Saudi Arabia and the Chinese planemaker Comac have been in discussions, Reuters reported.
Comac aims to compete with Airbus and Boeing with its C919 narrowbody plane.
Boeing's recent struggles could create more international opportunities for Comac.
Saudi officials are talking to China's planemaker Comac as the latter seeks to expand, Reuters reported.
The Comac C919 is a narrowbody plane that aims to compete with Airbus' A320neo and Boeing's 737 Max. It's China's first homegrown passenger jet, but so far, orders have only come from China and Southeast Asia.
Now, it looks like China is eyeing Saudi Arabia as the place to expand its market share and start competing with the two big Western planemakers.
According to Reuters, Dongfeng He, the chairman of Comac, visited Saudi Arabia for the first time this week. A Saudi delegation visited Comac's Shanghai facilities in February.
"Comac envisions enhancing global connectivity and diversity by contributing to Saudi Arabia's aviation transportation development," He told an aviation conference in Riyadh on Tuesday, per Reuters.
It comes after Saudi national carrier Saudia announced on Monday the biggest plane order in the kingdom's history. 105 Airbus jets, a mix of A320neo and A321neo models, will be distributed between the flag carrier and its subsidiary flyadeal.
The airline is owned by the Saudi government, and Saudia's chairman is also the transport minister. As part of its Vision 2030 plan to diversify its economy, aviation has been a focus to help promote tourism in the kingdom.
The Saudia deal appeared as a snub to Boeing, given that the US planemaker had previously won a big order from Riyadh Air — another state-owned airline set to launch in 2025.
Shortly before last November's Dubai Air Show, Bloomberg reported that Boeing was set to win another order from Riyadh Air for its narrowbody jets. However, that never materialized. CEO Tony Douglas blamed negative media coverage of delivery delays and technical problems.
With Boeing in crisis mode since January's Alaska Airlines blowout, carriers could be willing to look elsewhere. Plus, the backlog for Airbus commercial aircraft reached 8,626 at the end of March, leaving little room for more customers.
Earlier this month, the Brazilian planemaker Embraer denied The Wall Street Journal's report that it was working on a new narrowbody jet — capitalizing on Boeing's woes.
It's not just about working from your PJs on Fridays. Workers are sneaking in midday spa treatments and booking workout classes.
The result is a bustling work-from-home Friday economy, giving some businesses a noticeable boost at the end of the week. For a country that's seen many of its downtowns decimated, it's a welcome change.
And it's not just impacting mom-and-pop stores. Big chains like Starbucks and Sweetgreen have even seen an uptick on Fridays.
But WFH Fridays' staying power remains to be seen.
Companies have worked hard to pull workers back to the office to ensure "collaboration" and "culture." Some workers have fought back against losing their remote privileges.
Solidifying Friday as a remote day could be the middle ground employees and employers have struggled to find during the hybrid-work era.
Taiyou Nomachi/Getty Images
WFH Fridays coincide with another growing workplace trend: "quiet vacationing."
More than a third of millennials recently polled said they've taken time off without telling their boss, writes BI's Kelsey Vlamis.
Starting your vacation a bit early without burning a full day of PTO isn't an entirely new concept. Let those who haven't left work early to catch a flight or avoid traffic cast the first stone.
Remote work has supercharged the concept, though. Employees have gotten strategic about scheduling messages or keeping their statuses active, even if they're only working on cocktails and a good tan.
Which brings us back to WFH Fridays. As summer approaches, it's not hard to see employees leveraging their remote privileges to get a jump start on weekend travel plans. Driving to the shore during Friday rush-hour traffic is a special kind of hell.
But how far will employees push it? Because let's be honest, they're going to push it.
What starts as cutting out a few hours early on Friday suddenly turns into missing the whole day. Do you know the best way to beat Friday traffic? Leave Thursday night!
The end result could be employers saying abuse of WFH Fridays means they need you back in the office… for good.
3 things in markets
Momo Takahashi/BI
Getting a foot in the door at Goldman Sachs remains incredibly hard. Only 0.9% of applicants nabbed a summer internship this year, a record low. It shows the prestigious bank is still a top target among aspiring bankers despite some of its recent turmoil.
Wall Street is asking tough questions about Big Tech's cloud revenue numbers. A recent note from RBC Capital asked if big investments in AI startups were artificially boosting cloud growth figures. It's called revenue round tripping, and it's when money is invested in something that uses the cash on services from the initial investor.
Germany has a solar panel problem. The country has installed more solar capacity than demand requires, SEB Research found. That's pushed prices into negative territory during peak solar production hours.
3 things in tech
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/ Getty Images; Isabel Fernandez-Pujol/ BI
Good news: OpenAI wasn't lying about using a fake Scarlett Johansson voice. Bad news: It's just incompetent. OpenAI's response to the ScarJo saga is Sam Altman didn't know what he was doing, which is troubling, to say the least. That kind of bumbling argument works for a young startup but is tougher for a company meant to lead us into the future.
