Hermès and Louis Vuitton, meet ROI and liquidity.

Resale is coming for luxury retail.

The secondhand fashion and luxury market is growing three times as fast as the firsthand market, and it is expected to reach as much as $360 billion by 2030, according to an October report from Boston Consulting Group and pre-owned fashion marketplace Vestiaire Collective.

Items bought secondhand accounted for 28% of the total closets of the nearly 8,000 people surveyed and 40% of their handbags. Revenue at luxury secondhand retailers like Fashionphile and The RealReal is up in the double-digit percentages so far this year.

There are a few reasons for the secondhand surge: Affordability — in contrast to the price hikes from many luxury brands — has attracted buyers in an uncertain market, the proliferation of resale platforms has increased accessibility, and increased guardrails around authenticity have made shoppers more confident.

"It's becoming something that's much more sustainable and part of the way people engage in the category," Pierre Dupreelle, a managing director at BCG and one of the report's authors, told Business Insider of luxury shoppers.

For every secondhand buyer, there is a seller — and people are cashing in on the trend.

People now shop with ROI in mind. Online thrift store ThredUp found in a 2025 survey that 47% of consumers consider the resale value of clothing before making a purchase; among those aged 18 to 44, that number ballooned to 64%.

"You own a piece of capital that you can apply to something else; it's money in your closet, sitting and waiting to be spent," Lara Osborn, the SVP of merchandising and fulfillment at Fashionphile, told Business Insider.

But buyers who want to be sellers, beware: Like with stocks, investing in luxury is not a sure thing. So if you are going to shell out for a Hermès Birkin or Rolex, make sure you actually like it.

A good rule of thumb is to consider it a shopping victory "when you can buy, use, and enjoy it, and sell it at some point and get a big portion of your money back," Osborn said.

Business Insider has spoken with experts at luxury resale platforms like Fashionphile, The RealReal, and Bob's Watches about which items hold their value the best, and what can be resold for more than its list price. Read on for their tips and tricks before you become a fashion flipper.

• Saikat Chakrabarti, who's running to replace Nancy Pelosi, may be even wealthier than her.
• Chakrabarti was a founding engineer at Stripe and was AOC's first chief of staff.
• He's worth at least $167 million, and much of his wealth comes from equity in Stripe.

This article has been updated in light of Pelosi's announcement that she will not seek reelection. It was first published in August 2025.

Nancy Pelosi is one of the wealthiest members of Congress. One of the people running to succeed her may be even richer.

Saikat Chakrabarti, a progressive activist who's running in next year's Democratic primary, is worth at least $167 million — and possibly far more than that.

If elected, he would be one of the wealthiest members of Congress.

Pelosi and her husband, meanwhile, own assets worth somewhere between $100 million and $422 million.

Chakrabarti is best known in politics for serving as the campaign manager and first chief of staff for Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. Years before that, he was a founding engineer at Stripe, which is how he became wealthy.

"After I helped build the payment processing company Stripe, I became a centimillionaire — at least on paper," Chakrabarti told Business Insider in an email. "It was a shocking and weird experience, and of course, I feel incredibly lucky. But it's also given me a window into how wealth inequality works in America and just how unfair it is."

Chakrabarti launched his congressional campaign earlier this year, running on a progressive platform while arguing that Pelosi has been in office for too long and is no longer able to fight for Democrats.

Pelosi, 85, announced in November that she would not seek reelection in 2026. She has been in office since 1987.

Chakrabarti is now one of several candidates hoping to succeed her.

Chakrabarti and Pelosi both own more than $100 million worth of assets

Chakrabarti, Pelosi and any other candidates who choose to run are required to file financial disclosures that include information about their assets, sources of income, and any liabilities.

As an incumbent member of Congress, Pelosi's disclosure covers just 2024. Because he's a candidate, Chakrabarti's disclosure covers everything from the beginning of 2024 until July 2025.

Lawmakers and candidates are generally not required to disclose exact dollar amounts for their assets and liabilities, and only have to provide value ranges for each.

Pelosi and her husband own assets worth between $100 million and $422 million. They also have a variety of liabilities, mostly mortgages, of between $36.5 million and $106 million.

