• Startup Firestorm Labs aims to boost US drone production with 3D printers on the battlefield.
• Firestorm has secured $47 million in Series A funding and a $100 million Air Force contract.
• The Pentagon wants to buy hundreds of thousands of US-made drones over the next two years.

The US is light years behind its adversaries in military drone production. A San Diego startup wants to help solve that problem by bringing 3D printers to the battlefield.

Firestorm Labs has designed a small, mobile factory that the company says can fabricate virtually any model of drone or drone part. Each factory consists of two 20-foot shipping containers, outfitted with industrial-grade HP printers. Set-up requires just two to four people, and the company estimates that each factory can currently churn out about 17 small-to-mid-sized drones drones per week. The company also has two of its own drone designs.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has challenged the tech industry to help the US catch up on drones, and Silicon Valley is eager to cash in. Firestorm last year won a $100 million Air Force contract to research and develop unmanned aerial systems. This year, it raised $47 million in Series A funding from New Enterprise Associates, Lockheed Martin Ventures, and others.

Homing in on drones

Chad McCoy, cofounder and chief growth officer at Firestorm, served in the military for 23 years as a pararescueman, a medic trained to jump from aircraft and rappel down mountains to rescue service members or civilians in perilous situations.

One of the pieces of equipment he sorely needed was a small, waterproof box with a single plug to power his medical devices. It took four years for the military to develop and procure it, McCoy said in a 2023 podcast interview. Now, he wants to help the military iterate and produce things faster.

"Logistics is the way we win wars," McCoy told Business Insider. "And if we're able to empower the soldiers and sailors and Marines at the forward edge of the battle, it completely changes the game."

Chinese companies, led by market leader DJI, make tens of millions of drones per year, according to Bobby Sakaki, chief executive of UAS Nexus, a drone industry consultant. As the US races to ramp up its drone capabilities, one big challenge is a lack of parts for the type of drones being used on the battlefield, he said.

When Firestorm co-founders Dan Magy and Ian Muceus pitched McCoy on joining their company a few years ago, they proposed making cheap cruise missiles that could be built in mass quantities. Magy had founded Citadel Defense Company, which made counter drone technology and was acquired in 2021 by BlueHalo. Muceus had worked in aerospace and defense manufacturing at Origin, a 3D printing startup that was acquired by 3D printing company Stratasys.

McCoy, Magy, and Muceus eventually settled on creating a manufacturing solution for drones, which were becoming ubiquitous on the battlefield in places like Ukraine.

It was a fortuitous choice. Hegseth last week announced a plan to solicit bids from US companies to manufacture hundreds of thousands of inexpensive, unmanned drones over the next two years. The Pentagon plans to spend $1 billion on the initiative.

"We cannot be left behind," Hegseth said in a Defense Department video posted on YouTube.

For Firestorm, one challenge could be convincing the Pentagon to use drones made out of nylon instead of materials like steel and carbon fiber. The startup may also have to adjust its move-fast mentality to the reality of working with the federal government. Hegseth has said he wants to speed up the Pentagon's notoriously slow acquisition process.

A go-anywhere factory

Firestorm's pitch is that its mobile manufacturing facilities could help the US reach its drone ambitions.

"If we could create weapons anywhere in the world," McCoy said, "that would be a massive force multiplier."

Firestorm's mobile factory is called xCell. The sides of each shipping container pop out to create more space inside. The facility is designed to work in a range of climates; the company has tested its HVAC systems in arctic conditions in northern Canada, McCoy said.

Firestorm has a handful of xCells in the US. The company says that by the first quarter of 2026, it will have one stationed somewhere in the US Indo-Pacific Command, a vast area stretching from the west coast of the US to India and from Antarctica to the North Pole.

Firestorm's two drone designs, called Tempest and Hurricane, are customizable with open software development tools.

Eventually, McCoy hopes xCell can print more than just drones, perhaps venturing into prosthetics or medical devices.

"I think we can change how combat is fought and how logistics are done," he said.

