• Microsoft's senior leadership team includes Satya Nadella and 16 executives.
• Nadella has made changes in the past year to the company's top ranks.
• A leaked organizational chart reveals the CEO's closest lieutenants.

Microsoft's transition to AI could be one of the most pivotal moments in its 50-year history, and CEO Satya Nadella is making changes to the company's top ranks to seize the moment.

A leaked organizational chart showing Nadella's 16 direct reports, along with other internal documents, show how he's reshuffled executives and their duties over the past year to compete in the AI race.

Here are Nadella's direct reports:

Brad Smith, vice chair and president

Brad Smith is the face of Microsoft when it comes to public affairs.

He's built a reputation as "the statesman of the technology industry," and become one of the most influential voices on tech policy, particularly on issues related to AI, cybersecurity, data privacy, and human rights.

Smith's diplomatic approach has at times kept Microsoft out of regulators' crosshairs. He runs the Corporate, External, and Legal Affairs, or "CELA," team in charge of legal and regulatory matters, government affairs, and corporate responsibility.

Smith's role is especially crucial for Microsoft now as the company navigates regulation, geopolitics, data-governance and reputational risks to expand its cloud and AI global footprint.

Smith is also often the executive called upon to publicly address the company's toughest controversies, such as internal protests over government contracts.

Kevin Scott, chief technology officer

Kevin Scott is one of the most influential AI executives at Microsoft.

As chief technology officer and executive vice president of AI and research, it's Scott's job to define the company's long-term technology strategy.

Nadella named Scott CTO in early 2017. His mandate was initially broad, and he remained relatively low-profile at Microsoft.

By the next year, he started focusing on AI and brokered Microsoft's initial investment in OpenAI, which became one of the most consequential partnerships in the tech industry.

Takeshi Numoto, chief marketing officer

Microsoft Chief Marketing Officer Takeshi Numoto runs the company's global marketing efforts.

Numoto's bio on Microsoft's website calls out his role in creating new business models and modernizing Microsoft's marketing by making it more data-driven.

Recently, Numoto and his team joined a new organization under Judson Althoff, whom Microsoft just named as its CEO of commercial business. Numoto now reports to Althoff in his duties as chief marketing officer, but to Nadella on companywide matters.

Nadella described those matters as "all-up business models, planning, consumer marketing, and corporate brand and communications," according to an internal memo viewed by Business Insider.

Judson Althoff, Microsoft commercial CEO

Microsoft recently promoted longtime sales chief Judson Althoff to an expanded role as CEO of the company's commercial business.

Althoff's new organization combines sales, marketing, and operations into one unit for all of Microsoft's commercial products. He also leads a new commercial leadership team that includes executives from engineering, sales, marketing, operations, and finance.

Althoff's promotion is intended to give Nadella and the company's engineering leaders more time to focus on AI, according to an internal memo viewed by Business Insider.

"This will also allow our engineering leaders and me to be laser focused on our highest ambition technical work—across our datacenter buildout, systems architecture, AI science, and product innovation—to lead with intensity and pace in this generational platform shift," Nadella wrote.

Carolina Dybeck Happe, chief operations officer

Microsoft hired Carolina Dybeck Happe, previously GE's finance chief, in August 2024 in a newly created role of chief operations officer.

Nadella explained in an email announcing Dybeck Happe's hiring that her role would be to partner with Microsoft's leadership team to accelerate the company's AI transformation.

When Althoff was named commercial CEO, Dybeck Happe's operations organization moved to report to Althoff.

"Carolina Dybeck Happe will continue to report to me, as she works on our overall company transformation and continues to closely partner with Judson," Nadella wrote in the memo.

Amy Hood, chief financial officer

Amy Hood is Microsoft's longtime finance chief and an influential figure in the company's AI strategy.

Hood works closely with Nadella and is the gatekeeper of Microsoft's multibillion-dollar AI infrastructure buildout. The company reported a record $34.9 billion in capital expenditures during its most recent quarter and said spending will increase.

Hood also recently told employees in an internal email viewed by Business Insider that the current fiscal year 2026 will demand "intensity, clarity and bold execution," signaling her role in setting the tone for Microsoft's culture.

Scott Guthrie, Cloud + AI executive vice president

Scott Guthrie is one of Nadella's top lieutenants and the executive who has led Microsoft's cloud business since at least 2011.

Known for his signature red polo, Guthrie runs the Cloud + AI group, which Nadella created through a reorganization in 2018. That business unit is one of Microsoft's largest and most important, including the Azure cloud-computing business.

