Peter Thiel said that after Steve Jobs died in 2011, Apple hasn't innovated.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Peter Thiel said Apple hasn't innovated since the iPhone.
Thiel said Tim Cook hasn't taken the company in new directions.
The billionaire venture capitalist said eccentric CEOs like Elon Musk "are way better for society."
Peter Thiel, evidently, isn't a fan of the iPhone Duo.
In fact, the billionaire PayPal cofounder and tech investor said he hasn't been very impressed with much of anything that Apple has done since its eccentric founder, Steve Jobs, died of cancer in 2011.
"In my telling, it did nothing new after Jobs," Thiel said of the iPhone maker in a September interview with author Walter Isaacson for the "Builder's Podcast," which was released on Thursday.
"It turned out, yeah, the mobile phone was this giant invention — there was not that much more to do," he said. "Then it was just scaling and branding and building it out over 15 years or whatever."
Indeed, Apple has faced criticism for failing to innovate beyond the mobile phone and tablet, especially in the age of AI, where its "Siri" product is not as advanced as rivals from ChatGPT or Anthropic.
Jobs unveiled the first iPhone back in 2007 at a conference in San Francisco. Nearly 20 years later, Apple released the 18th iteration this week, with one slight caveat: This one folds.
That said, MacBooks are the de facto laptops for many an AI-nerd and normie alike. iPhones are ubiquitous, and the sleek AirPods design took hold when they were released in 2016.
Though Thiel told Maureen Dowd of The New York Times in 2017 that Apple's era was over, the company's stock price has grown steadily since then.
Thiel didn't pooh-pooh Apple entirely. He called it a "pure, well-run value stock," but lamented what he described as the loss of vision after Jobs' death.
"I would still say somehow Elon or Steve Jobs are way better for society than Tim Cook," he said.
Apple didn't immediately respond to a request for comment sent on Saturday.
A Autoridade Nacional de Emergência e Proteção Civil (ANEPC) confirmou este sábado, 24 de outubro, um ciberataque ao sistema de Recenseamento Nacional de Bombeiros Portugueses (RNBP), que permitiu o acesso não autorizado a dados pessoais. A aplicação foi entretanto suspensa e as autoridades estão a reforçar as medidas de segurança.
De acordo com a agência Lusa, o ataque informático comprometeu uma base de dados que contém cerca de 60 mil registos, incluindo informações pessoais e documentos de identificação dos bombeiros portugueses.
Perante a situação, a Proteção Civil enviou uma comunicação interna aos corpos de bombeiros e às respetivas entidades responsáveis, alertando para possíveis tentativas de fraude através de chamadas telefónicas, mensagens e outras comunicações suspeitas.
Nomes, moradas e números de identificação entre os dados acedidos
Segundo a informação a que a Lusa teve acesso, os piratas informáticos conseguiram aceder a vários tipos de dados pessoais armazenados no sistema.
Entre as informações potencialmente comprometidas encontram-se nomes completos, números do Cartão de Cidadão, identificação fiscal, números da Segurança Social e de utente do Serviço Nacional de Saúde.
A lista inclui ainda dados relativos a subsistemas de saúde, cartas de condução, estado civil, datas de nascimento, contactos telefónicos, moradas, fotografias e grupos sanguíneos.
Apesar da dimensão da informação envolvida, o presidente da Liga dos Bombeiros Portugueses, António Nunes, esclareceu que a aplicação não contém dados bancários.
Proteção Civil alerta para mensagens e chamadas fraudulentas
Na sequência do ataque, a ANEPC pediu aos bombeiros que mantenham uma atenção redobrada perante contactos inesperados que solicitem informações pessoais ou o acesso a páginas eletrónicas.
O alerta abrange diferentes modalidades de fraude informática, incluindo o phishing, que utiliza mensagens aparentemente legítimas para levar as vítimas a abrir ligações ou ficheiros maliciosos.
Também são identificados riscos de smishing, através de SMS fraudulentas, e de vishing, quando os criminosos recorrem a chamadas telefónicas para tentar obter informações confidenciais.
Outra das ameaças mencionadas é o quishing, um método que utiliza códigos QR maliciosos para encaminhar os utilizadores para páginas falsas.
Bombeiros devem confirmar contactos junto dos comandos
A Proteção Civil recomenda que qualquer comunicação suspeita seja confirmada diretamente junto da estrutura de comando do respetivo corpo de bombeiros, através dos canais habituais.
A ANEPC esclarece que as comunicações institucionais dirigidas aos bombeiros, nomeadamente para atualização de dados pessoais ou transmissão de informações, são normalmente efetuadas através das estruturas de comando.
Por esse motivo, os profissionais devem desconfiar de mensagens inesperadas que solicitem o preenchimento de formulários, a divulgação de dados pessoais ou o acesso a ligações desconhecidas.
Sistema com cerca de 60 mil registos foi suspenso
O Recenseamento Nacional de Bombeiros Portugueses é utilizado para gerir a informação dos profissionais integrados nos quadros de comando, ativo, de reserva e de honra.
Segundo António Nunes, o sistema conta com aproximadamente 60 mil registos, embora esse número não permita determinar quantas pessoas tiveram efetivamente os seus dados comprometidos.
O presidente da Liga dos Bombeiros Portugueses considerou ainda que a informação sobre o ataque deveria ter sido comunicada individualmente a todos os elementos inscritos na plataforma.
Entretanto, a aplicação foi suspensa e estão em curso procedimentos destinados a reforçar a segurança informática e a proteção dos dados pessoais.
A ANEPC garante que continuará a desenvolver as diligências necessárias para proteger os seus sistemas e preservar a confiança dos bombeiros nos canais oficiais de comunicação.
Para já, a principal recomendação passa por manter a vigilância perante contactos suspeitos, uma vez que os dados obtidos no ataque poderão ser utilizados em tentativas de fraude ou de usurpação de identidade.
The AI data center boom looks like it's running into serious trouble. Projects are being delayed, canceled, or abandoned. Electricity shortages are holding everything up.
But there's a twist: A lot of these data centers were probably never going to get built in the first place.
Bernstein Research analyzed thousands of planned US data centers and concluded that only about 35% of the announced capacity is likely to become reality.
The industry has a wonderful name for some of the more dubious projects: "Bragawatts."
These are enormous data centers announced by companies that often have little experience building them. Some haven't secured electricity, construction permits, or even customers.
Then there are the "ghost projects." Developers submit multiple requests for electricity connections, hoping at least one location works out. In Texas, these requests have reached more than five times the state's existing electricity supply.
No wonder the grid looks overwhelmed.