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• Geoffrey Hinton said just because AI is replacing some programming task doesn't mean a CS degree isn't valuable.
• Hinton, the "Godfather of AI," told Business Insider that computer science degrees teach more than just programming.
• As agentic AI advances, big names in tech are debating the future of CS programs as students face a harsher job market.

The 'godfather of AI' says now isn't the time to give up on computer science degrees — even if AI is changing the coding industry.

"Many people think a CS degree is just programming or something," AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton told Business Insider. "Obviously, just being a competent mid-level programmer is not going to be a career for much longer, because AI can do that."

Hinton said the value of a CS degree is much more than just coding, which is why he thinks a "CS degree will be valuable for quite a long time."

Hinton's view dovetails with that of other leading names in AI and tech, who say it's too early to declare the CS degree a casualty of the AI boom, even as agentic AI disrupts the job market for what was once a highly sought-after degree.

OpenAI chairman Bret Taylor, who holds a BS and MS in computer science from Stanford University, said earlier this year that a CS degree is "extremely valuable."

"There's a lot more to coding than writing the code," he said. "Computer science is a wonderful major to learn systems thinking."

That doesn't mean CS programs shouldn't adapt.

Sameer Samat, Google's head of Android, previously told Business Insider that CS needed to be reframed around "the science, in my opinion, of solving problems."

And UC Berkeley professor Hany Farid told us that the best jobs for CS graduates right now are not at "the usual suspects in Silicon Valley."

"I have always contended that the most exciting applications of computer science are not at Facebook, Google, and Amazon, but at the intersection of computing and other fields like: computational drug discovery, medial imaging, computational neuroscience, computational finance, digital humanities including art and music, computational social science, policy, etc," Farid said September.

Hinton's advice for middle and high school students

Hinton is also a strong believer in the benefits young students receive from learning to code, another point of contention for some in tech, as AI models become increasingly adept at vibe coding.

"Some time ago, it was both sort of a good intellectual activity and useful for getting a job. It's still a good intellectual activity," he said.

Learning to code, Hinton said, is a bit like learning Latin as part of a broad-based humanities education.

"I think it's very useful to learn to code and even if they end up not having AI do all the coding for them," he said. "I think learning to code is, it is maybe a bit like learning Latin is if you're in the humanities or something, you're never going to speak Latin, but it's still useful learning Latin."

Overall, Hinton's advice for students aiming to become high-level AI researchers or engineers is to focus on upping their critical thinking rather than any one specific skill, which could be replaced by AI.

"Some skills that are always going to be valuable, like knowing some math, and some statistics, and some probability theory, knowing things like linear algebra that will always be valuable," he said. "That's not knowledge that's going to disappear."

• A growing number of Americans are "solo-agers" — they live alone and don't have family to rely on.
• They're much more likely to live in poverty and struggle with their health.
• Advocates warn these older adults will need more support as they age.

Valerie Miller, 68, has lived in the same community in San Bernardino, California, for decades. But as she's gotten older, her connections have dwindled. She lives alone, has never been married, and doesn't have kids.

Many of her friends have moved out of state to retire or be closer to their grandchildren, while others have died. Miller's only remaining family members are a brother and a nephew she rarely talks to. While she works full-time at a truck-permitting company, the role is remote, so she spends most of her time at home by herself. She worries about being priced out of the mobile home park she lives in if she has to stop working.

"It feels like I'm flying without a net," she said. "There's no one to catch me."

Miller is part of a booming population of so-called "solo-agers," or older adults who live alone, are unmarried, and don't have adult children they can rely on. About 28% of people 65 and older — 22.1 million people — live alone and don't have children, according to 2022 US Census data. That share is up from about 10% in 1950. While the share of older women living alone has fallen slightly in the last 30 years, the vast majority of solo-agers are women.

The trend of smaller and more geographically scattered families began with baby boomers and has accelerated since, said Vickie Bajtelsmit, a professor emeritus of finance at Colorado State University who has investigated best practices for solo-agers. That's left many people in their golden years without family close by.

