Tag: News

• Some workers are letting AI tools do their jobs for them — and they're keeping quiet about it.
• Most companies are still in the early stages of AI deployment, leaving room for quiet "coasters."
• A recent study from McKinsey says AI tools can now automate about 57% of US work hours.

For nearly two years, Noah Olsen kept a secret from his manager at a small roofing company in Ohio. He used AI to complete about half of his software-engineering tasks, spending the rest of his time on the clock scrolling through Reddit and watching YouTube.

"I was copying and pasting all of my tasks into an AI agent such as Cursor or Claude Code, and I would let it do the work," Olsen told Business Insider. "So instead of having to work about 40 hours a week, I would work around 20 hours."

Olsen's quiet use of AI to get ahead highlights a fleeting period of technological ambiguity unfolding in workplaces across the globe. With many companies just starting to adopt AI tools, workers who've figured out how to use them to shave hours off their workloads face an awkward dilemma: Come clean or stay mum?

Right now, there is an "arbitrage opportunity" for AI-savvy workers whose managers and peers are behind the curve, Glenn Hopper, an AI consultant in Memphis, told Business Insider.

"If you're using AI, you're getting polished, completed reports and spreadsheets that look incredible," he said. "If you didn't know AI did it, you would think someone took hours to create something like this."

About 57% of employees said they've used AI at work in non-transparent ways, according to a global survey of more than 30,000 workers conducted between November 2024 and January 2025 by KPMG and the University of Melbourne. Those hidden uses included not disclosing when they used AI tools to complete their work and passing off AI-generated work as their own, the findings show.

AI's impact on productivity can be extraordinary for some workers, said Matt Martin, cofounder and CEO of Clockwise, which uses AI to optimize workers' calendars.

"If you're an engineering prototyper, like, holy shit," he said. "Your life changed in the last year."

A recent report from McKinsey found that AI-powered agents and robots available today could technically perform about 57% of US work hours for all sorts of jobs.

Some employees are calling out the gains they've made using AI, said Avani Prabhakar, Chief People Officer at software maker Atlassian.

"They are gloating," she said.

While getting work done faster is a plus, the outcome still needs to be up to snuff, Andrew Sobko, CEO of the AI infrastructure startup Argentum AI, told Business Insider. Since AI is known for making mistakes, or so-called hallucinations, users need to invest time and energy into ensuring what it spits out is accurate.

At some point in the future, Sobko said he expects enough workers to be using AI that the technology's productivity boost will no longer go unnoticed.

"Eventually it's going to even out," Sobko said.

It may be a while, though, before that happens. Another recently released study from McKinsey shows that around two-thirds of companies are still in the experimentation or pilot stage of AI deployment. It also notes that companies with more than $5 billion in revenue are closer to fully embedding the technology into their operations than those with less than $100 million in revenue.

"While AI tools are now commonplace, most organizations have not yet embedded them deeply enough into their workflows and processes to realize material enterprise-level benefits," the report concludes.

Employers hoping to boost productivity with AI should encourage workers to share the efficiencies they uncover and position that transparency as a good thing, Dan Kaplan, head of the HR practice at consulting firm ZRG, told Business Insider.

"Let's celebrate it," he said. "Let's give awards for it."

For Olsen, the software engineer from Ohio, the good times didn't last. Over the summer, he said, his employer hired an AI specialist who taught everyone on his team to use the same shortcuts he'd been relying on. Soon after, he said he was expected to fill the hours he'd spent slacking off with additional work.

Olsen, 21 years old, quit his job in September. He then visited China for two months and is now doing freelance software-engineering work for an employer in Europe that he said hasn't yet caught on to his penchant for AI coasting.

"If you're not at one of the bleeding-edge companies, then you can use AI to do a lot of your work," he said. "But who knows how long this will last."

• One of my sons started his very long Christmas wish list back in October.
• To temper expectations, I have set a gift limit and reserve the right to veto any gift on the list.
• I'm also working to teach my kids the importance of gratitude and giving to others this season.

My 5-year-old is like me in so many ways. He's social, loves trying new things, and makes friends wherever he goes, from a kid at the playground to the older man who walks his dogs in our neighborhood. Also, like me, his love language is receiving gifts.