A LinkedIn Copilot might be on the way. According to a planning document viewed by BI,Microsoft lists "LinkedIn" among existing Copilots. It's unclear what the reference to LinkedIn Copilot exactly means, but a person familiar with the planning said it suggests the company has bigger plans than its existing AI tools.
Keep it secret, keep it SAFE. AI startups are reviving the funding mechanism, pioneered by Y Combinator, to raise money in a more founder-friendly way. Rather than a conventional equity investment, investors commit a certain amount of funding, like a warrant, and in return, receive stock in the company at a future date.
3 things in business
Meta, Tyler Le/BI
How a former Meta and Google employee got Mark Cuban to respond to his cold email. They may seem daunting or even pointless, but a Meta and Google alum says cold emails helped him secure those jobs and grow his network by 100x. He shared the magic formula he uses — which includes a great hook and a clear ask.
Why did Vivek Ramaswamy invest in BuzzFeed? The former presidential candidate owns a 7.7% stake in BuzzFeed. But why? We have some unverified theories, including one involving the massively popular show Hot Ones.
It's the summer of meal deals. Burger King is launching its own $5 meal, just two weeks after it was reported that McDonald's would roll out a similar promotion. The set will include a sandwich, chicken nuggets, fries, and a drink and will run for several months, according to an internal document seen by Bloomberg.
G7 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting continues.
The Insider Today team: Dan DeFrancesco, deputy editor and anchor, in New York. Hallam Bullock, senior editor, in London. George Glover, reporter, in London. Grace Lett, associate editor, in Chicago. Laine Napoli, associate producer, in New York.
The Times reported that Nikeeta Sriram bought the property, which consists of a main house with three bedrooms and a separate one-bedroom back house with a loft, in March 2022.
At the time, Sriram was renting in Los Feliz and didn't want to break her lease, so she decided to rent her home to 36-year-old Nicholas Jarzabek, according to the Times.
"He seemed like the perfect tenant until he turned into a nightmare," Sriram told the outlet.
According to the Times, during his first year as a tenant, Jarzabek paid his $8,500 rent on time or early, and didn't make repair requests.
However, the newspaper said that in December 2023, Sriram discovered that her home was being listed on Airbnb, in violation of the lease.
Police were called after the ADT alarm was repeatedly triggered, the Times reported, with ADT informing Sriram that Airbnb guests had set off the alarm.
When confronted, Jarzabek denied subletting the property, but Sriram found listings for it on Airbnb, the Times reported.
Initially, the Airbnb account was hosted by someone named Rich Jacobs. It's unclear if this was an alias for Jarzabek or an associate.
The main house was listed for $688 per night and the back property for $496, with the two buildings collective having more than 100 reviews on Airbnb, per the Times.
The subpoena showed that for 16 months between 2022 and 2023, the Airbnb listing generated $215,954, about $13,500 a month, according to the Times.
In February, the Times said that Sriram booked the house to communicate with the account holder, writing: "STOP RELISTING THIS PROPERTY. You are not authorized to sublease this property!"
But according to the newspaper, she received the response: "Dear Nikeeta, Welcome and Thank You. You will have a great time here."
The listings were temporarily removed, but new ones soon appeared.
According to the lawsuit reviewed by the newspaper, the property listings omitted exterior shots and provided a false address about a mile from the actual location.
Although Sriram considered changing the locks, she didn't want to violate the lease terms, which could result in her having to pay out damages. Instead, she filed for eviction through the Los Angeles Superior Court and filed a cease and desist to Jarzabek's attorney, the newspaper said.
Throughout the legal proceedings, the property continued to be rented under a new account, a rental company called Monthier, which has other listings throughout LA.
Monthier did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Sriram told the Times she eventually resorted to showing up at the property to warn guests about the situation.
"I felt terrible. I didn't want to ruin their vacations," she said, but added: "This is our only recourse since Airbnb provided no help to us."
Airbnb confirmed to the Times that the listing is no longer active and the account associated with Jacobs has been deleted. The company did not immediately respond to BI's request for comment.
As part of the lawsuit, Sriram subpoenaed Airbnb for information about Jarzabek, discovering that the telephone number registered for Jacobs was a UK number, per the Times.
The newspaper said that Instagram posts show Jarzabek performing in London pubs under the name Nick Diver.
The Instagram account associated with Diver did not immediately respond to BI's request for comment.
"If the city can't figure out how to crack down on Airbnb, it should err on the side of caution and ban the platform until it can build a task force to manage it," Sriram told the newspaper.
According to the Times, Jarzabek stopped paying rent after Sriram filed the eviction notice. She told the newspaper that she estimates she has lost $100,000 this year in property damage, legal fees, and lost rent.
Sriram's unlawful detainer lawsuit was recently approved, allowing her to proceed with an eviction, the Times reported.
The newspaper said that she has also received a writ of possession, which permits a sheriff to take control of the property and return it to her. However, there is a waitlist of several months for that service.
But for the first time, the Russian military has caused widespread disruptions to Starlink, creating serious problems for Ukraine's frontline troops, according to The New York Times.
Members of Ukraine's 92nd Assault Brigade, who spoke to The Times, said Starlink became extremely slow earlier this month as Russian troops advanced across the northern border.