"When I was a kid, most people stayed in the same area where they grew up," said Bajtelsmit, who's a baby boomer. "Our generation, everybody has spread to the winds."

Older Americans who live alone tend to struggle more financially and with their emotional and physical health. About 20% of older people who lived alone were in poverty, compared with 6% of those who lived with others, according to a Pew analysis of 2023 Census data. They also report a lower quality of life. More than half of people over 50 said they don't feel confident about living alone as they get older, a recent AARP survey found.

Miller has struggled with arthritis and vertigo, and said she doesn't have anyone reliable to lean on for support. It's also gotten harder for her to live alone and do physical chores, like home maintenance and yard work.

"I'll get a notice because the trees are too bushy or the weeds are bad, and it's getting to the point where I can't do my gardening," she said.

Housing woes and rising costs

While older people control a disproportionate share of the country's wealth, many are also struggling with the rising cost of living. That includes rising healthcare and long-term care costs. Services like home health aides and assisted living are out of reach for most.

The country isn't prepared for "the explosive growth of solo agers," said Bob Kramer, founder of the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing and Care (NIC). For one thing, developers aren't building enough housing designed for them, he said.

Even just downsizing to an accessible and affordable home can be tricky.

Denise Cariello, 59, has been married and divorced twice and now lives alone in a one-bedroom rental apartment in Irvine, California. The Illinois native moved to California to be closer to her three adult children after getting sick several years ago. She's since taken up part-time work, and she relishes her independence. But she worries she won't be able to afford rising rent in the pricey area.

"I don't really know what the future holds. I don't know if I'd be able to afford to stay in California," she said. "So I try not to think about it too much."

A very small slice of apartments and condos are fully accessible for people with mobility issues. Just 10% of homes have multiple basic accessibility features, like an entry without steps and a bedroom and bathroom on the first floor.

"Most developers don't want to go to the expense, let alone have a unit that looks like it's designed for somebody old," Kramer said. "So you're not going to see grab bars. You're not going to see elevated toilets."

Most new, smaller homes are designed for young people or small families.

"We're not building it for the average single woman who's 72 years old, and she wants a place of companionship, comfort, and safety that she can afford," Kramer said.

The scarcity of housing suitable for older people has accelerated a surge in demand for age-restricted "active adult" communities or independent living.

Barbara White, 72, is among the fortunate baby boomers able to downsize to a more affordable and accessible home in a retirement community. A veteran realtor, White sold her four-bedroom house on Amelia Island in North Florida for about double what she bought it for seven years earlier. She then moved south to a new 55+ community in Brevard County, where she bought a single-story two-bedroom house with cash from her home sale.

White, a widow, lives alone, though she isn't technically a solo-ager. She has two adult sons who also live in Florida. And she likes living independently, and doesn't have any plans for what she'll do if that's no longer possible.

"I like my own time, my own space," she said.

Bajtelsmit worries that not enough solo-agers are planning ahead. Because they often have a weaker support network, she says they should get an earlier start figuring out what they might need help with in the future.

"The big issue is having nobody else to help you once you lose some functioning, so that requires a solo ager to try to make decisions earlier," she said.

That could mean getting rid of possessions and downsizing into a smaller and more accessible home earlier than one might otherwise. It could also include finding professional help with finances or hiring a healthcare proxy or caregivers.

Bajtelsmit recently authored a report for the Society of Actuaries that includes recommendations for how solo-agers should approach everything from paying bills to doing home repairs.

"The way to think about it is, what are things that a family member would normally do for you as you get old?" she said.

• Renting out her pool and spa on Swimply helped Morgan Night afford to stay in her 1970s dream house.
• The income helps pay her mortgage after she retired due to cancer.
• She invested $10,000 in her spa room and earned it back in the first year.

This is an as-told-to essay based on a conversation with Morgan Night, who rents out her Los Angeles pool and spa room by the hour using the Swimply app. This story has been edited for length and clarity.

I retired in 2022 because I have cancer and I couldn't work full-time anymore.