As such, his Christmas list is crazy long — and expensive. Since he's still a big believer in Santa and thinks all the gifts are made in the workshop, I can't use the cost of things to bring his expectations down to a realistic level.

Here's how I'm tempering his expectations this year, while still keeping the magic of Christmas alive.

I set a gift limit

Since we're still in the sweet stage of believing in Santa's magic, I can't really tell my kids that I'm setting a dollar amount on the gifts they'll receive for the holiday. After all, they still think all the toys are made in Santa's workshop and that everything is "free." Oh, I wish that were the case.

Instead, I'm setting a limit on the number of gifts Santa will bring him and his brother. In our house, it's 10 since most of the asks are for inexpensive toys.

And it's easy to explain the logic, too — since Santa has to bring gifts to every kid around the world, he can only carry a set amount per kid.

I asked him to rank his wish list

As a child, I remember drafting and redrafting my holiday wish list, ranking items in order of importance. Often, I'd cut out pictures of the desired item from catalogs or ads in the paper to really drive my point home. While Christmas isn't all about gifts, I know for kids, that's often the most exciting part of it, and I don't want to take that away from my 5-year-old.

That's why I have my kids rank their own list in order of importance, so I don't miss anything that they really want. It's also an excellent opportunity to discuss how they may not receive all the items on their list, and it's important to be thankful and appreciative of the items they do receive.

I'm teaching them to give, not just receive

At 5 and 7, my boys are at the perfect age to start giving gifts to loved ones. They both receive an allowance, so every year I take them to the toy store and have them pick out a small gift for each other with minimal guidance. Not only is it hilarious to see what they pick out for their brother, but it also teaches them the other side of holiday gifting.

We also adopt a family via the Salvation Army's Angel Tree program every year. We gather the family's list, hit up a local big-box store, and I let my boys take the lead on what they think the family's children would like. It also opens up the conversation about socioeconomic differences and the importance of giving to others if you're fortunate enough to have extra.

I encourage gratitude

This year, we're starting to exercise gratitude for what we have even earlier in the season. Every night at dinner, we share what we were grateful for that day.

We've also started a "leaf wall" in our dining room last month. Every day, the boys write one thing they're thankful for on a leaf and we affix it to the wall. We've enjoyed doing this so much that we're planning to keep adding to it through Christmas and the new year.

I always have veto power

I'm not sure how far you take the Santa thing in your house, but my kids think I'm on a first-name basis with the big guy. We text a lot. I know his favorite kind of cookie, and — most importantly — I have final approval on all the gifts Santa brings them.

This is important for two reasons. First, it helps me keep the budget in check. Second, I can easily veto gifts that aren't appropriate for their ages, like the super-fast dirt bike my 5-year-old asked for. Sorry, buddy, Mom doesn't want any emergency room visits this holiday season.

• AI-generated video has come a long way.
• In 2023, AI-generated videos went viral for depicting Will Smith eating spaghetti poorly.
• OpenAI's Sora and other models are coming close to passing the so-called spaghetti test.

It's no longer your mom's AI spaghetti.

In just two and a half years, AI video generation has progressed from struggling to depict Will Smith eating spaghetti to producing a lifelike video.

The unofficial benchmark test began in 2023 when a Reddit user posted a video of the Academy Award-winner eating spaghetti generated by ModelScope, a text-to-video AI model.

The initial results were horrifying. Will Smith looked nothing like his movie star self. Instead, he looked like a bad animation, complete with caricatured features that would be more at home on a tourist trap boardwalk. In some videos, he never actually consumed the spaghetti, failing to meet even the most basic premise of the test.

The failures highlighted the early limitations of AI-generated video and images, which sometimes produced people with 8 fingers or other anatomical imperfections.

Smith himself referenced the test in February 2024, posting a TikTok in which he ate spaghetti in almost as cartoonish a manner as the initial video.

A lot has changed since then, as SkyNews and others have recently pointed out.

