• MrBeast has an unusual expectation for ex-employees: Don't talk about MrBeast on social media — at all.
• Labor lawyers said the language in a letter outlining obligations for departing employees was uncommonly broad.
• A MrBeast rep said the language is meant to protect employees and the company from harassment.

MrBeast has an unusual expectation for departing employees: The world's top YouTuber doesn't want them to post about him — even if they're saying nice things.

Employees leaving the company of MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, receive a letter outlining their obligations, including an "expectation" that they refrain from creating, commenting on, or engaging with social posts involving Donaldson, his company Beast Industries, or any of its employees. Business Insider viewed one such letter and confirmed it was the standard version used by the company.

The letter also states that the employee should not disclose nonpublic information about the company or make false or disparaging statements about it.

Three employment lawyers told Business Insider that the letter had a few uncommon features, pointing particularly to the references to social media.

"It does seem like an unusual burden to not be able to comment on social media," said V. James DeSimone, a California-based attorney. Plus, the letter doesn't offer any severance or other consideration in exchange, he added.

A Beast Industries spokesman said the social media language is intended to protect employees and the company from harassing behavior on social media.

Evan Fray-Witzer, of the firm Ciampa Fray-Witzer — who has experience working with creators — said the language in the MrBeast letter was broader than typical nondisparagement clauses he's seen. That's because it covers all comments, not just negative ones, and also extends to every post that references the company.

"If you were to read this literally, the person couldn't hit the 'like' button on a MrBeast post," Fray-Witzer said. "That's absurd."

Donaldson has been chasing YouTube fame since he was a teen, and the colossus he's built is the result of the tight creative control he exerts. He's known to obsess over his videos and his image and to kill projects he doesn't believe meet his standards.

Russell Berger of Offit Kurman said the language might be understandable in the context of a social media star's company, but thought the letter was unusually formal, long, and cold in tone.

"This is more of a putting-you-on-notice way of doing it," he said. "Mostly when people leave a job, they don't get a reminder of what they can and can't do."

Legal bark or bite?

Fray-Witzer said the company's motivation is understandable: It likely doesn't want former employees undermining its brand or profiting from MrBeast's content.

The 28-year-old creator, who has over 523 million YouTube subscribers, has been rapidly scaling up his company, which was valued at around $5 billion last year. The operation has grown to nearly 800 employees as it has expanded into areas like candy and financial services.

"Where it becomes more questionable and heavy-handed is the extent that it is being used simply to silence former employees from saying anything about MrBeast or the company," Fray-Witzer said of the letter.

The lawyers who spoke with Business Insider said the letter isn't a contract and is likely not enforceable.

DeSimone said, however, that if the employee previously signed an agreement saying they wouldn't comment about Beast Industries on social media, and then did so, the company could potentially have a basis for legal action.

It might be hard to get a judge to enforce the provision, however, and MrBeast would likely "have to prove some sort of damages," Fray-Witzer said.

Even if the language isn't enforceable, it could still have a chilling effect.

"The question for the employee is always, what's worth the juice here?" DeSimone said.

• Influencer marketers from Disney, the NFL, and more shared novel ways they're using platforms today.
• They're embracing Substack for cultural cachet, Threads to experiment, and YouTube for entertainment.
• Brands are also bringing creators in earlier, treating them more like creative partners.

Creators are jumping among an ever-wider mix of platforms and formats — and brands are scrambling to follow them.

We asked the most innovative marketers working with influencers which platforms and tactics have their attention right now — and why.

Marketers from Disney, e.l.f. Beauty, and others told us they're using platforms like TikTok to own the red carpet, Substack to align with tastemakers, and Threads to experiment.

"YouTube is a home for creators. TikTok is a great way to get discovery," said Ian Trombetta, the National Football League's senior vice president of global social, creator, and content marketing. "And then Instagram is another big one for us as it relates to discovery. Even platforms like X and Reddit have a really important role to play."

Beyond platforms, brands like Keurig Dr Pepper are also exploring ways to work directly with creators, involving them earlier in the campaign process.

"A major shift has been pivoting away from rented reach to true collaboration," said Samim Sadrzadeh, Disney's director of creator content and partnerships. "For a long time, the industry treated creators as ad placements. We think that significantly undersells the value they actually bring."

Substack, Threads, and more

YouTube and creators are taking over the living room, and marketers like e.l.f. Beauty and St. Jude's fundraising organization ALSAC are leaning in, not wanting to be left behind.

"We have a lot of plans around long-form content, and that's a great place to show up," said Patrick O'Keefe, e.l.f. Beauty's chief integrated marketing officer. "We've been on YouTube for years. We're now looking at it from the lens of entertainment."

Others, like Poppi and Rothy's, are embracing the newsletter platform Substack to partner with creators. For some creators, Substack has become a way for them to get more personal with their biggest fans. That helps Poppi plan collaborations, said Sophia Sesto, Poppi's vice president of culture.

Yahoo has found value in Meta's Threads as a way to try out ideas in a lower-key environment before putting them out on bigger platforms, especially if it's jumping on a cultural moment and isn't sure how the effort will go over. When Taylor Swift released "Patient Zero," Yahoo riffed on it with a Thread that tied the "Os" in its name to the song.

"I think it's a little less precious over there, and it feels like a fun place to kind of gut check certain things, see how they'll perform," said Kemma Kefalas, Yahoo's senior director and head of Creative Lab. "It's just been a nice kind of litmus test for us."

Disney has especially found success with TikTok's Live feature, finding it a customizable way to build excitement for premieres. For "Zootopia 2," it had the viral squirrel character Nibs interview cast on the red carpet, while internet personality Carter Kench played host for the "Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special."

"Those moments work because we treated the platform as a canvas for a new kind of storytelling that connects directly to audiences in real time," Sadrzadeh said.

Brands are going direct

Platforms may always be a necessary part of doing business with creators. But going direct has become a bigger buzzword as many brands seek to bypass platforms entirely.

Keurig Dr Pepper, for one, wouldn't typically hire a creator through a platform's marketplace, said Lindsay Burstein, senior director of integrated social and communications, using TikTok as an example.

"We would hire the creator, have them post on TikTok. Then we have the ability to use that content and distribute it across multiple channels, but slice it up in different ways that make sense for that channel."

Influencers spent a long time trying to convince marketers to take them seriously. This year, marketers are expected to spend $44 billion with creators, more than tripling in five years, per the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

As brands increasingly treat creators as long-term partners, they're engaging with them earlier in the marketing process.

Yahoo's approach is to find creators who are entertaining and figure out how to insert itself into their work, rather than vice versa, as it did with TV persona Kyle Cooke to promote its new Yahoo Weather app.

"We're working with them for the entertainment that they bring to people, and we'll Yahooify it," Kefalas said. "Our briefs are often loose in those regards. We're not doing a lot of 'talk to camera, promote products' kind of thing. We've gotten a lot of positive feedback from creators that they've loved that opportunity to just do what they do best."

• The Tiger Sisters shared advice on when to keep friendships and when to walk away.
• Cherie and Jean Luo are applying their signature analytical approach to emotional topics.
• They laid out four factors to consider in evaluating friendships.

The Tiger Sisters became top business podcasters by sharing their educational and career experience at Stanford, Goldman Sachs, and more. Now, the self-described "Silicon Valley and Wall Street big sisters" are applying their mindset to friendships.

"I think everyone privately has gone through a friendship breakup at some point in their life, whether it's passive or active," Cherie Luo said in an interview. "And it's something that doesn't get enough attention because when we think relationships, we mostly think the romantic breakup is the most traumatic."

In a three-part series on the subject this month, the hosts broke down how they audit relationships with pals and when they know it's time to break up with a friend.

The sisters, who just joined the Vox Media Podcast Network, started out in 2024 by sharing lessons from their school and work experiences and have since introduced more emotional content. It's a bet that their formula can extend to a broad array of topics and give them more staying power as they aim to grow into a larger media company.

"We did start Tiger Sisters with a very, very business-oriented approach," Jean Luo said. "It was more so our audience that kept asking us like, 'Well, what about how does this apply to friendships? Who are you guys dating? What's going on in your relationships, in your dating lives?'"