"One day before the attacks, it just shut down," a soldier who goes by the call sign Ajax told the outlet. "It became super, super slow."
"We're losing the electronic warfare fight," Ajax said.
Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's digital minister, said in a recent interview that Russia is testing new, sophisticated tools to "disrupt the quality of Starlink connections because it's so important to us," The Times said.
Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's minister for digital transformation.
Brian Weeden, the chief program officer for the nonprofit Secure World Foundation, previously told BI that Russia has struggled to disrupt Ukraine's Starlink service.
This may be because its satellites operate at a far lower altitude than geostationary satellites, which means their signals are stronger and more concentrated.
Because Starlink satellites are closer to Earth, latency — the delay between a user's action and a network response — is shorter. This speeds up streaming, online gaming, videoconferencing, and other activities.
According to The Times, Russia may have gotten better at interfering with the signal by using more powerful and precise jammers.
A drone pilot who uses the call sign Kartel, told The Times that soldiers had to turn to text messaging apps because Starlink was so slow.
"During the first hours the front line was very dynamic. The enemy was moving. And we were moving as well. We needed to be fast in communicating," he said, adding that "everything was more time-consuming."
Though Russia's defense ministry is yet to comment, an official who leads the country's electronic warfare efforts told state media in April that the military had developed capabilities to counter Starlink, the outlet said.
The Wall Street Journal reported in April that Russia had illegally obtained Starlink devices from the black market to coordinate attacks in Ukraine.
The outlet said Russians were purchasing the technology from foreign countries, including the US, before smuggling it to Russian troops in Ukraine.
SpaceX, Ukraine's Ministry of Defense, and the Kremlin did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
"The books and TV series on my summer list all touch on the idea of service to others — why we do it, the things that can make it difficult, and why we should do it anyway," Gates wrote.
The Microsoft cofounder wrote that he didn't intend to center the list around service, but it's "certainly as relevant today as ever."
"At a time when wars dominate the headlines and our politics is becoming more and more polarized, it's inspiring to appreciate those who help others and think about how we can be more generous in our own lives," he wrote.
Here are the four books and one TV series that Gates said will enrich your summer.
"The Women" by Kristin Hannah.
Nurses attend to wounded US soldiers in 1967.
Bettmann/Getty Images
The historical fiction novel centers on a young US Army nurse who served two tours in the Vietnam War before returning home to political tension and the anti-war movement.
Gates wrote in a separate blog post that "The Women" changed his perspective on the Vietnam War, adding that the story highlights female Vietnam veterans.
"Enough time has passed that most people acknowledge the individual heroism that took place in Vietnam, even though history doesn't look kindly on the war itself," he wrote. "People over there did things that we can — and should — be proud of. That's one reason why I'm glad to see a book like 'The Women' doing so well. It's a beautifully written tribute to a group of veterans who deserve more appreciation for the incredible sacrifices they made."
"Infectious Generosity" by Chris Anderson.
Chris Anderson.
Eóin Noonan/Getty Images
Chris Anderson's "Infectious Generosity" is a non-fiction novel that explores how people can use the internet to maximize generosity. Anderson is the curator for TED Talks.
"Chris's central argument is that communications technology creates both an opportunity and a responsibility to give more," Gates wrote in a blog post. "When we can witness the hardships of others firsthand, even from the other side of the planet, our instinct to help is activated. And the internet makes it easy to act on that instinct."
"Slow Horses" on Apple TV+.
The cast of the Apple TV+ series "Slow Horses."
Gilbert Flores/Getty Images
"Slow Horses" is a British spy thriller with three seasons on Apple TV+ that debuted in 2022.
The show is about a group of undercover agents at Slough House working to protect England from nefarious forces. Slough House is where "people get sent to when they mess up badly, but not quite badly enough to get fired," Gates wrote in a blog post.
Gates, who said he binge-watched the series, added that it's "up there with the best spy stuff I've seen."
"Brave New Words" by Sal Khan.
Sal Khan.
MediaNews Group/The Mercury News via Getty Images
"Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That's a Good Thing)" is a deep dive into artificial intelligence and how that technology could influence classrooms worldwide.
"Sal argues that AI will radically improve both outcomes for students and the experiences of teachers, and help make sure everyone has access to a world-class education," Gates wrote. "He's well aware that innovation has had only a marginal impact in the classroom so far but makes a compelling case that AI will be different."
Gates added: "No technology is a silver bullet for education. But I believe AI can be a game changer and great equalizer in the classroom, the workforce, and beyond."
"How to Know a Person," by David Brooks.
David Brooks.
Bryan Bedder/Getty Images
The last book on Gates' list is "How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen," which is a guide to helping readers foster deep connections.
Gates wrote that Brooks' advice can be applied to all facets of life and help people build their social skills.
"As someone who has always been more comfortable making software than small talk, I found this idea both refreshing and informative," Gates wrote.
A GLSDB being fired in a press image dated to February 2023 and released by Saab.
Saab
US-provided glide bombs are struggling against Russian electronic jamming in Ukraine.
Ukraine received the Boeing-made bombs in February in the hopes of hitting longer-range targets.
