• Oura plans to expand its smart ring into digital payments, keys, and identity tools.
• CEO Tom Hale sees biometric wearables as a solution for secure authentication and payments.
• Integrating NFC chips into small wearables remains an engineering challenge, Hale acknowledged.

Oura, the maker of smart rings beloved by athletes and celebrities, has said it's on course to generate $1 billion in revenue this year. Now it's setting its sights beyond fitness and health tracking as it looks to capture its next billion-dollar opportunity.

Speaking to Business Insider at the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon this month, Oura CEO Tom Hale outlined a vision to expand into areas like digital identity and payments.

"The idea is very straightforward: What if this is your key? What if this is your wallet?" Hale said of the company's smart rings, which retail for up to $499.

Hale said there's a lot of friction within enterprises when it comes to validating identity — from office workers remembering their passwords when they log on to their computers, to those with clearance to operate weapons systems getting access to the control room.

"This is a biometric wearable that can identify you," Hale said.

Hale didn't give a timeline for when such features might be brought to the device.

"We're not suddenly going to become an identity provider," Hale said. "It's an additional value of biometric identification and payments as an application."

Oura first signaled its intent to move into the authentication space in 2023, when it acquired the identity technology provider Proxy in an all-equity deal. At the time, Oura said the deal gave it the opportunity to expand its addressable market, although it has largely kept details of precisely what it's working on under wraps since.

Oura raised a $900 million Series E funding round in October of this year, valuing the company at $11 billion. Hale said the fresh investment would primarily be used to support its international expansion.

Frederick Stanbrell, an analyst who focuses on the wearables market at the research company IDC, said Oura has many factors in its favor as it expands into areas like payments and IDs. Many consumers are already accustomed to swiping their smartwatches or using wearables to make payments on public transport, Stanbrell said.

Oura has sold more than 5.5 million devices, the company said earlier this year, and it has an audience base that consists of many ultra-high net worth individuals, which could work in its favor for striking partnerships with payment providers such as Visa and Mastercard.

However, integrating an NFC chip comes with challenges. Its compact size means the signal can be "quite weak," Stanbrell said, adding that skin on the wearer's finger can also "absorb some of the signal."

"Other companies have struggled to do it," he said, pointing to Samsung, which was expected to bring identity and payments tech to its Galaxy Ring but didn't.

Hale acknowledged integrating NFC hardware into a smart ring is "an engineering challenge," but added that NFC "is becoming more and more ubiquitous — it's highly reliable, and it's a low power draw."

• Habit Burger CEO Shannon Hennessy runs the up-and-coming brand in the Yum! portfolio.
• She told Business Insider about her non-negotiable daily routine, from wake-up to sundown.
• Hennessy swears by her morning rituals, from a daily workout to gaining insight from her Oura ring.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Shannon Hennessy, the CEO of Habit Burger, the newest chain in the Yum! Brands portfolio, which also includes fast food titans like Taco Bell and KFC. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I'm a mornings-and-margins kind of person. I get my workout in before most inboxes are awake, and I protect my sleep as if it were one of my core KPIs.

When I joined The Habit Burger & Grill in 2022, after serving as CFO of KFC's Global Division for two years, my first focus was to protect the things that make Habit special — the open-flame cooking, consistency, and care — while improving the economics of every restaurant. With that foundation built, I've been able to shift my attention to growth, finding ways to connect Habit's fresh, feel-good food with real, everyday value.

I spend a lot of time in the restaurants, listening to guests and our teams, and I'm constantly looking for inspiration, whether that's from a peer's podcast, a great book, or the design of a patio umbrella.

My belief is simple: people shouldn't have to choose between food that tastes good and food that feels good. If we continue to deliver both consistently and with heart, growth will take care of itself.

Here's what a typical day looks like for me.

I wake around 5:30 a.m.

I'm a morning person. Most days, I wake up around 5:30 a.m., usually a few minutes before my alarm sounds.

I set up my coffee station the night before so I can creep downstairs without waking anyone, flip it on, and grind beans for a hot cup.

Later in the morning, I'll switch to an iced latte — I love playing with flavors, but the first mug is sacred.

Move first, intensity by feel

I plan my workouts every Sunday and block them on my calendar. My anchor sessions are two Orangetheory classes a week.

If I'm home on Saturday, I'll join a strength boot camp outdoors at a local park. On other days, I mix Peloton rides (Cody, Leanne, and Christine are my go-tos), plus Pilates, yoga, and long walks.

I wear an Oura Ring mainly for sleep and recovery. I'm not obsessive, but if my score says "take it easy," I'll swap a HIIT class for a walk. Exercise, for me, regulates energy so I can show up as my best self — not to "win the Olympics."