Nadella recently tapped one of Guthrie's reports as a new advisor to "rethink the new economics of AI," according to an internal memo.

Amy Coleman, EVP, Chief People Officer

Amy Coleman, a longtime Microsoft HR executive, took over as the company's chief people officer in March.

Coleman's promotion came after nearly 2,000 employees deemed low-performers were fired by Microsoft as part of a overhaul of its performance review and management process. She also took the role amid an overall shift in the tech industry toward more rigor and less coddling of employees.

Under Coleman, Microsoft introduced a new three-day return to office policy. She made the case for the new policy in a recent internal meeting reviewed by Business Insider, saying in-person staff are "thriving" based on internal data.

Kathleen Hogan, EVP of strategy and transformation

One of Nadella's first big leadership moves after he became CEO in 2014 was to name Hogan as Microsoft's chief people officer.

In her more than 10 years in that role, Hogan helped Nadella craft a new workplace management system around the concept of a "growth mindset."

Nadella announced Hogan would leave the chief people officer position in March and take on a new role as executive vice president of the "Office of Strategy and Transformation."

"As we've seen time and again throughout our 50-year history, times of great change for the world and for our industry require us to have a mindset that enables us to continually adapt and transform ourselves," Nadella wrote an internal email announcing the change. "There's no question that we are at the forefront of another such moment, with the rapid changes across every industry and business function in this AI era."

Rajesh Jha, EVP, Experiences + Devices

Rajesh Jha runs Experiences and Devices, a major unit within Microsoft responsible for products including Office, Windows, and Teams. He's one of Nadella's most influential lieutenants.

Jha is also one of Microsoft's longest-serving executives. He rose through the ranks from software engineer to a top executive who led Office through its transition to the cloud-based Microsoft 365 suite of applications, and now into AI.

Jay Parikh, CoreAI and engineering manager

In January, Nadella put Jay Parikh in charge of a new AI unit called CoreAI, central to Microsoft's ambition to help developers build digital assistants capable of taking over tasks from human workers.

Parikh joined Microsoft in October 2024 after running cloud-security company Lacework. He previously was vice president and global head of engineering for Meta. Mark Zuckerberg credited Parikh for many technological achievements during his 11-year tenure at the social-media company.

Business Insider recently wrote about Parikh's internal weekly update memos, which revealed his goals for the CoreAI unit, its early accomplishments, and his advice to address what he sees as problems within the company.

Parikh's internal org chart, recently revealed by Business Insider, shows who's helping him run the new AI unit. Parikh recently shared a plan to ward off AI coding rivals by overhauling GitHub in an internal meeting reviewed by Business Insider.

Charlie Bell, EVP, Microsoft Security

Charlie Bell, considered a cofounder of the cloud giant Amazon Web Services, joined Microsoft in 2021 in a move that shook the industry.

Nadella put Bell in charge of a new $20 billion, 10,000-person cybersecurity group called Security, Compliance, Identity, and Management, and made security the company's No. 1 priority.

Microsoft recently expanded its Secure Future Initiative, making security the top priority for every employee, including making security a metric on which employees are evaluated during performance reviews.

The company has had some security struggles. The Department of Homeland Security, for example, last year condemned Microsoft for what it called "a cascade of security failures" that allowed Chinese hackers to access emails from thousands of customers.

Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft AI CEO

Last year, Microsoft appointed Mustafa Suleyman—cofounder of AI pioneer DeepMind and former head of startup Inflection AI—as CEO of a new Microsoft AI division. The organization is responsible for consumer AI products such as Microsoft's Copilot chatbot and the Bing search engine.

Suleyman recently unveiled a superintelligence team at Microsoft focused on building a "world-class, frontier-grade research capability in-house," he told Business Insider in a recent interview.

Suleyman has added nine direct reports in the past year or so, according to internal organization charts viewed by Business Insider. Five of those previously worked for Google or DeepMind.

Jason Zander, Microsoft Discovery & Quantum executive vice president

Zander previously ran Azure since 2012, overseeing everything from product management to engineering within Azure, under Guthrie.

After that, he started running a team called Strategic Missions and Technologies. The organization was formed to house initiatives like quantum computing and space technologies. These days, Zander's team focus includes AI.

"Our clear focus as a company is to define the AI wave and empower all our customers to succeed in the adoption of this transformative technology," Zander wrote in an internal email viewed by Business Insider last year.

