• Two MIT dropouts have raised $2.7 million for police tech startup Code Four.
• Code Four uses AI to generate reports from bodycam footage.
• Here's the pitch deck the Y Combinator graduates used to raise their seed round.

Two 19-year-old MIT dropouts have raised $2.7 million in seed funding out of Y Combinator to arm police officers with AI.

CEO George Cheng and CTO Dylan Nguyen cofounded Code Four, which is police radio lingo to indicate that a situation is under control. They say their technology reduces paperwork, allowing officers to spend more time in the field.

The startup uses AI to generate reports from bodycam footage that can be used in court or for record-keeping purposes. Code Four can also redact footage and reports for records requests and generate transcriptions and summaries from video interviews and security footage.

"The public safety and the government space is always kind of behind the curve in terms of getting the latest technology, even though these folks are some of the hardest working and most passionate about their mission," Nguyen told Business Insider.

While the duo knew they wanted to build in an impactful sector, they are aware of the concerns surrounding the use of AI in policing. Cheng said that while Code Four uses AI to generate preliminary drafts of reports, officers review and edit them for accuracy.

Cheng and Nguyen met during high school on the international science fair circuit, and both ended up at MIT, where they decided to build a company together. Ultimately, they dropped out as freshmen to attend Y Combinator.

They also plan to participate in the second cohort of the Palantir Startup Fellowship next year.

AME Cloud Ventures led Code Four's seed round, with participation from Pathlight Ventures and Webb Investment Network.

Cheng and Nguyen plan to use the funds to grow their team, which consists of four employees, split between engineering and sales.

Cheng said Code Four works with 25 police departments and makes money via a subscription model, which starts at $30 per officer a month.

Here's a look at the pitch deck Code Four used to raise its seed funding. The deck has been edited so that it can be shared publicly.

It was kind of cute when Aaron Terrazas' retired parents first started gifting him and his siblings various items and trinkets they'd accumulated from their travels over the years. But the little handoffs pretty quickly crossed into very annoying territory. "It just became more stuff that filled up our homes that we didn't need or have space for," Terrazas, a 40-year-old economist in Seattle, says.

While he understands that this is perhaps his parents' way of showing love, he had to explain that these objects were their memories, not his. If they gave him things he didn't want, he finally said, he'd refuse them. That knickknack his mom sent would go right back in the mail to her. The family made a rule: The only gifts allowed are ones that can be eaten or consumed. Terrazas' parents abide by it "for the most part," he says, but "sometimes they need a reminder."

Terrazas is not alone: the baby boomer stuff avalanche is upon us. Just as boomers and the Silent Generation are expected to pass on some $100 trillion in wealth to younger generations in the coming years, as I wrote last year, they're also expected to pass down the mounds of possessions they've accumulated over their lifetimes. Ideally, Mom and Dad and Grandma and Grandpa would downsize well in advance, but alas, life is not ideal — the issue is often dealt with in a tizzy, in the midst of a medical emergency or after a person has passed.

Older generations sometimes engage in a trickle of giving, gradually passing possessions to family members . It can be nice to offload some important things, especially while people are still around to explain their stories and significance. But it can also lead to some uncomfortable encounters, where family members fight over coveted items, things start to disappear, or, more often, parents and grandparents discover that their prized possessions are not prized by their offspring.

"I do encourage my clients to ask their kids or whoever they want their stuff to go to, 'Are there things you want?'' says Connie Tromble Eyster, an estate planning attorney in Colorado. "A lot of the time, the response from the kids is, 'I don't want anything.'"

The delicate dance around family dynamics of inheritance and gift-giving among generations is an awkward one for a multitude of reasons, perhaps most importantly, that nobody really wants to think about their ultimate demise or that of their loved ones.

"We act like we're immortal, and we're not," says Kevin C. Martin, an estate attorney in Washington, DC. He's seen "beautiful meetings" with families talking about who wants what and why, whether to put it in wills or to deal with it in the present day, "but not everybody is comfortable doing that."

A lot of the time, the response from the kids is, 'I don't want anything.'

As part of her work as a professional downsizer and the owner of the Downsizers in North Carolina, Elizabeth Hirsh has been a part of a lot of difficult conversations. In them, she talks a lot about what she calls "the psychology of letting go." She asks clients to interrogate why they're so insistent on keeping something or making sure someone in the family takes it. Does this silver your mother left to you really speak to you? Do you worry that if you get rid of it, your mother's memory won't be kept alive? Did you hold onto it out of guilt that you're now inadvertently passing on to your daughter? Or, does giving it to her just feel like the easiest option — for you?