I focus on protein and fiber as my family's breakfast chef

After workouts, I'll grab a high-protein shake if I'm not home yet, then I make breakfast for the family — often prepped egg-and-veg wraps I batch on weekends.

I upped my protein target this year from around 100g to 120g a day and pay more attention to my fiber intake after realizing how deficient most of us are. I use nutritional macros like a guideline, but I only track my meals closely when I need a mental reset.

In the office by 8:30 a.m. — caffeinated and listening

I try to protect my sleep so I can be sharp in the mornings. Another coffee or two doesn't hurt.

At the office, the "glue" is my longtime assistant, Katie. If her usually calm demeanor shifts, I pay attention: it often signals something brewing that hasn't reached me yet. She's a pulse check on culture and fit, and I'm often bouncing ideas off of her throughout the day.

I spend a lot of time in our restaurants and in meetings with my team to check in on our projects. Recently, I've been focused on our market "glow-ups," where we're updating signage, patios, lighting, and visibility at restaurants across the country, tailoring our approach to each city instead of having one-size-fits-all storefronts.

A quick lunch around noon, then more meetings

Lunch is quick — typically a big salad with protein, if I'm not sampling new menu items in our test kitchen.

Then I spend the afternoon in working sessions with ops, design, and marketing. Sometimes, that means being in front of the camera to film content for our social media channels, or it can involve a brainstorming session with our innovation team to develop new seasonal menu items.

I look for inspiration everywhere

My early career in consulting trained me to seek ideas everywhere, so I curate my own inspiration stream:

• Whenever a restaurant leader peer is on a podcast, I listen to understand how others think about the industry.
• I cycle through podcasts from "The Daily" and Esther Perel, as well as the occasional murder-mystery series for "mind candy."
• You can usually find me reading business books, such as "Unreasonable Hospitality" and "No Rules Rules."
• I also play Wordle, a tiny daily puzzle that resets my brain.

I'm always listening for questions we're not being asked — like how people feel working for me, or how to become a Gen Z "first-choice" employer — and using the answers to build momentum in our business.

I finish work around 5 p.m.

Evenings are for my teenage kids and, ideally, a home-cooked meal.

My husband is the dinner MVP; he's truly an exceptional home cook, so evenings are his domain. I'm grateful to be delightfully surprised by whatever he's making.

I don't micromanage dinner — prioritizing balance across the day lets me enjoy whatever's on the table. If I need a sweet finish, I'm a sucker for great ice cream.

On weekends, I try to avoid being available for work. That's my family's time, and protecting it helps me show up as my best self at the office.

I try to be in bed by 9 p.m.

I skim my sleep trends from my Oura Ring, maybe read some fiction (strong female leads are my jam), and aim to be in bed by 9.

Protecting sleep is non-negotiable. I can power through a day or two short on rest, but beyond that, my patience and mental capacity dip — and my team deserves the best version of me.

• Russia's medium-sized strike drones are flying smaller drones into battle, Ukrainian soldiers say.
• The fixed-wing "Molniya" drones can carry one or two first-person-view (FPV) quadcopters.
• The tactic extends the reach of Russia's FPV drones.

Russia has been using its medium-sized drones to fly smaller drones packed with explosives into combat, extending their range and creating deadly new problems for Ukrainian forces.

Ukrainian soldiers who described the tactic to Business Insider said that Moscow uses its fixed-wing Molniya ("lightning" in Russian) drones to carry small first-person-view (FPV) drones; these are typically the quadcopters that have become a dominant presence on the battlefield.

The tactic, while not a new phenomenon, has become a growing concern for Ukrainian forces because it enables the FPVs to operate and strike at greater depths. The war has featured other types of mothership-style drone carriers, but Russia only recently started using the Molinya for this purpose, soldiers said.

A soldier in the 4th Ranger Regiment, a Ukrainian special operations unit, said that the inexpensive Molniya drones act as "an aircraft carrier," bringing one or two FPVs into battle, significantly extending their reach.

The Molniya can also carry an explosive payload, allowing it to function as both a mothership and a strike drone, said the operator, who could only be identified by his call sign Khyzhak ("Predator" in Ukrainian) for security reasons.

After the Molniya releases its onboard FPVs, it can continue flying to strike a target. Russia has sometimes even put anti-tank mines on the drone to increase its explosive potential, Khyzhak said.

"They're cheap, there's a lot of them, and so they can use them any time — at any moment — they want," the soldier added.

Neither Russia's defense ministry nor its US embassy responded to Business Insider's request for comment on the tactic.