In the friendship episodes, the sisters took a data-driven approach, drawing on academic research and layering in their own experiences rather than just venting about breakups.

"I think it's kind of in our DNA of, 'How do we make sense of something that could potentially be very messy and emotional and bring a framework to help guide us through it?'" Cherie Luo said.

When to end a friendship

The sisters say people should consider four things when evaluating a friendship: who you are, where you are in your life, who the friend is, and how they'll fit into your life going forward.

"By providing this framework, it helps the listener and the Tiger fan take a step back from what is inherently an extremely emotional topic," Jean Luo said. "You can then decide if you want to go through an active or a passive dissolution."

Researchers have found that most friendship endings happen passively when people grow apart, Cherie Luo said. This leaves open the possibility that the friendship could be rekindled, whereas abrupt endings tend to be more acrimonious and permanent.

"It is less disruptive to a broader friend group," Jean added. "Friendships don't exist in a vacuum."

In the podcast, they also discussed alternatives to ending a friendship: distancing yourself or changing the role the friend occupies in your life.

They gave the example of a friend who was tired of always being canceled on by a pal. Rather than break up with them, they addressed the problem by double-booking them.

If you decide a friendship's run its course, you don't have to take the leap and break up with them immediately, the sisters said. It's important to take the rest of your life into account.

"Let's say you just had a baby, and you are starting a new job, and you are helping your parents with their health," Jean Luo said. "If there's a lot of things going on, maybe you actually don't need to address that friendship breakup right now. Even if the right decision is to end a friendship, there are a million different ways in which you can approach it."

• Microsoft offered a buyout to 60,000 employees this week.
• The offer spooked the tech industry and stoked chatter and concern inside the company.
• The key question: How many employees Microsoft is prepared to lose?

Microsoft's huge employee buyout stunned the industry this week, raising urgent questions about why the software giant might want so many people to leave.

Inside the company, concerned staff debated the meaning of the move. Why might Microsoft want to shed 60,000 workers? Will roles be replaced by AI? Are more layoffs ahead?

Business Insider spent recent days speaking with Microsoft insiders to find out what's really happening. The people asked not to be identified discussing sensitive matters.

The main takeaway so far is that Microsoft seems to have unnecessarily spooked employees with the sheer size of its buyout offer, leaving leaders scrambling to calm the troops.

Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood in an internal memo explained the offer was intended to "offer employees agency if they choose to leave the company on their own terms" and said the company expected "very few people" to accept.

Microsoft doubled down later and told Business Insider it anticipates 3,000 or fewer employees will take the buyout. That's only about 5%, or less, of those eligible.

Layoff concerns

Earlier this year, the company offered a retirement buyout to employees based on age and tenure. About one-third accepted.

Soon after, Microsoft did another round of layoffs. Some employees who didn't accept the retirement offer ended up losing their jobs.

That's led to speculation that more layoffs may come in the wake of this week's bigger buyout offer.

"Future workforce needs will continue to be based on business needs and priorities," Microsoft said in a statement.

Misconceptions and differences

Business Insider spoke to Microsoft executives who said there are misconceptions about the current buyout offer.

These executives could only speak about their own teams, and they were hesitant to definitively say layoffs aren't coming. However, they pointed out a few differences between the current buyouts and the retirement offer.

"Microsoft doesn't want to shrink by 60,000 people," one executive said, while asking not to be identified. "We are not replacing everyone with AI."

This person thinks Microsoft made latest buyout offer because some employees complained that they weren't eligible for the retirement buyout earlier this year.

And in the case of the retirement buyout, when employees left, Microsoft didn't fill those roles — the headcount went away.

This week's buyout works differently. In some cases, when staff leave this time their roles will be backfilled with new hires.

Why the latest buyout looks so big

One reason the latest buyout looks so huge: Some leaders decided it would be simpler to offer it to their entire organization, rather than try to pick which specific teams or individuals should be included.

"It's easier to opt-in giant organizations," one Microsoft executive told Business Insider.

Charles Lamanna, the executive in charge of the Copilot Platform, AI agents, Office and Word, decided to offer it to everyone in his organization, one of the people said. That includes many people in critical positions. The organization is prepared to backfill roles if any of those critical employees accept the buyout, this person said.

The Cloud + AI group took a different approach

Microsoft's key Cloud + AI division took a slightly different approach, according to another executive from the company.

Two teams — Azure Hardware Systems and Infrastructure and Cloud Operations + Innovation teams — decided not to offer the latest buyout to staff.

Most other groups within the Cloud + AI division did offer the buyout to employees. And this division can backfill some roles, this executive told Business Insider.

Cutting costs and avoiding layoffs

Backfilling roles could still help Microsoft cut labor costs. One executive at the company said if a senior person were to leave, they would likely backfill the role with someone more junior who would potentially be paid less. A Microsoft spokesperson said that's not an official company position.

If all this seems overly complex, compared to layoffs, there may be a reason: Microsoft has been under fire for cutting American staff while employing foreign workers.

The Trump administration recently suspended Microsoft from a federal program that sponsors foreign workers for permanent residency, accusing the company of laying off American employees while hiring lower-paid foreign workers. Microsoft has denied those claims.

"Never say never, but there's a lot of desire not to do big layoffs, especially as an American company," one of the Microsoft executives told Business Insider.

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• Amazon reported third-quarter earnings on Thursday.
• Amazon stuck with its $220 billion capex forecast for 2026.
• CEO Andy Jassy expects the company to spend "meaningfully more" next year.

Amazon is already spending a record amount on AI data centers. Next year will be even bigger.

The world's biggest cloud-computing company reported third-quarter results on Thursday and reiterated its plan for $220 billion in capital expenditure for 2026.

Then, CEO Andy Jassy shared his outlook for next year, saying Amazon expects "to spend meaningfully more in 2027."

Amazon’s spending has become the central question hanging over the company. It's building massive data centers and buying expensive chips and other gear to meet surging demand for AI.

That's pushed its free cash flow into negative territory, with third-quarter results showing a hole of $42.4 billion for the trailing twelve months.

Amazon spent $75.9 billion in cash capital expenditures during the third quarter alone, CFO Brian Olsavsky said, primarily on AWS and AI infrastructure.

The results did little to ease investors' concern about the spending. Amazon's third-quarter revenue and earnings came in below Wall Street expectations, and its shares fell roughly 6% in after-hours trading.

"The cloud unit's improving operating margin was one welcome signal, but it may not be sufficient to alleviate concerns about the sharp spike in capex spending and corresponding freefall of its free cash flow," Sky Canaves, a principal analyst at eMarketer, said in a statement.

Amazon has argued that AI infrastructure takes years to build before it can begin generating revenue, and that AI chip servers typically break even in less than three years once deployed. But the scale of the outlay has raised the stakes for Amazon's cloud business to sustain rapid growth as competitors make similarly enormous bets.

On Thursday, Jassy reiterated his confidence in the company's AI business model and outlook, saying there's a "clear line of sight to attractive financial returns."

The time it takes Amazon to turn newly delivered servers into revenue-generating capacity has also come under scrutiny.

Last week, Business Insider exclusively reported that Amazon has begun receiving billions of dollars in Nvidia server racks before all of the gear can be deployed at their final data-center sites, as power shortages and construction delays hold back new capacity.

"We can fund this plan"

Jassy argued Thursday that Amazon has visibility into the demand supporting its huge AI investments. Customers that need the largest AI deployments reserve capacity well ahead of time, he said, in blocks ranging from hundreds of megawatts to, in some cases, as much as a gigawatt.

"We have very good visibility into 2027 and 2028 and some of '29 too with respect to what customers want in those really big chunks of capacity," Jassy said.

AWS revenue rose 39.3% year over year to $46 billion in the third quarter, its fastest growth in nearly five years. Jassy said he expects AWS revenue to grow more than 40% in both 2027 and 2028, a projection that requires the company to keep rapidly adding capacity.

Jassy described the spending as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity rather than an optional expansion. It would be more convenient, he said, if Amazon could spread the investment over 25 years. But the speed of the AI market does not allow that.

"We can fund this plan," he said. "It will forever change our revenue. It will forever change our free cash flow."