But Russian electronic warfare has blunted the effectiveness of the US-supplied munitions.
US-provided glide bombs are struggling against sophisticated Russian electronic jamming in Ukraine, Reuters reported.
The Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb, or GLSDB, is a relatively new guided bomb with a range of 100 miles, thanks to small wings that extend from its body.
But their guidance systems are running into Russian jamming, causing many of the launches to miss their targets, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The GLSDB's developers, Boeing and Saab, have previously touted its high precision combined with its longer range.
In 2022, marketing materials for the bomb said that its navigation system is "supported by a highly jamming resistance GPS."
Representatives for Boeing didn't reply to Reuters and did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment, sent outside of working hours. Saab also did not immediately respond to BI.
Jamming works by overwhelming a device's GPS signal with stronger, false signals, disrupting its navigation.
In late April, William LaPlante, the US undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, discussed a US-supplied precision weapon that had suffered failings in Ukraine, in part because of electronic warfare.
He didn't name the weapon, but Defense One reported that it was likely the GLSDB.
Russian jamming has blunted the impact of several weapons that were initially highly effective in Ukraine, including the HIMARS-launched Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System, or GMLRS, and Joint Direct Attack Munitions, or JDAMS.
In March, reports emerged that the efficiency of GPS-guided Excalibur artillery shells had also been vastly reduced by Russia's evolving electronic warfare systems.
Jamming is also a highly inexpensive tactic — the software is available relatively cheaply and can help to take out munitions costing tens of thousands of dollars, Defense One reported.
Experts have warned that Russia's capabilities in this increasingly vital area now far exceed those of the US.
Nvidia cofounder Jensen Huang is now worth of $91 billion, according to Bloomberg.
His fortune ballooned $7.6 billion on Thursday as the AI darling stock racked up more gains.
Huang is now richer than Rob, Jim or Alice Walton, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Nvidia has emerged as one of the main winners of the AI investing craze — and the good times keep rolling for the semiconductor giant.
Shares in the "Magnificent Seven" tech company jumped 9% on Thursday after another strong earnings report, lifting its valuation to just under $2.6 trillion.
One obvious winner anytime the year's hottest stock surges is Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Huang. His net worth jumped another $7.6 billion, according to data from Bloomberg, as investors seized on better-than-expected quarterly profit and revenue numbers.
Huang's personal fortune of $91 billion now puts him 17th on the outlet's Billionaires Index. He's richer than every Walmart heir, including founder Sam Walton's three children Rob, Jim, and Alice.
Here's everything you need to know about Huang, who rocks a leather jacket everywhere he goes and reportedly got a tattoo of Nvidia's logo once the company's share price hit $100.
The jump in Nvidia stock follows another set of blockbuster quarterly earnings this week as the generative AI boom continues.
He moved to the US as a child
Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of Nvidia Corp., gives a keynote presentation during the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. Huang later unveiled the Titan X CPU operating with a GeForce GTX Titan X graphics card during the presentation.
Kim Kulish/Corbis/Getty Images
Born as Jen-hsun Huang in Taipei in 1963, Huang spent part of his childhood in Taiwan and Thailand, per Bloomberg.
In 1973, Huang's parents sent their children to relatives in the US owing to the social unrest in the Southeast Asian country, before relocating there themselves.
Huang's aunt and uncle — who were recent migrants to Washington state at the time — accidentally sent Jensen and his brother to Oneida Baptist Institute in Kentucky, which was considered a reform school instead of a prep school, according to Huang's 2002 interview with Wired.
"And the kids were really tough," Huang told NPR in a 2012 interview. "They all had pocket knives — and when they get in fights, it's not pretty. Kids get hurt."
Students at the school also had to work, and Huang's duty was to clean the bathrooms.
"The ending of the story is I loved the time I was there," Huang told NPR. "We worked really hard — we studied really hard, and the kids were really tough."
In 2019, he and his wife Lori donated $2 million toward building a female dormitory and classroom building at the school, per the institute's website.
He loves computer games and studied electrical engineering
Nvidia CEO and president Jen-Hsun Huang plays with a game using Nvidia's Physx technology for gaming, at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2009.
AP Photo / Paul Sakuma
Huang and his brother eventually moved to Oregon where they rejoined the family.
"I enjoyed computers growing up, but OSU opened up my eyes to the magic behind them," he told the university.
Huang graduated in 1984 — the "perfect year to graduate," he said at a keynote speech at National Taiwan University's commencement ceremony this year, per Fortune. That was the same year when the first Mac computers were released, bringing forth a new age in personal computing.
After graduating from OSU, Huang worked at chip companies LSI Logic and Advanced Micro Devices in a variety of roles, according to his bio on Nvidia's website.
He founded Nvidia in 1993 after leaving LSI Logic.
Huang founded Nvidia while dining at Denny's
Denny's.
Shutterstock
Nvidia was founded in 1993 at a Denny's restaurant where he was meeting with two friends, Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem, per The Wall Street Journal.
The trio "wondered whether starting a graphics company would be a good idea," Huang told Stanford University's engineering school in a 2010 interview.