A Ukrainian drone unit commander operating in the northeast Kharkiv region described the Molniya tactic as a "dispensable relay." They can often fly for dozens of miles, and the FPVs are remotely piloted after they are dropped off by the mothership.

Russia began using this tactic in the Kharkiv region several weeks ago, taking advantage of the shifting front lines, the commander said, speaking on the condition of anonymity due to security concerns.

Another Ukrainian soldier said he suspects Russia does not have many of these Molniya drones and described the threat as still being somewhat "experimental."

The soldier, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Ukraine has similar mothership-style drones that can carry three or even four smaller ones. He declined to detail how widespread their use is, citing operational security concerns.

Ukraine has previously disclosed the use of naval drones to carry FPVs in the Black Sea, with the smaller quadcopter drones taking off from the mothership to attack a Russian-held oil platform.

The introduction of the FPV-carrying Molniyas marks another instance of battlefield innovation, highlighting how drones continue to play an increasingly dominant role in the ongoing conflict.

"War changes. I'm not saying every day, but every year for sure, every half of the year. They're trying new tactics all the time. We are doing the same," Khyzhak said.

Both Ukraine and Russia are constantly trying to outsmart the other in what officials have described as a cat-and-mouse game to field new warfare technology before the other side develops a workable countermeasure.

New warfighting technologies often grants one side an advantage for only a limited window, maybe only a few months before the other side figures out how to respond, Lt. Col. Yurii Myronenko, Ukraine's deputy minister of defense for innovation and a former drone unit commander, told Business Insider recently.

Khyzhak said that Russia is modifying its drones to make them more deadly. He added that "they are improving their weapons — their equipment — nonstop, 24/7, every day."

Earlier this month, Ukraine's defense ministry published combat footage showing interceptor drones — one of Kyiv's newest air defense tools — taking out a handful of Molniyas above the battlefield. It's unclear if they have stopped any of the motherships carrying FPVs.

• Talent firm G&B Digital Management has been hosting creator economy classes for Hollywood pros.
• Traditional entertainment workers are seeking new skills as the film and TV industries slow down.
• Here's G&B's presentation laying out the dos and don'ts of the creator world.

It's a tough time in Hollywood, with TV shows being canceled, shoots moving to cheaper locales, and jobs lost to industry consolidation. Meanwhile, the independent creator economy is booming.

G&B Digital Management, a 10-year-old talent management firm, has been hosting free classes, called "Flipping the Script," aimed at helping Hollywood workers capitalize on new opportunities. G&B founder and CEO, Kyle Hjelmeseth, has put them on in Los Angeles and New York. About 40 people attended a recent event in New York, including film and TV producers and directors.

During the class, Hjelmeseth and G&B's education director, Joey Gagliardi, gave a high-level overview of the creator economy and practical steps people can follow to take advantage of it.

One big takeaway: the new and old entertainment worlds have more similarities than you might think, and even people used to being part of big crews and behind the scenes have transferable skills.

"You've already been trained for all of this," Gagliardi told the New York class. "Because nobody runs a ship tighter than a producer."

Check out slides from the presentation deck they used for "Flipping the Script."

G&B Digital Management encourages Hollywood pros to chart their path

G&B sees creators falling into three main types

One type is lifestyle creators who are known for taking people behind the scenes of their lives.

A second type is industry insiders or educators

G&B says a lot of Hollywood pros who are used to working behind the scenes are well-suited to this approach because it enables them to showcase their professional expertise.

A third type is entertainers

These people perform as characters in monologues, comedy bits, skits, and series.

Do you want to be on camera or off?

G&B says your first big decision is to figure out if you want to be on camera or not. Those on camera tend to be actors, hosts, and performers building personal brands online. Their personality is central to the content, and they use storytelling to connect directly to their audiences.

The off-camera path

G&B lays out ways writers, directors, producers, photographers, videographers, and editors can apply their skills to the creator economy, doing things like translating creative concepts to digital series for themselves or other creators.

Hollywood and the creator economy aren't that different

Many Hollywood terms and skills have their counterparts in the creator economy.

Start with a strong profile

Ask yourself when creating a digital profile: If someone landed on your profile today, would they know who you are, what you do, and why they should follow you?

Consistency is key

G&B stresses that posting regularly and with a consistent tone is important for attracting brand sponsors as well as fans. A creator who does this well is Bonnie Barton, whose home decor account flashesofstyle has a different color palette for each season.

Pairing food and fun

Another is Brandon Gouveia, a chef known for his fun and accessible recipes.

Put your pets to work

For people who don't want to be on camera, a pet can be a worthy substitute.

Have a strong hook

G&B recommends coming up with a good hook to grab people while they're scrolling — a cold open, if you will.

