

"These are the bread and butter of the US attorney's office," Sarah Krissoff, a former Manhattan federal prosecutor and former top lawyer at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, told Business Insider before jurors began deliberating. "They know how to put on a tight gun case."

Biden's trial was not necessarily a lost cause. His lawyers tried to convince jurors that he was seeking treatment and didn't consider himself addicted to drugs on the day he filled out that form, nor in the 11 days in October 2018 when he owned the gun. The jury — in his father's home state of Delaware — could have still ended up deadlocked or acquitted him.

That didn't happen.

On Tuesday, the jury convicted Biden on all three felony gun charges.

But Biden's legal team already had their eyes set on higher courts.

The politicization defense

Decisions from US District Judge Maryellen Noreika, whom Donald Trump appointed when he was president, made Biden's uphill climb steeper.

In a series of rulings before the case went to trial, she dismissed arguments from Biden's lawyers that would have allowed him to put on a stronger defense. Some of those motions argued that the case was fundamentally unfair and should never have been brought.

Biden's team — led by Lowell, who has previously represented politicians including Jared Kushner, Sen. Robert Menendez, and former Sen. John Edwards — has aggressively appealed the decisions.

None of the appeals stopped the case from going to trial before higher courts could consider their merits. But they can still be taken up at a later date.

Biden's primary arguments revolve around the notion that he's the victim of "selective and vindictive prosecution."

The criminal investigation originated under the authority of David Weiss, who was appointed as the US attorney for Delaware by Trump. He brought the indictment during the administration of President Joe Biden, who promised not to interfere with the case. US Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Weiss as a Justice Department special counsel to keep him insulated from outside influences.

Hunter Biden's lawyers have argued this arrangement has perversely allowed Weiss to politicize the proceedings unchecked.

Last summer, Weiss and Biden's lawyers reached a deal that would result in a diversion agreement for the gun charges and a guilty plea for a separate set of tax charges, with Biden accused of failing to pay at least $1.4 million to the IRS. But that fell apart in a court hearing when Noreika questioned the deal's technical mechanisms.

Amid the chaos, Trump and Republicans in Congress enthusiastically pressured Weiss to charge Biden in the gun case, as well as in the separate criminal tax case in California. When Weiss brought the indictments instead of continuing to negotiate a plea deal, those same Republicans gloated.

"They made it clear that they wanted Mr. Weiss to keep this litigation alive through the presidential election (regardless of merit) and for him to bring more serious charges as a foil for the investigations and prosecutions of former President Trump," Biden's lawyers wrote in a December filing.

Everyone wanted a plea deal — except Republicans

Legal commentators — and even some Republican politicians — have said the application of the criminal gun charges is highly unusual.

One of them, for falsely filling out the government's gun sales form, is typically slapped on as an additional charge in a larger gun-related case, like a gun-trafficking prosecution, experts told BI. There's no evidence that Biden even loaded or used the gun before his brother's widow, Hallie Biden, threw it out.

Another charge, for possessing a firearm by a person who has used or is addicted to a controlled substance, is even rarer. And according to Krissoff, federal prosecutors in Manhattan had a rule not to bring the charge at all.

"Absent this individual's status as Hunter Biden, it would be very unlikely that this case would've been brought," Krissoff, now a defense attorney at Cozen O'Connor, said last week.

Duncan Levin, a former New York federal prosecutor said the rarity of this application of the charges demonstrated the whole prosecution was political.

"I have never heard of a case that is brought as a stand-alone false claim on an application — ever," Levin told BI during the trial. "Lying to a gun dealer? I think there are fewer than 300 brought a year, of 25 million background checks. I think it speaks for itself."

A separate federal appeals court in Texas ruled last year that the application of the statute in a different criminal case violated the Second Amendment.

"Obviously, the conduct that the government ought to be addressing is whether somebody is on drugs and high while they're shooting a gun," Levin said, "not whether somebody used cocaine two weeks ago and then picks up a gun at some point, and goes to a range. It's incredibly vague what the statute even means."

