• I compared prices of my go-to groceries at Costco and Aldi to see which had better deals for me.
• Several items were cheaper at Costco, but things like beef and bagels were a better deal at Aldi.
• Learning Costco isn't a perfect single stop for bargain groceries made me question my membership.

Growing up in a Costco family meant weekly trips to the wholesale club.

Costco runs were as much a pastime as an errand, serving as our main activity on weekend mornings. The warehouse magically made every purchase feel like we were saving money instead of spending it.

As my parents always said, "Everything is cheaper at Costco."

Naturally, as a thrifty adult, I got my own membership once I moved out. However, some of my recent grocery receipts made me skeptical of Costco's budget-friendly reputation — especially when compared to Aldi, my go-to discount chain.

I questioned whether my groceries were actually cheaper at Costco, or if it was simply an illusion of shopping wholesale.

So, I took the same list to Costco and Aldi to see how each category measured up.

Costco had a great selection of fruits and vegetables, and my basket came out cheaper.

When I buy produce at Costco, I never worry about my purchases being mushy, overripe, or rotten. The quality and variety consistently impress me.

During my recent trip, I got a 5-pound bag of sweet potatoes, a 2-pound container of strawberries, a 4-pound bag of organic carrots, and 2 pints of raspberries.

Between the $0.05 per ounce for sweet potatoes, $0.27 for strawberries, $0.09 for organic carrots, and $0.40 for raspberries, my Costco produce basket came to $22.86.

Prices were similar at Aldi, though its produce selection was smaller and seemed to be of mixed quality. At $0.04 per ounce for sweet potatoes, $0.26 for strawberries, $0.11 for organic carrots, and $0.39 for raspberries, I would've paid about $23.11 for the same haul.

Though I saved a few cents at Costco, buying produce in bulk isn't always ideal for a two-person household like mine.

I try to avoid food waste, but warehouse-size portions are difficult to use up before they spoil, with berries and pre-cut veggies posing the biggest challenges.

Aldi's produce, on the other hand, comes in standard-size packaging that's more manageable for couples and small families. Even so, I'd choose Costco's produce almost every time.

In terms of the dairy section, Costco mostly won me over.

Aldi's Friendly Farms Greek yogurt is consistently my top pick for value and taste.

It's only $1.60 per pound, compared to the cheapest similar offering available at my Costco, which was organic Kirkland Signature Greek yogurt priced at $2.33 per pound.

On the other hand, Costco's cheese selections blew me away.

I got a bag of shredded mozzarella cheese for $0.17 per ounce, whereas Aldi's Friendly Farms variety was $0.21 per ounce.

I also purchased a six-pack of cream cheese at Costco, which came out to $1.17 per 8-ounce block. Aldi's 8-ounce blocks of cream cheese were on sale when I visited, but they were still $1.49 each.

The cost of 2% milk was comparable at both retailers, but organic almond milk gave Costco the upper hand.

Kirkland Signature almond milk is shelf-stable and much easier for me to store, plus it was $0.04 per ounce. At Aldi, organic almond milk cost $0.05 per ounce.

I was utterly unimpressed by Costco's ground beef … or lack thereof.

During my Costco trip, I found only two ground-beef options — neither was grass-fed, and neither had a fat content above 85/15.

The 4-pound pack of organic ground beef seemed like the best bet, even though it was divided into awkward 1.34-pound portions.

I bought it for the sake of convenience, but I wish I'd held off until a later trip to Aldi.

My local Aldi seemed to have every ratio under the sun, plus organic grass-fed ground beef, which is my preference.

Grass-fed beef is typically more expensive, but Aldi's was actually one cent cheaper per pound than Costco's non-grass-fed version.

Additionally, it comes in recipe-ready 1-pound packages that I love using for weeknight dinners.

I didn't buy chicken this time, but if I did, I'd get it from Aldi.

Costco's Kirkland Signature organic chicken breast was priced at $5.99 per pound. Aldi's Simply Nature organic chicken breast was $0.20 less per pound and is also free-range, a bonus for eco-conscious consumers.

The non-organic chicken breasts had an even more drastic price difference — they were $0.50 more per pound at Costco than at Aldi.

Bagels were double the price at Costco.

Bread, buns, and wraps were priced similarly at both stores, but bagels were a different story. Twelve bagels would've cost me a whopping $4 more at Costco.

Kirkland Signature bagels cost $0.67 each, more than double the $0.33 per piece for Aldi's L'oven Fresh. So, I'll continue purchasing bagels at Aldi.

Both stores carried affordable eggs and egg whites.

Considering the cheapest eggs came to just under $0.16 each at Costco and just over $0.16 at Aldi, the best deal depends on how many you'd realistically use.