Be human

Carson (Crustbycarson) and Ashby Florence are examples of popular creators who have gained big followings by being natural and unpolished.

Don't reinvent the wheel

Stick with an easily repeatable format and a couple of consistent phrases that people know you for.

Be real and consistent for a winning formula

Carson is an accountant by day who often starts his posts with a quippy intro before sharing his pastimes.

His account is brand-friendly

His account sticks with a few themes — traveling, working out, cooking — making it well-suited to brand sponsors.

Posting shouldn't be a chore: Work it into your daily life

Other dos: Respond to comments and messages, and build your posting activity into your schedule.

Don't oversell or chase trends

Stay yourself if you're doing a product-focused post. Don't change your tone of voice or be too salesy, G&B says.

Figure out who your audience is, and share your life with them

G&B says being consistent will also teach platforms' algorithms what you're about, so they can recommend you to potential future followers.

• In September, Larry Ellison briefly overtook Elon Musk as the richest man in the world.
• Ellison cofounded Oracle and his son recently bought Paramount.
• He's also been a big political donor and has supported several politicians over the years.

You've probably heard Larry Ellison's name a lot lately.

In September, the cofounder and chairman of Oracle briefly overtook Elon Musk as the richest man in the world after his company's stock price soared on news of a blockbuster earnings report.

He also cemented Oracle's role in the American takeover of TikTok, which was approved by President Donald Trump that same month.

And in August, his son David successfully acquired Paramount, a major shake-up of the media industry that led to a string of new acquisitions and the ascent of Bari Weiss as editor in chief of CBS.

Nonetheless, Ellison is known for keeping a relatively low profile compared to other major tech billionaires.

He's been around for a long time, and over the years, he's made a number of interesting moves. In 2012, he bought an entire island in Hawaii, and he later purchased an airline to help facilitate travel to it.

He also owns several mansions, including properties in Malibu, Palm Beach, and Rhode Island.

And the billionaire has thrown around his money in another way: spending it on political campaigns.

Though he's one of several tech leaders who's fostered ties to Trump, Ellison does not appear to have ever made any direct, public contributions to the president's political operation, according to Federal Election Commission records.

He did host a fundraiser for Trump in 2020 on one of his properties, but has said that he did not attend the event himself.

But Ellison has spent big on some other major politicians — mostly Republicans.

Here are the politicians who've enjoyed Ellison's largesse over the years.

Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina

Sen. Tim Scott, a Republican senator from South Carolina, has been Ellison's biggest financial beneficiary by far.

From 2020 to 2023, as Scott geared up for a 2024 presidential bid, Ellison poured more than $35 million into Opportunity Matters Fund, a super PAC associated with Scott.

Ellison even attended Scott's presidential campaign launch event in South Carolina in 2023, where the senator gave the Oracle cofounder and shoutout and called him a "mentor" of his.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio

Long before he became Secretary of State, Marco Rubio was a freshman senator running for President of the United States.

During the 2016 presidential election, Ellison contributed $5 million to Conservative Solutions PAC, a super PAC that supported Rubio's presidential bid.

Ellison reportedly held a fundraiser for Rubio at his mansion in Woodside, a town in the San Francisco Bay Area, in May 2015.

Rubio ultimately dropped out of the race after losing his home state of Florida, and Trump went on to win the nomination and the presidency.

Former Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah

Long before Romney was a senator from Utah, Ellison was a supporter of his 2012 presidential candidacy.

Ellison donated $3 million to Restore Our Future, a pro-Romney super PAC, that year.

Romney, the onetime governor of Massachusetts, ultimately lost to then-President Barack Obama. He was later elected to the Senate in 2018 and retired after 2024.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina

Tim Scott isn't the only South Carolina politician that Ellison has supported.

The state's other Republican senator, Lindsey Graham, has also earned Ellison's financial support, including as recently as this year.

Ellison contributed $1 million to Security is Strength, a pro-Graham super PAC, in March of this year.

It was his largest publicly disclosed political donation since 2022. Graham is seeking reelection next year.

Ellison also made a $250,000 contribution to the same group in 2020, the last time that Graham was up for reelection.

A smattering of other politicians have received Ellison's money

Ellison has donated to a variety of other politicians over the years.

In July, he gave almost $50,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the official campaign arm for Senate Republicans.

In 2020, he gave $1 million apiece to super PACs supporting Republican Sen. Susan Collins in Maine and GOP candidate John James in Michigan. He also gave $1 million in 2022 to a super PAC that spent heavily in a US House primary in Tennessee.

While most of his contributions have been to Republicans, Ellison wasn't always just a GOP donor.