Zander's current job title suggests he's running Microsoft Discovery, its new AI agent platform.

Ryan Roslansky, LinkedIn CEO and EVP of Office

Ryan Roslansky has been CEO of the Microsoft-owned professional social network LinkedIn since 2020.

Microsoft recently expanded Roslansky's role to include Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and the Microsoft 365 Copilot application, according to an internal announcement from Nadella in June.

Roslansky started reporting to Jha for his new duties as executive vice president of Office, and to Nadella in his capacity as LinkedIn CEO, according to organizational charts viewed by Business Insider.

Phil Spencer, Microsoft Gaming CEO

The gaming business became so important to the company that Nadella made gaming boss Phil Spencer one of his direct reports in September 2017, and the executive started regularly speaking at all-employee town hall meetings.

Spencer runs Xbox, Xbox Game Studios, ZeniMax Media, and Activision Blizzard. Those last two businesses were acquired through multibillion-dollar deals. Microsoft's Activision Blizzard acquisition was the largest in its history.

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• OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, face a growing number of lawsuits.
• Elon Musk, The NYTimes, and the parents of a boy who committed suicide are among those seeking damages.
• Business Insider breaks down the top legal challenges facing the maker of ChatGPT.

OpenAI is disrupting almost every industry in its path. But moving fast comes with costs.

In its journey to transform from an AI research lab to one of the most valuable companies in the world, OpenAI — and its CEO, Sam Altman — faces significant legal challenges. Everything from OpenAI's transition to a for-profit business model to how it trains its large language models has been fodder for lawsuits.

These cases could cost Altman many millions of dollars, impact how all of AI trains its large language models, and potentially even alter how companies and partnerships are organized.

Some, like the two court battles waged against Altman by partner-turned-rival Elon Musk, have an added appeal: as sheer, popcorn-worthy Clash-of-the-Tech-Titans entertainment.

Here's the latest on the most significant cases. OpenAI did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

The dispute over OpenAI's for-profit shift

The issue: Elon Musk sued Altman last year, accusing his onetime friend and OpenAI cofounder of betraying their original, 2015 nonprofit mission: to develop AI for the public's benefit, not for private gain.

Musk says he invested $38 million in that early mission only to see OpenAI enter into a multibillion-dollar exclusive licensing deal with Microsoft, creating what his lawsuit calls "a $157 billion, for-profit, market-paralyzing gorgon." Musk added Microsoft as a defendant to the lawsuit this year.

Altman counters that OpenAI is still controlled by OpenAI's nonprofit arm. (Altman also says Musk himself tried to restructure OpenAI into a for-profit — under his exclusive control — back in 2017, before severing ties with the company. Musk denies that's the case.)

What's at stake: Musk is demanding a return of "wrongful gains" from the OpenAI and Microsoft partnership — plus damages — in an amount to be set by a jury and potentially in the many millions of dollars.

What's next: The case is currently mired in pretrial evidentiary battles and litigation surrounding motions to dismiss filed by both Altman and Microsoft. A Phase I trial, limited to Musk's claim that OpenAI was unlawfully converted into a for-profit, is set for a federal jury trial in March.

Musk's suit over 'poached' staffers

The issue: Last month, Musk sued Altman again, this time accusing OpenAI of stealing his trade secrets and luring staff at his rival startup, xAI.

OpenAI has "engaged in a deeply troubling pattern" of recruiting xAI employees to gain access to insider intel relating to Musk's flagship chatbot, Grok, the lawsuit says. OpenAI denies any such pattern.

What's at stake: The lawsuit seeks a jury verdict that would force OpenAI to halt its "anti-competitive practices" and return "any ill-gotten confidential information." A jury could also order Altman to pay cash penalties.

What's next: Musk said in his lawsuit that he may seek a preliminary ruling halting what he calls xAI's "unlawful" poaching of his employees and intellectual property.

The case has been assigned to US District Court Judge Rita F. Lin in San Francisco. She has set an initial case management hearing for January 8, 2026.

A groundbreaking copyright infringement lawsuit

The issue: In December 2023, The New York Times became the largest US news outlet to sue OpenAI and Microsoft over the use of millions of copyrighted news articles in training its automated chatbots. The lawsuit argues that this has provided ChatGPT users with a backdoor to verbatim Times content.

Similar lawsuits were also filed by The Center for Investigative Reporting and a coalition of eight papers owned by Alden Global Capital — including the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, and Orlando Sentinel.