This doesn't mean the AI boom is fake. Far from it.
But there's a big difference between Amazon's very real problems and an inexperienced developer announcing a gigantic project that may never happen.
The AI data center boom is real, and so are the challenges of building all these facilities. But the sheer number of speculative projects may be making those challenges look bigger than they truly are.
Cybersecurity leaders talked with BI about the rise in demand for workers in the field.
MASTER/Getty Images
All hell broke loose this week after a security flaw in 70% of the world's websites was made public.
It was supposed to be kept under wraps as a fix was deployed, but one researcher jumped the gun.
Chainguard CEO Dan Lorenc told POLITICO why he decided to go public.
The exposure was immense, with AI multiplying the risks — and yet time-tested global cybersecurity procedures appeared to be functioning. Then suddenly, it all broke down.
The decision by a cybersecurity company on Wednesday to prematurely release information about a flaw in the popular PHP computer programming language left much of the web exposed to hackers, triggering a panic that brought to life months of warnings of how the AI-powered era could cause widespread damage.
The flaws in PHP, discovered using AI tools through a monthslong process coordinated by OpenAI, caused cyber agencies across Europe, the US, the UK, Australia and Canada to post urgent warnings Wednesday. Numerous governments took websites offline as a precaution.
While no major hacking damage was immediately apparent, the way the incident unfolded over 72 hours showed how easily cybersecurity processes can break down and the outsized consequences of cyber risks in the AI era.
The man who set off the chain reaction with the early release — Chainguard's CEO Dan Lorenc — quickly apologized in a LinkedIn post. But on Thursday, in an interview with POLITICO, Lorenc said he'd shared the information ahead of time because the flaw was already being exploited. Though others disputed that, Lorenc said he believed he'd seen enough evidence to invalidate an embargo set up to allow time to find a fix for the flaws.
While he disputed that his actions would have caused problems for other defenders, Lorenc said that the evidential threshold in these coordinated cyber defense systems is a "grey area."
The revelation of the PHP flaw brings out into the open what cyber officials have been bracing for since the arrival of the most powerful tools of artificial intelligence, which not only can be used to discover vulnerabilities but also to exploit them at scale.
The cybersecurity world's long-established protocols helped prevent disaster scenarios in which hackers would have successfully exploited the vulnerabilities to take control of numerous websites and access their data. But the scale and end-of-days potential of AI-driven cyber risks are now visible for the world to see.
This "is what happens when AI turns up a flaw that's been hiding for years," said Eylam Milner, cofounder and chief technology officer at cybersecurity startup Echo. The vulnerabilities, he added, are "about as serious as it gets for the web."
Origin story
Understanding how this week's emergency unfolded offers a glimpse at how companies and authorities are working to stave off attacks — and how much risk they face going forward.
The origins of the incident can be traced back as far as April, when leading frontier AI firm Anthropic unveiled Mythos, leading some in the cybersecurity world to worry that systems would quickly be overrun by advanced artificial intelligence, with potential for catastrophic events to ensue.
But while researchers did find more flaws in computer systems in the months after Anthropic and other AI firms like OpenAI released those models, they had little impact in the real world. Even the Hugging Face incident, a widely discussed hack that saw OpenAI's autonomous AI agents go rogue during an internal security evaluation, related more to the level of control AI companies exert over their models than their power to break into systems worldwide.
That changed this week after researchers unveiled the vulnerability in PHP, a coding language estimated to be integrated into some 70% of the web.
The process by which information about flaws is released among cybersecurity officials and affiliated companies is crucial. Through a long-standing practice known as coordinated disclosure, researchers and companies that identify flaws can find a fix and share it confidentially with agencies and others before releasing it to the public, meaning they don't hand malicious hackers the gift of a hole without a fix.
In the case of the PHP flaw, that process worked well, but not perfectly. Information about the bugs started to circulate ahead of the planned release time. Then, according to the PHP Foundation, Chainguard "unilaterally broke the embargo," which "disregarded weeks of work by many parties toward a coordinated disclosure." PHP Foundation executive director Elizabeth Barron told POLITICO by email that while it was "disappointed" with Chainguard, it hopes to "rebuild trust with them in the future to ensure we can continue to collaborate effectively."
After the leak — which meant information about the bugs was in the open before the fix was ready — confusion quickly ensued, with government bodies and private companies choosing to temporarily shut down their websites rather than risk potentially damaging breaches to their data and the sites themselves.
Early Thursday, Matthew Prince, the CEO of Cloudflare, an internet services company widely used by websites to block cyberattacks, which gives it a high level of visibility into what hackers are doing, said in a post on X that it had seen "millions" of attempts to exploit the flaw.
Cloudflare saw thousands in the 10 hours before the flaw was publicly announced, then tens of thousands in the 45 minutes after the announcement, hundreds of thousands within two hours, and now millions, Prince said.
Amazon's cloud division also said the flaw is "now being broadly exploited in the wild."
One senior US government cyber official said that federal authorities have been overwhelmed — and not just by PHP. The same day the world was racing to address PHP, they were also dealing with bugs in node.js, a widely used JavaScript framework, Fortinet, GitHub and Oracle.
"The fire department is fighting multiple fires at once," the official said, adding: "The good news is they're all one-story structures on fire, which the fire department deals with all day, every day."
More to come
Dauntingly, OpenAI said there's more on the way. "These bugs are among several significant vulnerabilities we've already found and are working to fix, and we expect similar findings to increase sharply in the coming months," the company said Wednesday in a statement.
Matthijs van Amelsfort, head of the Dutch cybersecurity agency, said in an interview that the job of keeping computer systems safe has been transformed by the advancement of AI. "As soon as the frontier models came out, that's exactly what we said: This will be the trend," he said. "And actually that's happening now."
Thomas Caspers, vice president of Germany's cyber agency BSI, concurred: "We expect that [to be] happening more and more during the coming months."
AI also ramps up the risks once the flaws are out in the open. Cyber agencies' recommendation that organizations take their websites offline was "really a drastic measure," Caspers said. "We wouldn't have done that a few years ago or so." But because AI has made it quicker and easier to exploit flaws, "we had to do that," he said.
At the same time, the use of advanced AI to detect the flaws may create a new level of protection against malicious hackers looking to take advantage of them. Caspers said that though his German agency has also seen attacks, it has not seen any successful use of the flaw by hackers.
"It seems a little bit more complicated than expected to exploit," he said.
Despite the fact that AI offers a new way to discover flaws, the work involved in keeping systems protected is more quotidian, with cyber agencies urging organizations to install the fix shared by the PHP Foundation, in a process known as patching.