FEC records show that in the 1990s, he made significant donations to Democrats, including a total of $120,000 to the Democratic National Committee, when Bill Clinton was the party's presidential nominee.

In 2000, he was quoted as saying: "We should have amended the Constitution to elect Bill Clinton to a third term."

• The Trump phone was announced in June and was originally set to be released in August.
• It's been months since then, and the phone has yet to hit the market.
• Here's what we know about the Trump phone as of now.

The Trump family's foray into the smartphone business has seemingly hit a snag.

Months ago, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump — the president's two oldest sons — announced the creation of "Trump Mobile," a new line of Trump-branded smartphones.

The duo made the announcement on June 16, the 10-year anniversary of President Donald Trump's first presidential campaign launch.

Among the new company's offerings: The T1, a gold-colored smartphone that largely resembles Apple's iPhone and that was originally advertised as being made in the USA.

There was also the "47 Plan," which would offer users services like unlimited texting, calling, and data, roadside assistance, and even tele-health services, all for $47.45 per month — a reference to Trump's status as both the 45th and 47th president of the United States.

Since then, there have been some adjustments.

Within days of the launch, the "MADE IN THE USA" wording was struck from the Trump Mobile website. The phone is now simply described as "brought to life right here in the USA" and made with "American hands."

More significantly, the company has missed its original launch date.

The phone was originally set to be released in August, according to the company's June announcement.

A spokesperson later told USA Today that the phone would launch in October.

It's now late November, and the Trump Mobile website simply says the phone will be available "later this year."

Trump Mobile did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

Meanwhile, Trump Mobile's X account has laid dormant for months — the last post the company made was on August 27.

Despite the delay in the release — and the lack of information about when the phone may be available — Trump Mobile is still accepting pre-orders for $100, with the remaining $399 charged when the phone finally arrives.

• A NATO drone maker said smaller, frontline NATO members have two key weaponry needs.
• They need autonomy because they have smaller populations, and cost-effective ways to stop attacks.
• Latvia's Origin Robotics makes drones and drone interceptors, and has systems in Ukraine.

A drone maker that's been arming Ukraine and designing systems to protect NATO says it's learned what the alliance, especially allies sharing a border with Russia, will need to fight — and win — a war.

Drone maker Origin Robotics, which is based in Latvia, one of NATO’s smaller eastern edge allies bordering Russia and Belarus, is among those considered most at risk of a potential Russian attack. Facing a growing threat, countries along that frontier have played an outsized role in shaping NATO’s urgency toward Moscow.

CEO Agris Kipurs recently told Business Insider that these smaller front-line states need to invest in autonomy and lower-cost ways to take down enemy mass.

These are the kind of solutions that the technology company is working on. It has supplied some systems to Ukraine and has R&D contracts with Latvia's defense ministry. And Belgium recently agreed to buy Origin's interceptors.

Origin Robotics produces autonomous aerial and airborne systems, including an AI-enabled drone interceptor called BLAZE and a drone-launched precision-guided weapon known called BEAK. The latter is in use in Ukraine.

Kipurs said the company is using Ukrainian feedback to shape how it's building its new systems with NATO in mind. "We take the learnings of Ukraine, but we adapt those weapons systems specifically to be used in a NATO country," the market they are building for, he said.

Western militaries see real-world experience from Ukraine as key for industry. Luke Pollard, the UK's armed forces minister, said earlier this year that any Western drone companies that don't have their gear in Ukraine "might as well give up."

A need for autonomy

Russia has one of the world's largest armed forces. In Ukraine, Russia has shown a willingness to send waves of soldiers forward to relentless stress and overwhelm defenses — tactics often described as "meat waves." It has roots in Soviet doctrine, though it's not a 1:1 comparison to the fatal forward charges of the Second World War.

Smaller militaries with fewer troops can counter that mass with autonomy, Kipurs said. That kind of tech allows armies to be bigger than their numbers. Autonomy can give life to drone swarms, converting a single operator into an army of their own.

"For a NATO country, you need a scalable solution," he said. Compared to Russia and Ukraine, "our armies, in terms of head count, are a lot smaller." The alliance as a whole commands substantial forces, but force multipliers like autonomy can make alliance military might much greater.

"We have to build systems which can be deployed within a smaller army where one operator has to accomplish way more than an operator in Ukraine is accomplishing," he said. "And pretty much the only answer to that is autonomy."

Autonomy allows militaries to scale, Kipurs explained. "We don't have the numbers in terms of infantry, in terms of any army operator. So they have to be able to accomplish more."

Ukraine, one of Europe's largest countries, is still struggling against Russia's superior manpower and is increasingly turning to autonomy to offset that disadvantage. It also wants technology that protects operators by keeping them farther from the front lines, a crucial need as drone pilots have become top Russian targets.