I've had it for seven years now. I was actually supposed to die three years ago, so because of that, I ran out of money. I only planned for up until I was supposed to die.

I bought my house really cheap when interest rates were low 13 years ago, and I fixed it up into my dream home. It's a time capsule of a seventies house. I grew up in the seventies and am a big fan of that era. I was the perfect second owner because I knew what to do to bring it back to its original glory.

I thought I would have to move out and downsize into a much smaller place during my final years.

I had seen ads for the app Swimply, where people rent out their pools. We had a pool that I had built for my daughter and me. So during the summer of 2024, I decided to give it a shot to bring in some extra money to pay the mortgage.

It was wildly successful, and I think that's partly because my previous job was as a themed hotel owner, so I knew how to deal with guests and make the space really fun.

That first summer, renting out the pool earned three times my best-case scenario.

It allowed me to stay in my dream house for my final bow.

I invested $10,000 to rent out my spa

When the weather changed, we weren't getting many bookings, and heating the pool is way more expensive in the winter, so I was trying to think of a way to keep income coming in.

We had an old indoor spa room that we weren't using because it had issues with tile breaking, and the spa itself wasn't that great. So I invested some of my summer money to bring the room back to life.

I spent three or four months fixing it up. I added a sauna and an outdoor fire pit area right next to it that has great views.

I let all our summer guests know we had a winter option. We also made it an add-on for the pool in the summer, so our pool bookings were up this year, partially because of the hot tub.

I probably spent about $10,000 on everything. I made that back on the spa alone in the first year.

I offer the hot tub for a starting base rate of $25 per hour, and people can add on the fire pit, sauna, or the rec room, which features a pool table, jukebox, darts, and video games. The pool starts at $50 per hour.

Most people who book the spa are couples looking for a romantic night. The pool gets everything from couples to parties. We get 18-year-olds up to 60-year-olds, swim instructors, big 40-person birthday parties, and corporate events. We get a lot of repeat bookings too.

Because of the political climate we're in, I also make it clear on our listings that we're a safe space for gay and trans people.

Renting my space is the easiest job I’ve ever had

The work involves communicating with guests over the internet, cleaning between guests, sanitizing, and doing some laundry.

To me, all of it seems like the easiest job I've ever had. I don't even have to leave home. I can just sit at home and watch movies while others are here and earn an income.

The only occasional issues I've had with guests are people accidentally inviting extra guests or getting too loud. However, when I clearly outline everything in the messages ahead of time, there are no issues. Everyone is really respectful because it's your private home.

The work I'm able to do is health-dependent. I have never felt sick from the cancer, but the side effects from the drugs keeping me alive are sometimes really brutal.

Luckily, I've been able to do 90% of this on my own, and my partner helps if I'm sick. I would never take a job where being part of a team would be affected by my health, so this is kind of the perfect scenario.

I used to be a workaholic, so I think I get high off having a little bit of that back.

The work-to-money ratio is ridiculously good, and I can't recommend it enough as a side hustle if you have a pool or a spa. It's allowed me to stay in my dream house. It was either this or move out.

• Miles Bradley has struggled to find work for three years after losing his AT&T contract role.
• He believes some companies are seeking the perfect "Goldilocks" candidate in a competitive job market.
• Bradley said he's coped with long-term unemployment by minimizing expenses and staying optimistic.

After more than three years of job hunting, Miles Bradley suspects his best chance of getting hired may be a strategy he refuses to try: lying on his résumé.

Bradley has been searching for work since October 2022, when he was let go from a contract software engineering role at AT&T. He said he's connected with several recruiters during his search, and that some have asked him to tailor his résumé to better align with a job posting — requests he's been happy to accommodate.

However, Bradley said some recruiters went a step further — making significant changes to his résumé without his approval, which he felt didn't accurately reflect his experience and qualifications. These changes appeared to help him land a few interviews, but once he realized which résumé had been used, he declined the opportunities and stopped working with the recruiters.