Most of the Pelosis' wealth is bound up in real estate and stock in various tech companies. In 2024, Paul Pelosi owned between $25 million and $50 million in Apple stock, plus between $5 million and $25 million in stock each in Alphabet, Salesforce, NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Amazon.

Chakrabarti's disclosure indicates that he's worth at least $167 million and does not have any liabilities. But unlike with the Pelosis, it's difficult to know what the maximum value of his assets is.

That's because the bulk of his wealth comes from equity in Stripe and a Fidelity investment fund that primarily holds US government securities. In both cases, Chakrabarti was only required to say that each asset is worth more than $50 million.

Chakrabarti did not provide a more precise amount when asked by Business Insider, and Stripe did not respond to a request for comment in August about the size of Chakrabarti's stake in the company.

Aside from those two assets, much of his wealth is held across scores of other investment funds. He has earned at least $16 million in investment income since the beginning of 2024, while the Pelosis earned at least $8.9 million in 2024 from investment and rental income.

An unusual progressive candidate

Chakrabarti's status as a centimillionaire sets him apart from other progressive politicians.

The wealthiest Democrats in Congress tend not to be members of the party's furthest left flank, and some of the party's most prominent progressives tend to come from more modest means.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Chakrabarti's one-time boss, recently disclosed owning somewhere between $17,000 and $81,000 in assets, along with up to $50,000 in student loan debt.

Chakrabarti's wealth has allowed him to largely self-fund his campaign so far. The latest publicly available Federal Election Commission records show that 75% of the money in his campaign account has come from personal loans he's made to the campaign.

He told Business Insider that while he worked "hard" at Stripe, he did not work harder than teachers or nurses, and that the American economy shouldn't "be organized as a winner-take-all battle for survival."

"A society that works like that, where you either hit the lottery and get rich or you'll never be able to afford a house or a secure retirement, is crazy. And unless we change it, America is doomed to fail," Chakrabarti said. "That's a big reason I'm fighting for policies like Medicare-for-all, affordable housing for all, universal childcare, a Mission for America to create millions of high-wage jobs, and a wealth tax on billionaires and centimillionaires."

A potentially crowded primary field

Chakrabarti isn't the only candidate running for Pelosi's seat.

State Sen. Scott Weiner announced his own campaign for the seat in October, before Pelosi announced her retirement. He is a prominent housing policy voice and was the author of an AI safety bill that caused divisions in Silicon Valley last year.

Connie Chan, a member of the San Francisco board of supervisors, launched her campaign in November. In her launch video, she appeared to make a subtle dig at Chakrabarti, saying she "didn't make money in tech."

One person who's not running: Pelosi's daughter Christine, who had long been seen as a potential successor to her mother.

The younger Pelosi announced that she would instead run for the state Senate seat currently held by Weiner.

Like a typical millennial or elder Gen Zer, the outside of my fridge is overrun by wedding save-the-dates and engagement announcements. That means I spend a lot of time scrolling the clothing rental app Nuuly, searching the grid for dresses to wear and hoarding the designs in my virtual closet. I've spent enough time closely critiquing each look that I've even started to recognize dresses worn by other guests and have a pretty good idea of when I see a fellow Nuuly-ier on the dance floor.

Over the past decade, fast fashion has come under fire for its environmental impact and exploitation of workers for low wages. In turn, thrifting and meeting up with strangers from Facebook Marketplace became chic — more than 1 billion people it monthly — and apps like Poshmark and Curtsy have made thrifting seamless no matter how far away you live from the used Kate Spade bag you want. That mindset shift has made way for clothing rental apps like Nuuly, BNTO, and Pickle, which give shoppers access to current, high-quality, and designer items at deeply reduced prices.

Nuuly, owned by Urban Outfitters' parent company Urbn, hit its first profitable year in January. Pickle, an app that facilitates rentals from one person's closet to another — a sort of upscaling of ransacking your sister's wardrobe — has more than 230,000 items available. BNTO, a clothing subscription and resale app that also sells new clothing, raised $15 million in a Series A fundraising round earlier this year. "For Gen Z, style isn't just about affordability — it's about discovery, sustainability, and personal expression," Notable, the VC firm that led that round, wrote last month. The clothing rental market is valued at around $2.6 billion, and projected to top $6 billion over the next 10 years, according to research firm Future Market Insights.