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• Carolyn Tisch Blodgett, a co-owner of the New York Giants and Gotham FC, is using AI to cut costs.
• "There's a lot of parts of a sports team that are just expensive to operate," Tisch Blodgett said.
• Tisch Blodgett shared how she's turned around Gotham FC at Business Insider's The Long Play.

New York Giants and Gotham FC co-owner Carolyn Tisch Blodgett is betting on AI to transform women's sports into a major moneymaker.

"If AI can make you more efficient, that totally changes where women's sports can go," Tisch Blodgett said at Business Insider's The Long Play event on Thursday afternoon.

Tisch Blodgett, who's the lead owner of Gotham FC in the National Women's Soccer League, sees AI as a way to reduce the costs of running a sports business without cutting corners.

"There's a lot of parts of a sports team that are just expensive to operate. It's expensive to operate a stadium, it's expensive to operate a ticketing team, expensive to operate a marketing team," Tisch Blodgett said.

Those struggles are heightened for women's sports, which historically haven't gotten the same level of investment as men's sports.

"The revenue was not high enough to really justify building out an entire business team, and the business model just didn't really work," Tisch Blodgett said of women's sports.

Tisch Blodgett made a name for herself by starting sports-focused venture capital firm Next 3, which has invested in Gotham FC, the Los Angeles Golf Club in golf league TGL, Premier Lacrosse League, and lottery ticket site Jackpot.com.

The Gotham FC owner has had a front-row seat to running sports since she was a kid: Her family bought half of the NFL's New York Giants in 1991. The Tisch family runs Loews Corporation, a hotel and insurance conglomerate worth about $22.9 billion.

Under the Tisch's ownership, the Giants have won two Super Bowls. Tisch Blodgett has already matched that title count in the three years she's owned Gotham FC — though building a winner hasn't been easy.

Building a champion by gathering feedback

Tisch Blodgett felt firsthand the challenges that women's sports teams face after taking over Gotham FC in 2023. The New York-based team had talent, as it went on to bring home its first title months later.

But success on the pitch hadn't translated to a winning business. Gotham FC didn't have its own business office when Tisch Blodgett took over, and players shared a practice field with a club team of 16-year-old boys.

While Gotham FC had "a great product on the field," Tisch Blodgett said, "attendance was really low" due to a lack of awareness.

"It was clear that the people that came really liked it, but it was very small," Tisch Blodgett said of Gotham FC's fanbase in 2023.

Tisch Blodgett has since flipped the script. This July, Gotham FC sold out Citi Field in Queens, drawing over 42,000 fans in what she said was the biggest women's sports event ever in New York City.

Gotham FC announced in July that it would call Queens home starting in 2028 — a major upgrade from its current stadium in Harrison, New Jersey, which is difficult to reach from New York City by public transit.

One key to Gotham FC's success has been gathering feedback. Tisch Blodgett, who led marketing for fitness giant Peloton before starting Next 3, said learning from fans "makes the whole business smarter" and has been crucial to the soccer club's growth.

"Fan feedback is incredibly important to me — it's how we run our organization," Tisch Blodgett said. "After every game, we send out a survey to every person that attended, essentially saying, 'Did you like it? Would you recommend it to a friend?'"

Gotham FC's Net Promoter Score — which measures how likely customers are to recommend the brand to a friend — rivals Apple, Tisch Blodgett said.

"It makes every person in the organization understand what we're building towards in a much more efficient way," Tisch Blodgett said.

• While some companies are slashing head count, Google's is surging.
• The company had nearly 205,000 employees at the end of September.
• While Google has conducted layoffs, it has also ramped up hiring and acquired Wiz.

While AI may be driving some companies to slash their head count, Google's is soaring.

When Google reported its Q3 earnings on Wednesday, it said it had 204,757 employees for the quarter ending September 2026. That means Google added roughly 10,000 people to the payroll since the end of March.

The uptick in head count runs counter to another trend across the tech industry, where some of Google's peers are slashing their workforces. Meta has been on a cost-cutting odyssey for several years, while Microsoft recently offered voluntary buyouts to 60,000 employees.

Some of Google's head count growth can be attributed to mergers and acquisitions. On March 11, Google said it had completed its acquisition of cybersecurity firm Wiz, which had roughly 2,000 employees.

In January 2023, Google announced it would slash roughly 12,000 roles — around 6% of the workforce at the time — and has since made several smaller rounds of layoffs, Business Insider has reported.

While the head count has grown somewhat steadily since Q2 2024, it has accelerated since the end of 2025. Google also reported Wednesday that its quarterly revenue grew 25% from this period last year.

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• Instagram is offering some creators six figures to help make it a long-form video hub.
• The Meta platform is reviving its IGTV ambitions, allowing horizontal videos of up to 90 minutes.
• Creators are required to cross-post their long-form YouTube content to Instagram as part of nonexclusive deals.

Instagram wants what YouTube has — and it's willing to pay up to get it.

In an effort to persuade content creators to post long-form video on Instagram, the company is paying a select number of creators hefty sums, according to people familiar with the deals.

Not every deal is equal. The Meta-owned platform has offered select creators $50,000 to post long-form video to its new "Features" product, while others have been offered six-figure deals, some of which have reached $500,000, Business Insider exclusively learned.

"We've been public about the fact that we are funding Features content directly with some creators right now to support them," a Meta spokesperson told Business Insider. "The details of those deals are confidential, but we're excited to see the content going live."

On Monday, Instagram unveiled an overhaul of its video formats. Most importantly, it's resurrecting IGTV — a long-form video product Instagram launched in 2018 and sunset in 2022 — in the form of Features. The horizontal, wide-screen videos will exist within the Instagram app, and can be as long as a feature film: 90 minutes.

Long-form video isn't exactly what people are used to watching on Instagram. Reels, the platform's answer to TikTok's meteoric rise, has redefined the Instagram experience and is driving time-spent and revenue across Meta's apps.

YouTube, however, reigns king as the internet's destination for sit-down, longer-form videos.

Instagram knows this. The deals do not require exclusivity to Instagram, multiple people familiar with the agreements said; one person familiar with the offers said it's asking creators to post to Instagram any of the long-form content they publish to YouTube that same day.

Reza Izad, partner at Underscore Talent, which reps clients like "Subway Takes'" Kareem Rahma and Noah Beck, called the deals an "exciting opportunity" for creators.

"Every time there's a new feature in these apps that the company's promoting, people will have more opportunity to be seen because there's going to be algorithmic preference to this kind of content," he said. "And unlike short-form, there's not a lot of abundance."

Money, money, money

This isn't the first time Instagram has inked paid deals with creators to lure them to post more on Meta's apps.

Last year, Meta was paying creators thousands of dollars to post short-form videos to Instagram and Facebook in the midst of TikTok's potential ban. The company has tested several bonus programs paying creators for the performance of their Reels on Instagram, though those programs have dwindled.

Back in 2021, when IGTV was still part of Instagram's big video bet, it inked deals with creators, funding long-form episodic shows from creators like TikTok's "Sway Boys" and "Dance Moms" alum Nia Sioux. Briefly, IGTV had its own monetization program, too, which let some creators earn a cut from ad revenue on the format.

While Instagram is paying some creators directly, a big question looms over the creator economy: What about the rest of them?

A major draw of YouTube is its long-standing Partner Program, which pays eligible creators a share of the ad revenue generated by their videos. Even though YouTube has increased its eligibility requirements, the potential to turn a hobby or passion project into a cash-earning career has kept YouTube on top as the go-to video platform for creators.

It's no surprise, then, that when Instagram announced its video overhaul, creators immediately had questions about monetization.

"We understand the economics matter a ton, and are exploring multiple options to help long-form creators get paid," Instagram's top executive, Adam Mosseri, wrote in an X post on Wednesday.

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• The founder behind the "never-ending" cruise told Business Insider that problems piled up this year.
• The Iran war sent fuel prices soaring. Then Villa Vie spooked passengers by asking them for loans.
• Now founder Mikael Petterson says he is considering bankruptcy.

A financial whirlpool sucked the "never-ending" cruise under.

The founder behind the Villa Vie Odyssey told Business Insider that the Iran war fuel-price surge was the beginning of a "cascading effect" that led the cruise to shut down this week. Mikael Petterson, Villa Vie Residences' founder and executive chairman, said he's considering bankruptcy.