Low-cost counters

Kipurs said finding cost-effective ways to stop large-scale attacks is also critical for nations with limited budgets, not just smaller militaries.

A key Russian tactic has been launching massive drone and missile barrages across Ukraine. This is something the West is increasingly worried about, with many officials acknowledging a gap in its defenses. There are not enough air defense systems, particularly affordable ones. It's not sustainable to fire a $4 million Patriot missile at a Russian drone worth only thousands.

Kipurs said that "when you look at the current offering for precision strike technology or weapon systems that can deliver precision strikes at the lowest end, you are talking hundreds of thousands per one successful strike." Some missile systems are worth millions, which is what higher-end interceptors are made for.

In Ukraine, both sides have recognized that exquisite precision strike capabilities are simply not sustainable in the long run, so they've been augmenting barrages with cheaper drones and loitering munitions.

It's cheap mass, not the expensive weapons that top armies have prioritized for decades. Addressing this problem, Kipurs said, is an "opportunity" for European entrepreneurs.

Front-line perspectives

Latvia and its neighbors, countries at risk that have grappled with Russian hybrid attacks and airspace violations, warned early on that Russia posed a threat and are now among Ukraine's strongest backers.

They're also some of NATO's most vocal members, warning that Moscow could strike elsewhere in Europe. These nations rank among the alliance's top defense spenders relative to GDP and have built new border defenses to blunt any potential attack.

They're protected by NATO's mutual-defense clause — it essentially states an attack on one is an attack on all — meaning that despite their small size, they have the backing of major militaries like the US, UK, and Germany.

But officials in these countries remain concerned about how quickly NATO could respond, insisting that Russia must not be allowed to seize even an inch of territory. That urgency is driving them to build stronger deterrents and homegrown defenses, a focus shared by companies like Origin Robotics.

The uncertain state of the US commitment to NATO and European security has only heightened those concerns across the region.

• Tesla is stepping up its efforts to get self-driving cars on the road in Europe.
• The EV maker is offering Full Self-Driving ride-alongs in France, Germany, and Italy next month.
• Tesla aims to have FSD approved in Europe by February, but regulators have cast doubt on the timeline.

Tesla is going on the offensive in its campaign to roll out its self-driving tech in Europe.

The EV maker is offering Full Self-Driving (FSD) ride-alongs in Germany, Italy, and France next month, as it inches closer to introducing the self-driving software in Europe.

According to Tesla's website, the ride-alongs will allow Europeans to experience FSD — which the company says can handle almost all driving scenarios autonomously but requires human supervision — during a test drive from the passenger seat.

FSD has been available in the US since 2022, but Tesla has struggled to roll it out internationally.

The automaker said in a Saturday X post that after pushing hard to ship FSD in Europe for over a year, it expected to get approval from the Dutch regulator RDW in February 2026.

However, the regulator quickly fired back, saying that although the agency had drawn up a schedule to grant approval by February, it "remains to be seen" whether that timeline will be met.

The RDW also asked Tesla fans to stop contacting them after the company called on European owners to get in touch with the regulator and "express your excitement."

Tesla has been testing Full Self-Driving for months on European roads, posting videos of cars driving through the streets of Rome and the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

Business Insider previously reported that Tesla employees working on FSD approval have expressed impatience with the extensive testing required by Dutch regulators, with one employee telling officials that FSD approval was "mission critical" to Tesla's leadership.

CEO Elon Musk has regularly complained that European bureaucracy is holding up Tesla's attempts to roll out its self-driving tech.

In a July earnings call, he said the company was navigating a "Kafkaesque" labyrinth of regulations, and predicted that Tesla's sales in Europe would surge once the company got the regulatory green light.

Tesla could use the boost. The company's sales in Europe have plummeted this year amid backlash over Musk's support for the far-right German party AFD and fierce competition from the Chinese EV giant BYD.

In October, Tesla's European sales were down nearly 50% from the previous year, according to data from the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association, while BYD's sales surged by over 200%.

• Hedge funds have been quick to use artificial intelligence to help their investing teams.
• The so-called smart money has also been quick to invest in the trend across public and private companies.
• Quant funds have used machine-learning techniques for years.

Artificial intelligence has already changed the way many industries operate, and hedge funds are no exception.

The $5 trillion field is diverse in the type of strategies different firms employ and the type of securities they invest in. But everyone wants to be the smartest manager in the world — or at least the best-informed.

To do that, funds have pumped resources into building out generative AI capabilities and use cases. Many firms, especially quantitative traders, are expanding initiatives they were already pursuing in areas such as machine learning. And nearly every firm is putting capital behind the trend that has dominated the public and private equity markets for several years now.