"There are three things that you have to do right now," said van Amelsfort from the Dutch agency. "And that's patch, patch, and patch."
John Sakellariadis contributed to this report.
The Axel Springer Global Reporters Network harnesses the resources of the company's newsrooms to publish ambitious scoops, investigations, interviews, opinion pieces and analysis. It allows journalists — including those from POLITICO, The Telegraph, Business Insider, WELT, BILD, Onet and Fakt — to collaborate on major stories for an international audience of hundreds of millions across platforms: online, print, TV and audio.
There are clear parallels between the AI boom and the dot-com bubble, tech investor Paul Wick says.
But solid demand, strong earnings, and less mania make for a "healthier" backdrop, Wick said.
Seligman's chief investor brushed off Michael Burry's worries but flagged some trends to watch.
The AI boom has shades of the dot-com bubble, but fears of an imminent crash and mass unemployment are overblown, a veteran tech investor says.
At the turn of this century, there was an explosion in dot-com startups being formed, and a huge infrastructure buildout with telecoms "aggressively" spending on wired and wireless networks, Paul Wick told Business Insider in an interview this week.
The chief investor of Seligman Investments — a group within Columbia Threadneedle Investments that manages over $40 billion of assets and comprises a hedge fund, a mutual fund, and a venture capital arm — said there were clear parallels between that period and the current boom in AI startups and data-center spending. He also noted that energy prices and interest rates jumped then as they've done this year.
But Wick noted there isn't the same IPO frenzy now, or the same "frenetic environment" where stocks soar fivefold or tenfold in a day. He also said that by late 2000, a slowdown in IT spending was being forecasted for 2001, whereas enterprise spending on AI remains strong and recent tech earnings have been robust.
Simply put, the situation seems "healthier" now than in 2000, he said.
Business Insider asked Wick about Michael Burry's warnings this year around AI. "The Big Short" investor has called out aggressive accounting, circular financing, hidden debt, and overinvestment in depreciating assets like microchips as reasons to be skeptical that the boom has legs.
Wick said that Burry, known for predicting and profiting from the collapse of the mid-2000s housing bubble, has been "early or downright wrong on many other things."
Burry has previously defended his track record, citing his correct predictions and sharing charts showing the timing of his market calls.
As for concerns about Nvidia's efforts to grow the AI ecosystem by investing in data center developers and software companies, Wick emphasized that the chipmaker is "extraordinarily profitable."
He cast doubt on whether Nvidia should spend its spare cash only on buybacks, rather than bolstering its customers, especially as several of the industry's biggest players are working to develop their own AI chips to reduce their reliance on Nvidia.
But he also flagged some industry trends to watch, including enterprise clients opting to use older models or build their own, and token pricing coming under pressure as users embrace open-source models, raising questions over the size of the market opportunity for the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic.
"It used to be that a degree in computer science was a ticket to success," he said.
A better option today might be to learn a trade, as there's "booming demand" for workers such as electricians and HVAC technicians, and they can make an "incredibly good living" without having to go to a four-year college, Wick said.
He also took aim at the "doom-and-gloom notion that AI is going to eviscerate demand" for human labor. He described that worry as a "little premature" as nobody knows for sure how AI will affect entry-level roles in the future, unemployment is yet to soar, and there's always inertia when it comes to businesses and consumers changing their behavior.
Christie Hemm Klok for The Washington Post via Getty Images
Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale's wife has an interesting nickname for their AI agent.
She calls it "Tradbot," he said, a name inspired by the social media trend of tradwives.
The Lonsdales use their "Tradbot" for help with parenting.
What does Joe Lonsdale's AI agent and Ballerina Farm have in common?
Lonsdale, who cofounded Palantir before building his venture capital firm, told CNBC on Thursday how his wife, Tayler, uses AI — and the nickname she's given their agent.
"My wife has Grok Bot at home," Lonsdale said. "She calls it the 'tradbot' for tradwife."
For those unfamiliar, a tradwife is a woman who embraces traditional gender roles, such as supporting her husband with household work and taking a primary role in raising kids. Some of these tradwives become influencers, posting videos of their ornate meals or gifts for their husbands.
The Lonsdale family's "tradbot" helps them manage parenting duties for their six children. Lonsdale said the AI agent tells them about health appointments and activities.
He asked the "tradbot" to help his two-year-old break up with his binky. "It's telling me when to and when not to give it to him," Lonsdale said.
Parents have been employing AI for all kinds of use cases. One mom of two previously told Business Insider that she sends voice memos to Claude to help organize her life. Another said that she built AI agents to help manage schedules and school emails. Business Insider's Amanda Hoover declared mom, dad, and AI the "modern parenting throuple." The debate of how much — if any — AI should be involved in parenting continues to rage online.
Lonsdale is a vocal proponent of AI, having invested in it heavily through his venture capital fund, 8VC. During September's AI extinction freak-out, Lonsdale reassured the public: "The world is going to be alright, guys."
Clearly, Lonsdale's use of AI has extended beyond the office. "My wife's definitely using it at home," Lonsdale told CNBC, "and we're using it a lot at work as well."
Frutiger Aero design combines old-school tech with green and blue natural imagery.
Sammy Conti/@bwuubbles on Instagram and TikTok
Frutiger Aero, a Gen Z favorite, combines early internet nostalgia with a utopian tech vision.
Fans say the aesthetic represents a "future that was promised" by tech but never arrived.
Some recent tech releases have hinted at a Frutiger Aero revival.
Looking at 22-year-old Sammy Conti's room is like looking into a fishbowl.
Shades of blue fill the space, interspersed with neon green and the occasional pop of orange or yellow. Vines, bubbles, and jellyfish hang from the ceiling. Moving lamps are everywhere: lava lamps, bubble lamps, aquarium lamps with roving tropical fish. Then there are objects that feel out of place: a purple Game Boy Advance, Nintendo 64 cartridges, Wii and PlayStation game cases hung like art on a gallery wall, and a DIY mirror in the shape of an old Microsoft Windows logo.
The confluence of nature and old-school tech isn't random. It's Frutiger Aero, an aesthetic inspired by the early internet, embraced by Gen Zers who say it represents a future that was promised but never arrived — one where technology is a source of inspiration and fuel for creativity, coexisting with nature and helping us ascend to our highest selves.
"You grow up thinking the world is going to be this green utopia where we coexist with nature and have technology and it helps us," Conti told Business Insider. "Then as I started getting older, things became very sleek and modernist, very gray."