"We talk a lot about the cost of carrying things on," Hirsh says.

Baby boomers grew up in an era where it was expected to accumulate as much as possible; they were collectors. They were also raised by parents who grew up in the Great Depression and were disinclined to give up the few things they had. So when it comes time to shed their worldly possessions, boomers sometimes need a gentle reality check. Like it or not, there are things that are irreplaceable — photos, awards, diplomas — and other things that are commodities. Asking a family member to take anything requires time and effort, whether that means them finding a place for your favorite knicknack or you paying hundreds of dollars to ship an unwanted bedroom set cross-country.

Hirsh says clients often need to be reminded that when they do give things away, they don't have a say after the fact about what the recipient does with them. "It can't be a conditional gift," she says.

As much as boomers need to accept some hard truths, their kids do too. She reminds sons and daughters that as long as their parents abide by the "out of my house, out of my control" rule, it's sometimes easier to just take the thing and move on. Kids think they're being selfless by declining gifts and don't realize their parents may receive that as hurtful.

I almost need my mom to say, 'You don't have to keep that anymore, honey.'

Jeffrey and Elaine Karr, septuagenarians who live in California, don't think they're too overloaded by possessions, and they've already started passing some important things down to their niece and nephew, whom they jokingly refer to as their "rent-a-kids." They donated their wedding china, gave their niece and nephew some jewelry so they could refashion the stones if they wanted, and shipped Elaine's silver to her cousin to replace a stolen set. As much as they say they're not too attached to their stuff, Elaine admits she's saving some heirlooms, including a needlepoint her deceased mother made, in the garage that she's not quite sure what to do with.

"It will never go out to be displayed. What am I going to do with it? And what will my niece do with it? I should let it go," she says. "I almost need my mom to say, 'You don't have to keep that anymore, honey.'"

Some of the anticipatory offloading older people do can be much more complicated, financially, than deciding whether a loved one wants dishes or souvenirs.

Gerry W. Beyer, a law professor at Texas Tech University, warns clients they have to be careful about giving away anything of value — say, a coin collection, or art — because of taxes. In most cases, capital gains taxes mean it makes sense to hand things down after death since heirs can use the stepped-up cost basis, meaning they're only taxed on the difference between the value at the time they inherited the item and what they sell it for, not on the appreciation over the original owner's lifetime. Say your grandfather bought some art for $100 in 1960, and it's now worth $25,000. If he gifts it to you before he dies, and you turn around and sell it for $30,000, you have to pay taxes on all $29,900 worth of gains — the difference from the original purchase price and the final sale price. But if it's passed on to you after he dies, the value resets to $25,000, so if you go on to sell it for that $30,000, you'd only be taxed on the $5,000 gain, not the other $24,900 in appreciation that occurred during his life.

It's a similar story with putting children on house deeds, which some parents may think is a good idea. When the house sells, the kid will be on the hook for a higher capital gains tax than they would have otherwise — not to mention that if the kid winds up in financial trouble, creditors could try to take the house.

Unless you're extremely wealthy so that it wouldn't make any difference, you've got to be careful about giving cash to kids and grandkids.

People can give up to $19,000 to a single person each year without having to report it to the IRS, and for the vast majority of people, except the ultrawealthy, paying inheritance taxes isn't an issue. But attorneys still warn against people giving too much of their cash away to loved ones while they're still alive — once that money's out the door, it's generally not coming back.

"Unless you're extremely wealthy so that it wouldn't make any difference, you've got to be careful about giving cash to kids and grandkids. First of all, it can absolutely cause jealousy among the kids unless you give everybody the same amount," Beyer says. "And then things can change. You could be diagnosed with a serious disease, you could have a loss not covered by insurance."

Many attorneys I spoke to for this story flagged concerns about elder abuse and shady financial maneuvering that leaves older people on the short end. Sometimes, that looks like a will being altered when someone isn't about their wits. At other times, it can involve possessions slowly disappearing over time without it being clear where those things are going. It's often unclear whether strangers are taking them or family members, or if items were given away intentionally or not.

"These types of things, believe it or not, unfortunately happen regularly," says Elizabeth Garlovsky, a trust and estates attorney in Illinois.