"We brainstormed and fantasized about what kind of company it would be and the world we could help. It was fun," he told Stanford.
Denny's was also where Huang part-timed when he was a student, per a 2010 New York Times interview. There, he learned how to be more outgoing.
"I was a very good student and I was always focused and driven. But I was very introverted. I was incredibly shy," he told The Times. "The one experience that pulled me out of my shell was waiting tables at Denny's. I was horrified by the prospect of having to talk to people."
Huang is 61, making him years older than Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos when they left day-to-day operations at 52 and 57 years old, respectively.
There are few signs he plans to slow down.
"Nothing is more fun to me than to build a once-in-a-generation company with all of my friends here," Huang told Business Insider in 2021 . "I can't imagine wanting to do anything other than that."
May 24, 2024: This story has been updated to reflect movements in Nvdia's share price and Jensen Huang's net worth.
Huang is now one of the biggest winners of the AI boom.
Huang believes that generative AI has hit a "new tipping point."
Mohd Rasfan/AFP/Getty Images
Nvidia has made itself a key player in the AI boom by supplying hardware to major companies, including OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. Demand for the company's hardware has been driven by several factors, including a sophisticated software system that makes its chips simple to use as well as a shortage of AI chips.
Huang now believes we've hit a new threshold in the AI hype cycle. "Accelerated computing and generative AI have hit the tipping point. Demand is surging worldwide across companies, industries, and nations," Huang said in the company's fourth-quarter earnings press release.
Hong Yea quit his director role because he felt like working for a company was limiting his dreams.
Getty Images; Alyssa Powell/BI
Hong Yea spent 10 years as a trader but always had dreams of starting his own business.
Yea quit his director job at Goldman Sachs to start a crypto company, just as the industry tanked.
He had doubts, alongside everyone else, but a Korean proverb spurred him to pursue his startup.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Hong Yea,a 36-year-old CEO and cofounder of GRVT. It has been edited for length and clarity.
In 2018, after five years of working in security lending at Credit Suisse, I started pondering what I wanted to do with my life. I was 30, living in Hong Kong. Did I want to keep working as a trader or do something completely different?
Around that time, a Goldman Sachs recruiter in Hong Kong approached me to work for them. After an interview, they offered me a job. I wasn't convinced I wanted to stay in banking, so I declined.
I took a two-week trip to Canada to meet with a good friend who worked at Amazon. If I was going to leave trading and start something new, I needed to be convinced by an idea or industry I could immerse myself in.
After two weeks of brainstorming with my friend, I didn't love anything we came up with. Luckily, Goldman hadn't filled the role, so I started working for them in November 2018.
Working at Goldman Sachs would always be limiting
I liked working as a trader at Goldman, but it wasn't fulfilling. I had this passion to start a business I couldn't let go of.
I worked at Goldman from November 2018 to July 2022. During that time, I started several side projects, including a restaurant and a home import service. I slowly realized that working for Goldman or any company, the end goal is limited to possibly being a partner. There's a cap.
I was promoted to executive director in 2019. The next step at the firm was managing director, a role with significantly more responsibility and compensation. I knew I'd struggle to walk away from my team and the money.
If I wanted to build something of my own, I needed to leave before reaching that point.
The 3 essentials for leaving my job
By 2020, I was seriously considering leaving my job to start my own business. But before I went out alone, I needed my new venture to be positioned in a fast-growing industry, have a business idea I knew I could contribute to and excel at, and have good co-founders to help me run the business.
I started researching crypto and blockchain in 2021. I'd invested in crypto since 2018 but wasn't that into it. But in 2021, the market was booming. I looked at the technology more closely, and it seemed applicable to the financial systems I was familiar with.
I booked a ticket to a crypto conference in February 2022 in Barcelona to learn more. The conference convinced me this was the industry to be in. There were many "crypto natives" there, but I saw a lack of traditional finance expertise. It felt like was a big opportunity for me to get in early.
When I got home, I spoke with two friends, Matthew and Aaron. Matthew was a trustworthy friend with a strong blockchain background. He'd introduced Aron to me as the best engineer he knew. I suggested we look into the decentralized finance space and see what improvements we could make, and they were on board.
I had all three requirements I'd set out to leave Goldman.
We started a crypto company weeks before the crash
By April 2022, we all decided to quit our jobs and dive full time into creating GRVT (pronounced gravity).
GRVT would be a self-custodial cryptocurrency exchange designed to give users complete control over their assets. Basically, it would be a system to create more secure crypto trading and protect investors from third parties defaulting on their payments.
I had enough savings to cover my rent and living expenses for a year and other non-cash assets that I could leverage if needed.
For me, it didn't matter how much I'd saved. The key was having a team and project I felt confident could raise sufficient funds. Now we had that. There was no turning back.
I was working from Singapore in early May 2022. I emailed my boss in Hong Kong to say I was resigning. When I followed up on the phone with him, he said he was coming to Singapore a week later and wanted to talk with me in person.
At the same time all this was happening, Luna Crypto, followed by the crypto market, crashed.