For me, it'd be a single dozen at Aldi. I'd have to buy a carton of 60 at Costco to get that affordable price, and I don't have the space, time, or stomach to use five dozen eggs.

Egg whites, a staple in my fridge, had a slightly lower sticker price at Aldi.

Costco had some unbeatable cereal prices.

With a variety of trendy high-protein cereals and classics, Costco's cereal aisle was a breakfast lover's dream.

A nearly 50-ounce bag of Cinnamon Toast Crunch was just $0.16 an ounce. Meanwhile, Aldi's cheapest (and much smaller) box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch came to $0.26 an ounce.

There's a clear better deal, though the true value depends on whether your household consumes a lot of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

Costco's 160-ounce pack of Quaker old-fashioned oats came to just $0.05 an ounce — the best value I've ever seen. Even Aldi's in-house brand of Millville oats were $0.10 an ounce, double the price.

Since oats are quite shelf-stable, I'd definitely buy them at Costco.

Several of my pantry staples were more expensive at Costco.

I expected my pantry staples, such as marinara sauce and canned beans, to be a great bargain at Costco. This wasn't exactly the case.

Aldi had organic marinara sauce priced at $0.09 an ounce and organic black beans at $0.06 an ounce.

Meanwhile, the cheapest organic marinara sauce I could find at Costco was $0.14 an ounce, and organic black beans $0.07 an ounce.

However, the frozen-veggie aisle was a different story.

I got organic frozen broccoli for just $0.16 an ounce at Costco, a great deal for someone who goes through several pounds of the vegetable every week.

At Aldi, organic frozen broccoli was priced at $0.20 an ounce

Theoretically and by ounce, my Costco haul would've cost a few bucks more at Aldi.

My Costco haul came to $148.33. Using price-per-ounce math, if I'd been able to purchase the same items in identical weights and quantities, my cart would've cost $4.79 more at Aldi.

Interestingly, 10 of the 17 items I bought were cheaper per ounce at Aldi. However, the low-cost mozzarella cheese, almond milk, frozen veggies, and cereal really skewed the total in Costco's favor.

Of course, this math is theoretical. I can't control the sizes of packages available for purchase at either store.

It's also worth noting that shopping at Aldi is free, but doing so at Costco requires a membership, the cheapest of which is $65 a year.

Now that I generally know which items to buy at each store, I feel equipped to maximize my savings at both locations.

If I only shopped at Costco, I'd pay too much for bagels, waste a lot of eggs, miss out on Aldi's grass-fed ground beef, and overpay for some pantry staples.

Based on the price per ounce, I'd save money on meat, canned goods, bread, and conventional produce at Aldi.

Costco, however, is my ideal pick for lower prices on dairy, cereal, organic produce, and packaged snacks like chips and cookies. (For example, I noticed Oreos were $0.25 an ounce at Aldi and only $0.18 an ounce at Costco.)

This logic isn't foolproof, as prices and sales can vary by location and are subject to change; however, I feel fairly confident about where to shop for what.

Still, I must admit that realizing Costco isn't the clear frontrunner for cheap groceries has me reevaluating my $65-a-year membership.

As much as I love shopping there and find its gas prices unbeatable, my small household doesn't consume food quickly enough for buying in bulk to be a significant advantage.

Ultimately, the value of a membership comes down to household size, fridge and freezer space, what you buy, and how quickly you move through bulk groceries.

For larger families who consume more produce, packaged snacks, and cereals, the membership could quickly pay off.

• AI is shifting software valuations away from annual recurring revenue toward new metrics.
• Traditional ARR is losing relevance as AI-driven usage and outcome-based business models emerge.
• Investors now prioritize AI leverage, operational efficiency, and customer productivity gains.

Startups and other tech companies love to boast about "annual recurring revenue." AI could make this metric obsolete, though.

According to a new report by consultant AlixPartners, investors are on the cusp of abandoning the traditional ARR-multiple playbook that defined the SaaS era. In its place will emerge hybrid valuation models that reward companies not for the size of their subscription base but for how effectively they use AI to elevate customer outcomes.

For decades, ARR served as the bedrock for valuing enterprise software firms. It measures revenue from subscriptions by taking the value of current contracts and extrapolating that out over a full year.

AlixPartners now argues that ARR is becoming increasingly "meaningless" in an AI-first economy, especially as usage- and outcome-based business models replace the per-seat licenses that have dominated the SaaS industry.

The big change is related to how expensive AI models are to run. Every time a new AI software service taps into this intelligence, the provider has to pay a per-token price. That makes fixed, per-seat SaaS subscriptions tougher to offer.

This means revenue could fluctuate more in the future, because it will be based on consumption rather than fixed contracts. This makes the "recurring" part of the ARR equation a much less reliable proxy for durable value.