Villa Vie sold permanent cabins at prices ranging from $119,999 to $439,999, promising residents an endless cruise with stops at more than 400 ports of call and a global circumnavigation every three-and-a-half years.

Here are five business problems that brought the trip to an abrupt end.

1. Fuel prices soared.

In February, the United States and Israel launched a war in Iran. Fuel prices surged. The Odyssey uses marine gas oil, or MGO.

Villa Vie had typically paid around $600 or $700 per metric ton for the Odyssey's fuel, Petterson said. By March, the price of MGO in Singapore had soared to nearly $2,000 per metric ton, according to data from Ship & Bunker, a trade publication.

2. The company was too small to hedge.

Some publicly traded companies, like Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, have told shareholders this year that they have taken measures to blunt the impact of fuel-price volatility. Unlike larger cruise lines, Villa Vie didn't have the scale to absorb the higher prices, Petterson said.

"They're able to hedge and take away some of that risk, but we're too small of a company to do that," he said.

The ship changed its itinerary to spend more time docked at ports and conserve fuel, but it wasn't enough, Petterson said.

3. Villa Vie spooked its own passengers.

In April, Villa Vie wanted residents to help shore up its finances. The company asked them to loan Villa Vie money, offering them interest rates of 12% to 24%, according to a letter viewed by Business Insider.

Some residents got "scared," Petterson said. They sold their cabins to other people who wanted to live aboard. That made things more difficult for Villa Vie's sales team, which was still trying to find buyers for the remaining vacancies on the ship, Petterson said.

4. The company's reputation was damaged.

Some of the Odyssey's residents were content creators. In Substack posts and YouTube videos, they posted about their experiences, some positive and some negative, for the roughly two years that it sailed the world.

Some travel bloggers and social media posters blamed Villa Vie's management for the operation's financial troubles. The negative publicity made it harder to bring more people aboard, Petterson said.

5. The company struggled with cash flow.

The ship's original launch in 2024 was delayed for four months while mechanical problems — including issues with the aging ship's rudder — kept the ship stuck in dry dock. Preparing the ship for launch cost $15 million more than what Villa Vie had expected, Petterson said.

He said the operation was on track to get to break-even cash flow by the second quarter of this year — but the Iran war blew up that plan.

• A "never-ending" cruise was halted because of soaring fuel prices. Its founder blames the Iran war.
• Mikael Petterson says he's considering bankruptcy for his company, Villa Vie. "I feel awful."
• He says residents began to jump ship when the company asked them for emergency loans.

The founder of the "never-ending" cruise that stalled in Cambodia told Business Insider he's doing his best to right the ship.

"I feel awful," Mikael Petterson said when reached by phone Wednesday. The vessel's evicted residents are "counting on me to make the decisions here, and there's nothing else I'm focused on."

After a stormy two years at sea, he had a plan last week to keep the ship's finances afloat, he said.

With his company, Villa Vie Residences, Petterson had promised a new way of life: People could spend six figures to purchase one of 509 cabins on a luxury cruise ship called the Odyssey, and sail around the world for the rest of their lives.

Reality was different. Unexpected mechanical problems delayed the ship's launch for months. Some passengers were unhappy with their cabins. Then the war in Iran sent fuel prices soaring. Residents began to jump ship.

That began a financial whirlpool that sucked the ship under. The price surge was the beginning of a "cascading effect" that led Villa Vie to shut the Odyssey down on Tuesday, Petterson said. The company told passengers living aboard to leave the ship within hours.

"Nobody that's tried residential cruising has succeeded, and we've gone further than anyone else," said Petterson, Villa Vie's founder and executive chairman. "But I think we would have been absolutely fine — and we would have seen this through — if there was no Iran war."

Until last week, Petterson said, he was in talks with a potential investor and was expecting a new infusion of cash. When the deal fell apart, he said, the company was out of options. Now he's considering bankruptcy. He said he understood why residents said they felt shocked and heartbroken.

"I'm the villain in the story, but I'm doing everything I can to support the residents on a solution," he said.

A turbulent launch

The Villa Vie Odyssey was supposed to set sail from Belfast in May 2024. But it wasn't yet seaworthy.

Villa Vie Residences had retrofitted the three-decade-old ship and sold permanent cabins at prices ranging from $119,999 to $439,999. The company's pitch to residents was an endless cruise with stops at more than 400 ports of call and a global circumnavigation every three-and-a-half years. Buyers uprooted their landbound lives with plans to live out the rest of their days on a luxury floating hotel with a pool deck and spa.

Mechanical problems — including issues with the aging ship's rudder — kept the ship in dry dock, leaving some passengers stuck in Belfast for months. Preparing the ship for launch cost $15 million more than what Villa Vie had expected, Petterson told Business Insider.

Once onboard, some passengers were unhappy with their accommodations. Two passengers sued last year, claiming that the ship's living quarters and amenities weren't as promised. One of them also lamented the noise from a pickleball court installed over his cabin. Villa Vie has disputed the claims and said it honored the terms of its contracts. Both lawsuits are ongoing.

Petterson said the ship's first year-and-a-half at sea was "a ginormous undertaking" beset by financial challenges, but the company had put in place a plan for the operation's cash flow to break even by the second quarter of 2026.

Then, in late February, the United States and Israel launched a war in Iran.

Jumping ship

Fuel prices surged. The Odyssey uses marine gas oil, or MGO.

Villa Vie had typically paid around $600 or $700 per metric ton for the Odyssey's fuel, Petterson said. By March, the price of MGO in Singapore had soared to nearly $2,000 per metric ton, according to data from Ship & Bunker, a trade publication.

Unlike larger cruise lines, Villa Vie didn't have the scale to absorb the higher prices, Petterson said.

"They're able to hedge and take away some of that risk, but we're too small of a company to do that," he said.

In April, Villa Vie wanted residents to help shore up its finances. The company asked residents to loan Villa Vie money, offering them interest rates of 12% to 24%, according to a letter viewed by Business Insider. Villa Vie also changed the ship's itinerary, canceling stops at some ports to stretch its fuel supply, Petterson said.

Some residents got "scared," Petterson said. They sold their cabins to other people who wanted to live aboard. That, in turn, made things more difficult for Villa Vie's sales team, which was still trying to find buyers for the remaining vacancies on the ship, he said.

The Odyssey's passengers were mostly Americans; some of them were content creators. In Substack posts and YouTube videos, they posted about their experiences, some positive and some negative, for the roughly two years that it sailed the world.

Some travel bloggers and social media posters blamed Villa Vie's management for the operation's financial troubles. The negative publicity made it harder to bring more people aboard, Petterson said.

By the start of June, fuel prices were falling and things were looking up for Villa Vie, Petterson said. The Odyssey had sold 85% of its units, he said. Villa Vie announced plans to launch another residential cruise ship that would be bigger and better than the Odyssey.

Then in July, fighting between the US and Iran expanded. Fuel prices jumped, and the company's prospects plunged again, he said.

As fuel prices remained high, Villa Vie entered into talks with Oneil Khosa, the former CEO of Margaritaville's cruise line, to inject cash and join as an operational partner, Petterson said. Last week, the negotiations turned into "a game of chicken that just blew up in everyone's face," he said. Talks fell apart.

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

Villa Vie announced that the Odyssey was suspending operations while it was docked this week at the port of Sihanoukville in Cambodia. The price of MGO in Cambodia is now $2,200 per ton, Petterson said, and in Manila, it is even higher.

Passengers told Business Insider they were given only eight hours to disembark.

Barbara Fiegel, 62, who had lived with her partner aboard the Odyssey since December 2024, returned to the ship with her partner later that evening and the following day to pack their belongings.

"I couldn't stop crying," she said.

Petterson said the company could undergo a court-supervised restructuring that would allow management to remain in control, or it could have to liquidate.

"We just don't have the financial ability to sustain normal operations for the time being," he said. "So we're protecting the asset and laying it up until we can find a solution going forward."

Petterson expressed pride in the "community of almost 400 residents" that sailed around six continents. He said letting them down felt "incredibly deflating."

"I'm working day and night to find a way to get through this," he said.