Rather than seeking status by purchasing trendy or designer items, sporting secondhand and borrowed pieces has become "cool to do," says Shawn Grain Carter, a professor of fashion business management at the Fashion Institute of Technology. "It doesn't signify your financial status within the world. It has a certain cachet that it did not have before."

Fashion sense has become far less about the names in your closet, and more about the new, bold pieces you can post once to social media.

Rent the Runway defined the clothing rental market when it launched in 2009, but the focus was high-end designers for workwear and dress-up occasions, and the company slumped during the pandemic when there was no place to wear a Reformation gown. Nuuly captured younger, mid-tier shoppers, with the options to rent from more accessible brands like its own Urban Outfitters all the way up to pieces that sell for a few hundred dollars. The company already had a steady production line from its brands (Anthropologie and Free People are part of the family, too), and Grain Carter tells me that may make it easier for Nuuly to control and scale its offerings.

Isabella De Murguia, 27, has made more than $25,000 renting out her closet on Pickle over the past year.

Apps like Nuuly also came about after other companies normalized renting once seemingly intimate items and spaces. Need a cheap room to crash in? Airbnb. A private driver at your door? Pick to sit in someone's backseat on Uber. Taking a risk on a dress that's already been worn by several strangers doesn't seem so strange anymore. "Without all of those things, we probably wouldn't have gotten to where we are today," says Brian McMahon, cofounder and CEO of Pickle. "Borrowing someone else's clothes is probably a bit more intimate than sitting in the back of someone's car using a spare bedroom."

The acceptance of sharing is clear in the demographics: Some 60% of Pickle users are Gen Z, while the 40% are millennials, according to the company. And it's not just clothes — there's BabyQuip, which rents strollers and car seats to traveling families, and Tblscape for glassware, plates, and table decor to host events. According to consumer insights research firm GWI, one in five Americans said in a 2022 survey they prefer to rent an outfit for a one-off event, and as of this year, 5 percent are subscribed to clothing, cosmetics, and accessory shipping services, while 12% have previously subscribed (the survey included men and women in the US, but these types of service overwhelmingly cater to and are bought by women).

On TikTok, people post videos of their hauls, similar to when they splurge on a shopping trip — but showcasing their rentals straddles both consumerism and the de-influencing movement, a social trend that discourages people from buying products with abandon. Renting gives people the dopamine of a shopping spree without the guilt.

All of that word-of-mouth and influencer marketing seems to be paying off. Nuuly reported this month that it now averages 400,000 active monthly subscribers. Pickle has expanded from its start in New York, and saw rentals increase by 195% in Los Angeles and nearly 500% in Miami this year. Rent the Runway announced it would double its inventory this year, with more styles in workwear, dresses, vacation, and casual clothing. As of July, the company saw its subscribers grow 13% year-over-year, and revenue for the quarter topped $80 million.

For renters, there's a potential killing to be made. Isabella De Murguia, a 27-year-old who works in consulting, has made more than $25,000 renting out her closet on Pickle over the past year. She calls the extra cash her "fun money," and she uses it to travel on luxe vacations to places like Mykonos. De Muguira tells me she started renting out pieces because she loves shopping and would splurge on several new outfits to wear on vacation or for events. But afterwards, they would sit in her closet, wasting away. Now, she spends just a few hours a week at most turning her closet into the circular economy; listing clothes, washing them, readying them for pick-up, and, in one case, hand-sewing little pearls back onto a popular top that lost some when worn by some of its 30 borrowers. "Most of the time, I will buy what I like," she tells me, rather than picking pieces just because they're trendy and might rent well. She's found, "what I like is generally what others will like as well."