AlixPartners says investors are already shifting focus toward a hybrid valuation approach in the AI era:

• AI leverage ratios — These measure how effectively companies convert AI investments into revenue and margin gains. Rather than rewarding scale for its own sake, investors will reward operational efficiency and automation-driven profitability.

• Outcome-based performance benchmarks — Metrics such as customer margin expansion, reduced task completion time, or increased throughput will matter more than raw seat-based user counts.

• Traditional ARR multiples — Still relevant but no longer sufficient on their own.

New forecasting metrics, such as "time to usage," "usage ramp rate," and "usage volatility," are emerging to help investors gauge how quickly customers adopt AI features and how stable their consumption patterns are over time.

The message is clear: In the AI era, value follows impact. Companies that can demonstrate real productivity gains for customers and operational leverage for themselves will earn premium valuations. Those clinging to legacy ARR-driven models risk being left behind as investors pivot to frameworks that better capture the economics of intelligent software.

Sign up for BI's Tech Memo newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com.

• Ukraine's drone schools say the best pupils tend to be young people with tech and gaming experience.
• Being used to staring at screens for a long time helps too.
• The schools train soldiers fighting against Russia's invasion, and the West is watching Ukraine's lessons.

Ukraine's drone schools say it's clear: young, tech-savvy people with a gaming background make the best drone pilots.

Across the country, drone schools are training new operators for what has become one of the most important roles in Ukraine's fight against the Russian invasion — flying the drones that scout Russian positions, find targets, and blow up tanks and troops.

Three leaders working at two schools told Business Insider that younger students with gaming or tech experience tend to consistently pick up skills the fastest. These students often are already comfortable with controllers, joysticks, and staring at a screen for a long time.

The instructor comments offer insight into what kind of person makes the best pilot, useful as Ukraine continues to fight for its survival and Western militaries study the war, investing more heavily in drone programs for a potential future fight.

Dmytro Slediuk, head of the education department at Dronarium, a drone training school with sites in Kyiv and Lviv, said younger people and gamers, "are really good because their system of motor movements in their hands is already well developed."

His colleague, Tetyana, a Ukrainian veteran who goes by the call sign "Ruda" and is now the head of R&D for Dronarium, agreed, telling BI that "those who used to play video games, those who are accustomed to using a joystick, would be better in terms of running an FPV drone."

Technical fluency matters too. It's easier to train people with IT or engineering backgrounds than it is teachers, marketing specialists, or accountants. This war is one of rapidly evolving technology and tactics, especially in drone warfare.

Being an operator isn't just about physical control; it's about really understanding how drones work and what they can do. The school strives to instill these principles in all students.

And gaming experience, technical knowledge, and flexible adaptation in the face of new technology tend to be more easily found among younger students. If they're over 50, Tetyana explained, "it is a bit more challenging for students to get hold of controlling some types of drones."

Vitalii Pervak, CEO of another training school, Karlsson, Karas & Associates, said someone who flies well isn't automatically a strong combat operator — but after a year of training, his team has identified what works.

"Young people aged 18-27 are the easiest to train," he said. "They memorize information and acquire skills faster and more effectively. As we have noted, the older a person is, the more difficult it is for them to learn."

Similar to the other drone school leaders, Pervak said people who have a technical mindset can absorb training "more easily and understand the intricacies of using UAVs in combat better." Those who were programmers and gamers often "find it easiest to focus on a monitor for long periods of time. Everyone else must develop this skill."

Good health is also key, but he said the school has nonetheless "successfully trained people with visual and hearing impairments, back problems, contusions, and even head injuries."

Fighting for Ukraine

Drones account for about 60% of Ukraine's front-line strikes, according to the country's commander-in-chief. With shortages of artillery shells and other weaponry, Ukraine has leaned heavily on drones. The inexpensive systems have been highly effective at damaging and destroying equipment worth millions.

Cheap drones offer an asymmetric advantage and provide the Ukrainian military with combat power it couldn't generate with humans and crewed assets alone. But its drone force is only as strong as its pilots are capable, making drone training essential.

The drone school leaders are not alone in their assessment of who tends to make the best pilots.

Ukrainian soldiers with gaming backgrounds have also credited that experience for their skills, and Ukraine's special drone unit, Typhoon, previously told Business Insider that gamers make great drone pilots. But they also cautioned that real drone warfare is much more complicated and dangerous than any video game.

One Typhoon operator said that "people think flying a military drone is like playing 'Call of Duty,' until they realize there's no restart option," referring to the popular video game.

Western drone pilots have previously expressed similar sentiments. Tanner Yackley, a former US Air Force drone operator who left in 2018, previously told Business Insider that it's fundamentally different because "you're making life or death calls every single day."

"There's not a single game in the world that can prep you for what you're going to do," he said.