For Conti, whose Frutiger Aero content has earned her more than 700,000 followers across Instagram and TikTok, the aesthetic represents a promise tech abandoned. "We could have lived in that future," she said. "It could have been taken care of responsibly in a way that doesn't take people's jobs, doesn't pollute the environment, but it's not."
A fervent online community has formed around the term after it first gained traction in 2023, according to Google Trends data. There's an active Discord and Subreddit, plus millions of views for #frutigeraero on TikTok.
Sofi Xian, a researcher and founding member of an online community called the Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute, coined the term Frutiger Aeroin2017 to describe a corporate tech aesthetic prevalent from the mid-2000s through the early 2010s. Some defining characteristics included glossy surfaces, glass or transparent materials, and macro photos of grass. "Frutiger" refers to a specific typeface, while "Aero" was Microsoft's name for the interface design of its Windows Vista operating system, which came out in 2006.
"Nobody at the time really thought it was cool," Xian said of the design style. "It was a corporate product. It was sold to us."
The "Bliss" image used in Microsoft Windows XP is beloved by Frutiger Aero fans.
Kevin Lee/Getty Images
The recent embrace of Frutiger Aero remains somewhat of a mystery to Xian, who says the term has blossomedwell beyond what she first documented. Her book on the style, "Archaeology of a Promised Future," is set to come out in November.
The modern version of the aesthetic still incorporates some of the classic elements, and then some. "Bliss," the iconic photo of rolling green hills beneath a bright blue sky with clouds — the default wallpaper on Windows XP upon its release in 2001 — remains an almost sacred image to Frutiger fans. Conti recently made a pilgrimage to the area in Sonoma County, California, and called it "just as beautiful as it is in the photos."
The future that never showed
"The future that was promised" is a central theme in the world of Frutiger Aero and is frequently invoked alongside images of clean, glistening skyscrapers set against grassy fields.
"It's really a vision of technology that is quite different to what we have," Maria Gemma Brown, a cultural studies researcher at the University of Queensland, told Business Insider.
Many young people now see technology as bland, lifeless, addictive, or even sinister. AI is increasingly associated with war, mass surveillance, and environmental degradation. Data centers, one of the most controversial physical manifestations of modern tech, face fierce opposition over environmental concerns.
Richy Srirachanikorn, a Ph.D. candidate at Concordia University, has interviewed more than 30 people in the Frutiger Aero community. He said it's about nostalgia for a feeling more than about the specific objects or design that inspired it.
"Whatever this aesthetic was as a kid, it made me optimistic, not about the future, but about the present," he said was how the people he interviewed described it.
That could help explain why it's especially appealing to Gen Z, a generation rife with concerns about environmental, technological, and financial doom. Srirachanikorn said he found Frutiger Aero is used almost as a "coping mechanism" and the associated online communities as places to take "respite from the uncertainties of the world."
Apple computers and laptops around the turn of the century came in translucent materials and bright, eye-catching shades.
Getty Images
Lovers of Frutiger Aero are also rejecting a broader design shift toward minimalism and neutral colors. In consumer tech, translucent clamshell laptops and bright pink MP3 players have given way to sleek, uniformly gray designs, as if they're explicitly meant to disappear into the background of our lives.
"I feel like products had almost a personality. Which color you picked or what design you picked was a loud extension of you," Conti said, adding that now it feels like everything merely wants to "fit in."
The old-school tech may also represent a level of agency that feels unattainable now, Srirachanikorn said. In the early 2000s, consumer tech companies may have embraced bright colors and images of nature to make their products more appealing as they still needed us to buy in. Today, their products are almost impossible to escape.
Hope for a new bloom
Austin Horey, founder of the New York-based brand Unjust Jewelry, makes a range of products inspired by Frutiger Aero and similar strainsof nostalgia. He's sold over 10,000 bottles of a Frutiger Aero-inspired fragrance — oceanic, clean, soapy — that comes in a box that, when opened, plays an original Frutiger Aero-inspired song.
Horey said not only is there a huge appetite for Frutiger Aero content and products, but that major tech companies seem to be taking notice. His work has been embraced by an icon of the Frutiger Aero movement: Microsoft. When he released a Windows XP bracelet featuring the classic application icons from the operating system, the company partnered with him to make a necklace as well.
Fans of Frutiger Aero celebrate every time Big Tech makes a move they think signals a return to the aesthetic, like Xbox introducing a new glossy neon-green logo and the release of the budget-friendly Apple MacBook Neo, which comes in a bright yellow-green. Apple's introduction of the Liquid Glass design last year also set off the Frutiger Aero antennae. Microsoft even posted a TikTok suggesting the design was reminiscent of Windows Vista.
A selfie Sammy Conti took with an iPhone 4 she bought on eBay for taking old-school photos.
Sammy Conti
Conti said the colorful MacBook Neo was the most Frutiger Aero product a tech company had released in years. While she's been disappointed in modern tech, the underlying vibe of Frutiger Aero is one of optimism, and she still sees the ideas behind it as something to strive for, "especially as Gen Z moves into these positions of power as we get older."
"I think it's important not to forget what it still could be," she said.
Business Insider wants to hear from moms who work for Uber and Lyft.
: Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Being a mom can be challenging and expensive.
Some have turned to apps like Uber and Lyft to make extra money — or as their main source of income.
Fill out our survey if you're a mom who does gig work.
Uber and Lyft often talk about the flexibility of working as a driver on their apps.
That aspect of the gig has attracted moms, among other people who often want to earn money outside a 9-to-5 schedule. The job can be appealing to mothers who need to juggle school drop-offs, childcare, and other obligations of parenting.
Others, including single moms, say they feel stuck in ride-hailing work and end up having to drive for Uber or Lyft at set times anyway, depending on when the most passengers need rides.
With costs like childcare and college rising, Uber and Lyft offer some moms a way to make extra money — if they can earn enough on the apps and keep costs like gas and car maintenance under control.
Business Insider wants to speak with moms who drive for Uber, Lyft, or other ride-hailing apps. We want to hear about how you combine the gig with taking care of your kids, including both what's working and what isn't. Please fill out the survey below.
Vercel's Tom Occhino, left, with Tools for Humanity's Tiago Sada at an event in San Francisco in April.
Kimberly White/Getty Images for Tools for Humanity
Everyone complains about AI-generated junk.
But decades of sloppy human-written software may be a much bigger problem.
This week's "Black October" freakout was caused by human slop, not AI.
The internet has a slop problem. And for once, we can't blame AI.
Most of us spend hours online every day without thinking much about the software holding everything together. We assume somebody, somewhere, has made sure it all works properly.
So it probably came as a shock this week to discover just how vulnerable some of that software is.