That seems to be the case for many who are renting clothes. Several of my friends are among the group of Nuuly-pilled customers — the app has thousands of items to rent, yet those of us with very distinct styles seem to be gravitating toward the same pieces. I once went to look at reviews of a dress and saw a photo there of my best friend wearing it (she didn't like the fabric, and her review helped me steer clear of the same mistake). With the increased purchasing power of a rental subscription, maybe it's only a matter of time before we end up somewhere in matching outfits. At least we'll be able to send them back at the end of the month.

Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.

• OpenAI's ChatGPT launched on November 30, 2022.
• ChatGPT helped OpenAI become the preeminent AI startup in Silicon Valley.
• The AI chatbot now has 800 million weekly active users.

When he first introduced ChatGPT in November 2022, Sam Altman said, "Language interfaces are going to be a big deal."

That has turned out to be a rare understatement from the CEO of OpenAI.

In the three years since, the AI chatbot has become one of the most popular tech products in history. As of September 2025, ChatGPT had accumulated nearly 800 million weekly active users.

Available online or as an app, ChatGPT's widespread adoption among the public and among businesses has helped OpenAI become a leader in the AI race, solidifying its position as a serious contender in Silicon Valley, even in the face of competition from tech giants like Meta and Google.

Here's a look at ChatGPT's meteoric rise over its short history.

GPT-5: OpenAI's latest release

Altman described the first iteration of ChatGPT as a "research release."

"Soon you will be able to have helpful assistants that talk to you, answer questions, and give advice. Later, you can have something that goes off and does tasks for you," Altman wrote on X. "Eventually, you can have something that goes off and discovers new knowledge for you."

At the time, ChatGPT relied on OpenAI's GPT‑3.5 large language model. As the company built more advanced models — like GPT-4o in 2024 — ChatGPT became faster and more efficient in tackling a wider range of tasks.

The most recent version, GPT-5 replaced older versions — to the disappointment of some who missed the "personality" of GPT-4o. In response, Altman said users subscribed to ChatGPT Plus would still be able to use GPT-4o.

GPT-5 is the default model for non-subscribers, and OpenAI said it is designed for casual users.

"GPT‑5 not only outperforms previous models on benchmarks and answers questions more quickly, but—most importantly—is more useful for real-world queries," the company said in August. "We've made significant advances in reducing hallucinations, improving instruction following, and minimizing sycophancy, while leveling up GPT-5's performance in three of ChatGPT's most common uses: writing, coding, and health."

ChatGPT has 800 million weekly active users

One month after its November 2022 launch, ChatGPT had attracted one million weekly active users, according to a study by the company's Economic Research team and Harvard economist David Deming.

"ChatGPT had more than 100 million logged-in WAU after one year, and almost 350 million after two years," the study, published in September, said, referring to weekly average users. "By the end of July 2025, ChatGPT had more than 700 million total WAU, nearly 10% of the world's adult population."

An OpenAI spokesperson told Business Insider that ChatGPT has now reached 800 million weekly active users.

ChatGPT initially had more users with masculine names, but the apparent gender gap has shrunk

Researchers for OpenAI's study said that users with masculine names initially dominated ChatGPT's user demographics.

"A significant share (around 80%) of the weekly active users (WAU) in the first few months after ChatGPT was released were by users with typically masculine first names. However, in the first half of 2025, we see the share of active users with typically feminine and typically masculine names reach near-parity."

Researchers said that as of September 2025, women appear to outnumber men on the platform.

"By June 2025, we observe active users are more likely to have typically feminine names. This suggests that gender gaps in ChatGPT usage have closed substantially over time," researchers wrote.

They said the users with "typically female first names" tended to use ChatGPT for queries about practical guidance and writing. On the other hand, users with "typically male first names" were more likely to create queries about multimedia, technical help, and seeking out information.

By July 2025, ChatGPT users were sending billions of messages a week

An OpenAI spokesperson told Business Insider that ChatGPT users were sending the chatbot 18 billion messages a week by July.

The company's study broke down the number of messages even further: Users were sending "more than 2.5 billion messages per day, or about 29,000 messages per second" by July.

OpenAI has 1 million business customers

ChatGPT isn't just a tool for people who want to create Studio Ghibli-style images or diet plans.

OpenAI announced that it had accumulated one million business customers in November 2025.