Human beings place a lot of importance on their possessions. We're prone to the endowment effect, where we place a higher value on things we own. We associate things with memories, people, and feelings. We can also tend to be a bit of a selfish breed. Inheritance, including passing down objects when someone is still alive, mixes all those impulses together. Money and possessions aren't personal on their own, but in context, they're among the most personal things there are.

Garlovsky tells me conversations with clients about getting rid of their stuff go well about one out of 10 times she has them. "If they're still living in their homes, they like looking at their things, they like their furniture the way it is, and they don't have, frequently, the energy or even sometimes maybe the ability to dig through the boxes in the basement," she says.

The path of least resistance can feel like simply putting it off — who among us enjoys cleaning out our homes, let alone contemplating our impending deaths? And if they think there will be conflict in the family over who gets what, in terms of money or property, people might rather incur the wrath once they're no longer around to be on the receiving end of it. There's also only so much people can give away while they're still around.

"Ahead of time, they're not giving away all of their stuff, they're maybe just giving away some of their stuff, so all the cards are not on the table," Eyster says.

You don't want Grandma sitting alone in an empty house. Still, you can try to encourage grandma to make specific lists of who gets the grandfather clock and diamond ring and kitchen hutch later — assuming anybody wants it.

As for what to do, most downsizers advise saying no to storage units — if you don't want that furniture now, you won't want it after incurring $10,000 in storage fees. Attorneys say to talk about who gets what early and have the uncomfortable conversations that need to be had. Just because something doesn't stay in the family doesn't mean it can't find another happy home. At some point, many people will find themselves in a sort of intergenerational stuff limbo — the older generations want to pass their things on, the younger generations don't want most of it, and everybody feels bad about it.

For the older people: If your niece does say yes to that costume jewelry you give her over the holidays, don't ask next year what she did with it. For the younger people: You can say no, especially if it's a big thing, but maybe you just want to say yes and make a quick trip to Goodwill to drop it off in the New Year.

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

• President Donald Trump hosted a White House dinner for the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.
• The dinner was attended by nearly 50 American CEOs and executives from different industries.
• The guest list included Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.

Business leaders, including Elon Musk and AMD CEO Lisa Su, joined a dinner with President Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House on Tuesday.

The guest list, shared by the White House, included members of the Saudi government and royal family, as well as almost 50 US business executives. Soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo also attended.

The dinner was the Tesla CEO's first public visit to the White House since his bitter feud with Trump this summer, following Musk's departure from his role as leader of the White House DOGE Office.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison, and Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev were on the guest list, but it is unclear if they attended the event.

Here is a list of US executives who attended the high-profile dinner.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang

Apple CEO Tim Cook

AMD CEO Lisa Su

Pershing Square CEO Bill Ackman

President of OpenAI Greg Brockman

General partner of Craft Ventures, David Sacks

Sacks is also the chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong

• United Airlines flight 869 made an emergency landing because of a burning smell in the cabin.
• Passenger Vincent Goh sent goodbye messages to his friend when he saw smoke billowing from the plane.
• After the emergency landing, he had a hearty meal and a glass of red wine to unwind.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Vincent Goh, a 25-year-old working in the Bay Area for a Cantonese publishing house, who was on United flight 869 when it made an emergency landing at SFO. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I was on my way to Hong Kong for business, just as I had done three times in the past six months. But smoke coming from the plane had me thinking this would be my last flight.

The flight was already very delayed. I was one of the last to board.

It was then delayed for another hour. The crew said the plane was overweight, and they were taking luggage off it.

I was glued to my phone after takeoff, with my headphones in. I started getting a bit hungry, so I looked up, but I didn't see a flight attendant bringing out the food.

Then I looked to my left to look out the window — I was in the middle seat — and saw lots of smoke coming out of the plane. It looked crazy.

As soon as I saw that, I took off my headphones and I started listening to the crew. The pilot said something about smoke and that the plane would be returning to SFO.

Passengers around me were talking to each other and looked anxious. I heard a person say in Chinese, "Are we fucked?"

I sent my friend in San Francisco what I thought would be my last message. I told her how to contact my family. I never talk to my family, but if something happened to me, I told her to contact them.

I was sitting very close to the gas tank. Imagine taking off your earphones, hearing that there is smoke coming from the flight, and being able to see the smoke it's releasing. I was terrified.