The cybersecurity freakout dubbed "Black October" has inspired warnings about AI-powered hackers, digital catastrophe, and even advice to stockpile cash and canned food.
At first glance, AI looks like the villain. But this is largely a human-made mess.
Here's the problem.
The internet runs on decades of software, some of it containing security weaknesses that have been overlooked, tolerated, or simply left unfixed.
For years, that was a manageable gamble. Fixing software takes time and money. Exploiting obscure weaknesses often required considerable expertise. Companies could convince themselves that the risk wasn't worth worrying about.
AI is changing that calculation. Someone who once needed years of training to hunt for weaknesses can now get help from an AI model. These tools can also examine software at speeds that humans can't match.
Suddenly, all those problems we've been ignoring look more urgent.
"Over the last 10 years the risk acceptance process has morphed from a way to accept risks to enable the business, to a way to justify never fixing security issues," Joel de la Garza and Zane Lackey, partners at a16z, wrote on Friday.
That's quite an indictment. The result is a recent surge in published vulnerabilities.
This looks like AI is creating new security problems. But it's actually AI exposing weaknesses that humans left behind.
Slop irony
The irony is delicious. We've spent the past couple of years complaining about "AI slop." Turns out human slop can be pretty consequential, too.
"The funny thing is everyone was saying AI slop code will cause a cyber crisis but it's actually all the old human slop causing it and the AI is just cleaning it up," software engineer Ben Kaufman wrote on X on Thursday.
"Humans have been the ones writing and reviewing each other's code for decades," tech founder Anant Jain wrote on X. "If we're being intellectually honest and holding ourselves to the same bar we hold AI to, we'd have to admit that we haven't been all that good at it either."
Humans are sloppy
Anyone who's worked with other humans for a decade or two knows exactly how this happens.
It's Friday afternoon. You've almost finished a project. You could spend another few hours making it perfect, or declare it 90% done and head off to that dinner party. We've all been there.
AI agents don't have dinner parties. They don't get tired on Friday afternoons. They can keep searching, testing, and trying again. That persistence is now colliding with an internet built by busy, imperfect humans who often settled for "good enough for now."
A tragedy of the commons
There's another wrinkle here, though, and it's an important one.
Much of the software underpinning the internet is freely available for anyone to use. Some of it is maintained by volunteers or small groups of experts, even as enormous technology companies depend on it.
In 2020, the cartoonist Randall Munroe captured this absurdity in an xkcd comic. Modern digital infrastructure still rests precariously on tiny foundations.
It's funny because it's uncomfortably close to reality. Take the specific PHP problems from this week. These flaws have existed for years, and the PHP Foundation acknowledges that limited resources and disagreements over fixes contributed to delays in fixing them.
Tom Occhino, chief product officer at Vercel, brought up Munroe's cartoon during my recent interview with him.
He explained that AI is finding weaknesses even in software that the industry has treated as dependable for decades.
This is partly a version of the tragedy of the commons: Everyone benefits from a shared resource, but no one has sufficient incentive to take responsibility for maintaining it.
And let's be clear: The volunteers keeping essential software running aren't the villains here. The companies benefiting from their work have a much greater responsibility.
Occhino thinks AI could help solve the problem it is exposing.
He described an idea being discussed at Vercel: Create a foundation or coalition that funds efforts to identify vulnerable software and replace it with safer alternatives.
"We need a consortium. We need a coalition," he told me.
He suggested companies could contribute computing resources and AI tools to the effort. Nothing has been formally announced, but the idea is compelling.
Indeed, OpenAI's Patch the Planet effort is an example of what's possible.
Rather than simply using AI to create more software, the industry could use it to repair what already exists.
Occhino put it nicely: Companies need to spend less time chasing new ideas and more time asking how to make existing systems "just work really, really well."
That's a better response than panicking about the imminent collapse of the internet.
AI didn't create decades of neglected software. We did. Perhaps it's time to clean up our own slop.
The UN food agency helping Palestinians and others in need across the world has come under scrutiny for its contract with Palantir – the controversial US tech and AI company used by various international border police and militaries to sort data and better identify targets.
The UN’s food agency, the World Food Programme (WFP), prolonged its contract with Palantir in July, prompting civil organisations to urge the end of these agreements in a letter published on Friday (23 October).
Some 3,000 European citizens have written to the WFP’s leadership, calling for the agency to end its Palantir partnership.
The WFP holds one of the biggest biometric databases in the world, with millions of its records containing information about vulnerable populations.
WFP is effectively supporting a company that undermines its own operations in Palestine by helping kill civilians for another client, which is “a very strong contradiction,” Giulio Carini, head of campaigns at an NGO WeMove Europe told EUobserver.
“On one hand, you’re feeding people of Gaza, but then, but on the other, you’re using software from a company whose technology is allegedly also being used to kill them” he added.
As many as 1.1 million people are reached by the WFP in Gaza each month, out of the 1.4 million facing acute food insecurity. The organisation is complaining that it had to scale down its food assistance in Gaza and the West Bank due to a lack of funding.
The WFP has argued that its use of Palantir’s software to compile its datasets and make better decisions has saved them $50m [€45m] that would otherwise be spent on inefficient management of its resources.
This article continues, but the full version is available only to EUobserver.com subscribers. Visit account.euobserver.com/membership
The design platformlaunched Canva Craft on Thursday, its first image-generation model, similar to those from Google, Meta, and OpenAI.
Users can access Craft through Canva’s Dream Lab, including with free accounts, though it is subject to AI usage limits. You’ll need to sign in to a Canva account to get started.
In the release announcement, Canva said the tool plans a design’s layout, proportions, and text before generating an image, an approach that aims to help it produce legible lettering and accurate details.
The company also said that the model was trained on human-designed Canva templates, including posters, menus, and presentations, rather than photographs.
To test how Canva performs, Business Insider created three image generation prompts with escalating difficulty levels — from designing a simple greeting card to creating a photorealistic image from scratch.
Here is how Canva's brand-new image generation tool stacked up against three of the most powerful models.
Canva did not respond to a request for comment.
Starting off with an illustration
Canva's response to a greeting card prompt (left), compared to ChatGPT (middle) and Gemini (right).
Business Insider
We started off simple with a prompt for a birthday card.
Create a cartoon "Happy Birthday" greeting card for a friend named Jessica who has pink hair, brown eyes, likes to wear paisley, and is turning 28 years old in November.
Surprisingly, Canva, the design platform, fell short in its design of the birthday card, from the awkward font to the outsize head of the cartoon character. It didn't even bother to include any paisley.
By comparison, ChatGPT and Muse understood the assignment.