"I was like, 'wait, this résumé doesn't represent me at all, and I'm not ethically going to do this,'" said Bradley, who's in his late 50s and lives in New York.

Bradley is among the dozens of Americans Business Insider has spoken with over the past year who are struggling to find work. Amid economic uncertainty, the early effects of generative AI adoption, and a trend toward streamlining operations, US businesses are now hiring at one of the slowest rates since 2013. Job openings have fallen sharply since peaking in 2022, when they exceeded 12 million, to about 7.2 million as of this past August, the most recent data available.

In a competitive job market, some job seekers are willing to try just about anything to get hired. While stretching the truth on a résumé or during an interview, for example, might pay off, the strategy also comes with significant risks.

Some companies could be holding out for the perfect candidate

Bradley said he's concerned that a competitive job market encourages résumé embellishment by both recruiters and job seekers — and that it's hard for him to compete with fabricated applications.

If companies are patient enough, he thinks someone with the ideal résumé — embellished or not — will often eventually come along. And when that happens, Bradley said, he can't blame companies for choosing the candidate who appears to be the safe, logical option — even if they might not actually be the best person for the job.

"The industry has become addicted to finding the 'Goldilocks' candidates," he said. "They want to have somebody that exactly fits what they're looking for."

There's evidence that companies have become slower to fill job openings, whether due to economic uncertainty or the desire to find the perfect candidate. In October 2019, about 91% of job postings from companies in the Russell 3000 — a stock market index that tracks the performance of the 3,000 largest US public firms — were filled within six months, according to data shared with Business Insider by Revelio Labs. Of the jobs posted in October 2024, fewer than half were filled within the same six-month timeframe.

While Bradley prefers to be as honest as possible on his résumé, he said he's become comfortable being somewhat flexible with certain details. For example, he said he might present certain skills or experiences as more central to his past work than they actually were. However, he's careful not to include anything that he believes would misrepresent who he is or what he's actually done.

Coping with long-term unemployment

In his final days on the job at AT&T, Bradley said he did his best to "exit gracefully," which included training his replacement and ensuring his main project was in as good a shape as possible.

Once he officially left, he began searching for work, targeting engineering manager- and director-level roles. As his job search has dragged on, he said he has also explored product management and business analyst roles, and even applied for a barista position at Starbucks. Despite submitting hundreds of applications, he's still waiting for an offer.

Job-hunting for three years has taken a toll on Bradley's finances, but he said he's fortunate to have support from his partner and family. In addition to that financial help, Bradley said he has been able to get by because he has become a "hyper minimalist." He said he used to have multiple cars, but now drives a single 15-year-old vehicle.

"It means I don't get anything that I don't need," he said. "I've reduced it down to a couple of backpacks' worth of stuff."

Bradley is among the Americans dealing with the economic consequences of long-term unemployment. While the unemployment rate remains fairly low by historical standards, it has risen to its highest level since 2021, when the economy was still recovering from pandemic-related disruptions. The share of unemployed workers who've been searching for work for 27 weeks or longer rose this year to the highest level since early 2022, and remains near that level as of the most recent data.

Bradley said he often reminds himself that, in the big picture, he's fortunate to have the lifestyle he does.

"I still live at the top percentage of the world's population," he said. "So what do I have to be upset about?"

Going forward, Bradley said he's at peace with the possibility that his job search luck may never change — but he still plans to keep looking for work.

"I love to help companies be successful," he said. "But at the same time, if nobody wants to hire me, I shrug my shoulders and keep going."

• Shopify president Harley Finkelstein advocates for work-life "harmony."
• Finkelstein said that his harmony involved some Saturdays at work and some Thursdays spent walking with his wife.
• His approach to "work-life balance" is similar to Satya Nadella's and Jeff Bezos'.

For this Shopify leader, work and life are less of a balancing act and more of a song.

Work-life balance is a classic business mantra, but a difficult one to define. Does it mean working exclusively from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.? Or does it mean shutting off your Slack and email over the weekend? These clear-cut solutions may not fit all office jobs.