The crypto industry had been decimated, and I'd lost around two-thirds of my savings in cryptocurrency. I couldn't help questioning my decisions. It was a really fragile time in my life.
When I told my parents and friends I had resigned from Goldman to start a career in the cryptocurrency industry, they were concerned. Many people asked why I'd leave Goldman for crypto during a crash.
"It is the best time to build when things are crashing as long as you have the conviction that industry will grow because it's the time when the fewest others will be building," I said in response to their worried questioning.
A Korean proverb inspired me to stick to my guns
My boss flew into Singapore and met with me. "Are you sure you don't want to come back," he asked me, half serious, half joking.
But after talking to my fiancé, I decided to stick with my plan. She reminded me of a Korean proverb: "If you've drawn your sword, you need to slay something before you put it back." I'd been careful and made all the right assessments. Even if the markets were tanking, I was committed.
In the following months, we focused on building and getting investor funding. It was the worst time to raise because no one was looking to crypto. It was daunting, and stressful, and required a lot of self-convincing.
In October 2022, we pivoted away from lending toward building a safer hybrid trading platform: a crypto derivatives exchange. That's when we started receiving our first proper investments.
It felt like the industry was entering a no-return stage after FTX
When FTX filed for bankruptcy in November 2022, it confirmed that we were building something the industry needed.
If you trust your funds to an exchange, they have full control over their management. GRVT solves that problem. User funds are never controlled by a third party. You always have control of the funds in your own wallet and trade through your own wallet.
After the FTX crash, there were moments when I thought the industry was entering a no-return stage because the sentiment was so negative.
The technology we believed in — blockchain and smart contract-based risk management — could be the answer to preventing future incidents like this. That conviction kept us going through the toughest times.
Since the FTX crash, things have gone up for us
We've raised about $9.3 million, which is pretty decent for seed rounds at the worst time. We're a team of 26 building what I think is the future of exchanges. We're looking to launch in the next two months. Over 2 million people are registered on our waiting list, and we have 500,000 followers on X.
Achieving these milestones step by step is exciting for myself and the team, even if we've built it through the worst times.
I wanted to dream up something big enough that when I fulfilled it, it felt so much better than working for a company. We weathered the storm, and it feels incredibly rewarding.
Washington, DC, has the highest upper-class cutoff of any state.
Wasin Pummarin/Getty Images
Here's how much you need to make to be considered upper class — and what percentage of each state is.
The upper class in Washington, DC, starts at $202,000, while in Mississippi, it's $105,400.
Over 21% of DC residents are upper class, compared to just 14.4% in Alaska.
This map reveals just how much Americans in each state need to make to be considered in the upper class — and what percentage of residents fall into that demographic.
A Business Insider analysis of 2022 US Census Bureau data, the latest year for which data is available, revealed that 21.1% of Washington, DC, are considered upper class with household incomes above $202,000. Meanwhile, just 14.4% of Alaskan households are upper class, earning above $176,000.
That's based on the Pew Research Center's definition of upper class, meaning you earn at least double a state's median income. This means that states with households with more income dispersion may have more people in the upper class, even with a higher income cutoff.
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The Census Bureau notes the real median household income nationally was $74,580 in 2022, ranging on a state level from $52,700 to $101,000. This means that the upper class in one state could still be considered middle class in another.
Even so, being upper class may not feel like swimming in wealth. For instance, some HENRYs — or high earners, not rich yet — previously told BI that even with household incomes clearly landing them in the upper class, they're still worried about retirement, buying a home, having kids, or going on vacations.
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DC has the highest cutoff, followed by New Jersey at nearly $192,700 per household. Maryland, Massachusetts, Hawaii, California, and Washington all have cutoffs in the $180,000s per household.
When looking at the share of households in the upper class, the top 10 shifts. New York has the second-highest share in the upper class at nearly 21%, even though the cutoff is $159,100. Louisiana, with a cutoff of over $110,800, was ranked third.
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Nearly every state in the bottom 10 for upper-class cutoffs was in the South. To be upper-class in Mississippi — which 19.3% of the population is — households must make a bit over $105,400. West Virginia comes in at $108,650, while Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Alabama, and New Mexico were all below $120,000.
The list of states with the lowest shares of people in the upper class also doesn't correspond. Alaska, Utah, and Idaho have below 15% of their populations in the upper class, while Wyoming and Delaware are in the 15% range.
Do you feel upper class? Did you move to another state where you could feel more financially secure? Tell this reporter why or why not at nsheidlower@businessinsider.com.
In Nantucket, Massachusetts, erosion is intensifying and sea levels are rising. Demand for multimillion-dollar homes, though, has remained sky-high.
iStock; Rebecca Zisser/BI
This month, residents of the island of Nantucket, a storybook New England coastal retreat located 30 miles off the coast of Cape Cod, gathered for their annual town meeting and quietly acknowledged a mounting eco-crisis.
Erosion, which is typical for most islands, is now increasing in severity, threatening to reshape Nantucket's downtown and wash away the homes sitting on its edge. Permanent residents formally approved the designation of the entire island as an "Islands Coastal Resilience District," with hopes that state-backed help could follow.