Levin said the constitutional flimsiness of such a case was why it made more sense for everyone to agree to some kind of nonprosecution deal. The same applies to the tax charges in California, which were brought after Biden had already paid back the taxes and was prepared to plead guilty, Levin said.

And, in fact, that's what was supposed to happen. Everyone wanted a plea deal except for Republican politicians.

"Hunter Biden was never the president. He's not running for office. He's not a public official. He is a private person," Levin said. "And these charges are at very most de minimis. They're the type of charges that not only would typically result in a pretrial diversion, they were supposed to result in a pretrial diversion. The fact that this is on trial is due to politics, clear and simple."

According to Krissoff, plea deals fall apart under a judge's scrutiny all the time. When that happens, the prosecutors and defense lawyers usually pick up the pieces and try to craft a new agreement, she said. It's usually much easier than going to trial.

"Pleas go south all the time while you're in the courtroom, or when you're walking into the courtroom, and it can be unclear whether or not the plea is going to get through for various reasons," she said. "The judge asked a lot of hard questions, and the plea didn't make it through. That has happened many times to me in my life, so I'm sure it will happen more."

Biden's attorneys have argued that the diversion agreement on the drug charges was still binding even without the judge's approval and that the charges should be tossed.

Noreika denied the motion, as well as Biden's requests to dig deeper into the Justice Department to look for evidence of political pressure.

But forcing prosecutors to uphold the diversion agreement on the gun charges — which would not cover the tax charges — may have the strongest chance on appeal, said Neama Rahmani, the president of West Coast Trial Lawyers and a former federal prosecutor in California.

"It was idiotic to blow up the deal," Rahmani told BI during the trial. "I'm sure they regret it."

Before Biden and his lawyers could get an appeals court to listen to them, though, they had to finish the trial.

Biden did have some defenses to muster, Levin said, days before the verdict.

"Hunter Biden had just gotten out of an 11-day program and was living with somebody who was sober at the time," he said. "I think it's a pretty crabbed way of looking at it, to say he was an addict at that time — he was clearly committed to his recovery and had just finished a rehab program."

Given how many arguments the judge has already rejected, however, the felony conviction was expected.

"By the time they get to this point, the prosecution usually has a very strong hand," Krissoff said last week. "Creative defense attorneys can do some damage and be very effective, so we'll see. But I doubt even Hunter Biden is optimistic."

This story was updated following the jury verdict in Hunter Biden's gun trial.

• My twin sister and I have been coworkers twice. 
• The first time we worked together was for a family business, which was stressful. 
• Years later, we worked together at a local mall, where customers often got us mixed up.

When I started working at my local shopping mall in 2016, I brought a swirl of confusion to my coworkers — and customers.

My identical twin sister, Aimee, had already worked there for around a year while balancing her studies at dance college. I was also a student and needed a job, so Aimee put in a good word with her manager.

I was hired as a part-time general operative shortly after an interview. My role involved working alongside my sister in the food court, cleaning tables, assisting customers, and cleaning the restrooms and the managers' offices.

But when my first day rolled around, it became clear that Aimee and my new manager had failed to mention that I was a twin to our coworkers.

When I arrived at the food court, ready to start my first shift, another worker approached me with a confused grin. She started chatting as if she knew me and asked why I was in the food court when I was supposed to be working at a different station.

I realized she had mistaken me for Aimee, who was working on the floor above us.

I told the worker that Aimee was my twin, and her grin morphed into a laugh. She couldn't believe it.

Many customers had the same reaction. Some would stop to ask me if I had a twin after seeing Aimee and I work together or in different parts of the mall on the same day.

Others assumed I had super speed, going from one part of the mall to the other in record time, when they were actually just seeing my sister and I at different work stations.

Of course, I should have prepared for these reactions. It wasn't the first time my sister and I had worked together.

We worked together at our family business as teenagers

The shopping mall was our second attempt to be coworkers.