"This includes all organizations that actively pay OpenAI for business use—either through ChatGPT for Work, or through direct consumption of our models through our developer platform," the company said.

ChatGPT helped boost OpenAI's valuation to nearly $500 billion

ChatGPT has played a big role in driving OpenAI's sky-high valuation.

A New York Times report valued the company at $80 billion in February 2024. By October 2024, the valuation skyrocketed to $157 billion.

More recently, OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar told attendees at the Goldman Sachs tech conference in September that after a secondary share sale, the company had reached a $500 billion valuation, making it the most valuable startup in history.

In October, a Reuters report said OpenAI could achieve a $1 trillion valuation if it ever goes public.

ChatGPT is available in over 150 countries

The AI-powered chatbot is available for use in over 150 countries. An OpenAI spokesperson shared the top 10 countries using ChatGPT:

1. United States
2. India
3. Brazil
4. Germany
5. Indonesia
6. France
7. Japan
8. Mexico
9. United Kingdom
10. Philippines

More ChatGPT users are sending more non-work-related messages

OpenAI's study on ChatGPT said that 53% of messages users sent were non-work-related and 47% were work-related in June 2024.

A year later, researchers said non-work-related messages jumped to 73%, while work-related messages fell to 27%.

"Both types of messages have grown continuously, but non-work messages have grown faster and now represent more than 70% of all consumer ChatGPT messages," the researchers wrote. "While most economic analysis of AI has focused on its impact on productivity in paid work, the impact on activity outside of work (home production) is on a similar scale and possibly larger."

Users can now do more with ChatGPT.

When ChatGPT first launched, users were confined to writing prompts and receiving written responses from the chatbot.

Now, ChatGPT has several features, including the ability to generate images and transcribe speech to text. In April 2025, the company introduced a new AI shopping feature that curates product suggestions.

OpenAI also introduced a group chat feature in ChatGPT in November.

Users have created millions of custom versions of ChatGPT.

In November 2023, OpenAI announced that users could create custom versions of ChatGPT. No coding is required to build a GPT.

"GPTs are a new way for anyone to create a tailored version of ChatGPT to be more helpful in their daily life, at specific tasks, at work, or at home—and then share that creation with others," the company said.

OpenAI said users had created more than 3 million custom GPTs as of January 2024. "Many builders have shared their GPTs for others to use," OpenAI said.

• Jeeva AI raised $9 million from Marc Benioff, Jack Altman, and Sapphire Ventures.
• The sales tech startup created an AI-powered platform to help users improve sales outreach.
• Jeeva AI plans to use the funding to enhance its AI models and expand sales and marketing.

Gaurav Bhattacharya came up with his idea for Jeeva AI, a sales tech platform, when he was struggling to keep his last venture afloat.

"Even though we sold to some really large customers, I feel like our downfall was that we were not super good at selling," Bhattacharya, Jeeva AI's founder and CEO, said. "It became a very technical, very hard problem for us."

So, the San Francisco-based company pivoted from a customer intelligence platform, keeping its own problem in mind.

"What we want to build with Jeeva is some kind of companion that truly helps anyone become a really good salesperson," he said, about the new product. "Just how Cursor is doing with coding."

The agentic sales platform just raised $9 million in funding from JLL Spark and Sapphire Ventures, along with investments from Jack Altman's Alt Capital, Marc Benioff, Launch Capital, Bonfire Ventures, Techstars, and Mucker Capital.

The platform, which launched this year, allows individuals or businesses to find leads and customers based on who they're already in conversation with and craft outreach across channels.

It's like a "coach" that follows you around on email and phone calls, Bhattacharya said.

Jeeva AI offers two pricing tiers: free and paid, where users can purchase credits in amounts of $20, $50, and $100. It has about 300 paying customers, including real estate giant JLL and energy company Whisper Energy.

To land new customers, the company transferred 2 cents on PayPal to prospective customers with a short note introducing the company and inviting people to share their "2 cents" on the product.

"We got the same amount of negative and positive reactions," Bhattacharya said. "We sent it to about 250 people, and about 50 of them booked meetings with us, 20 of them became customers. About 50 of them were like, 'This is the worst strategy, I would never do this again.'"