In 2024, MiniMax, a Chinese AI model, made a much more accurate representation, but AI Smith's chewing was still off. And at the very end of the clip, the noodles appear to levitate. In May, a user posted on X that he used Google's Veo 3 to generate a new video. The problem with this one is that the noodles AI Smith is chewing sound way too crunchy. A later Veo 3.1-generated video looks even more realistic.

OpenAI's Sora is widely regarded as the best AI video generator on the market. In fact, it is so good that soon after the launch of Sora 2 and its accompanying TikTok-esque mobile app in September, the company was forced to add more guardrails on third-party likeness and copyrights after a series of high-profile incidents involving SpongeBob and Martin Luther King Jr.

Google and Elon Musk's xAI are racing to keep up. In July, xAI launched Grok Imagine, its text-to-video generator.

Passing the spaghetti test might be tougher now, as Hollywood and other rights holders intensify their efforts to prevent AI companies from infringing on their rights. Just days before Sora 2's release, Disney, Universal, Warner Bros., and other rights holders filed suit in federal court against MiniMax.

Cameo, the personalized video company, sued OpenAI over its decision to name the core feature of the Sora app "cameos." One of the reasons Sora can generate such high-quality videos, especially of non-public figures, is that users can upload facial scans to the app, which is the "cameo" feature. In November, a federal judge temporarily blocked OpenAI from using the word "cameo."

Meanwhile, in Washington, some lawmakers are appalled that AI can now generate videos of them speaking words that they never once uttered.

Not everyone is shying away from AI video. Coca-Cola recently said it once again used AI to help generate its holiday ad, this time drawing on Sora, Veo 3, and Luma AI.

• Bart Dziedzic left JPMorgan for MrBeast, trading pay and prestige for the entrepreneurial route.
• He's had a number of roles, including helping build a pop-up theme park in Saudi Arabia.
• Dziedzic, 27, now values experience over money and advises others to take calculated risks.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Bart Dziedzic, a 27-year-old who left investment banking to work for YouTube's top creator, MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson. It's been edited for length and clarity.

I grew up in Darien, an upscale town in Connecticut, but I didn't belong to the world of finance bros. My parents were Polish immigrants, and we lived paycheck to paycheck. I was enamored by the big guys: Steve Jobs, Elon Musk.

I went to Fordham and landed at JPMorgan Chase, where I worked my way up into investment banking. It was prestigious, and the money was good.

But the investment banking lifestyle started to get repetitive. I was working 80- to 100-hour weeks, and if you break it down to the hourly rate, it's not a ton of money. And the noise of the city was starting to wear on me.

One day, I was talking to a partner at a VC firm who was doing some recruiting for MrBeast. They were looking for smart, obsessive, athletic people.

I always wanted to be either a soccer player or an entrepreneur. Growing up, I did construction with my dad in the summer. In elementary school, I sold duct-tape wallets until the principal shut it down because you weren't allowed to sell stuff at school.

I didn't grow up with media or social media, but I realized that everyone from my cousins in Poland to people in Asia and Africa knew who MrBeast was.

Going to MrBeast had pros and cons

There were a lot of reasons not to go there. I didn't really understand the role completely — working in development for the chief of staff. I wondered about the key-man risk. I'd be taking a 50% pay cut and going to Greenville, North Carolina, and leaving all my family and friends behind. My parents thought I should stay at JPMorgan.

But I figured, I don't have a family or mortgage, and everyone knows the MrBeast name. I saw the opportunity to learn, add value, be part of a brand that is growing very rapidly, and have autonomy. That's the one thing I didn't like about JPMorgan — like any corporate job, it's too structured.

In the worst-case scenario, I can come back. If nothing else, it'd be an experience in itself. So I left JPMorgan in January 2024 and started at MrBeast in February.

My first week on the job, I got to watch a video being produced where people aged 1 to 100 were competing for a prize. These are multimillion-dollar shoots. It was exciting. This is a totally new landscape, the creator economy. How do you take this massive megaphone of followers and then turn it into something sustainable?

I had to adjust to small-town life

The transition to Greenville was tough at first. I lived out of suitcases in a hotel for two weeks because they didn't have housing ready for me; they were hiring so rapidly. There wasn't a lot to do. I ended up getting a dog and a truck. I went on Hinge, where I met my girlfriend. I played a lot of pickleball.