OpenAI counters that it only scraped Times articles to train its chatbots, and that this is a fair use under copyright law. OpenAI further argues that it's rare for ChatGPT to serve up verbatim Times content — an error they are working to fix.

What's at stake: These news organizations seek unspecified cash damages and a jury verdict that permanently bars OpenAI from scraping their content.

If successful, the news organizations' lawsuit could result in a multimillion-dollar verdict and clearer guardrails for AI's future use of published content.

What's next: In April, these separate news organization cases were combined. Their next joint court date is in January in Manhattan, with evidentiary hearings set for February.

More copyright infringement claims

The issue: In April, the news organizations' complaints were combined with a series of lawsuits by major authors and creators who have also sued OpenAI for copyright infringement.

Those plaintiffs include the comedian Sarah Silverman, the Authors Guild, and novelists George R.R. Martin, Jodi Picoult, and John Grisham.

What's at stake: As with the news publishers' suit, a verdict that could upend the future of AI development. These cases could also force AI companies to disclose closely held training information, although the extent to which that information would be made public is unclear.

What's next: In October, US District Judge Sidney H. Stein ruled against OpenAI's motion to dismiss the combined lawsuits, finding that ChatGPT's responses to user questions were sufficiently similar to the original works.

Stein also said the consolidated cases had shown "a prima facie claim of copyright infringement based on ChatGPT's outputs." The judge's ruling, however, did not address the question of fair use, which lawyers on both sides say will be the subject of considerable future debate.

The parties are scheduled to appear in court in January and further hash out discovery-related issues in February.

Wrongful deaths, mental breakdowns blamed on ChatGPT

The issue: The parents of Adam Raine sued OpenAI, Altman, 10 employees, and 10 investors in state court in California in August, blaming ChatGPT for their 16-year-old son's death by suicide.

The suit alleges that OpenAI's chatbot encouraged Adam to kill himself by detailing methods of suicide and discouraging him from seeking support from family members.

As of November, OpenAI has said it is rolling out age-verification features and working with mental health professionals to improve ChatGPT's responses when a user shows mental distress.

The stakes: In addition to financial restitution, Raine's parents are asking for significant changes to ChatGPT, including quarterly compliance audits by an independent monitor.

What's next: The Raine family's case is still in its early stages. In November, four similar wrongful death suits were filed against OpenAI in California state court.

As with the Raine case, the new suits concern OpenAI's GPT-4o, a now-outdated model that Altman has previously said acted "too sycophant-y" in its responses.

They were filed by the Social Media Victims Law Center and the Tech Justice Law Project, which has filed a similar lawsuit against Character.AI, plus three additional lawsuits claiming ChatGPT contributed to plaintiffs' mental breakdowns.

A video trademark infringement case

The issue: Cameo, the company known for personalized celebrity videos, filed suit in federal court in California in October, accusing OpenAI of trademark infringement for naming one of the core features of its Sora app "cameo."

"We disagree that anyone can claim exclusive ownership over the word 'cameo,'" an OpenAI spokesperson said in a previous statement to Business Insider.

The stakes: OpenAI could have to change the name of the core feature of Sora, which is used as the basis for the app's AI-generated content. OpenAI has also expanded the feature beyond humans, covering pets and objects.

What's next: US District Judge Eumi K. Lee granted Cameo a temporary block on OpenAI using the term "cameo" through December 22. Days before the deadline, both sides are due in court to argue over whether Lee's order should be made permanent.

• Ege Aksu, an economist at Revelio Labs, looked at data on transitions into entrepreneurship.
• Hiring has cooled from a 2022 peak, while moves into entrepreneurship have risen.
• People looking to run a business should think about their finances and skills.

Instead of sending out résumés and job applications during the Great Freeze, it could be a good time to get a business plan in order.

Ege Aksu, an economist at workforce intelligence company Revelio Labs, analyzed shifts in US entrepreneurship and hiring over the past few years, using data from public professional profiles on platforms like LinkedIn posted between 2019 and this past June. Clear patterns emerged: when hiring fell, the share of job switchers transitioning into entrepreneurship tended to heat up.

Aksu told Business Insider that people may be starting businesses out of necessity. Despite better-than-expected job growth in September, job gains were pretty concentrated, and Indeed Hiring Lab economist Cory Stahle said the US still has a cooling job market. Job-search platform ZipRecruiter described the labor market's prolonged period of both employers and employees staying put as a "Great Freeze." Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed that quits, layoffs, and hiring have remained low.