As NATO watches the war in Ukraine, worried about a wider conflict, its forces are already adapting and also looking to gamers, even embracing tech from the gaming world to make it easier for younger troops to quickly skill up on new technology.

Some American and European troops, for instance, are training on a new air-defense system that uses an Xbox controller to launch interceptor drones.

By necessity, Ukraine has emerged as a leader in modern drone warfare, with its experiences in battle not only strengthening its own forces but also supporting Western militaries bracing for future fights.

The drone schools, however, are constantly grappling with challenges, such as limited funding, reliance on donated drones, and the threat of Russian strikes. They have to keep their curricula updated, with instructors traveling to the front and rewriting lessons every couple of weeks to match the rapid battlefield shifts.

• The annual Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards highlight the funniest images in wildlife photography.
• Judges chose 16 highly commended and winning photos out of 10,000 entries.
• The overall winning photo features a gorilla showing off its acrobatic skills.

The Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards provide more than just laughs — they also raise money for wildlife conservation.

Each year, photographers submit their funniest wildlife photos showing animals striking amusing poses or making hilarious faces in their natural habitats.

In 2025, the contest received 10,000 entries from 109 countries, the most submissions in the history of the awards. A panel of judges selected 10 highly commended images and six winners in categories such as birds, fish, and reptiles, as well as an overall winner.

The Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards donate 10% of its revenue to Whitley Fund for Nature, a wildlife conservation organization.

Here are the funniest wildlife photos of the year.

Highly commended: "Smile, You're Being Photographed" by Valtteri Mulkahainen

Mulkahainen took this photo of a brown bear in the Martinselkonen area of Finland.

"When I was photographing bears, this one-year-old bear cub saw it and started smiling at me," Mulkahainen wrote.

Highly commended: "The Choir" by Meline Ellwanger

Ellwanger caught three lions yawning at the same time, calling it "a hilariously lucky moment."

Highly commended: "Landing Gear Down" by Erkko Badermann

"The red-throated loon is quite a poor flyer, and its landing is usually very wobbly," Badermann, who took the photo in Finland, wrote. "It seeks balance with its legs stretched backwards and then belly-lands to glide. I like to say they use the water as their runway. This time, the bird came straight towards me and was so steady you might imagine it had taken flying lessons."

Highly commended: "Monkey Circus" by Kalin Botev

While visiting Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe, Botev came across a troop of baboons playing in a tree.

"Every time they passed by the sitting baboon, it was trying to catch them in a funny way," Botev wrote.

Highly commended: "Bad Hair Day" by Christy Grinton

Grinton photographed a grey squirrel relocating her babies to a new nest in Victoria's Beacon Hill Park in British Columbia. As the squirrel left the nest, her wet tail moved on top of her head, making it look like a spiky haircut.

"When I saw her it made me smile, thinking, 'I know that moment where you have just washed your hair and the doorbell goes!" Grinton wrote. "I also loved the textures and colors of the bark of the arbutus tree surrounding her and her 'bad hair.'"

Highly commended: "I Just Can't Wait To Be King" by Bret Saalwaechter

Saalwaechter photographed lion cubs pestering their mother in Tanzania's Serengeti National Park.

"For over an hour, they followed their mother around a famous Serengeti kopje — those iconic rocky outcrops that dot the landscape— alternating between trying to suckle and play," Saalwaechter wrote. "Each time the mother, already in a foul mood from the sweltering heat, would give a quick roar of disapproval and escape the circus. But the cubs, like any persistent little ones, would chase her down, nipping at her and yelping for more attention."

Highly commended: "Fonzies Advertising" by Liliana Luca

Luca photographed a lemur in Madagascar licking its fingers "with the grace of a stage actor and the timing of a comedian," as if it had just eaten a bag of Fonzies snacks.

"The photo immediately reminded me of that old snack commercial: 'If you don't lick your fingers, you're only half enjoying it!'" Luca wrote.

Highly commended: "Now Which Direction Is My Nest?" by Alison Tuck

Tuck captured the moment when nesting grass blew into a gannet's face on the Bempton Cliffs in Yorkshire, England.

Highly commended: "Go Away" by Annette Kirby

Kirby photographed a Steller's sea eagle guarding a fish it had caught in Hokkaido, Japan.

"Other birds were flying above, and as they came closer, I captured the look it gave them," Kirby wrote. "There was no way it was parting with its catch."

Highly commended: "Aaaaawa Mum" by Mark Meth Cohn

Cohn photographed a baby gorilla appearing embarrassed by its mother in the Virunga Mountains in Rwanda.

Bird category winner: "Headlock" by Warren Price

Price wrote that he photographed these "fiercely territorial" guillemots in the midst of a dispute "on a small rocky cliff ledge where space was at a premium."