ChatGPT guessed that the recipient's favorite color might be pink, while Muse thoughtfully wove in cozy fall elements for the November birthday girl.
Muse wove in cozy fall elements for the November birthday girl.
Screenshot/Business Insider
Meanwhile, Gemini took the request literally and produced an image of an actual card. Extra points!
Winner: Muse
Editing an image
The request and original image (left). Canva's results (right).
Screenshot/Business Insider
For the second task, I tested the AI models' ability to identify an element and place it in a brand-new setting.
Edit this image of me holding a necklace pendant. Take the red garnet pendant off my hand and make it look as if it is displayed in a vitrine in a jewelry showroom.
Canva did a great job of identifying the pendant and creating an atmospheric setting, but, like Gemini, it depicted the jewelry in a way that defied physics and common sense. It would be unrealistic for a pendant to float in the air or sit propped on a metal pole.
ChatGPT (left), Muse (middle), and Gemini (right).
Business Insider
ChatGPT and Muse once again outperformed other models in understanding how things typically look in reality. Muse, however, made some alterations to the pendant, which I didn't ask for.
Winner: ChatGPT
Creating a photorealistic image from scratch
Canva's depiction of a cat perched atop a gothic castle.
Made with Canva/Business Insider
With Halloween approaching, I asked for a realistic depiction of my favorite animal.
Generate a photorealistic image of a long-haired orange tabby cat in a Halloween costume with bat wings, perched on the edge of a gothic medieval castle under the full moon and a starless night sky.
Though the cat's fur looks a little too strandy and high-contrast in Canva's creation, no components are missing or malformed, and the image composition pretty much matches the quality of Muse and Gemini.
The clear winner for me in this round, however, would be ChatGPT.
Gemini (left), ChatGPT (middle), and Muse (right).
Business Insider
Not only is the cat's posture majestic, but the soft glow on his left side is extremely realistic, and the white balance is well done. There are also clouds softly cradling the moon, which could be a response to my request for a starless sky.
Winner: ChatGPT
Overall, it's evident that Canva still has a lot of room to grow compared to other models, especially if graphic design is its focus. For now, I'll stick to moving components around by hand.
Ukraine said Friday it is still experiencing restrictions on the Starlink satellite system, contradicting a claim by US President Donald Trump that access had been fully restored. Trump said he had not yet spoken with SpaceX chief Elon Musk about the issue.
Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has reached an arrangement with the company to help cover the cost of a proposed California wealth tax targeting billionaires. Zuckerberg had previously said he would consider leaving the state if the levy took effect.
Apple shares are trading near record highs and closing in on Nvidia's market capitalization, putting the iPhone maker on track to reclaim the title of world's most valuable company. Upcoming quarterly earnings could be the catalyst that pushes Apple's valuation past its AI-chip rival.
The initiative will focus on resilient communications, navigation, and onboard autonomy, as Sine Engineering specializes in producing satellite-independent navigation software, enabling drones to fly without relying on GPS.
Ukraine's air force has discussed the F-16 Block 70/72 with US manufacturer Lockheed Martin, which then gave President Zelenskyy a model of one
The Block 70/72 is smarter and tougher than Ukraine's ex-European F-16 Block 15 Mid Life Updates, but that doesn't mean the newer model is a major priority
The Ukrainian air force needs munitions more than it needs new airframes
When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met a Lockheed Martin team led by Orlando Sanchez Jr., head of its aeronautics division, in Kyiv on 19 October, the talk was of Patriot interceptors and of repairing the Ukrainian air force's small but growing fleet of ex-European F-16 fighters inside the country. Lockheed designed the F-16 and still builds it.
But the Lockheed officials may have had other things on their minds. They gave Zelenskyy a scale model of a new and improved F-16 variant in Ukrainian livery, according to a photo posted by the MilitaryNewsUA account.
In late September, Ukraine's air force commander, Lt. Gen. Anatolii Kryvonozhko, and Lockheed discussed a possible move to newer F-16s. Now we have a clearer idea what those F-16s might look like—and what they might be capable of. The model Lockheed officials gave to Zelenskyy appears to be based on the Block 70/72 version of the classic supersonic fighter that Lockheed manufactures at its factory in Greenville, South Carolina.
A model of the F-16 Block 70/72 fighter that Lockheed Martin representatives gifted to Volodymyr Zelenskyy during their personal meeting yesterday. pic.twitter.com/tprj5yuj2z
It's a world-class jet. But a pricey batch of factory-fresh Block 70/72s isn't actually at the top of the Ukrainian air force's wish list. Not as long as the air force's existing warplanes lack munitions.
The Block 70/72 boasts a better radar, more fuel capacity, and a tougher airframe compared to older F-16 models, which have been flying since the late 1970s. The F-16 is still one of the most numerous fighter types in US Air Force service. Surplus 1980s-vintage F-16s from Denmark and the Netherlands make up the bulk of the Ukrainian air force's front-line fleet. Norway's six are still being refurbished, and Belgium's are coming.
Whether Ukraine ever gets new F-16s is anyone's guess. Kyiv would need to pay around $100 million per copy, or find an ally to finance the purchase. Either could be a heavy lift. And to be sure, Ukraine has options as it rebuilds its battered air force. Sweden is donating 16 older Saab Gripens, the first due early next year, and Kyiv plans to buy 20 newer ones. Kyiv has negotiated to buy 16 Dassault Rafales from France, which may not arrive until 2028. Belgium has promised as many as 53 older F-16s, the last of them perhaps not until 2029.
Ukrainian F-16s. Ukrainian air force photo.
Welcome jets
But new Block 70/72 F-16s would be welcome. The Block 70/72 builds on what already makes the F-16 great: its agility, flexibility, reliability, excellent electronic warfare systems, and compatibility with a wide array of munitions.
Where the Block 15 Mid Life Update F-16s Ukraine currently flies have the older analog AN/APG-66(V2) radar, the Block 70/72 has a digital APG-83 active electronically scanned array radar. It can also carry overwing conformal fuel tanks for extra range.
Perhaps most exciting for the Ukrainian air force, a newly made Block 70/72 is good for 12,000 hours of flight: enough for about 30 years at 400 flying hours a year. An aging Block 15 has a structural life of about 8,000 hours, and Ukraine's jets fly hard. Zelenskyy has said about half of them spend long stretches abroad for repairs, many at Sabena Aerospace Engineering in Belgium, a process that can take months.
Ukraine F-16 Pilots Rationing Missiles as Russian Attacks Intensify | NEWSMAX2
Ukraine’s American-made F-16 fighter jets are defending the skies against Russian drones and cruise missiles — but a critical shortage of U.S.-made missiles is putting that mission at risk.