I've had a lot of different roles in my time here. Although we have titles, the roles are very ambiguous. You just break down problems and figure things out. One of the projects we had was doing this pop-up theme park in Riyadh that was supposed to be something between a Six Flags and a carnival pop-up, and gamified — MrBeast-style.

I was part of the negotiations and planning, so I kind of took the lead and worked with our partners over there to design and build it. Seeing it come to fruition was similar to doing a construction project with my dad. It was beautiful.

A high point was launching MrBeast's theme park

Operationally, there were a lot of things to figure out. Jimmy [Donaldson] was there on opening day, so that's a world of its own from an operational perspective. We had 7,000 people on opening day. A few days before, MrBeast said he wanted a prize wall. We had to figure out a points system to award prizes, what the prizes would be, and how we'd get them here in three days. We brought some stuff from the states, like an authenticated piece of a set or Jimmy's hat from a set.

Jimmy also wanted to take pictures with a bunch of people. We had to design it so as many people as possible could take pictures with him while making it a good experience for them. We handed out 250 golden tickets and built barriers to control the crowd. Then people started coming in with one ticket and three families. So we limited it to five people.

I enjoy getting my hands dirty and doing things. I think a lot of people operate in fear of decision-making. You always have to think about, "What's the opportunity cost of this decision? Is it a big decision where I could literally ruin this park? Or is it a micro decision where I can live with the consequences?"

I was pretty proud of the team and myself. We were supposed to open in December, but we ended up opening it earlier. We're in a foreign country, dealing with a lot of inputs. There was a lot of just figuring it out. And it was cool to see it all come together in a project of this size.

Now I'm manager of strategy and operations on the holdco team. There wasn't really a reason for them to be in Greenville, so the team moved to New York, and I moved back in the summer.

After a break from New York, I'm glad to be back. I appreciated the nice weather and greenery, but there wasn't as much to do in Greenville. I've also slowed down as I've gotten a little older. I enjoy going on walks instead of going to a bar until three in the morning.

I learned to prioritize experience over pay

I've learned you shouldn't optimize for salary in your 20s. You should build skills and experiences so you can make more money when you're older or start your own thing. I would tell people out of college, take as much ownership as you can in something. Do something that's exciting, risky, with a good leadership team behind you, where you can learn something. Because the further you get along in your career, the harder it will be to pivot.

I think a lot of people want certainty in their careers, and that's why a lot of people stay at roles like JPMorgan even though they're miserable. But it's an ever-changing world. Google didn't even exist when I was born. Also, everyone's going to give you advice based off of their own experience when those experiences don't necessarily apply to you. In the same way you would do benchmarking comps for a business or analyze anything in life, you should take 10, 15 inputs and then decide what the risks and rewards are based on that.

• Lee Givens, Jr. worked at Microsoft, Meta, and Apple over a 15-year span.
• After leaving Microsoft and Meta, he lost his contract job at Apple and struggled to find work.
• He said learning about AI and exploring opportunities outside Big Tech helped him land a new role.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Lee Givens, Jr., a 57-year-old product manager in Seattle who works at Woven by Toyota, a subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corporation. Business Insider has verified his employment with documentation. This essay has been edited for length and clarity.

I'd worked at Big Tech companies for more than a decade, but a year ago, I found myself in the middle of a humbling job search.

I started working for Microsoft in 2011 as a product manager, but in 2014, I was among thousands of employees who were laid off. I never actually left Microsoft — I was given 60 days to find a new role internally and successfully moved into a program manager position in a different department.

By 2020, my job at Microsoft had become somewhat boring, in part because there was a lot of legal and compliance work. I also thought I needed a new challenge and more money.

I left Microsoft for a new opportunity, but looking back, I maybe shouldn't have been so quick to leave. I'm now working at Toyota and am happy with my role, but I had to endure some ups and downs to get here.

Moving on from Microsoft and Meta

When I started looking for something new in 2020, Meta was actively recruiting. I decided to leave Microsoft for a product marketing manager role there, where I worked on an augmented reality glasses product. Some of the product plans went awry, and it felt like the team was in disarray.