Shopify president Harley Finkelstein offered an alternative. On Skims cofounder Emma Grede's "Aspire" podcast, Finkelstein called work-life balance a "misnomer."

"I think actually what we're all searching for is some sort of harmony," he said. "There are some Saturdays where I have to work, and there are some Thursday afternoons that I go for a walk with my wife. That's my version of harmony."

Finkelstein said that work-life balance can also look different depending on the individual circumstances, or life chapter, you're in.

"There's a period in your life, before I was married, before I had kids, where I was able to work 80 hours a week all the time," Finkelstein said. "Then, when I had newborns, I wasn't able to work 80 hours. I think everyone needs to find their own version of it."

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella shares a similar definition. In a 2019 interview with the Financial Review, Nadella said that he wanted to "harmonize" what he cares about with his work.

Other business leaders have also expressed a desire to reframe the concept of work-life balance. Mark Cuban said that there "is no balance" for incredibly ambitious people, because competitors will work even longer.

Jeff Bezos referred to work-life balance as a "debilitating phrase" in 2018. "It actually is a circle. It's not a balance," he said.

As hardcore work culture and employee monitoring surges, some office workers may struggle to maintain Finkelstein's flexible work-life harmony. Workers may be required to clock certain hours and report to work on specific days, or face disciplinary action.

As for those 80-hour workweeks, Finkelstein clarified that they weren't necessary to be a high achiever.

"I know some people who work 40 hours a week who are some of the greatest performers ever," he said. "They're just incredibly efficient with their time."

Bill Gates has been right about a lot of things over the years — Microsoft, mosquito nets, the risk of pandemics. One thing he was not so right about: the idea that the internet would cut out the economy's middlemen. In his 1995 book "The Road Ahead," Gates predicted that the information highway would "extend the electronic marketplace and make it the ultimate go-between," leading to a scenario where the only humans often involved in a transaction would be the actual buyer and seller. Given that you are alive in this current time, you already know that is not what happened. Instead, the internet gave way to a new class of commercial go-betweens. Amazon connects gift givers to makers of novelty socks that the recipient will almost surely never wear. Uber serves as the conduit between driver and rider. DoorDash connects (and takes a hefty fee from) the begrudging restaurant and the lazy eater. And while some more analog middlemen — sorry, travel agents — have withered, others in industries from pharma to meatpacking have tightened their grips.

Middlemen are a necessary evil in many parts of the modern economy. Supply chains are increasingly complex, so someone has to manage coordination and logistics. Consumers demand convenience, which middlemen provide. Suppliers don't have a choice — they have to go where the people are, even if that means signing up for a delivery app or e-commerce platform that gives them a raw deal. The result: an economy where the real power doesn't lie with the businesses making goods or performing services but instead with the intermediaries that control access and quietly set tolls.

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The problem with middlemen isn't their existence. If I'm in the mood for chicken for dinner, I don't want to drive out to the chicken farm to pick a little guy out — that would take a lot of time, and I am not an expert in what makes a good chicken. I want to be able to go buy it from the grocery store, which relies on Tyson and other middlemen to pick it up and process it. Everyone has a part to play in getting the fowl from the farm to my face. The issue is that middlemen gain so much bargaining power that both the chicken farmer and I are in a bind in terms of the conditions of his contract with Tyson and my ability as a consumer to shop around, and neither of us has full visibility into the steps along the supply chain.

"What these intermediaries do is they try to stand between buyer and seller, and the way that they impose their taxes or take rates on, typically, the sellers is very opaque to the buyers," says Hal Singer, the managing director of Econ One, an economic consulting firm.

Opacity is a middleman's superpower. Most consumers have no idea how much Amazon charges sellers on its platform, what Apple or Google skim off the top of app sales, or what amount a pharmacy benefit manager is keeping for itself. This hidden tax is often ultimately passed on to the consumer because the seller increases prices to offset it. And, it's hard, if not impossible, to get around. Amazon and Apple deter sellers and developers from steering customers to cheaper channels. Credit card companies try to compel merchants to accept all of their cards, regardless of the swipe fee. Food distributors allow farmers little leverage over contracts and pay, and some consumers come to suspect they're not playing fair, price-wise.