"We're seeing employers and job seekers both trying to wait out any of the uncertainty," Nicole Bachaud, labor economist at ZipRecruiter, previously told Business Insider.

Self-employment in many different forms is on the rise. ADP Research found that the number of independent contractors — which can include a range of workers, from delivery work to gig economy freelancers — surged by 50% between 2019 and 2024.

"This growth accelerated in the second half of 2020 and first half of 2021, driven by pandemic-driven labor shifts, remote work, and the expansion of online platform-based services," economist Łukasz Below wrote.

Aksu expects the share of job switchers transitioning into entrepreneurship to continue increasing because she doesn't expect the hiring slowdown to quickly fade next year. Aksu expects more graduates to turn to business ventures because of the tough job market, too.

What to do before starting a business or pursuing self-employment

Sharon Miller, president of Business Banking at Bank of America, said aspiring business owners should consider whether their idea matches their skills and passion, and if there's demand for it. She suggested researching the potential competition and identifying the target audience. She said they also need to be ready to resolve problems, pivot when need be, and already have a business plan.

"What is your operation going to look like? What is the competition? What is your mission of the company? All of those things are important to lay out," Miller said. "You've got to revisit those often because things do change, whether it be the economy or trends."

You could give your idea a go as a side hustle, depending on your workplace's rules.

"You have to be careful that you're not doing anything competitive or anything that would concern your primary employer," Ted Rossman, senior industry analyst at Bankrate, previously told Business Insider.

Meghan Lim, who pivoted from a financial analyst job to self-employment, previously told Business Insider that people should start with just one side hustle. She also suggested having an emergency fund and waiting until your side earnings exceed your day job's income for a few consecutive months.

"It's also important to ask yourself why you're doing it. Are you fulfilled with doing it? And do you see yourself doing this for the next few years?" Lim said.

Aksu said it may be easier for people to start their own businesses than in the past, with the help of AI tools and flexible work options.

"It's maybe speaking to work culture and autonomy, flexibility that are more talked about in today's job market," Aksu said.

Did you make a career pivot into starting your own business? Reach out to this reporter to share at mhoff@businessinsider.com.

The stereotypical millennial plight goes something like this: A guy or gal staring down 40 is trapped in a perpetual struggle to launch. They've finally moved out of their parents' homes, but later than their judgmental relatives expected. They're getting around to marriage and kids, but they're forever screwed on housing, still trying to shake the ghosts of the post-Great Recession job market, and drowning in student debt. They've developed a strange animosity toward their baby boomer parents, who seemingly had it all and won't let go.

Much of this stereotype, however, is more feeling than fact, especially when it's repeated by frustrated millennials themselves. Despite their gripes, the generation born between 1981 and 1996 is doing quite a bit better financially than their parents. It's just that they're not outpacing them as much as they expected, especially millennials on the wealthier end of the scale, who are accustomed to everything being extra great. That's a marked shift, since it was wealthier baby boomers who were the biggest winners of their generation. Poorer millennials are actually doing better than Americans at the lower end of the income scale in previous generations, but poor in America is still pretty bad, and for the rich, the narrowing of the income gap can be uncomfortable.

That's one of the takeaways from a recent paper out of the Federal Reserve Board comparing how Gen X and millennials are faring on their economic journeys. The findings: When Gen Xers and millennials hit their late 30s they had a median household real (aka inflation-adjusted) income 16% and 18% higher, respectively, compared to the generation before them at the same age, whereas the Silent Generation and baby boomers had increases of 34% and 27%, respectively.

"It's taking longer to launch, there is some more debt, but in the long run, millennials are actually doing better than Generation X and baby boomers," says Kevin Corinth, a senior fellow and deputy director of the Center for Opportunity and Social Mobility at the American Enterprise Institute and one of the paper's authors. "It's just taking them a longer time."

Nobody likes to hear, "You'll be OK … eventually," or face the reality of life not working out quite as expected, and so it tracks that millennials would be vocal about the economy not being a bang-up time. The issue isn't necessarily struggling, it's recalibrating expectations.

Blame women for millennials not doing as well as their parents — or, rather, their moms. I'm kidding, but women in the workforce do explain much of what's going on. Many more baby boomer women launched careers compared to their mothers, which boosted household incomes and drove the outsize gains in generation-to-generation wellbeing. Chances are, if you're a millennial woman or Gen X, your mom had a job, so any gains you make are going to come from fighting for a raise.

"There wasn't more juice to squeeze to get additional income growth out of that, so now we're really relying on increased wages," Corinth says.