We got back to SFO soon after, and people immediately stood up when the plane landed. The pilot told them to sit down.

We got off the plane OK. But I could not find any information counter for United, so I wandered around the airport for an hour, then ended up going to the United lounge for answers.

I was given a $15 meal coupon as compensation. If you've eaten at SFO, you know $15 is not enough for a meal here. I decided to get a good meal after the ordeal — fries and a chicken sandwich, with a glass of red wine, which came up to $35 after redeeming the voucher.

I've been waiting for the next flight for three hours. It keeps getting delayed.

I'm not in a hurry because it's not an urgent trip. It's Thanksgiving, so I took some time off for myself and decided to fly in ahead of schedule.

But if it were another trip with a tighter schedule, it might have really affected me.

Representatives for United Airlines told Business Insider that the flight, a Boeing 777 aircraft carrying 336 passengers and 15 crew members, returned to SFO "to address a burning rubber smell in the cabin."

• Databricks CEO says the industry has already achieved AGI — AI that can reason like a human.
• Silicon Valley invented superintelligence to raise the bar, Ali Ghodsi said.
• But the fixation with superintelligence is "misdirected," and AGI is good enough for companies, he said.

Databricks CEO says we already have artificial general intelligence. Silicon Valley just refuses to admit it.

Ali Ghodsi said at Goldman Sachs' Communicopia + Technology Conference in September that AI chatbots already meet the definition of AGI — AI that can reason like a human — that researchers used a decade ago.

"Everybody would say yes, but we kept moving the goalposts," Ghodsi said in the discussion, which was published Tuesday.

"Since we kind of achieved it, let's come up with something even bigger," he added, referring to the push toward superintelligence — AI that can reason far smarter than humans.

Ghodsi, who holds a doctorate in computer science, said the industry's goal of superintelligence is nowhere close using today's techniques. He also said the fixation with superintelligence is "misdirected," adding that building systems to outsmart the world's brightest minds isn't what companies actually need.

AGI "has everything we need to be able to automate and build the agents," he said. "We just need to do the boring work," he added.

San Francisco-based Databricks raised $1 billion in September, which valued the company at over $100 billion.

Ghodsi said at the conference that the era of giant leaps from AI models has slowed. The scaling laws that powered the last several years of AI progress have clearly "come to a stop," and newer systems like OpenAI's GPT-5 and Anthropic's Claude 4 aren't delivering massive improvements.

"It's getting harder and harder to get value out of the next pre-trained giant model," he said.

The debate on superintelligence

Ghodsi's comments come as the industry splits over whether building artificial superintelligence is even desirable.

Microsoft AI CEO said on an episode of the "Silicon Valley Girl Podcast" published Saturday that artificial superintelligence should be treated as an "anti-goal."

Superintelligence "doesn't feel like a positive vision of the future," said Mustafa Suleyman. "It would be very hard to contain something like that or align it to our values."

Suleyman, who cofounded DeepMind before moving to Microsoft, said his team is instead aiming for what he calls "humanist superintelligence" — one that is grounded in human interest and values.

Other tech leaders are determined to achieve superintelligence.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said earlier this year that the company is building toward superintelligence, not stopping at AGI.

"Superintelligent tools could massively accelerate scientific discovery and innovation well beyond what we are capable of doing on our own, and in turn massively increase abundance and prosperity," Altman said in January.

Altman said in an interview in September that he would be very surprised if the industry had not reached superintelligence by 2030. Altman has long described AGI as OpenAI's central mission.

Google DeepMind's cofounder, Demis Hassabis, has put forward a similar timeline. He said in April that AGI could arrive "in the next five to 10 years," describing a future where AI systems understand the world "in very nuanced and deep ways" and are woven into everyday life.

• Ukraine confirmed on Tuesday that it used US-made ATACMS missiles in a strike on Russian territory.
• It follows months of delays and US policy uncertainty on how Ukraine can use the long-range missiles.
• Ukraine's General Staff said the ATACMS strikes would continue.

Ukraine said on Tuesday that it targeted Russian territory with US-made ATACMS, in its first public announcement of such a strike since the second Trump administration began.

The General Staff of Ukraine's armed forces did not provide further details of the attack, only saying that the long-range missiles were used in a "precision strike."

"The use of long-range strike capabilities, including systems such as ATACMS, will continue," its Tuesday statement said.

Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, are powerful ground-launched missiles with a maximum range of about 190 miles.