Newer F-16s require less maintenance. They can fly and fight more often. In that sense, 50 Block 70/72s are worth more than 50 Block 15s.
But the availability of airframes isn't the biggest problem in the 107th Aviation Wing, the Ukrainian air force's sole F-16 unit. The wing is desperately low on air-to-air missiles. Its pilots often resort to gunning down Russian drones and cruise missiles with the F-16's built-in 20-mm cannon—a risky tactic given how close a fighter must get to its target to make use of its gun.
While a few billion dollars' worth of fresh F-16s could keep the 107th Aviation Wing in fighting shape for decades to come, fresh airframes aren't actually the most urgent priority. Given a choice between getting new F-16s or getting substantial supplies of missiles for its old F-16s, the wing would surely opt for the latter.
Explore further
Belgium’s 10 F-16s bring Ukraine’s promised fleet to about 100 jets. Fewer than 40 are flying, as Russia’s jet drones run them ragged
Speaking at a Reuters NEXT Newsmaker event on Friday, the entrepreneur and billionaire investorcompared the threat posed by swarms of AI agents to cockroaches finding their way into a freshly treated house.
"When I go talk to cybersecurity experts, I ask them all the time. I'm like, when we hear about these hacks and breakthroughs and, you know, different problems, do these AIs invent something new?" Cuban said.
"No, they didn't invent something new," Cuban added. "But they're able to do something in mass volume that it's all brute force hacks."
Cuban compared the challenge to keeping cockroaches out of a house.
"It's like the cockroach theory, where if somebody can create enough agents, it'll find a way to get in, and then it just exploits that. But the good news is you can spray your systems with just as much AI, and I think there's gonna be more effort from the good guys trying to stop the bad guys," Cuban said. "I'm not a doomer at all."
The AI industry is already creating its own team of exterminators to contain risks.
OpenAI safety roles on LinkedIn jumped by 91% over the past year, spanning work such as system testing, technical research, and governance.
The risks have also surfaced during testing. Anthropic said that three Claude models accessed organizations’ live systems without permission after a third-party testing environment was misconfigured. The company subsequently introduced real-time classifiers to detect and block attempts to escape testing environments.
Cuban said AI could make malicious activity more accessible, but the same techniques could also strengthen defenses.
"There will be scenarios where bad stuff happens, but we've always had hacks," said Cuban. "And if it's brute force on that side with the bad guys, you can also use brute force with the good guys."
The US has been building these computing facilities for decades, but development has ramped up dramatically in recent years as AI increasingly drives demand for computing power.
Business Insider compiled a list of some of these enormous US data-center projects to illustrate the scale of what's being built. Those on the list have at least 1 gigawatt of capacity and have broken ground.
Among the largest is a city-sized campus in Texas pursuing up to 17 gigawatts of power capacity. Another in Ohio is aiming to have up to 10 gigawatts of data-center capacity, most of which OpenAI has contracted to use. For reference, 1 gigawatt of electricity continuously supplied for a year could power roughly 835,000 average American homes.
In total, the Pew Research Center says the US has more than 3,000 operating data centers nationwide and over 1,500 more under development, mostly in rural areas. According to data from the Energy Institute's 2026 Statistical Review of World Energy, US data centers accounted for nearly 40% of global data-center electricity use in 2025, consuming about 313 terawatt-hours. That's more electricity than all of Australia used that year.
Planned capacity is the closest public proxy for how much computing these AI campuses can support, and that's important because the electricity and water needed to run their servers and cooling systems can have major implications for local grids and sustainability.
Residents affected by developments in places like Texas and Utah have pushed back over concerns about noise, property values, and the effects on nearby communities. New York has temporarily paused the construction of new large-scale AI data centers.
Still, the 2025 US Data Center Energy Usage Report from Berkeley Lab projects that data centers will consume 11.8% of US electricity by 2030, up from about 4.4% in 2023. Oracle, SB Energy, SpaceX, Google, and Meta are among the leading developers and operators.
Elon Musk's SpaceX is so eager to build its supercomputers that it's offering employees a pay bump to temporarily move to the data-center sites to help with the buildout.
Here's a closer look at some of the largest AI data-center campuses being built.
Meta Lebanon Campus — Indiana
Thibault Camus/AP
Mark Zuckerberg's Meta currently has 21 data centers under construction. Its Lebanon, Indiana, data center is one of its biggest investments — and the company's second in the state.
It's expected to be completed by early 2028. Neighbors have complained about light pollution from the construction, while residents across Indiana have urged state lawmakers to regulate the growing data-center industry.
Meta El Paso Data Center — Texas
EL PASO, TEXAS - AUGUST 13: In an aerial view, the Meta El Paso Data Center is seen on August 13, 2026 in El Paso, Texas. Meta Platforms continues construction on its more than $10 billion Meta El Paso Data Center in Northeast El Paso, Texas. Occupying approximately 1,000 acres, Meta has expanded the project to 1 gigawatt of
Brandon Bell/Getty Images
Meta's data center in El Paso, Texas, is planned to be powered by 1 gigawatt of capacity and span roughly 1,000 acres. It originally called for $1.5 billion in investment, which later increased to $10 billion.
The center will support more than 300 workers once complete, while around 4,000 construction workers are expected to build it out.
The site broke ground in October 2025 and is expected to be finished in 2028. The site has also sparked backlash from residents.
Project Freebird (Stargate) — Texas
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman
Bloomberg/Getty Images
Project Freebird is part of Stargate, the AI-infrastructure initiative co-led by OpenAI and SoftBank, which OpenAI said in January 2025 would invest up to $500 billion in US infrastructure.
Freebird will be a 1.2-gigawatt data center campus in Milam County, Texas, near Austin. The first phase was expected to be completed by October, while additional phases are planned through 2028. Construction began in 2025.
However, the company has not issued any update on the data center's completion as of late October.
The site, being developed by SB Energy, a SoftBank-backed infrastructure company, will span roughly 595 acres. Phase 1 has an estimated construction cost of $470 million, while total investment in the broader project is expected to range from $1.8 billion to $3 billion.
The first phase had a scheduled construction-completion date of October 15, while SB Energy says operations are expected to begin in 2027.
Fort Wayne Data Center — Indiana
Google CEO Sundar Pichai delivers a speech during the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi in February 2026.
Ludovic MARIN / AFP via Getty Images
In 2024, Google broke ground on a $2 billion data center campus in Fort Wayne, Indiana, to support its AI and cloud operations.