People who have always had access to social mobility no longer having such easy access to social mobility does have implications for the general sort of malaise about the economy.

Wage growth can be a slow process, and thanks to the recovery from the Great Recession and pandemic-related labor market pressures, people at the bottom of the income distribution have seen bigger gains than people at the top. From January 2020 to June 2023, real hourly earnings for people in the 10th percentile of the wage distribution rose by 7.8%, while they fell by 6% and 8% for those in the 50th and 90th percentiles, according to a paper from researchers David Autor, Arindrajit Dube, and Annie McGrew, meaning wage gains were concentrated among lower-income workers while higher-income workers lost ground.

At the same time, millennials higher up the income distribution are feeling squeezed. Yes, the jobs market is always pretty good for higher-income, college-educated people — the unemployment rate for college-educated workers in the US is persistently well under 3% — but things for the typically comfortable are feeling a little uncomfortable right now. Many white-collar workers are having a hard time getting hired, and the headlines about mass layoffs at big companies are unnerving, as is the threat posed by AI. Even if you are doing fairly well, you may not love that people at lower incomes are catching up, while at the same time, the peak of the income scale doesn't feel any closer.

"The people who I call the lower-rich, they have never felt poor before. Now, they're not poor, either, but there is such a wide gap between what you earn as a young lawyer in a firm in New York compared to someone that works in private equity or that works at a hedge fund," says A. Mechele Dickerson, the author of the forthcoming book "The Middle-Class New Deal Restoring Upward Mobility and the American Dream." "For the lower rich, they've never been in a space where the number that they are earning doesn't actually make them rich in their mind. It makes them poor."

I do not want to dump on the plight of more well-off millennials, given that I am probably one of them. Obviously, everyone's personal situations are different, problems are problems, and the supposed American dream dictates that you're supposed to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, be upwardly mobile, and outdo your parents.

The country is in the midst of an affordability crisis that hits everyone. The housing market is a complete drag — the typical age of a first-time homebuyer is 40, which doesn't feel good as an age to have finally "made it." A college education still pays off, but many students are saddled with debt that makes it feel like it doesn't. Younger millennials who are doing well may not internalize it because they're still living off their parents' money.

The confluence of these elements "really creates the condition for dissatisfaction for folks who thought they could have it all," says Rakeen Mabud, an associate fellow at Common Wealth, an economic think tank. "People who have always had access to social mobility no longer having such easy access to social mobility does have implications for the general sort of malaise about the economy."

This not only creates a sense of unease among millennials, but also triggers a lot of the generational animus millennials have toward boomers — though thinking your parents had it easier isn't particularly unique to the avocado toast cohort. "Almost every generation is like this," says Matt Darling, a senior research associate at MEF Associates, a social policy research firm. People tend to downplay the tribulations that plagued previous generations — after all, they weren't around for them. Millennials frustrated by post-pandemic inflation could probably stand to talk to boomers about how they dealt with it in the 1970s and '80s. "Every generation has its own unique challenges, and every generation forgets about what happened previously," Darling says.

As big-ticket items have become increasingly expensive — housing, healthcare, childcare, education — it's become easy to overlook the smaller-ticket items that have gotten cheaper. Yes, sending your kid to preschool is going to hit you where it hurts, but at least the toys you buy them and the clothes you put them in nowadays are super inexpensive. The same goes for that iPad you let them play with more than you should.

They feel so vulnerable because they're looking at what the ultra-elite rich are doing and can afford to do, and, in comparison, they feel poor.

"As these items become a less big part of our spending, they also sort of drop out of our memory," Darling says. They're also all that's left of whatever the American dream is.

Consumers are wired to want more more more, and while baby boomers are often knocked as a hyper-materialist generation, millennials and Gen X are not exactly living light, stuff-wise. The thing is, getting more doesn't necessarily make you happier. The hedonic treadmill says that people generally revert to their normal level of happiness relatively quickly after they acquire the new fun thing. Finally closing on that house at 40 will feel good for a while, but eventually, it'll become the new norm, and you're suddenly itching for a place with one more bedroom.

Many millennials near the top (but not at the tip-top) feel a sense of precarity and scarcity. They feel the need to optimize their children's education and extracurriculars in order to ensure they get into the best schools. They're hyper-focused on their investments since their retirement depends on their own savings and 401(k)s, rather than a defined pension. They work extra-long hours in hopes that their boss might feel a twinge of guilt before putting them on the layoff list.