Business Insider rounded up how some of the biggest and well-known managers are leveraging and backing the development of AI. It's an extensive, but not exhaustive, rundown.

How funds are using AI

It is, first and foremost, about the data.

Hedge funds have spent countless hours and astronomical amounts of money to get more information than their rivals as fast as possible. Their insatiable appetite for new and unique data has created a thriving alternative data industry, which is filled with firms scouring the world for new information to sell.

As Umesh Subramanian, the chief technology officer of Ken Griffin's $69 billion Citadel, said at a Bloomberg event in October, the data firms like his are now consuming is in petabytes. A single petabyte is 1 million gigabytes and can store hundreds of millions of photos or hundreds of thousands of high-definition movies.

The only reason funds like Citadel are able to consume this amount of information without feeling overwhelmed is because of AI. And, given the hypercompetitive nature of the industry, even the slightest advantage over a competitor is worth the cost.

"It's an arms race to be able to consume the right kind of data in the right kind of way to be able to make the right decisions," Subramanian said.

$29 billion hedge fund Balyasny has built an AI bot that it believes will be able to do the grunt work that typically falls to senior analysts — a potential huge timesaver for investment teams. The manager told Business Insider in 2024 that roughly 80% of the firm's staff use its AI tools, which include the internal chatbot BAMChatGPT, and recently hired Matthew Henderey, one of the CIA's AI developers, as a data science executive.

Balyasny isn't the only firm that has its own chatbot. Man Group and Viking Global have also developed their own internal offerings.

Quant funds like D.E. Shaw, Bridgewater, and Two Sigma and proprietary trading firms and marketmakers like Jane Street, Citadel Securities, and Hudson River Trading have been at the cutting edge of AI and machine learning for years.

For example, Two Sigma's Mike Shuster, who is the head of the quant's core AI team, said at a Columbia University event in November 2024 that his firm had been using generative AI for more than five years at that point. Bridgewater launched a $2 billion fund in the summer of 2024 that is run by machine learning; the manager's CEO, Nir Bar Dea, said this year the strategy produces "a unique alpha uncorrelated to what our humans do."

To stay at the vanguard of a new technology, you need top talent. These firms have often been able to lure top technical talent with eye-popping pay packages, but AI companies have been able to match, and in some cases, surpass compensation offers.

As Business Insider reported, young quants drawn to the work AI startups are doing now "don't even have to take a pay cut" to choose Silicon Valley over East Coast trading floors.

How funds are investing in AI

One of the reasons AI startups like OpenAI and Anthropic can afford hedge-fund talent is the tens of billions of capital that have been invested into them by big-name venture capital firms, as well as Tiger Cubs like Tiger Global, Coatue, and D1. Tiger Cubs are hedge funds with connections to the billionaire Julian Robertson and his firm, Tiger Management, that often focus on growth stocks in industries such as technology.

Stockpicking funds like the Tiger Cubs have increasingly turned their attention to the AI trend in the public and private markets. Stocks like Nvidia, AMD, and Korean chipmaker SK Hynix are often significant holdings in their public portfolios, alongside tech giants such as Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta.

Maverick, a smaller Tiger Cub run by Lee Ainslie, focuses less on picking the winners and losers among AI players and more on supporting the chipmaking ecosystem. The firm's private fund, Maverick Silicon, which invests in that space, is run by one of the firm's longtime investors, Andrew Homan.

Steve Cohen, whose $40.5 billion Point72 has dozens of teams that invest in equities, was so convinced by AI's potential that he created a standalone strategy in October 2024, named Turion, a play on the famous computer scientist Alan Turing's name, to invest in the space. Point72 rarely offers new funds outside its flagship.

Turion, which is run by portfolio manager Eric Sanchez, has outperformed the manager's flagship offering in 2025.

Where AI still falls short

While some firms have turned over investing decision-making to AI, other industry leaders are not yet convinced that the machines can outperform the market.

Citadel's Ken Griffin said at an October conference that AI can not yet beat the markets. Man Group's Numeric unit has created an internal "large language model-based workflow" called AlphaGPT that "still requires human oversight and strategic direction." Elliott's Paul Singer said in a podcast at the start of the year that AI's use cases are "way exaggerated."

There's no doubt that funds are using AI more than ever before and processing more data than ever imagined. However, human creativity remains important for investment giants, and, for the most part, AI is seen as a tool, not a replacement, for flesh-and-blood traders.

At a London quant conference in October, the conclusion many systematic funds reached is that humans, not machines, are the edge required to beat the markets, Business Insider reported.