Joshua Nelken Zitser contributed reporting.

Have you spent time on the Villa Vie Odyssey as a cabin owner, renter, or staff member? If you have a story to share, get in touch with us at jzitser@businessinsider.com.

• Charles Lamanna, head of Copilot, Agents, and Platform, just took over Office and Teams.
• Teams within his new combined unit have adopted flatter structures amid the rise of AI agents.
• He's also enforced a stricter RTO for senior staff, and offered employees relocation to major hubs.

Microsoft's head of the Copilot platform, AI agents, and now Office is making good on his promise to reshape how his teams work.

"The most important thing my team will do this year won't be any single product or feature we ship: instead, it will be changing how we work," Charles Lamanna, the new boss of this key Microsoft unit, wrote in August.

Lamanna has started requiring senior staff to work in offices four days a week, and he's offering relocation to major hubs, according to people familiar with the changes. Teams within his organization have also reorganized to a flatter structure removing middle managers in line with Lamanna's views about how agentic AI is changing engineering.

"We're rethinking where managerial layers are critical and where flatter structures can enable faster decision-making, clearer ownership and greater autonomy," a Microsoft spokesperson said.

The moves offer an early look at how Microsoft is reworking its software empire for the AI age. Lamanna, who already oversees the company's Copilot and AI agent platforms, now controls the Office productivity software and Teams workplace chat service that are used by millions of workers.

Lamanna took over those groups earlier in October when the previous boss, Ryan Roslansky, announced plans to leave at the end of the year. Roslansky was seen as a successor to Microsoft veteran Rajesh Jha, who retired in July. Roslansky and Lamanna were two of the three executives who made up the new Copilot leadership team.

The changes come as CEO Satya Nadella reshapes the company around AI. Microsoft has been consolidating responsibility for its AI products, and a wave of senior executive departures has made way for a new generation of leaders.

"Span of control"

Lamanna's expanding responsibilities make him a key player in this leadership transition, giving him oversight of Microsoft's flagship workplace software and the AI tools that could change how customers use its products.

Recently, the Teams unit now under Lamanna reorganized by increasing the "span of control" for managers in engineering, according to two of the people familiar with the changes.

This refers to the number of employees who report to each manager, and it's become common for tech companies to flatten engineering organizations like this in the AI era, as coding tools and agents write more software.

The reorganization included converting managers to individual contributors, the people said. The idea is that agentic coding capabilities mean Microsoft needs fewer managers, according to one of the people. The team will now have a ratio of one manager per 12 individual contributors.

"Agentic coding capabilities have changed every level of the engineering function," Microsoft's spokesperson said. "Software engineers are no longer hand-assembling every line of code. Instead, they are now designing and directing the 'agentic coding machine' that helps build the product."

As AI makes it easier to build software, skills like making sound technical decisions, designing systems, ensuring quality and security, and understanding customer needs become more valuable.

"At the same time, some tasks that traditionally required managerial coordination, such as managing handoffs and orchestrating work across teams, become less central," the spokesperson said.

Other teams have implemented similar restructuring, the spokesperson confirmed.

RTO and relocation

Lamanna has also started reshaping where employees work. Last week, Lamanna's Copilot, Agents, and Platform (CAP) organization offered select US employees the option to relocate to offices at Microsoft's Redmond, Washington headquarters, San Francisco, or New York, according to three people familiar with the plans.

The people who spoke with Business Insider for this story asked not to be identified discussing internal matters.

Lamanna has also asked employees at the "partner" level and above — some of Microsoft's most senior staff — to start working in physical offices at least four days a week. The companywide standard is three days a week.

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• Microsoft lowered its 2026 capex forecast to $170 billion, down from $175 billion.
• CFO Amy Hood cited delays in third-party capacity as Wall Street scrutinizes returns on AI spending.
• Azure revenue jumped 48%, beating expectations, while Microsoft's headcount fell 2%.

Microsoft reduced its forecast for capital expenditure, a rare move in an industry that mostly continues to splurge more on huge AI investments.

The software giant said capex for the 2026 calendar year will be $170 billion from a previous forecast of $175 billion.

Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood gave the forecast on the company's fiscal first-quarter earnings call on Wednesday.

She said Microsoft was expecting new capacity to arrive from third-parties, but some of these "GPU-as-a-Service contracts" have been delayed until the second half of the fiscal year.

This likely refers to other providers of AI cloud services that use Nvidia GPUs to run their offerings. Microsoft has partnered with some outside providers to meet rampant AI demand.

Hood's comments could refer to a recent spate of AI data center project delays, which have mostly been caused by a lack of electricity, along with local opposition.

The CFO said Microsoft expects capex to accelerate in the second half of its fiscal year, as the delayed capacity kicks in.

Wall Street has become increasingly concerned the huge investments cloud companies are making to expand AI infrastructure. Microsoft last quarter kept its forecast unchanged, notable as many cloud giants have been steadily increasing their AI spending forecasts.

Overall, Microsoft reported $92.3 billion in revenue, up 19%, for the fiscal first-quarter ending Sept. 30. Azure cloud revenue was up 48% to more than $33 billion, surpassing Wall Street expectations.

Microsoft share were up about about 3% in after-hours trading following the earnings call.

Earlier this week, Microsoft offered a buyout to more than a quarter of its workforce. A Microsoft spokesperson told Business Insider on Wednesday that the company expects 5% of eligible employees at most to accept the buyout.

"We expect very few people to select this offer because of the growth opportunities here at Microsoft," Hood wrote in an internal memo viewed by Business Insider. Microsoft's headcount slipped 2% during the fiscal first quarter, the company reported.

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• YouTube's ad revenue fell short of analysts' expectations for the third quarter.
• Its parent reported $11.2 billion in Q3 ads revenue, under analysts' $11.43 billion estimate.
• The company said it now has 150 million YouTube Music and Premium subscribers, up from 125 million in March 2025.

YouTube's ad revenue growth slowed down, missing analysts' estimates in the third quarter.

Its parent company, Alphabet, reported $11.2 billion in third-quarter YouTube ads revenue, a 9% increase from a year ago. That falls below the $11.43 billion analyst consensus estimate. Its ads revenue growth also slowed from the previous quarter, when it pulled in about $11.1 billion, a 13% increase from the previous year.

Beyond YouTube, Alphabet missed expectations in other areas of its business, including on overall revenue. In a bright spot, it beat revenue estimates for its cloud business.

The company's shares were down over 10% in after-hours trading.

While YouTube's ad revenue was weaker than expected, it wasn't all bad news. The company said it now has over 150 million YouTube Music and Premium subscribers, up from 125 million in March 2025. The company said its subscriptions business was growing faster than ads.

YouTube has also been the envy of rivals in key areas like TV viewership. Its share of US television viewership was about twice that of Netflix in August, according to recent Nielsen estimates. Over a third of YouTube's third-quarter ad revenue came from the living room, Google's chief business officer Philipp Schindler said on Wednesday.

Netflix, meanwhile, walked back its full-year ad revenue expectations during last week's earnings. The streamer lowered its ad revenue forecast from $3 billion to $2.7 billion after experiencing delays around the rollout of its ad products. It laid off about 1,000 workers earlier this month.

This week, Instagram unveiled an overhaul of long-form video features seemingly designed to counter YouTube and bolster its presence on TV screens.

"Everyone in streaming is chasing YouTube, and even Instagram is going to pivot their strategy based on the success that YouTube's had," said Ross Benes, a senior analyst at EMARKETER, Business Insider's sister company.

• Microsoft is offering buyouts to about a quarter of its workforce.
• In an internal memo, Microsoft's finance boss said the company expects "very few people" to accept.
• Employees had been questioning the rationale behind the offer, the memo said.

Microsoft expects 3,000 or fewer employees to accept the buyout it offered this week to more than a quarter of its workforce, a spokesperson told Business Insider.

The point was reiterated on Wednesday by Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood, who wrote in an internal memo that employees have been questioning the rationale behind the buyout.

"I know there have been some questions on the rationale behind the voluntary exit offer that we announced this week," Hood wrote. "Our intent is to offer employees agency if they choose to leave the company on their own terms. We expect very few people to select this offer because of the growth opportunities here at Microsoft."