The company, which employs 20 people, plans to split the $9 million cash injection into two areas: half toward sales and marketing, and the other half toward product by improving its AI models.

Check out the 10-slide pitch deck Jeeva AI used to raise fresh funding:

• Alicia Keys says her kids help her recognize and heal her own emotional triggers.
• While parents often project worries onto kids, the singer said it's crucial to know when to step back.
• "I think that's why they're the most beautiful teachers because they bring to light what we have to see in ourselves," she said.

Alicia Keys, 44, says having kids has taught her some lessons about herself.

During an appearance on Sunday's episode of "The Drew Barrymore Show," Keys spoke about being a mother and how it has made her more introspective.

When host Drew Barrymore said that she's the type to "care myself to death" when it comes to parenting and asked Keys for advice, Keys said the goal is to embrace the experience.

"You have your instinct, and you know what you feel. And I think we also do have to learn how to separate ourselves from them, because I think that's a big point that you're bringing up," Keys told Barrymore.

The "Empire State of Mind" singer and her husband, Swizz Beatz, have a blended family of five kids, three of whom are from his previous relationships.

While it might be common for parents to project their worries onto their kids, Keys said it's important to recognize when to step back.

"Like, naturally, we do have our own triggers, and we do have our own histories and things that we're working through," Keys said. "And so knowing that they're so pure, you know, knowing that they are a clean slate and a pureness, we can almost take a step and say, 'Hold on, that's mine. That's not theirs. Let me just take a breather.'"

The singer added that it might be a "beautiful way" for parents to become conscious of unresolved issues they're personally working through.

"It's just like these things, they bring up things in you, and you're like, 'Ah, wait a minute. Is that me, though? It's probably me,'" Keys said.

"I think that's why they're the most beautiful teachers because they bring to light what we have to see in ourselves," she added.

Speaking to Bustle in 2021, Keys said that becoming a mother is "the reason I came into myself."

"I know for sure that prior to it, I still didn't know myself. I still didn't understand my own worth and importance," she said.

That same introspection is something she also tries to pass on to her kids.

In 2024, Keys told People that she encourages her kids to share their thoughts and trust their own intuition.

"If you don't know what you think or what you feel, it's going to be hard for you. I feel like I've spent a lot of time not fully understanding or not trusting what I felt, and so I want to teach them to trust their instincts."

• Ukraine's interceptor drones are countering Russia's new jet-powered Geran-3 attack drones.
• Russia has deployed 138 Geran-3 drones, which are faster and more advanced than Geran-2 models.
• Ukrainian developers are rapidly adapting drone technology to meet evolving Russian drone threats.

Russia's new high-speed attack drones are increasingly appearing on the battlefield, but Ukrainians said they've already destroyed some with cheap interceptors.

Serhii Sternenko, the leader of a volunteer organization specializing in donating drones to Ukrainian units, said on Sunday that the Sting — a locally built interceptor drone — successfully destroyed several jet-powered attack drones.

"A bit of a historic achievement," wrote Sternenko in his Telegram channel. He published a photo that appears to show the back of a jet-powered Geran-3 in the sky, indicating that the footage was captured by an aircraft fast enough to catch the Russian drone.

The announcement is another sign of how Ukraine is finding ways to fight the growing threat of jet-powered strikes, amid concerns that Russia's new drones are too fast to be reliably destroyed through inexpensive means.

On Sunday, Ukraine's General Staff said in a description of a monthly briefing for officials that Russia had already deployed 138 of the new uncrewed aerial systems.

This turbojet drone is the Geran-3, Russia's domestic version of the Iranian Shahed-238 long-range loitering munition. With an estimated top speed of 230 mph, the Geran-3 flies much more swiftly than its propeller-driven predecessor, which the Kremlin has been using to hammer Ukraine in large waves over the past year.

The Geran-2, modeled after the Shahed-136, flies at around 115 mph and is now the foundation of Moscow's bombardment strategy.

Russia regularly accumulates these mass-produced drones to send in large waves over the border, pairing them with hundreds of decoys to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses. Kyiv officials have said Geran-2s can cost as little as $20,000 each.