When we were in high school, Aimee and I worked at our parents' fish and chip shop in our hometown.

As Aimee was more outgoing, she worked out front with the customers, while I usually stayed in the back, cleaning the dishes and doing other chores.

It was a great experience, and it made sense that my parents wanted us to work at the shop. It helped instill a work ethic in both of us, and it was inspiring to see my mom and dad work hard at something they were passionate about.

However, as you can probably imagine, working with family had some drawbacks. I remember countless family arguments and moments of tension caused by the stress of running a business.

Even when we weren't working, all my family seemed to talk about was the shop. It wasn't healthy for my relationship with my sister or my parents.

My parents decided to close the shop around four years after it first opened. It was a bittersweet decision, but we all knew it was the right thing for our family.

Things were different when Aimee and I worked at the mall. We weren't emotionally attached to our work this time because the stakes weren't as high.

If we made a mistake at work or got frustrated with a coworker, we could leave it at the door.

As a result, our relationship flourished. We genuinely enjoyed working together, and to this day, we still share inside jokes and funny stories about our time at the mall.

The experience taught me that there are benefits to working with siblings, and I'd definitely encourage it — but a family business isn't always the best place to do it.

• Apple unveiled Apple Intelligence at WWDC 2024.
• An iPhone 15 Pro or newer is required for compatibility with the new AI features.
• Apple's iPhone sales have faced headwinds in the last year, so the company is hoping it can convince people to upgrade.

Apple finally threw its hat into the AI ring during its WWDC keynote on Monday, revealing a suite of generative AI features it calls Apple Intelligence.

But most iPhone users will need to upgrade in order to use them.

The Apple Intelligence features, which will be coming to iPhone, iPad, and Mac, will be free for users and start rolling out to US users later this year. There's also a revamped Siri, powered by Apple Intelligence, that promises to be more useful by accessing specific actions within apps.

The AI tasks — which range from helping draft emails to generating custom images and emojis to figuring out when you should the house to catch your flight — will be mostly handled entirely on the Apple devices themselves, powered by the chips within the iPhone, iPad or Mac. That means you'll need one of the very latest iPhones, or a fairly modern iPad or Mac, to access Apple Intelligence.

An entry-level iPhone 15 isn't even enough. You'll need at least the iPhone 15 Pro or an iPhone 15 Pro Max. Apple Intelligence is also only compatible with iPads and Macs that have the M1 chip — thankfully those have been around for years.

You'll also have the choice of letting Apple Intelligence and the new Siri tap into ChatGPT for some tasks. The integration will make accessing ChatGPT more seamless, but those with older iPhones can always simply download the ChatGPT iOS app.

Apple Intelligence's launch comes after recent declines in iPhone sales, which dropped by 10% year-over-year in the first quarter. There's also data indicating that people are holding onto their iPhones for longer. As groundbreaking upgrades plateau and prices increase, people likely see less of a need to trade out their current iPhones for the latest models.

AI represents an opportunity for Apple to buck that trend.

Now, iPhone owners will have to decide if Apple Intelligence is enough of a reason to upgrade.

Apple certainly hopes so.

• BeReal is acquired by Voodoo Games for 500 million euros.
• The once-popular social media app struggled to grow and had limited runway left.
• Co-founder and CEO Alexis Barreyat will leave BeReal after a transition period.

BeReal is being acquired.

The startup social media app, which soared in popularity during the height of the pandemic and struggled to find long-term footing with users, has been purchased by Voodoo Games.

Voodoo, a French gaming company, said it valued BeReal at 500 million euros.

Business Insider first reported that BeReal was looking to be acquired. The company was struggling to grow user numbers and had less than a year of runway left from previous rounds of funding.

As part of the sale to Voodoo, BeReal co-founder and CEO Alexis Barreyat is leaving the company after a transition period.

Are you a tech employee or someone else with a tip or insight to share? Contact Kali Hays at khays@businessinsider.com or on secure messaging app Signal at 949-280-0267. Reach out using a non-work device.