"I liked the way the guillemot was looking directly into my lens, its white eye-liner eyes highlighting its predicament!" Price wrote. "Sometimes you just want to bite your neighbor's head off…literally!"

Fish and other aquatic animals category winner: "Smiley" by Jenny Stock

"Whilst on a scuba dive in the Philippines, this little fish kept popping its head out of its home, a hole in the patterned coral," Stock wrote of the bluestriped fangblenny featured in her winning image. "I took a few photos and I loved its cheeky face smiling back at me. What an expressive-looking face!"

Reptile, amphibian, and insect category winner and Nikon junior category winner: "Baptism of the Unwilling Convert" by Grayson Bell

Bell, a 13-year-old photographer, took this photo of male frogs establishing their territory in a pond in Maine.

"I took my camera and lay on my belly, watching them and taking shots," Bell wrote. "It wasn't until I got back to the house and looked at the pictures that I saw this one and realized how much I liked it. I showed it to my parents and they loved it too and it became one of my favorites. We all thought it looked like one frog was trying to baptize the other!"

Nikon young photographer category winner: "Hit the Dance Floor" by Paula Rustemeier

Rustemeier photographed playful foxes on a nature reserve in the Netherlands, documenting the same den over several months.

"The time with them taught me a lot about their social behavior," Rustemeier wrote. "I saw them fight, hunt, sleep, groom, and of course play, which is always my favorite to watch! You really have to giggle a lot watching foxes play with their quirky personalities."

Portfolio category winner: "Digging for Gold" by Maggie Hoffman

Hoffman caught a female chimpanzee picking her nose in a series of photographs taken in Gombe National Park in Tanzania.

Overall Winner: "High Five" by Mark Meth Cohn

Cohn snapped this winning photo of a gorilla from a family group known as the Amahoro family in Rwanda's Virunga Mountains.

"One young male was especially keen to show off his acrobatic flair: pirouetting, tumbling, and high kicking," Cohn wrote. "Watching his performance was pure joy, and I'm thrilled to have captured his playful spirit in this image."

• Todd Combs bid farewell to Geico employees in a Monday email obtained by Business Insider.
• Warren Buffett's deputy is leaving the Berkshire-owned insurer to join JPMorgan and advise Jamie Dimon.
• Scroll down to read Combs' goodbye message.

Todd Combs thanked Geico employees, trumpeted the auto insurer's prospects, and championed his successor as CEO in a farewell email on Monday obtained by Business Insider.

Combs — one of Warren Buffett's two investment managers at Berkshire Hathaway for the past 15 years, and the CEO of Berkshire-owned Geico since 2020 — struck a grateful tone in his goodbye message, saying it was a "privilege" and "honor" to lead the company.

The departing boss said he was confident in Geico and its "ongoing transformation," and that it had "tremendous momentum — and that momentum belongs to you."

Combs hailed new CEO Nancy Pierce, an almost 40-year Geico veteran who was previously its operating chief, as the "right leader" for Geico and "uniquely qualified" to take it to the "next level."

The former hedge fund manager is leaving Berkshire to head up JPMorgan's $10 billion Strategic Investment Group and serve as a special advisor to the bank's CEO, Jamie Dimon.

Geico declined a request for comment from Business Insider.

Read Combs' full letter below:

GEICO Associates,

Todd

Combs led a comeback

Combs spearheaded a turnaround at Geico that saw it swing from a pre-tax underwriting loss of $1.9 billion in 2023, to a $3.6 billion profit in 2024, then a $7.8 billion profit in the 2025 financial year.

Buffett told Berkshire shareholders in his annual letter this year that Combs had "reshaped Geico in a major way, increasing efficiency and bringing underwriting practices up to date," and described the company's performance in 2024 as "spectacular."

The legendary investor, now in the final stretch of his six-decade run as Berkshire's CEO with Greg Abel set to take over on New Year's Day, wrote that Geico was a "long-held gem that needed major repolishing" and Combs had "worked tirelessly in getting the job done."

Do you work for Berkshire Hathaway and have a story to share? Get in touch with this reporter by emailing tmohamed@insider.com or messaging theron.36 on Signal.

• Storm Bram brought high winds to the UK and Ireland on Tuesday, causing flight chaos.
• Passengers on a Ryanair flight from Manchester to Dublin were expecting a 40-minute journey.
• Instead, it had two failed landing attempts before turning back after a two-and-a-half-hour flight.

Passengers expecting a quick hop across the Irish Sea instead faced a flight to nowhere.

Ryanair Flight 555 departed Manchester, in northern England, on Tuesday afternoon and was supposed to land in Dublin about 40 minutes later.

The two cities are only about 160 miles apart, as the crow flies.