"Our key takeaway so far is that AlphaGPT doesn't replace human judgment but amplifies it. The most effective use of the system involves human researchers working alongside AI, with each contributing their unique strengths," a pair of Man Numeric executives wrote in a note on AlphaGPT from earlier in November.

"Numeric Humans provide strategic direction, market context, and final decision-making, while AlphaGPT handles the heavy lifting of data processing, hypothesis generation, and initial analysis."

• Miles Wu, 14, won a $25,000 award for his research project combining origami and physics.
• He measured the weight that Miura-ori origami patterns can hold across various benchmarks.
• Wu said the pattern could help improve deployable structures used in emergencies.

While most 14-year-olds are folding paper airplanes, Miles Wu is folding origami patterns that he believes could one day improve disaster relief.

The New York City teen just won $25,000 for a research project based on an origami fold called Miura-ori, which is known for collapsing and expanding with precision.

"I've been folding origami as a hobby for more than six years, mostly of animals or insects," Wu told Business Insider. "Recently I've been designing my own origami, too."

For his project, which won the top prize at the Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge in October, Wu spent months determining whether the strength-to-weight ratio of the Miura fold can be leveraged to improve deployable structures used in emergency situations.

Essentially, Wu tested how much weight the Miura fold could handle across different types of paper, parallelogram heights, parallelogram widths, and parallelogram angles.

Wu got the idea while learning about natural disasters, like January's wildfires in Southern California and Hurricane Helene, which hit the Southeast US in 2024. He also studied how people use origami in STEM disciplines, including the medical field.

"A problem with current deployable structures and emergency structures is, for example, tents are sometimes strong, sometimes they can compact really small, and sometimes they're easily deployable, but almost never are they all three, but Miura-ori could potentially solve that problem," Wu said.

"I found that Miura-ori was really strong, light, and folds down really compactly."

Wu tested 54 variations and underwent 108 trials

When using the Miura-ori, a sheet of paper is folded into a smaller area with repeating parallelograms.

To figure out the winning combination, Wu tested three different parallelogram widths, three different parallelogram angles, and two different parallelogram heights. He also tested three different types of paper.

That means Wu tested 54 hand-folded variations and oversaw 108 trials.

"After folding them with the help of a cutting machine for accuracy, I placed them between guardrails to keep my experimentation the same throughout my trials," Wu said. "Then, I placed a lot of heavy weights on top."

Wu would gradually place more weight atop each test variation until they collapsed. To his surprise, the origami variations were quite strong. He used every book in his home as a weight before having to ask his parents to purchase exercise weights for his research.

Wu believed "smaller, less acutely angled panels made of heavier material would yield a greater strength-to-weight ratio."

By the end of his trials, his hypothesis was partially correct. While small and less acutely angled panels showed a better strength-to-weight ratio, Wu found that copy paper — not heavier materials —had the strongest strength-to-weight ratio.

"The final statistic I got about the strongest Miura-ori that I tested was that it could hold over 10,000 times its own weight," Wu said. "I calculated that to be the equivalent of a New York City taxi cab holding over 4,000 elephants."

Wu took the top prize at the competition in Washington, D.C.

Taking top prize at the Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge is no small feat. To apply, middle schoolers must compete at local science or engineering fairs, where judges nominate the top 10% of projects.

Of the 2,000 or so applicants, judges select 300 before narrowing it down to just 30. Those 30 kids then travel to Washington, D.C., where they present their work and participate in challenges.

Those challenges play a role in how judges decide who will take home an award.

Maya Ajmera, the president and CEO of the Society for Science, which collaborates with Thermo Fisher Scientific to host the competition, told Business Insider that Wu excelled in those challenges.

"We're not only looking at their project. We're looking at do they deal with creative problem solving, how they deal with setbacks, how they bring everyone in a collaborative mode," Ajmera said. "Not only did Miles have an extraordinary project, but he shined as a leader in these challenges."

To Ajmera, introducing STEM education to young people is imperative.

"We're looking for the next generation of innovators," Ajmera said.

Ajmera said that many of the kids participating in the competition are considering careers in STEM fields.

"That is really important for global competitiveness as the United States, being the global leader of innovation and also solving the world's most intractable problems," Ajmera said. "I think we have a duty to really nurture the curiosity."

Wu said he and his parents decided to put the $25,000 award toward higher education. Although it's been nearly a month since Wu won, he's already thinking ahead about how to bring his vision to life.

"One thing I really want to look into is prototyping one of these Muira-ori to create a real emergency shelter that could be used in real-life situations and actually help people," Wu said. "But overall, I would love to keep working on origami-related research. Not only Miura-ori folds, but origami as a whole, and in other fields, too."