They are typically fired through the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System or M240 Multiple Launch Rocket System launchers, both of which Ukraine possesses.

Several Russian Telegram channels have published footage of air defense systems being activated over the Voronezh region, but Business Insider could not independently verify the target area of the strikes.

The General Staff's announcement comes after months of reported delays in US approval for ATACMS strikes into Russia. Because Ukraine's launchers and missiles are American-made, the US requires that Kyiv coordinate its targets with the Pentagon.

In November 2024, then-President Joe Biden initially lifted previous restrictions on Ukraine's US-provided launchers, allowing it to attack Russian soil directly. Kyiv followed through with strikes on the Bryansk region.

It was a move that Washington had hesitated to make for years, out of fear that such involvement would push Moscow toward escalatory action or even a nuclear attack.

Since the initial strike last year, Ukraine has remained quiet over any use of ATACMS as President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January. It's unclear if the Pentagon continued to allow such strikes on Russia under the new administration.

Those months were marked by an intense negotiation effort by Trump to reach a ceasefire deal with Russia.

In August, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Pentagon had been vetoing Ukraine's ATACMS strikes on Russia for months.

Ukraine's announcement on Tuesday suggests a shift in the Pentagon's policy, although the circumstances behind the US's new stance remain unclear.

The White House and Pentagon did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

As use of Western-made munitions stalled, Ukraine has tried to fill the gap by deploying its own homegrown long-range missiles, such as the Flamingo, to hit targets such as arms factories and oil facilities deeper inside Russia.

Kyiv has also been attacking Russia with its own, large, slow-moving winged drones, which are often equipped to fly into their targets with an explosive payload.

• Russia's UAC said it just delivered two export models of its Su-57 fighter to a foreign buyer.
• The fifth-generation jets are meant to rival the F-35 and F-22, but Russia has a limited number of them.
• The announcement comes as the West has tried to restrict Russia's military industrial base for years.

Russia's primary aircraft manufacturer said on Monday that it had delivered two Su-57 fighters to a foreign buyer, marking the first time the fifth-generation jet was sent to another country's military.

Vadim Badekha, the CEO of United Aircraft Corporation, said on Channel One, a Russian state-owned TV channel, that a "foreign partner" had received the aircraft.

"They have begun combat duty and are demonstrating their best qualities," Badekha said. "Our customer is satisfied."

Badekha did not name the customer. Russia's state-owned arms exporter, Rosoboronexport, first said in November 2024 that it had reached a deal with at least one foreign buyer to sell Su-57s, but did not name the partner country, either.

In February, Algeria's state media reported that its government was one such buyer, and that Algerian pilots were training in Russia to fly the Su-57.

The Sukhoi Su-57 is Russia's fifth-generation jet and its most modern fighter in official operational service.

Only the US, with the F-35 Lightning II and F-22 Raptor, and China, with the Chengdu J-20 and Shenyang J-35, are serially producing fighter aircraft in the same generation, which is typically marked by advanced stealth and digital capabilities.

Russia's export version of the fighter, the Su-57E, is widely believed to feature some modifications to avionics, electronics, and software compared to those used in its own fleet.

While the Su-57 is thought to be available in limited numbers, Russia's ability to export the fighter suggests that Moscow is still capable of reliably producing them, or that it can at least spare some from its existing inventory.

International observers have long tried to gain insight into the health of Russia's military manufacturing base, which has greatly expanded since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022.

Frontelligence Insight, an open-source research group, said in October 2024 that Su-57 production lines were under threat from Western sanctions because they included components such as a German-made radar.

The West has attempted to restrict Moscow's access to resources and components through sanctions on energy and technology trade, but Russia has largely found ways to keep its war industry humming. Ukraine, meanwhile, has tried to scupper Russian production by carrying out regular cross-border strikes against military factories.

The Su-57 is used sparingly against Ukraine, with the Kremlin relying heavily on fourth-generation aircraft such as the Su-27 and Su-35, which are more equivalent to fighters like the F-16 Fighting Falcon.

Russia is believed to have built two dozen or so Su-57s, with its then-defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, saying in 2020 that the country's military would receive 22 of the advanced fighters by 2024.

Moscow said it aims to acquire a total of 76 Su-57s by 2028.

Kyiv said in the summer of 2024 that it had damaged at least one Su-57 in a strike on a Russian airfield.