However, as the Boeing 737 approached the Irish capital, it circled off the coast a few times before coming in for its first landing attempt.

The plane was unable to touch down and instead headed back out to sea, entering another holding pattern.

Storm Bram caused widespread disruption in Ireland and the UK on Tuesday. Yellow wind warnings were in place across the whole of Ireland. At one point, wind gusts in Dublin reached 50 knots, or about 57 mph. Some 25,000 buildings in the country were left without power.

Two hours after leaving Manchester, the pilots made a second landing attempt but were again unable to bring the plane down.

Instead, they decided to head back across the Irish Sea, diverting to Manchester.

The plane landed there around 5:30 p.m. — nearly two and a half hours after it had taken off.

"Storm Bram is continuing to have a significant impact on flights at Dublin Airport today," the airport said in a Tuesday X post.

It added that nearly 100 flights had been canceled as of 4 p.m., while about 10 had been diverted.

"Challenging wind conditions have meant some aircraft have been unable to land and take off at Dublin Airport for extended periods this afternoon."

Operations largely returned to normal the following day, with the airport calling Tuesday "a day of significant disruption."

Ryanair didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

• Fei-Fei Li, founder of World Labs, says degrees matter far less now than AI expertise.
• The Stanford computer science professor says she hires for AI tool fluency and adaptability.
• Silicon Valley companies are increasingly hiring candidates based on their AI skills.

Don't count on a college degree to land your dream job in Silicon Valley.

Increasingly, founders and tech companies are judging talent by how quickly someone can learn, adapt, and build — not on how long they spent in a lecture hall — reshaping traditional pathways into the workforce.

Fei-Fei Li, the Stanford computer science professor widely known as the "Godmother of AI," is one example of this.

In an interview on "The Tim Ferriss Show" this week, she spoke about the value of a degree when it comes to hiring for her AI startup, World Labs.

"When we interview a software engineer, I personally feel the degree they have matters less to us now," Li said.

"Now, it's more about what have you learned, what tools do you use, how quickly can you superpower yourself in using these tools — and a lot of these are AI tools," she said. "What's your mindset toward using these tools matter more to me."

Her hiring bar has become even clearer: she won't hire software engineers who resist AI.

"At this point in 2025 — hiring at World Labs — I would not hire any software engineer who does not embrace AI collaborative software tools," Li said.

It's not about automating humans out of the equation, she added — it's about identifying people who can grow as fast as the technology around them.

"If you're able to use these tools, you're able to learn. You can superpower yourself better," she said.

AI is rewriting the rules

Li's stance is part of a broader shift playing out across Silicon Valley, where more founders and even major tech firms are openly questioning the value of higher education.

Palantir's CEO, Alex Karp, has openly challenged the value of a college education, urging young entrepreneurs to skip the lecture hall and learn by doing instead — a view echoed by LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky, who has said that adaptability and AI fluency now matter far more than the "fanciest degrees."

"AI makes skill sets based on years of education irrelevant," Dan Rhoton, CEO of Hopeworks, told Business Insider. Hopeworks is a tech-training nonprofit that prepares underrepresented talent for AI-enabled jobs.

After 13 years of preparing unemployed young adults ages 17 to 26 in Camden, New Jersey, and Philadelphia for tech careers, Rhoton said he has watched firsthand how AI is upending the value of a college degree.

"We're seeing more and more employers coming to us, saying, 'We used to require a bachelor's degree in this, but we don't understand why.'"

Instead, he said, employers now want a "value proposition," which he said any job seeker can achieve by showing an AI-generated solution to a company's specific problems.

"This is the age of: I'm someone who's going to deliver business value," Rhoton said. "Not: I have the right degree."

• Included Health has rolled out an AI-powered personal health assistant, Business Insider learned.
• The startup could be competing with tech heavyweights like Google and OpenAI.
• Included is betting it can beat ChatGPT with deeper health data and a network of human clinicians.

Included Health is rolling out a new AI tool that could pit it against Big Tech's latest health bets.

The healthcare startup has launched an AI-powered personal health assistant, Business Insider has learned exclusively. The tech draws on patients' medical claims, benefits information, and other data to offer on-demand answers to health-related questions.

Included Health is tapping into a hot area in healthcare AI, where it's competing against other health startups as well as tech heavyweights. Alphabet's Verily released its own AI-powered app in October that allows patients to connect their medical records and ask a chatbot their health-related questions. OpenAI wants to win in consumer health tech, too, and is considering building tools such as its own personal health assistant, Business Insider reported in November.

Included Health has been scaling on the premise of personalizing how patients interact with their healthcare for over a decade. The company, which sells tech to about 300 employers and health plans to help patients better navigate their health benefits, tested its AI assistant for about 18 months to ensure its accuracy in smaller pilots before making it available to its entire employer base, CEO Owen Tripp said.