A lot of real estate value is at stake. Over the past two centuries, Nantucket has gone from a whaling town to a hippie refuge to a holiday hot spot for billionaires. Its year-round population hovers at about 14,000, but over the summer, it balloons to 80,000 as the likes of Blackstone's Steve Schwarzman and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who own picturesque grey-shingled mansions lined with blooming hydrangea, descend on the island in their private jets, sporting Nantucket red and boat shoes.
And it's only expected to worsen in the "foreseeable future," C. Elizabeth Gibson, the town manager, wrote in the 2021 Coastal Resilience Plan. "The risks for Nantucket, a maritime community, are significant."
Erosion has long been a problem on Nantucket.
David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
In total, sea level rise, coastal flooding, and erosion are estimated to cause over $3.4 billion in cumulative damages to Nantucket over the next five decades, according to the plan.
But demand for properties has remained sky-high on the idyllic island. Last year's median home sale price was $3.2 million, up from $1.9 million five years prior, according to data from local firm Fisher Real Estate. Twenty-seven percent of the homes sold cost more than $5 million.
"The concentration of wealth is quite stunning on Nantucket, and it keeps escalating," Bruce Percelay, a real estate developer and the publisher of the island's N Magazine, who has been vacationing on Nantucket for nearly all of his life, told Business Insider. "To use a well-worn phrase, come hell or high water, people are still buying multimillion-dollar homes on Nantucket."
The Grey Lady is only getting greyer
Year-round Nantucket resident and real estate broker Edward Sanford's family has been visiting the island for generations, starting in the 1920s. As a child, he'd visit his grandfather's cottage on the south shore, which has been prone to erosion for hundreds of years.
"We called it the shack. It had a handpump for plumbing and no electricity," he told BI. "That building today is probably two or three hundred yards into the ocean."
It seems that everyone with a connection to Nantucket knows someone who knows someone who has been affected by erosion or rising sea levels. The island is, as residents like to remind you, nothing more than a sandbar, and erosion was causing destruction long before terms like climate change were part of the common vernacular.
"If there was no global warming or there was no rising sea levels, storms happen, and waves lap against the land," Percelay said. "When the land is made of sand, it erodes, and it is hard to tell whether this would happen under different circumstances, but it is not a new condition." (Last year, Percelay garnered attention for clashing with a climate protester at a Nantucket cocktail party, something for which he has since apologized.)
Still, all signs point to destruction intensifying with the changing climate.
Downtown's Easy Street flooded an average of six days a year between 1965 and 1972. From 2013 to 2020, that increased to an average of 37 days a year, and in 2023, it flooded 75 days, according to the town's coastal resilience department.
By 2070, over 2,300 buildings — 84% of the homes — on the island will be at risk of coastal flooding or erosion, according to projections from the Coastal Resilience Plan, created by the town in 2021 to outline the risks and propose interventions. Between 2030 and 2100, the number of structures exposed to coastal erosion is expected to go from 113 to 860.
Increased erosion puts multimillion-dollar homes at risk
Several expensive oceanfront neighborhoods — and the multimillion-dollar mansions within them — are particularly vulnerable.
"They're not your classic beach house. They're much more substantial," Greg Mckechnie, a real-estate agent who has lived on the island for 25 years, told BI. "When I was a kid, if a house flooded down on Hulbert Avenue, you'd go get a broom, sweep the water out, and wait for it to dry."
Billionaire Barry Sternlicht's home in Nantucket's Cisco neighborhood was demolished earlier this month after erosion made it uninhabitable.
Suzanne Kreiter/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
In the quiet area of Cisco, Sternlicht's home was recently demolished before it fell into the water. In nearby Madaket, famous for its untouched acres and beautiful sunsets, a number of houses have also suffered that fate.
Real estate broker Shelly Lockwood, who's lived on and off the island since the 1970s, recalled a client's parents being forced to tear down the home they'd lived in for decades.
"He was like, 'When we bought that house 47 years ago, my wife told me I would die before the house went in, and I'm still here,'" she recalled. "It's heartbreaking."
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On the island's eastern side, Siasconset, called Sconset by locals, is known for its expensive homes and well-heeled inhabitants, and it's similarly in danger.
People buying on the area's Baxter Road often purchase property on either side of the street, with the parcel further inland serving as a sort of insurance policy — a place to move their homes if erosion comes for their beachfront. If a Baxter Road lot becomes completely inhabitable, one can do as a former Sconset resident did in 2010: cut the house into six pieces and move it to a completely different part of the island.
"Without erosion, this would be an extremely valuable area," Baxter Road resident Joshua Posner told BI. "With erosion, it's volatile."
Sankaty Head Beach Club in Sconset — part of a golf club where Jack Welch routinely played in tournaments and which reportedly counts former Patriots coach Bill Belichick as a member — received a demolition permit last month in the face of continued erosion. Real estate broker Sanford, who is the vice president and treasurer of the club's board, said the permit is more about preparedness and that the building won't be destroyed right away.
Still, a demo permit is notable. Demolition on the island is seen as a last resort. Legal measures ensure an owner has exhausted all other options — and indicate that if a structure stayed in place, it would actually be harmful.