A challenge for new interceptors

In response, Ukrainians are developing interceptor drones, or small first-person-view drones modified to fly at high speeds, as a low-cost way of countering the Geran-2. Each one typically costs between $2,000 and $6,000, and they're now considered a crucial part of Ukraine's air defense system, working in tandem with machine gun crews and a range of other interceptors.

The Sting, the interceptor mentioned by Sternenko, is one such drone that is frequently deployed. It was developed by the Ukrainian company Wild Hornets to fly at roughly 215 mph with four rotors.

Sporadic appearances of the Geran-3 over the last year, however, sparked fears that these interceptor drones would be too slow to catch waves of jet-powered Shaheds.

If that becomes the case, the war would resurface Ukraine's key struggle in defending against such large-scale air attacks: cost. The country is already strapped for resources and cannot afford to use traditional expensive missiles to take down cheap Russian drones.

The General Staff's latest briefing said Ukraine had destroyed most of the 138 Geran-3s used by Russia lately, but it's unclear through what means.

Senior Ukrainian officials told Business Insider's Jake Epstein last month that Russia is experimenting with the Geran-3 to test and probe Ukraine's defenses.

But they also said that Moscow has deployed the new drones in limited numbers. That would indicate that Russia has yet to move into mass production on the scale it has reached with the Geran-2.

The Geran-3 is significantly more advanced than the Geran-2, of which Russia produces thousands each month, with newer features such as a satellite navigation system that enhances resistance to electronic warfare.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian drone developers previously told Business Insider that they've been preparing for the possibility of the Geran-3 taking over the skies.

The deputy head of Ukraine's presidential office, Pavlo Palisa, said in September that Kyiv had already developed drones "capable of fighting the Shaheds with jet engines." However, he did not disclose details about these new interceptors.

• Hilton's CEO, Christopher Nassetta, said he's not afraid of customers with problems.
• He said solving customers' problems makes them more loyal to a brand, rather than perfect service.
• Hilton has over 1.3 million rooms in 141 countries, with an additional 515,000 rooms in development.

Hilton's CEO said there's one surefire way to build loyalty with a customer.

Christopher Nassetta, the executive who has held the hotel chain's reins since 2007, said solving problems for his guests is the key to customer retention.

"People have studied problems and resolution, and it turns out that historically — and it's true to this day — that you build more loyalty with a customer when you have a problem, and you solve it well, than if you never had a problem," he said on a Saturday episode of Yahoo Finance's "Opening Bid" podcast.

"It sounds crazy, but it's true," he added.

Nassetta said that customers who don't face any problems with the service don't think much about it.

But he added, "If I had a problem and you've managed it really well, you think, 'Hey, wow, they care about me. They're really good at this.'"

The executive said that solving problems for customers is more effective than "begging forgiveness" and rewarding "a million honor points."

To that end, he said AI integration into the Hilton Honors app has been "the biggest game changer," helping the company resolve customer problems quickly.

When reached for comment, a Hilton representative directed Business Insider to a January 2024 news release about Hilton allowing its customers to text properties via its Honors app, SMS, WhatsApp, and other channels.

Hilton has over 9,000 properties in 141 countries, consisting of more than 1.3 million rooms. The company plans to add more than 515,000 rooms, per its October earnings report.

The company's stock has risen about 15% this year.

Nassetta's comments come shortly after another American hospitality giant, Marriott, made headlines in November for abruptly terminating its licensing agreement with short-term rental company Sonder.

Marriott guests staying in Sonder facilities received an eleventh-hour notice to vacate the properties, resulting in travel chaos. Previously loyal Marriott guests told Business Insider that the hotel's poor customer service had upended their trip and broken their trust with the brand.

Evan Nierman, the founder of Florida-based crisis public relations firm Red Banyan, told Business Insider last month that Marriott should have solved problems for affected customers rather than making them deal with rebookings and processing refunds themselves.

"The lesson is that hospitality companies earn goodwill when they take the burden off the customer," Nierman said. "Relocation, refunds, and clear guidance are essentials, not perks, during a crisis."