"They feel so vulnerable because they're looking at what the ultra-elite rich are doing and can afford to do, and, in comparison, they feel poor," Dickerson says.

They also don't feel very rich, comparatively, looking below them. As much as many wealthier people might not admit it, or even recognize it, wage compression — the shrinking of the pay gap up and down the income spectrum — can be discomforting for people at the top. If you spend a bunch of money on a college education and run into your cousin who just graduated from high school and realize they're making the same money as you, there's an understandable sense of, "Wait, what was all that for?"

As workers at the bottom earn more, it can also push up prices for the better-off. Part of the reason people are annoyed by the high cost of their DoorDash orders is that delivery drivers may have a minimum amount they need to earn. That tip you're angry at at the coffee counter is supplementing the barista's pay, whose wages have gone up anyway in recent years and are making your fancy coffee pricier. Most people would agree it's good for home health aides to be paid more — until they try to hire one to take care of their parents. What's more, that aide's pay bump probably isn't bumping them into the middle class, so they're still struggling, even if it's to a comparatively lesser degree.

Despite some of the vibes (a word I hate to employ given how overused it's become), millennials are generally fine. Life's just moving a little slower, and fine often doesn't feel especially good.

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

• A vibe coding startup founder says vibe coding tools are easy to clone.
• Startups built only on prompting an LLM or light fine-tuning could struggle to defend their business.
• Maor Shlomo's comments come as vibe coding platforms continue to gain traction.

Maor Shlomo, who built a vibe coding startup and sold it for about $80 million, has a warning for the fast-growing vibe coding market: These tools are easy to clone, and that makes them fragile businesses.

The founder and CEO of Base44 said in an episode of "20VC" podcast published Monday that "it's relatively easy to create a vibe coding tool."

Vibe coding tools enable anyone to build software by simply prompting AI. But Shlomo said the part users see — the magic moment when an interface appears — is the easiest piece to replicate.

"Every feature that we put out, we know that's going to take either a few weeks or a few months for competitor to copy," he added.

Shlomo founded Base44 as a bootstrapped project that quickly hit hundreds of thousands of users. In June, it was acquired by Wix, a web development company, for about $80 million.

Wix said in its second-quarter results in August that Base44 was on track to reach $40 to $50 million in annual recurring revenue by the end of 2025.

Shlomo said on the podcast that startups that rely on clever prompting or fine-tuning an existing LLM could struggle to defend their business. "It's going to be hard to have a moat," he said.

What is difficult to replicate is the underlying infrastructure behind a tool, such as a built-in database, authentication system, user management, and analytics, he added.

"It's very, very, very hard to create a platform that could help people build products they'll actually use, that are functional, that are complex enough for real-world use cases," Shlomo said.

"For that, you need many layers of integrations. You need to adapt and tune the agent to handle very complex projects," he added. "It's going to take you, like, hundreds or thousands of prompts to get to something that you're going to use day-to-day."

The rise of vibecoding tools

Shlomo's comments come as vibecoding tools continue to gain traction in the tech world, with startups and investors pouring serious money into them.

A recent a16z analysis of startup spending shows a noticeable shift toward vibecoding platforms. According to the October report, Replit, Cursor, Loveable, and Emergent were among the top 50 AI-native applications based on spending data. Replit ranked third in total spend, behind OpenAI and Anthropic.

"Vibe coding is no mere consumer trend — it has landed in workplaces," wrote the three a16z staff who authored the report.

The findings came from an a16z partnership with Mercury, a fintech that provides banking and payment tools to startups. The analysis draws on transaction data from more than 200,000 Mercury customers between June and August.

Investors are also betting big on vibecoding. Replit announced in September that it raised a $250 million round at a $3 billion valuation, nearly tripling its valuation since its last round in 2023. Lovable closed a $200 million Series A in July that valued it at $1.8 billion, according to PitchBook. Cursor, one of the biggest players in the vibe coding space, announced earlier this month that it had raised a $2.3 billion round at a $29.3 billion valuation.

• Michelle Obama says it's time to stop treating 35 as the age when everything should be figured out.
• "I would just say there are no 'shoulds'. There are so many ways to live a happy, fulfilling life," she said.
• Moreover, much of what shapes the future comes down to circumstances beyond one's control, she added.

Michelle Obama wants people to stop stressing about turning 35.

In a clip released on Tuesday from her podcast "The Look," Obama sat down with guests Jane Fonda and Bethann Hardison to reflect on the advice she'd give her 35-year-old self.