"Once it's in pieces all over the place, and — pun intended — but once the septic falls in, it's a pretty shitty situation," Lockwood said.
'Leases with Mother Nature'
In February, a home on Madaket's Sheep Pond Road made headlines for its sale price: $600,000, down from its original price of $2.3 million. Sanford said the ranch-style three-bedroom property could have gone for as much as $12 million if not for the erosion that recently destroyed dozens of feet of its shoreline.
The house, Sanford added, "is not long for this world."
That's something its buyer, New Yorker Brendan Maddigan, seemed to be OK with.
"I'd like to think that it'll be there for a while, but I was definitely aware of the risk of any particular storm causing a problem in the future," Maddigan told The Boston Globe.
"Those are properties we refer to occasionally as leases with Mother Nature," real-estate agent Mckechnie told BI.
The house on Sheep Pond Road sold for $600,000 — less than a third of its original asking price — after losing dozens of feet of dune.
Suzanne Kreiter/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
A few other sellers have similarly cut their listing prices. A nearby house on Sheep Pond Road is now going for $2.995 million, down from $3.998 million, and one on Sternlicht's street saw its price go from $5.6 million to $5.1 million earlier this month.
Some areas that are more impacted by rising sea levels than by erosion — like Brant Point, whose properties have pristine lawns and views of the Nantucket Sound — have become more expensive. In October 2021, Schwarzman bought a home in the neighborhood for $32.5 million. Last year, an unknown buyer purchased a house nearby for $33 million.
"When it comes to rising sea levels, the trade-off for the amenities, location, and often views, people are willing to take on the mitigation that needs to be done," Mckechnie said, like building at a higher level and adding storm panels.
Lockwood has made it her mission to ensure that homes on the island are priced fairly, in part to protect clients and in part to protect brokers' reputations.
"Some of these homes are extremely overvalued," she said. "We as a profession need to get in front of it, or we're all going down as sleazebags."
She's helped develop an education module for real estate agents on coastal resilience so they can fully understand the dangers of erosion and rising sea levels; once they know the risks — or "material defects" — agents will be obligated to disclose them to clients.
"I was watching people invest multi-millions of dollars on waterfront property, and I was like, 'Why? It's going in,'" she said.
Still, some wealthy people simply don't care to see the signs.
"Ultimately, the market makes the decision, not the real estate brokers," Percelay said.
Case in point: Last year's median home price in Madaket was $2.7 million — 39% more than the five-year average median price in the area, per Fisher's data.
Spending millions to keep erosion at bay
In Sconset, a group of neighbors have mounted a plan to buy themselves more time — and they are personally spending millions of dollars to do so.
With homes that hang precariously onto the edge of a 60-foot bluff, the residents of Baxter Road can't put their heads in the sand when it comes to the issue of erosion. Many, like housing developer Posner, have already spent tens of thousands of dollars to move their homes from their original positions.
"We're kind of sticking out farther into the Atlantic Ocean than anybody else," Posner, who moved his house back 50 feet 15 years ago, told BI.
Though the bluff has been eroding "irregularly" for the past 20 to 30 years, Posner estimated that sea level rise has accelerated the process to two to three feet every year.
So, he's taken action.
In the last decade, Posner spearheaded the implementation of anti-erosion technology called "geotubes." These large, cylindrical bags of sand that look like giant slugs are placed strategically on the shore to act as a defense barrier. The hope is that these structures will keep Baxter Road intact for decades.
The geotubes don't come cheap. Posner says current members of the Sconset Beach Preservation Fund, which manages the tubes, donate anywhere from $20,000 to $100,000 each year to the project. Not every resident of Baxter Road currently contributes, though Posner believes that will need to change if the plan is to be successful. Eventually, he estimates every owner will need to spend around $30,000 annually to keep the tubes operational.
"It's not inexpensive, but it is worth doing," Posner told BI. "It's like another tax bill."
Hedge fund pioneer F. Helmut Weymar, a Baxter Road resident who helped Posner research the geotubes, hopes they'll preserve the value of his five-bedroom home, which he spent $300,000 moving away from the bluff's edge six years ago. Purchased in the 1980s for $800,000, he believes with a successful geotubes project, the home's price could rise to $1.5 million.
However, the project has not been without controversy.
Advocates of the geotubes have been in a yearslong battle with the Conservation Commission of Nantucket, which says the tubes disturb the historic character of the beaches.
"Any attempts at delaying the impacts of erosion should rely on nature-based solutions," Coastal Conservancy member D. Anne Atherton told The New York Times in 2022.
To Weymar, the shorefront properties — which he pointed out supply the town with quite a lot of tax dollars — are as intrinsic to Nantucket as the beach is.
"The nature of Nantucket, to a significant degree, is the role of the summer community living on the shorefront," he said.
Posner, who said he believes an agreement will be reached with the Conservation Commission, is unwilling to wave the white flag to Mother Nature.
"If you have a chronic disease and the doctor tells you there's some things that can give you another 20 years," he said, "most people will take that."