The memo statement was part of a quarterly earnings email Hood typically sends internally to employees every quarter when Microsoft discloses its financials.

These memos mostly repeat what the company reports publicly, but this time Hood went out of her way to address the buyout offer, which caused quite a stir across the tech industry this week.

Earlier this year, Microsoft offered a different retirement buyout. In that situation, about one-third of eligible employees took the offer, and that helped Microsoft cut fewer employees in subsequent layoffs.

This week's buyout is getting a lot less uptake, according to the company.

Read the CFO's full memo

Team,

This afternoon, we announced our first-quarter financial results. We exceeded Wall Street expectations, growing revenue 19% and operating income 21%.

With the start of FY27, we also made an important change to how we report our business. We announced that we changed our reporting structure for the first time in 12 years, moving from three segments to two: Agents and Infra, and Devices and Consumer. This change better reflects how we are running the business today — from how we build products and allocate resources to how we create value for customers across the connected layers of our platform. To give you a sense of the two segments, looking back to last fiscal year, Agents and Infra would have represented about 81% of our revenue while Devices and Consumer would have been 19%.

A few highlights from the quarter across our two new segments:

• Agents and Infra grew revenue 23% this quarter
• Microsoft Cloud revenue was $63.9 billion and accelerated to 30%.
  Azure revenue increased 48% reflecting accelerating Foundry demand.
• Microsoft 365 commercial cloud revenue increased 18% in constant currency driven by growth in our premium seat offerings like Copilot and E7 as well as usage-based services across M365 Copilot and GitHub Copilot.
• Microsoft 365 commercial seats increased 5% and the number of customers with more than 50,000 M365 Copilot seats increased 8x year-over-year.
• Microsoft 365 consumer cloud revenue increased 17% with subscriber growth of 7%.
• Industry solutions cloud revenue increased 10% with growth in Dynamics 365 and LinkedIn Talent Solutions.
• Devices and Consumer declined 3% this quarter
• Search and advertising revenue ex-TAC increased 12%, with growth across LinkedIn, Bing, and Edge.
• Windows OEM and devices revenue decreased 22%, reflecting the prior-year benefit from Windows 10 end of support, inventory drawdowns by OEM partners, and weaker PC market demand.
  XBOX content and services revenue decreased 2%. Last week, we launched Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, as we continue to bring great games to more players across more devices.

Thank you for everything you did to deliver a strong start to the year. In particular, I want to thank our engineering and capacity delivery teams who are working to help us deliver more capacity faster and with high reliability. These teams are also using the capacity we have more efficiently to create room for us to better meet customer demand for the Azure platform, which continues to exceed our supply.

I know there have been some questions on the rationale behind the voluntary exit offer that we announced this week. Our intent is to offer employees agency if they choose to leave the company on their own terms. We expect very few people to select this offer because of the growth opportunities here at Microsoft. We'll continue to provide a broad set of options for employees to learn, gain new skills, and advance their careers here.

We have tremendous opportunity ahead of us. To meet the moment, we are focused on delivering great products and solutions that help our customers to achieve their many goals — security, innovation, growth — to name a few. Thank you for keeping positive, value-creating outcomes for our customers at the top of the list.

To hear more details about the quarter and our outlook for Q2, you can join live today at 2:30PM Pacific Time, listen on-demand, or read the transcript on the Investor Relations website. Finally, mark your calendars for Microsoft Ignite, on November 17-20, where we'll show how our innovation across AI, cloud, data, security, and Copilot is coming together to help customers transform their businesses.

With appreciation and gratitude,

Amy

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• Google's AI chip business is turning into a TPU-shaped headache for Nvidia.
• A blockbuster deal with Oracle will put Google's TPUs inside another hyperscaler.
• Is the market underestimating the potential of Google's chip business?

Earlier this year, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang downplayed the threat of other companies building competing AI chips, including Google.

"Without Anthropic, why would there be any TPU growth at all?" he said in an interview with podcaster Dwarkesh Patel, referring to Google's custom chips. "It's 100% Anthropic."

That is no longer the case.

On Tuesday, Google and Oracle announced a blockbuster deal that will see Google's TPUs, short for Tensor Processing Units, made available to Oracle cloud customers from next year. As the companies underscored in a joint announcement, it's the first time Google's TPUs have been offered on a hyperscaler's platform beyond its own.

Anthropic isn't the only one Nvidia should be worried about. OpenAI has a job listing for a software engineer to optimize its models for TPUs, and The Information reported Tuesday that OpenAI plans to buy TPUs from Google.

Meanwhile, several analysts have predicted Google's TPU business is about to explode as more companies hedge their bets with a multichip strategy — providing an opening for Google and others to further move onto Nvidia's turf.

Despite this, Nvidia's chip business still eclipses everyone else's, including Google, which is also a big customer of Nvidia's GPUs. Yet Google's AI chips, which the company began building more than a decade ago to power search and other products, might be poised for takeoff.

On Wednesday, during Google's third-quarter earnings call, chief financial officer Anat Ashkenazi said the company expects a "meaningful revenue ramp in 2027" in TPU sales.

Cloud chief Thomas Kurian also said on the call that TPU sales were a "meaningful contributor" to the company's Q3 financials.

In its IPO paperwork filed this week, Anthropic said it planned to spend $114.5 billion on Google compute between April 2026 and July 2033. While it didn't specify how much of that would go to TPUs specifically, it estimated spending between $125 billion and $150 billion on TPU capacity from Google and other providers.

In the same filing, Anthropic said it's also using Amazon's Trainium chips and AMD's GPUs, as well as chips from Nvidia and Google.

All told, this might be Nvidia's nightmare scenario coming true. If companies are increasingly using a multichip strategy, it could hamper Nvidia's pricing power.

Google declined to comment, and Nvidia and OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment.

TPU takeoff?

Google's TPU business may only be getting started.

In notes published this month, Japanese banking group Mizuho projected TPU revenue of $28 billion for 2026 and $67 billion in 2027. Mizuho said Google could see that number reach as high as $100 billion in 2028, while TD Cowen's John Blackledge projected it could reach $138 billion, accounting for 34% of Google Cloud's 2028 revenue.

That number is still dwarfed by Nvidia, which reported $96.2 billion in revenue in the previous quarter alone, and the market reacted with a shrug on Wednesday as its share price stayed flat.

Some analysts, though, think the market is underestimating Google, especially as more companies look to reduce their reliance on Nvidia's GPUs.

"We believe Google's TPU hardware business is emerging as a materially larger opportunity than what is currently reflected in consensus estimates," Mizuho analysts wrote in a note published October 18, adding that selling TPUs outright — rather than renting them from Google's own data centers — could ease Google's aggressive capex spending.

And even if that spending continues to soar — and right now, there are no signs the foot is coming off the accelerator — analysts at Bank of America said Google's cash-splashing looks "relatively efficient" compared to its peers, as TPUs continue to power the company's own AI efforts.

For Google, it's the payoff of a decade-plus investment in silicon that was originally designed to make Search smarter. It could also act as something of a buffer against damage to its core search business as AI agents eat Google's lunch, Mizuho also said this month.

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• AI coding startup Cogniton is fielding offers for a new funding round.
• The round could value Cognition between $70 billion and $80 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.
• The new offers come weeks after the company announced a $2 billion round at a $48 billion valuation.

Just weeks after announcing a new round of funding at a $48 billion valuation, AI coding startup Cognition is fielding new investor interest at a much higher price.

The startup has received offers valuing it at between $70 billion and $80 billion and is seriously considering a round before the end of the year, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The talks around the financing are still early, and valuation targets could still change.

Founded in 2023 by Scott Wu, Steven Hao, and Walden Yan, Cognition is best known for Devin, an AI coding agent designed to automate software engineering tasks. The San Francisco-based company's existing investors include a16z, Accel, Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, Elad Gil, and Pear VC.

Cognition's rapid valuation climb underscores the investor frenzy around AI coding, one of the hottest and most competitive corners of the AI market. As companies race to sell AI coding agents that can take on more of the work engineers do, investors are placing increasingly expensive bets on the few startups they think could emerge as leaders.

A $75 billion valuation wouldn't be so far-fetched, as SpaceX just acquired fellow AI coding giant Cursor for $60 billion a few months ago.