In December 2021, after a little more than a year at Meta, I transitioned to a global product lead role at the software development company Unity.

Things didn't ultimately work out there either. As I searched for work in recent years — and faced a challenging job market — I sometimes found myself thinking that I shouldn't have left Microsoft.

Diving into AI after a layoff

Things at Unity seemed promising at first, but as the tech industry shifted toward AI, our researchers began to be poached left and right. We didn't have the budget to keep them happy.

I still believed in Unity and really thought it had potential. However, in May 2023, a few days after getting married and honeymooning in Italy, I learned I'd been laid off.

This was the third layoff of my career, but it was the first time I had nothing in the pipeline to help me transition to my next role.

I decided to take some time to learn as much as I could about AI — and the basics of how AI frameworks like PyTorch and Modular's MAX worked. My goal was to understand AI so I could better communicate with the engineers working on the technology.

I also actively applied for jobs and reached out to recruiters. Apple was one of my top targets, and I applied to every AI-related role I could find at the company.

Leaving Apple and learning how to find a job

After a few months of job searching, a recruiter contacted me about a contract opportunity at Apple for an engineering program manager role, which I started in September 2023.

My contract was extended every three months, and my manager told me that the company was attempting to transition me to a full-time role. It was my understanding that contractors in my group couldn't stay beyond a year, so I figured I'd either be converted or out of a job.

As the one-year mark approached, I was told that a senior leader wanted everyone on my team to be based in Cupertino, California, where Apple is headquartered. My understanding was that my chances of landing a full-time role would increase dramatically if I moved to Cupertino.

But my wife and I didn't want to leave Seattle. We had recently bought a home in the area, and she had a job there. By the time my contract with Apple ended in September 2024, I had started my next job search.

I found the job market to be extremely challenging

For six months, I had numerous conversations and interviews, and then a lot of "Nope, you didn't get the job" messages.

I'd never had that problem before. Throughout my career, I had almost never actively sought a job. Most of the jobs I'd had came through friends or recruiters who actively pursued me. It was a humbling experience of putting out hundreds of résumés and not hearing back.

Fortunately, I found some part-time consulting gigs as I looked for work. I'd been good at investing — doing well enough that I could almost retire — so I wasn't too worried about cash. My wife also had a fairly high-paying job.

Still, we had college expenses for two kids, and my wife was thinking about starting her own business. If we were to make this work financially, I felt I'd have to step up. This motivated me to find a job.

For months, I focused on getting back into Apple

I eventually decided to become more open to other opportunities. I started entertaining LinkedIn messages from recruiters I would've previously ignored.

One of those messages came from Toyota. The original job was based in Palo Alto, but the company was flexible and agreed to move the role to Seattle.

In April, after about two-and-a-half months of interviews, I joined the company as a staff product manager in the company's Woven by Toyota subsidiary. I have a six-figure salary, and my total compensation is much higher than what I was earning at Meta and Apple.

I definitely think taking the time to learn more about AI helped me land the job, and that knowledge is driving the main work I'm doing now.

Reflections on my career journey

One of the biggest takeaways from my career journey is that when there's a major technological shift — such as the rise of the internet or AI — you have to reinvent yourself. You need to dive deep into the technology to really understand it.

Another lesson: Don't get pigeonholed. I had my heart set on staying at Apple, and I nearly missed out on a great opportunity. Be open to new industries — it could actually work out.

Additionally, don't rush to switch jobs. Before I left Microsoft in 2020, I really clicked there and felt comfortable — and I think I maybe should've stuck around, even if part of me wanted to try something new. At the same time, leaving Microsoft set me on a path to learning more about AI, which I believe will serve me well in my career.

I'm happy with my current role. Toyota's culture, legacy, and focus align closely with my approach to work. The subsidiary I work for is much smaller than Microsoft, Meta, and Apple, which has made it easier for me to make an impact and gain visibility with company leaders.

Legal tech has had a breakout year for VC funding, which reached $3.2 billion in 2025. As the sector attracts investment, questions remain about a bubble and real revenue gains. Meanwhile, law firms are exploring ways to utilize AI to deliver better and faster service.

For many lawyers, 2025 was the year when using AI became mandatory.