In this day and age, if you sell stuff online, you can't not be on Amazon.

Across industries, the pattern plays out — middlemen lock in customers with convenience and lock in suppliers with access. Intermediaries merge or acquire each other until they become entrenched or leave people with few other options.

"Once a platform aggregates millions of buyers and sellers, whether it's Amazon's marketplace, a PBM's drug formulary, or a ride-hail app, over time, contracts, software, and even regulations get written around those intermediaries, turning them from optional helpers into infrastructure," says Anindya Ghose, a business professor at NYU's Stern School of Business, in an email.

In this day and age, if you sell stuff online, you can't not be on Amazon. And if you manage to avoid buying anything as a consumer on Amazon, bless you.

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Some of the ways middlemen become so big and powerful can feel almost inevitable. Supply chains are long and convoluted. Consumers value ease. Suppliers want to offload their products quickly. Economies of scale are an advantage. Middlemen can connect buyers and sellers who wouldn't otherwise find each other, developing niche expertise that has value for both ends of the equation.

"The way that they've grown is not that they were kind of started with this evil intent of taking over the economy. No, they grew in power because they were providing a very real service, but in the process of providing that service, they are very often also erecting blinders that limit us and our ability to see the effects of the decisions that we're making," Kathryn Judge, the author of "Direct: The Rise of the Middleman Economy and the Power of Going to the Source," told me in a 2022 podcast interview.

A lot of what middlemen solve for are fixed costs, explains Matthew Grant, an assistant professor of economics at Dartmouth College. They make investments to set up and maintain infrastructure and markets that smaller businesses can't undertake as one-offs on their own. If you're a bookseller or a small farmer, owning and operating a global transportation network, writing up hundreds of contracts, and building out extensive legal and accounting teams isn't really feasible. To offset those costs and generate meaningful profits for taking on all that work, middlemen gain significant market share and leverage it to recoup their expenses.

"In practice, there aren't too many other companies that are trying to be Amazon because they know if they tried it, it would not make money," Grant says.

High fixed costs foster high barriers to entry, which lead to a handful of dominant intermediaries. It's central to the business model.

Middlemen come with trade-offs. Walmart has cheap prices, but if it squeezes local retailers, it also means fewer choices. Sysco is a convenient partner for restaurants and other food service operations, but it gets to call a lot of shots with suppliers and buyers if it's the only game in town. Uber is nice for users who want to avoid flagging down vehicles in the street, and its drivers get an extra way to make money. But it's killed off how we used to do this — taxis — and a lot of drivers and riders feel like ultimately they're getting screwed.

If there aren't many other competitors, or none at all, middlemen get to charge whatever they want. People on both sides start grumbling about how they're either paying too much or not getting paid enough, and it feels like neither side is getting a good deal. That's where you get complaints about fees on ticketing platforms while artists bemoan how unsustainable a music career is. Mystery charges on food delivery frustrate both eaters and restaurants. Both guests and hosts on vacation rental websites realize this would be a better deal for both parties if they could negotiate directly.

Consumers and producers end up griping about each other while the middlemen quietly skate on by.

"A very simple way to think about it is that a middleman increases the size of the pie," says Marina Krakovsky, the author of the book "The Middleman Economy: How Brokers, Agents, Dealers, and Everyday Matchmakers Create Value and Profit." "But then how big a slice do they take for themselves?"

In many cases, it's a pretty big one, as being a behemoth middleman is a lucrative endeavor. Amazon booked $638 billion in sales in 2024, Uber generated $44 billion in revenue, and Sysco reported $80 billion in sales. Pharmacy benefits managers, which sit between health insurers and drug manufacturers, rake in billions of dollars a year through a web of fees, price spreads, and rebate sharing that's almost impossible for a layperson to untangle, and they often drive up prices, too.

"Collectively, these intermediaries sit on top of major money flows," Ghose says.