Last month, Cognition was drawn into a public feud with rival Factory AI, which accused Cognition employees of posing as job applicants to seek product information and faulted a former Factory adviser for meeting with Cognition executives. Cognition and the former adviser denied that confidential information was sought or shared.

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• The startup world is littered with companies that tried to become the next YouTube.
• Andrew Morse is trying it again, anyway.
• Morse's pitch: a curated app that gives creators incentives a reason to give it exclusive content.

Are you sick of the algorithms that serve you video on giant platforms like YouTube and TikTok?

Or are you a video-maker who's sick of the algorithms that don't serve your stuff to would-be watchers?

Andrew Morse would like to talk to you.

Morse, who spent years working in big media (Bloomberg, CNN) and most recently in local news (The Atlanta Journal-Constution), is building Phareo, a startup he hopes will one day rival internet media heavyweights. The secret sauce, he says: his own AI-powered discovery engine that will make both video-watchers and video-makers happy.

This is, to put it politely, a very tall order.

But it's still worth talking about, since Morse is homing in on a problem you hear a lot about in creator circles these days: the sense that people who make content are getting increasingly bad deals from platforms, because they can't control who sees their stuff.

Phareo (the name is an allusion to Pharos, the ancient lighthouse of Alexandria) says it can solve that problem by giving creators real incentives to make exclusive stuff for the company, via levers like revenue share and options. Morse plans to launch in January with an initial group of 25 creators. The app will start out as a free, ad-supported service, but he hopes to eventually offer a paid tier.

I talked to him this week about his plans, the shifting media landscape, and why he's increasingly worried about the creator economy — at the same time he's launching a creator economy app. This is an edited excerpt of our conversation:

Peter Kafka: You have a classic chicken/egg problem: Consumers are not going to use a new app unless it has compelling content they can't get somewhere else. 
Content-makers don't want to put their stuff there unless there's a big audience.

Andrew Morse: It is the most important question we have to solve.
It starts with dissatisfaction, and it starts with a belief from consumers and creators, that they're not being currently served as well as they could be. So we're working with creators who believe that there has to be a better alternative.

We don't really have anything to lose, given the direction that the platforms are taking and given the overreliance that their creative work has on algorithms that don't serve them. We're going to build with creators and try to build a super-passionate core and grow from there.

But YouTube, TikTok, Reels, etc do a great job of giving me tons of video. And they have unlimited content. How do you move me over from the platforms I'm already using?

It's an ironic conundrum — we're trying to solve the discovery problem, but we have to be discovered ourselves.

Over the years, I've seen many companies say they're trying to solve a discovery problem. 
But it doesn't seem like consumers have a discovery problem. It's the content owners who have a problem getting their stuff in front of consumers. What's the incentive for consumers to move to a platform content-owners like? 


There's an inherent assumption that consumers are satisfied with the platforms. I don't think that that's true. I think consumers are on these platforms because they have to be. Whether they're getting what they want in an efficient way is an entirely different story.

Any advice for your former CNN colleagues who are now working for David Ellison?

Stay focused on the work. It's always the journalism that matters. 
And the truth and the facts and great storytelling will always rise to the top.

We have seen a steady stream of journalists leaving places like CNN and starting their own thing. Do you think that trend accelerates or stalls out as people realize how difficult it is to do solo media for a living?

I'm concerned about this creator economy — which is really about about businesses that have built themselves on the back of YouTube. If you go back to 2016, 2017, a number of really clever, really creative businesses were built on the back of social platforms. When the algorithms changed, it became almost impossible for these businesses to stay afloat. It was hard for us at CNN, but we had a big enough business that we were able to mitigate and ride the wave. For these other companies, it was disastrous. 


I think you're going to see more and more people trying to go out on their own — and that's what scares me. 
Because I think that the sands may begin to shift a little bit.

• Dalet Labs, an AI commerce startup, is coming out of stealth mode with a $7 million pre-seed round.
• It's launching a new app called Scene, where you can scroll through shoppable, AI-generated images.
• Read the 5-page pitch deck the startup used to raise capital — months before finalizing its product.

Would you shop from a feed of AI-generated images?

The startup Dalet Labs is betting you will.

The AI-commerce company exclusively told CMO Insider that it raised a $7 million pre-seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and is launching its first product, a shopping app called Scene.

Founded by Omer Bar-Tal in 2025 after he left the AI video startup Runway, Dalet Labs recently came out of stealth mode. The startup raised its pre-seed in late 2025, before finalizing its product road map. In addition to Lightspeed, venture capital firm SV Angel and individual angel investors participated in the round.

Lisa Han, the Lightspeed partner who led the round, said that Bar-Tal has a combination of "video AI research expertise" and a "deep understanding of what consumers want."

Scene, which became available on the Apple App Store in the US on Wednesday, lets people scroll through a feed of shoppable AI-generated images. The app will be invite-only at launch, and isn't yet available on Android. While the images of people or scenes are AI-generated, the products themselves come from real brands across categories like fashion, home decor, and sports.

Bar-Tal envisions Scene as a tool people can turn to when they want to buy something but are still uncertain about exactly what they have in mind. It's similar to scrolling through Pinterest or TikTok in hopes of being inspired to buy something, but Bar-Tal said there's a key difference: You come to Scene to shop, not be entertained.

Bar-Tal sees Scene as a virtual "mall" where users can window-shop, save items to their cart, and make purchases.

Commerce has become an increasingly attractive use case for AI tools like chatbots and agents (including Meta's Muse). However, Bar-Tal argues that AI shopping tools are missing something.

"AI is amazing when you know what you want, but it's really important to actually have an ability to discover and to see things," Bar-Tal said. Agentic commerce, he added, "misses the point in shopping — which is essentially a delightful experience."

As a Scene user scrolls and interacts with products linked in the app, the feed adapts to what type of brands or items the user is interested in. Then, Scene uses AI to generate scenes with people wearing or using those items.

Bar-Tal did not comment on which third-party models Dalet Labs uses.

Bar-Tal said Dalet Labs doesn't see its product as replacing influencers, but rather as "complementary."

"The content here is AI, but it is not aiming to replace creators because we are not aiming to create entertainment," he said.

However, even if Scene isn't competing with influencers for entertaining content, it's still competing with their business model: making money by promoting brands' products and ultimately driving sales.

Scene has a catalog of hundreds of brands and retailers, Bar-Tal said, and is making more partnerships. The company did not share further details on what brands Dalet Labs has already established relationships with.

Bar-Tal said the company is also leveraging affiliate marketing to monetize the app early on, working with affiliate networks to earn from each in-app transaction.

Dalet Labs' Scene is entering a crowded market of apps offering people ways to discover brands and goods, like TikTok's growing Shop presence in the US or Pinterest's visual search prowess. Startups like Doji and Alta have also raised millions on the promise of tech that lets people try on clothes using AI-generated versions of themselves.

How will Dalet Labs get people to download an entirely new app?

Using influencers and social media to promote the app will be a core part of Dalet Labs' user acquisition plan. It also plans to roll out a coupon campaign during the holidays, offering new users discounts on purchases made through the Scene app. Bar-Tal didn't share whether the discounts would be funded by Scene or by brand partners.

The New York-based startup, meanwhile, is using its pre-seed funding to hire more engineers and researchers to build out Scene.

Read the 5-page pitch deck Dalet Labs used to raise its $7 million pre-seed:

The deck starts with background on the technology

Here's what the slide says:

For over half a century, every major shift in computing has been driven by an interface revolution.

The move from terminals to graphical user interfaces (GUIs) transformed computers from expert tools into mass-market products.

The rise of the web and mobile extended that pattern: each new medium made digital interaction more visual, intuitive, and consumable.

Text, by nature, demands active cognitive effort; Visual interfaces go a step further by allowing users to grasp high bandwidth information almost instantly with minimal cognitive effort.

Then it explains Dalet Labs' thesis

Here's what the slide says:

Today, artificial intelligence represents the most profound computing shift since the PC. Yet, paradoxically, our interface to AI remains stuck in the terminal era.

We converse with models through text prompts and receive text streams in return in synchronous manner. Our product thesis is simple and inevitable: AI requires a native GUI.