"This can't be ChatGPT level of probability. It has to be precise," he said.

Tripp is optimistic about patients receiving general health guidance from LLMs like OpenAI's ChatGPT or Anthropic's Claude. Those AI tools can help patients learn more about their conditions and prepare for doctor's visits, he said. But he emphasized that Included's tech takes that guidance a step further.

"When it gets down to the business of actually taking care of oneself or taking care of somebody else, you're going to need a lot of very secure, specific data and a whole context to go solve problems, including the exact medical history of that patient," Tripp said.

Patient-facing healthcare AI sometimes walks a regulatory tightrope, especially if the tech provides personalized advice that effectively replaces the work clinicians are licensed to do. Tripp said he doubts that most large tech companies attempting to delve into medical records aggregation will want to grapple with that complexity.

"I predict, like many before them, they will pull back. It's just hard, and the juice is often not worth the squeeze for these high-profile companies," he said.

Health AI with humans in the loop

Included Health's personal health assistant, called Dot, has become its members' front door and the foundation for Included's new products, said COO Nupur Srivastava.

Included recently put Dot in front of members during open enrollment to help answer their benefits questions, Srivastava said. The AI agent can also help patients prepare for doctor's visits and send the clinician a summary of patients' past visits ahead of time.

Included Health still employs plenty of its own clinicians and care advocates that members can talk to if they prefer. Srivastava also noted that if a patient mentions the term 'suicide' in a conversation with Dot, "within a minute, someone will call you."

When asked about Big Tech and AI startups' ambitions to build personalized health AI, Tripp said that Included Health is in talks with multiple potential partners to help them achieve those goals. He didn't specify which companies it's talking to, but he suggested some AI companies are focused on acquiring personalized health data that they can anonymize and use to train models.

"But when it comes to actually delivering patient care, we're pretty confident that companies that are going to succeed will be the ones that have well-trained physicians licensed in all 50 states, delivering on a real-time platform, across mind, body, and wallet," he said.

Included's IPO delay

Included Health was supposed to go public in 2022. The startup had hired banks for an IPO push, but pulled out of its planned investor meetings when the market started to tank, Tripp told Business Insider in January.

Tripp declined to share specifics about Included's exit strategy as of November. But Included is profitable, so the company doesn't need to raise money through a public listing, he said. Included hasn't publicly fundraised since it was formed from the 2021 merger of Grand Rounds and Doctor on Demand, and the company hasn't shared its valuation.

The public markets haven't been forgiving to healthcare startups. Only two digital health companies went public this year, Hinge Health and Omada Health. And while Hinge and Omada have fared far better than most companies that listed during digital health's 2021 IPO wave, healthcare IPO hopefuls still face high standards to going public and significant volatility risks once they begin trading.

"The last few years in our space haven't been a great commercial for being a public company," Tripp said.

With so many developments in healthcare AI, however, Tripp does recognize that an IPO could create opportunities for Included Health to acquire other companies.

"I do think this is a time where there are going to be some interesting capabilities and technologies available in the market that allow us to provide even more service to our members," he said. "I do have my eyes very open to how I would use capital to execute on some of those M&A events. That part is more important to me."

• A woman gave birth in a robotaxi in San Francisco earlier this week, Waymo confirmed.
• Waymo told local media that the robotaxi safely delivered its passengers to the hospital.
• It's not the first birth recorded in a Waymo, and with the company expanding rapidly, it may not be the last.

One San Francisco robotaxi arrived at its destination with an unexpected extra passenger on Monday.

A woman in labor gave birth in the back seat of a Waymo robotaxi while traveling to the hospital, the company confirmed in a blog post on Wednesday.

"Some people just can't wait for their first Waymo ride," the company said.

A spokesperson for the Google-backed robotaxi firm told The San Francisco Standard, which first reported the news, that Waymo's remote monitoring team detected "unusual activity" in the backseat of the driverless vehicle.

Employees called 911 once they realised what was happening. But the robotaxi delivered its passengers to the hospital without needing assistance, and was subsequently removed from Waymo's fleet for cleaning.

Apparently, it's not the first time someone has given birth in a Waymo, with the company confirming to The San Francisco Standard that a similar incident previously occurred in Phoenix.

Waymo is growing up fast

Waymo has had a big year, with the company's robotaxis becoming a regular sight on San Francisco's streets, alongside expansions into new markets in Austin and Atlanta.

On Wednesday, Waymo said it had served over 14 million trips so far this year, and expected to hit 1 million rides a week by the end of 2025.

It hasn't all been smooth sailing. Last month, Waymo issued a software update to 3,067 robotaxis after reports that its vehicles were driving past stopped school buses, according to a regulatory report filed on Thursday.