"I would tell myself to enjoy this age, the struggles that you feel like you have at this age," Obama said. "Because mid-30s are when you may think that your career should be further along than it should be, because now you think you are starting to feel old, and you think that the time is starting to tick."

Many people begin to feel a sense of urgency at that age, thinking they should have already reached milestones like marriage or starting a family, she said.

"I would just say there are no 'shoulds'. There are so many ways to live a happy, fulfilling life," she said.

There are both positives and negatives to being married or to being a parent, and "none of that makes you who you are," Obama said.

Moreover, much of what shapes the future comes down to luck and circumstances beyond one's control, she added.

"Will you find love if you haven't found it? Who knows? You could hook up and marry somebody. That is the worst mistake you'll make. You just have to keep learning how to adapt," she said.

Despite the pressure many feel at that age, 35 is still "really, really young," Obama said.

"You have so many more chapters, and they will look completely different. So don't get caught up on what is or isn't happening now because the future has so much waiting in store," she said.

Obama joins a growing group of women in Hollywood who are pushing back against age-related expectations.

Speaking to Porter magazine in November 2023, Anne Hathaway said she was once told her career "would fall off a cliff at the age of 35."

During a "Today" show interview in November 2024, Lauren Sánchez Bezos said she never expected to have so much to look forward to in life after turning 50.

"When I was 20, I thought, 'Oh my gosh, life is over at 50.' Let me tell you: It is not, ladies. It is not over," she said.

• Ukrainians are experimenting with ground drones to make a remotely piloted attack truck.
• Ukrainian Armored Vehicles released test footage of its Protector drone with an M2 Browning turret.
• It's a combination of two emerging technologies on Ukraine's battlefield.

A Ukrainian company is creating a drone truck that can remotely drive up to the battlefield and rain .50 caliber rounds on its target, all without needing a human driver or gun operator on board.

Ukrainian Armored Vehicles, based in Kyiv, released footage on Monday of the Protector, its uncrewed ground vehicle, conducting firing range tests with a Tavria-12.7 turret.

The Tavria-12.7 is a remotely controlled turret that uses the M2 Browning machine gun. Like most remote-controlled gun turrets, it's typically mounted on armored carriers with human operators inside, allowing them to shoot from the safety of the vehicle's interior.

But by combining the two uncrewed technologies, Ukrainian Armored Vehicles said it's turned its drone truck into a "full-fledged combat unit."

"We got good results both in static shooting and in moving shooting from different distances," Vladyslav Belbas, the firm's general director, said in the company's statement.

Both the Protector and Tavria-12.7 have already been codified, or approved for military use, by Ukraine's defense ministry. The measure allows Ukrainian units and developers to officially acquire and integrate these weapons and platforms into active combat.

According to the defense ministry, the Protector can be remotely driven for up to 400 km, or about 250 miles, and carry a payload of 700 kg, or 1,543 pounds.

Without the need for a driver's cabin, there's enough space for roughly eight people to sit on the Protector's bed.

When the truck was unveiled in September 2024, Ukrainian Armored Vehicles said it featured NATO-standard Level 1 ballistic protection, which means it can withstand fire from rifles or smaller caliber guns, but not armor-piercing or heavy machine gun rounds.

The company added at the time that the Protector's 190-horsepower engine can bring the truck to a top speed of 37 miles per hour.

As for the Tavria-12.7, Ukraine's defense ministry said in November 2024 that the turret can operate at night or during the day, and is protected by armor that can withstand small arms fire and shrapnel.

The Protector was initially presented as a logistics drone, allowing Ukrainians to evacuate the wounded or carry vital equipment in areas that would be dangerous for human soldiers.

But Ukrainian Armored Vehicles also hinted at the time that the truck could be used as a combat vehicle, releasing renderings of the Protector mounted with machine guns or anti-tank missiles.

Uncrewed ground vehicles, or UGVs, have proliferated on Ukraine's battlefield as the war remains largely stagnant, with slow, grinding fights over small pieces of territory along the front lines.

Both sides are now increasingly turning to automation and cheap, remotely controlled tech to reduce attrition among their resources and troops. Russian soldiers have also been deploying their own UGVs.

In the last two years, Ukrainian developers have debuted combat UGVs that are typically tracked or smaller, wheeled platforms carrying rifles, gun turrets, or missile launchers.

A truck-based platform should be faster than most of its competitors and allow the ground drone to carry significantly more weight, although its larger profile may make it easier to spot and hit.