We believe the GUI to AI will not be code-based, but rather generated by media models.

It then outlines the competition

Here's what the slide says:

The core product of AI consumption platforms is inseparable from their textual chat interfaces.

For example, the OpenAI brand is strictly associated with the chat interface of ChatGPT.

Moreover, by decoupling the user interface from any specific model provider, we can integrate multiple frontier models (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or open-source systems) and focus our innovation on the new media generation GUI platform. This modularity becomes increasingly valuable as AI models are commoditized. In addition, their technical stacks are anchored in the code generation paradigm, in contrast to our focus on Media Models.

Finally, it introduces Dalet Labs' founder

Here's what the slide says:

Omer Bar-Tal

• Research experience from Weizmann Institute.

  • Built the first method for editing real-world videos using text
  • Papers in CVPR, ECCV, ICML, ICLR etc.
• Trained video foundation models (Google, Pika, Runway)
• Built creative applications with media models (eg video editing, reference-to-video, etc.)
• Led applied research teams and product launches

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Keep calm: We have a plan.

That's essentially been the adtech industry's response to Apple's latest crackdown on web trackers.

The workaround may only be a temporary fix, however.

Apple recently implemented new restrictions in its Safari browser designed to stamp out "identity resolution," a method used to track users across different devices and websites by linking data points such as IP addresses, email addresses, and other identifying information collected about them.

Adtech has largely united around a proposed solution: Move the identity resolution process so it takes place inside publishers' and adtech companies' servers rather than in the browser, where Apple has more control. Adtech industry execs have said the move will mitigate disruptions to publishers' revenue and measurement from Apple's blockers, while still allowing them to respect users' privacy choices.

Privacy experts, on the other hand, say that while the server-side shift might succeed temporarily, it's far from a permanent solution. Apple has made it clear that attempts to circumvent its tracking protections could trigger further restrictions on adtech companies.

"It's tough to predict how long Apple would need to find ways to block workarounds, but adtech companies that bet against the browser are in for a rude awakening at some point in the future," said Zach Edwards, a cybersecurity researcher and cofounder of the adtech transparency platform DecryptAds.

The stakes extend beyond the adtech companies whose technology Apple is blocking. Publishers and advertisers have increasingly relied on identity resolution to target specific audiences and to measure whether campaigns are working. If identity resolution becomes less effective, advertisers could shift more of their budgets away from web publishers and to platforms like Google and Meta that have reams of their own logged-in user data.

Anthony Katsur, CEO of the IAB's Tech Lab, which created the Trusted Server project, said its estimates show that the Apple-powered browser ecosystem accounts for 40% of total web traffic, which leaves a large chunk of potentially unaddressable ad inventory.

"That creates tremendous downside for media companies to then prove themselves to agencies and brands they work with that, yes, a consumer saw this ad, and they converted," Katsur said.

How Apple could thwart adtech's server-side solution

How could Apple block identity resolution if the data matching occurs only on servers outside its control?

There is a precedent. When Apple blocked third-party tracking cookies in Safari, some adtech companies used a workaround called CNAME cloaking. It made third-party trackers appear to Safari as if they belonged to the website a reader had chosen to visit — known as "first-party" activity. Apple soon identified and developed protections against that tactic.

Edwards said many server-side tracking systems still rely on cookies or other identifiers stored in a user's browser to recognize them across websites. Apple can block the collection of identifying information before it reaches the server.

Privacy-focused browser company Brave, for example, already blocks scripts that are known to collect and record information used for server-side identification, said Pete Snyder, the company's principal researcher.

Katsur of the IAB Tech Lab said the switch to server-side isn't an attempt to trick the browser.

"This isn't about circumventing consumer privacy preferences; this isn't about circumventing regulations; it's about moving the advertising stack to a publisher-controlled server-side solution that complies with legal regulations," Katsur said.

He added that through the Trusted Server, publishers can also strip out unwanted third-party tracking identifiers from ads.

Katsur acknowledged Apple was likely to clamp down on server-side identity resolution eventually, but that the tech giant risks breaking essential web functionality if it goes too far.

The consumer opt-out option

Some server-side matching may be impossible for Apple to stop through browser technology alone. If someone provides their home address to an e-commerce site for delivery of their purchase, Apple's Safari can't prevent the retailer from knowing it. The retailer could then potentially use that information to match the customer against other databases.

Snyder said it's why Brave supports consumer opt-out mechanisms like the Global Privacy Control signal, a browser setting that tells a website a user doesn't want their data sold to or shared with third parties for targeted advertising, a preference companies must honor where the law requires it. Starting January 1 next year, the state of California will require browsers to provide an easy-to-find setting that lets users opt out of having their personal data sold or shared.

"Protecting users against this kind of tracking requires 'privacy in depth,' or using a wide range of privacy protections, by default and automatically, to minimize how often users share identifiers, and to, whenever possible, block sites trying to collect those identifiers," Brave's Snyder said.

Moving identity resolution to servers may temporarily put the method out of Safari's current reach, but not necessarily out of Apple's sights.

"This is basically a cat-and-mouse game, but the cat in this instance is a trillion-dollar company controlling one of the most valuable user data supply chains in the world," Decrypt Ads' Edwards said.

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Hugo Veiga and Diego Machado — the former AKQA global chief creative officers — spent two decades building brands at some of advertising's most storied creative agencies. Their next bet: a new type of agency that wants to be paid not just in cash, but in a share of the businesses it helps build.

Veiga and Machado exclusively told CMO Insider this week that they have launched !F Creative Capital, a company that combines conventional commissions with equity partnerships and revenue-sharing arrangements tied to clients' sales.

Rather than charging an upfront fee alone, !F Creative Capital offers creative consultancy in exchange for equity in companies it believes can grow. For example, it took a stake in the superfoods brand Authentic Fruits in a deal that includes a three-year creative engagement, a share of sales, and additional equity tied to sales performance. It has equity in CheckMy.Music, an AI platform that scans songs for plagiarism, and an equity partnership on a new project led by former Chelsea FC and Real Madrid manager Carlo Ancelotti.

A long-held complaint on Madison Avenue is that agency holding companies prioritize businesses such as media buying — and, increasingly, data, technology, and AI services — because they are easier to package, measure, and sell repeatedly than bespoke creative work. Veiga and Machado said that !F Creative Capital was born out of a desire to create a model that more effectively ties the value of creative ideas to business results.

"In many of the creative industries, everyone is too busy doing decks, doing keynotes, and losing the connection with the final thing," Machado said.

!F Creative Capital has also launched its own brands, including SNIFF, a pet company that lets dogs smell food before their owners buy it, and Baitts, a toothpick brand.

Elsewhere, the company is coproducing a feature film set for release next year, and it's preparing to launch an eight-week "School of Creative Entrepreneurship" to help people turn their ideas into businesses.

While !F Creative Capital has taken on commission-based creative work for brands including Corona and Cristiano Ronaldo's Globe Sports Award, Veiga and Machado said they are reinvesting that money into the equity-focused side of the business and their in-house projects. !F Creative Capital is self-funded and has a team of around 15 people spanning seven countries, along with a broader network of contributors.

'You have an idea, and you give it for free'

Veiga said the long-term vision is for !F Creative Capital to become independent from commission work as it builds its own brands and effectively becomes its own client. The result might look more like a holding company for brands than the creative agencies where the duo made their name.

"A lot of times you have an idea, and you give it for free, or you push to make it happen without owning that," Machado said of the agency business.

Adland's creative agencies have explored similar equity-focused business models in the past. Uncommon, the London-based studio in which Havas acquired a majority stake in 2023, took equity in the compostable coffee pod company Halo and the finance app Communion. In 2010, former Deutsch exec Mike Duda cofounded the hybrid early-stage venture firm and creative agency that later became Bullish. Anomaly, now owned by Stagwell, began incubating and acquiring stakes in brands in the 2000s.

Brian Wieser, CEO of the advisory and consulting firm Madison and Wall, said that while the equity model still persists in the agency industry, the practice isn't common and mostly ties to the individuals running those companies because the skill sets are different.

"Most people who can do venture well focus on venture capital," Wieser said. "But the right person with the right relationships can make this happen."