Waymo is planning a major expansion next year as it faces competition from Tesla's nascent robotaxi service, which launched in Austin in June.

The robotaxi company plans to open its driverless ride-hailing service to the public in a host of new cities in 2026, including Miami and Washington, DC.

• Warren Buffett hired Todd Combs to eventually succeed him as Berkshire Hathaway's stock picker.
• Combs, one of Buffett's two investment managers and Geico's CEO, has quit to join JPMorgan.
• After years of praising Combs, Buffett's farewell announcement for him was muted.

Warren Buffett hired Todd Combs in 2010 to help, and ultimately succeed, him and Charlie Munger in managing Berkshire Hathaway's vast investment portfolio.

But their handpicked heir to the stockpickers' throne has quit to join JPMorgan. The announcement comes just as Buffett is preparing to step down as CEO after six decades in charge.

Lawrence Cunningham, the director of the University of Delaware's Weinberg Center and the author of several books about Berkshire, told Business Insider that Combs' exit was "certainly striking."

"My impression is that this was not an easy decision for anyone concerned," Cunningham added.

Business Insider spoke to longtime Berkshire watchers for their read on Combs' unexpected departure. We also dug through more than 10 years of Berkshire annual letters to see how Buffett's descriptions of Combs have changed over the years.

Combs and Berkshire did not respond to Business Insider's requests for comment.

'We hit the jackpot'

Buffett has heaped praise on Combs and his other investment manager, Ted Weschler, since hiring the two hedge fund managers around 15 years ago.

Combs and Weschler had "proved to be smart, models of integrity, helpful to Berkshire in many ways beyond portfolio management, and a perfect cultural fit," Buffett wrote in his 2012 shareholder letter, two years after hiring Combs. "We hit the jackpot with these two."

"Their contributions are just beginning: Both men have Berkshire blood in their veins," he wrote the following year.

In his 2015 letter, Buffett gave a "personal thank you" to Combs for bringing Precision Castparts to his attention, paving the way for Berkshire to acquire the manufacturing giant for more than $30 billion.

Buffett also entrusted Combs and Weschler with a bigger piece of Berkshire's portfolio over time. They started off managing about $2 billion of assets each, but were jointly overseeing $34 billion by the end of 2021. Buffett hasn't provided an update on the size of their portfolios since then.

In 2020, Combs took over as CEO of Berkshire-owned Geico and successfully engineered a turnaround. Buffett shouted him out in this year's letter, saying he had "reshaped Geico in a major way" and "worked tirelessly in getting the job done," resulting in a "spectacular improvement" last year.

Steven Check, the founder and chief investor of Check Capital Management, told Business Insider that Combs' departure surprised him as he'd been "handpicked" by Buffett and had taken on the "huge responsibility" of revitalizing Geico and delivered.

A muted farewell

Buffett struck a more formal tone in the press release on Monday that broke the news of Combs' departure and other leadership changes.

He referred to his colleague of 15 years, who he once envisioned becoming Berkshire's chief investor, as "Todd A. Combs" — a sharp contrast to his use of "Marc" for Berkshire's outgoing finance chief, Marc Hamburg.

Buffett said JPMorgan had "made a good decision" in hiring Combs, but he didn't mention his personal traits, investing prowess, or other contributions to Berkshire. Buffett only praised Combs for his "many great hires at Geico and broadening its horizons."

"The rather cool sendoff in the press release implies Warren wasn't too happy about the departure," Check, a longtime Buffett watcher, said.

Greater expectations

Before taking over at Geico, Combs played a key role in setting up Haven, a healthcare joint venture between Berkshire, JPMorgan, and Amazon that was launched in 2018 but ended three years later.

He represented Berkshire on Haven's board and has sat on JPMorgan's board for the past nine years. He resigned from that post on Sunday ahead of taking up his new role at the bank in January.

Chris Bloomstran, the president of Semper Augustus Investments and a Berkshire shareholder for the past 25 years, told Business Insider that Combs' roles at Haven, JPMorgan, and Geico suggested he had a "diminished role" in managing Berkshire's portfolio.

Bloomstran also pointed out that in May, Buffett said Abel would be responsible for Berkshire's capital allocation, including its stock investments.

"Todd may have aspired to managing more or all of the portfolio, which wasn't going to happen," Bloomstran said.

He added that Combs didn't seem like a "realistic candidate" to succeed Ajit Jain as Berkshire's insurance chief, given his lack of reinsurance experience.

Abel having "final say" on how Berkshire invests its cash "may have been the impetus for Todd Combs to consider other career options," John Longo, a finance professor at Rutgers Business School and the author of "Buffett's Tips," told Business Insider.

He added that he's not concerned about Combs leaving, as Weschler is "very capable of managing the equity portfolio."

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