Law firm leaders and general counsels moved the tech from pilots to production, standardizing research and drafting copilots while expanding innovation teams and training junior lawyers.

That demand fueled investment in a new crop of startups across contract review, corporate due diligence, predictive analytics, and more. Buzzy legaltech startups like Harvey and Legora pulled in bigger checks, as incumbents from LexisNexis to Clio made aggressive moves to keep pace.

Funding for legal companies hit $3.2 billion this year, according to Business Insider's analysis of Crunchbase data and recent financings. Valuations on some names have prompted bubble talk, but buyer demand would suggest there's at least real revenue beneath the hype.

This year, Business Insider had the inside track on legal tech companies raising money. Read on for our coverage of some of 2025's most notable deals.

Legora raised $80 million — without even trying

Legora CEO Max Junestrand said the company wasn't actively seeking funding last spring, but still, the offers flooded in. "I don't think it's a secret that things have been really working," Junestrand said.

By now, the company has amassed over 400 clients across 40 markets, including big-league law firms like Cleary Gottlieb, Goodwin, Bird & Bird, and Mannheimer Swartling, Sweden's largest law firm.

In October, Legora closed another blockbuster round, raising $150 million in Series C funding, led by Bessemer Venture Partners.

Eudia's $75 million shopping spree

Eudia emerged from stealth in February with $105 million in Series A funding from General Catalyst. The investment had just one major condition: Eudia would get $30 million up front and the other $75 million as it found other companies to buy. Its first acquisition was Irish-founded alternative legal services provider Johnson Hana. In October, Eudia also acquired the legal service provider Out-House.

Bench IQ raised a round to predict judges' rulings

Jimoh Ovbiagele, Bench IQ's cofounder and chief executive, said Bench IQ has built a proprietary dataset and layered in large language models to forecast how judges tend to think and rule.

Battery Ventures and Inovia Capital led the company's $5 million seed round. Before Bench IQ, Ovbiagele was a founder of Ross Intelligence, the legal research company that shut down after a costly lawsuit brought by Thomson Reuters.

An ex-Microsoft scientist takes on work visas

Priyanka Kulkarni spent nine years on a visa while working as an AI scientist for Microsoft. Now, her startup, Casium, which raised $5 million in seed funding, sells employers a portal to run visa cases end-to-end, replacing the Excel spreadsheets and, in many instances, the outside law firms that they usually rely on. The product is designed to respond to the rapidly changing employment immigration landscape as policy has swung in recent months.

The software-first approach to legal advice

WeWork's former top lawyer raised $4 million to build an AI-native law firm. Covenant, cofounded by Jen Berrent, reviews fund docs for private market investors. Its tools use large language models to root through hundreds of pages of legal documents, raise red flags, and suggest stronger terms that are tailored to the investor's own playbook.

A lawyer-backed startup for due diligence

Marveri wants to cut manual review from months to minutes. Their software sucks up all of a corporation's documents, then automatically renames, organizes, and analyzes them. The company emerged from stealth with $3.5 million in funding. High-profile litigator Alex Spiro — best known for helping Elon Musk defeat a defamation lawsuit and getting Alec Baldwin's manslaughter case dismissed — is advising the Marveri team.

Attorney's crystal ball into settlement rulings

Theo Ai is building a "predictive engine" tool, aimed at law firms and large corporations, that it says takes the guesswork out of pricing a lawsuit. Earlier this month, the company told Business Insider it raised $3 million in new funding from Run Ventures, bringing total backing to more than $10 million. Trained on a firm's own data, when a new case lands, the model finds look-alikes in that history and returns a settlement likelihood and range.

Hermès and Louis Vuitton, meet ROI and liquidity.

Resale is coming for luxury retail.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An unusual progressive candidate

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

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

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

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

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

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

A potentially crowded primary field

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GPT-5: OpenAI's latest release

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

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

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

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

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

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

ChatGPT has 800 million weekly active users

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OpenAI has 1 million business customers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ChatGPT is available in over 150 countries

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

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

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

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

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

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

Users can now do more with ChatGPT.

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

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

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

Users have created millions of custom versions of ChatGPT.

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

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

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