Parties on either side of the transaction the middleman is facilitating might not always know who to blame. Buyers on a secondary ticket market get mad at the seller when their tickets don't come through, when in reality, it's the platform itself that failed to do its due diligence. The delivery guy thinks the customer is a cheapskate after driving through a storm for a minuscule tip, without realizing the platform prompted that option. The restaurant patron is appalled by the menu's high prices, while the restaurant owner is barely making it through the month. Consumers and producers end up griping about each other while the middlemen quietly skate on by.

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The answer isn't that there should be no middlemen — again, I am not interested in making weekly trips to the chicken farm, or any farm, for that matter. But it would be better if there were more rules of the road to ensure they don't turn convenience into oversize markups and exorbitant profits. That could take a lot of different forms — increased transparency, more regulatory oversight and enforcement, new laws, or different efforts to ensure competition. Perhaps disclosure requirements for platform fees or restrictions on anti-steering clauses. But given how entrenched — and opaque — these go-betweens can be, wrangling their power has proven to be a tough task.

If an industry has one middleman, it's a problem. The same goes for if it's four and they're all colluding.

"One of the problems and probably a predicate is how concentrated all these markets are," Singer says.

"It would be great if we had a choice of middlemen and they were competing with each other to be the best middleman they can be on price, on quality, on ethics, and everything," Krakovsky says. "And often we lose that."

And so, here we sit, in an economy dominated by middlemen, telling ourselves we'll do better this holiday season and not rely so much on Amazon, and then deciding maybe that's better as a New Year's resolution.

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Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

• OpenAI's ChatGPT boss says there are no live ads or ad tests running on the chatbot.
• Rumors of ads on ChatGPT have surfaced online.
• Its recent updates include a shopping feature, not traditional advertising.

ChatGPT's 800 million weekly users are worried that OpenAI, whose mission is to create artificial intelligence that benefits all of humanity, is starting to publish ads on the platform.

Screenshots of the ChatGPT interface showing what looks like a Target ad have been circulating on social media.

OpenAI's head of ChatGPT, Nick Turley, however, dismissed those rumors in a post on X on Saturday.

"I'm seeing lots of confusion about ads rumors in ChatGPT. There are no live tests for ads — any screenshots you've seen are either not real or not ads. If we do pursue ads, we'll take a thoughtful approach," he said. "People trust ChatGPT and anything we do will be designed to respect that."

Earlier this week, an X user posted a screenshot on X of what he described as "ADS TO SHOP AT TARGET."

"If this is a 'feature,' let me turn it off," he added.

The link to shop at Target in the screenshot is likely related to a new shopping feature rather than any move by the company to include straight advertising on the platform.

In late September, OpenAI announced that it was taking the "first steps toward agentic commerce in ChatGPT with new ways for people, AI agents, and businesses to shop together."

With that, it launched an Instant Checkout feature built in conjunction with Stripe, a financial technology company.

When the bot is posed with a shopping question, ChatGPT shows the most relevant products from across the web, and if those products are supported by Instant Checkout, users can hit a "Buy" tab, OpenAI says on its website.

That's not to say ads won't be coming to ChatGPT at some point.

OpenAI has said it is considering advertising on the platform, which is perhaps unsurprising given its massive user base, a fraction of which are paying customers.

In a post on X in late November, developer Tibor Blaho said he had found code in ChatGPT's Android app that included references to "an ads feature."

"Scouring apps for yet-to-be-released features is a long-standing tech hobby, and sometimes it really does yield results. It's also entirely possible that what Blaho found is … something other than an ad product road map," Business Insider's Peter Kafka wrote at the time.

In any case, any plan by OpenAI to publish ads on ChatGPT appears to be on ice after the buzzy release of Google's Gemini 3 last month.

Altman told OpenAI employees in an internal Slack memo, seen by multiple outlets, that he was issuing a "code red" in response to the positive reception Gemini 3 has received. He said the company would allocate more resources to ChatGPT and delay the release of other products and features, including ads.

De Krake, Turley, and OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.