The campus is expected to require up to 1.2 gigawatts of power at full build-out. Some Indiana politicians have expressed concern about the amount of power required to run the data center and who will foot the energy bill.
"If companies want to build a data center here, and we have to build new power generation for them, then they need to share in that risk," Indiana Rep. Ed Soliday, a Republican, previously told Business Insider. "There are a couple of data center folks who have said, 'Oh no, that's not fair.' Yes, it is. Grandma down the street shouldn't have to pay for your dreams."
Stargate Abilene — Texas
The Stargate AI data center in Abilene, Texas.
Bloomberg/Getty Images
The Stargate AI data center campus outside Abilene, Texas, is expected to deliver 1.2 gigawatts of capacity. Crusoe, the lead developer and builder behind the project, broke ground on the campus in June 2024. The first phase is already operational.
The second phase, which is under construction, is backed by a $15 billion joint venture between Crusoe, Blue Owl Capital, and Primary Digital Infrastructure. It will add six buildings to the campus, bringing the total to eight and the planned capacity to 1.2 gigawatts. The site will span 875 acres.
Nebius AI Factory — Missouri
Danila Shtan, chief technology officer at Nebius. The company is an AI cloud infrastructure provider headquartered in Amsterdam.
Bloomberg/Getty Images
Nebius' data center in Independence, Missouri, will span roughly 400 acres and reach a capacity of up to 1.2 gigawatts. The company broke ground in May and is expected to bring roughly 1,200 construction jobs and 130 permanent jobs.
Nebius has not announced a total investment amount, though the city expects to begin collecting tax revenue from the campus in 2028.
The site hasn't come without controversy. A group of citizens is suing the city of Independence and companies involved with the project, alleging 16 counts, including claims that the city violated Missouri's Sunshine Law several times by failing to provide finalized data center construction plans. Nebius did not offer a comment.
CloudBurst San Marcos Data Center I — Texas
CloudBurst Data Centers and Evolve Holdings broke ground on the site in late 2025.
Evolve Holdings
CloudBurst's San Marcos Data Center I is a planned 1.2-gigawatt capacity campus on 706 acres in central Texas. Guadalupe County approved a $500 million tax abatement for the project.
The company and its development partner, Evolve, broke ground in November 2025, with an initial 50-megawatt phase expected to be complete by late 2026. Construction is expected to be complete in 2029.
San Marcos residents have protested proposed data centers over water and energy concerns. The city has since become the first in Texas to ban new data centers, though the ban won't stop CloudBurst's project, which is outside city limits.
The Barn Data Center — Michigan
Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
The Barn, part of the Stargate project, is a multi-billion-dollar AI data center campus in Saline Township, southwest of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Related Digital, a data-center developer, is building the campus for Oracle as part of its partnership with OpenAI. Construction for The Barn began in June.
The campus will comprise three data center buildings with a combined capacity of 1.4 gigawatts. The $16 billion project is backed by Related Digital and investment firm Blackstone. The first facilities are expected to enter service by the end of 2027.
In October, state regulators opened public comment on a wastewater permit for the campus’s proposed on-site water-treatment system.
Stargate Frontier Campus — Texas
OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar (left) and CEO Sam Altman (right) during a media tour of the Stargate AI data center in Abilene, Texas, in 2025.
Bloomberg/Getty Images
The Stargate Frontier Campus, developed by Vantage Data Centers, will be a 1.4 gigawatt, 1,200-acre data center in Shackelford County, Texas, near Albany in north-central Texas.
The campus is part of the broader Stargate initiative led by OpenAI, Oracle, and other partners, and is being designed for ultra-high-density AI workloads. Vantage plans to invest more than $25 billion in the project, which is expected to be fully built out by 2028.
Work continues on a data center being built by SpaceXAI on August 2, 2026 in Southaven, Mississippi. Hastily built to meet the skyrocketing demand for computing power required by the global artificial intelligence race, these data centers are meeting stiff opposition across the United States. In Southaven, 69 turbines are constantly in motion to
Brandon Dill / AFP via Getty Images
Elon Musk's xAI is building Colossus 2 to power Grok, the AI chatbot on X. Construction began in 2025 in Memphis, Tennessee, and the company has said it plans to expand the site to 1.5 gigawatts. The nonprofit research institute Epoch AI estimates its current capacity at about 946 megawatts.
Environmental justice groups, led by the NAACP, sued xAI earlier this year, alleging that the company installed and operated gas turbines that power Colossus 2 in nearby Southaven, Mississippi, without the required air permits. In March, Mississippi regulators approved a permit for xAI to build and operate a new fleet of turbines at the site.
Local residents have filed a class-action lawsuit against xAI, MZX Tech, and SpaceX, alleging that noise and vibrations from the gas turbines have disrupted their lives and harmed their property values.
Still, in late October, Business Insider reported that SpaceX was offering employees a 20% pay bump to temporarily relocate to Memphis or Southaven, Mississippi, for six weeks to help build out Colossus 1 and 2.
Project Jupiter — New Mexico
Project Jupiter is located in Santa Teresa, New Mexico
Omar Ornelas/El Paso Times/Reuters
Developed by infrastructure companies STACK Infrastructure and BorderPlex Digital Assets, Project Jupiter will be an AI data center campus in Doña Ana County, New Mexico, near the Texas border. It is part of the Stargate initiative and is expected to support Oracle's AI-computing operations for OpenAI.
Construction for Project Jupiter began in September 2025. The campus's planned on-site power system could include up to 2.45 gigawatts of Bloom Energy fuel cells, replacing an earlier proposal centered on gas turbines and diesel generators.
In May, Oracle ditched its plan to construct a natural gas plant to power Project Jupiter, following local residents' concerns over the potential negative water usage and air pollution effects it could cause.
Oracle issued a force majeure notice in September due to potential delays in the project's power infrastructure, though it says the campus remains on track for 2028.
Meta Hyperion — Louisiana
Aerial view of Richland Parish Data Center.
Meta
Meta's Hyperion AI data center in rural northeast Louisiana, backed by more than $50 billion in investment, will span more than 3,600 acres and is planned to deliver 5 gigawatts of capacity once fully developed. Hyperion broke ground in December 2024.
Meta says Hyperion is designed to train and run its artificial-intelligence systems. Earlier this year, Louisiana gave Meta $3.3 billion in tax breaks for Meta to build Hyperion. The project is expected to be completed in the 2030s.
Since the center is located in a rural part of the state, the influx of 7,500 trade and construction workers has spurred a housing boom, with mobile homes built for workers that rent for $3,000 a month.
Still, the project has also faced pushback from local residents and environmental groups concerned about its impact on water, energy use, and the surrounding community.
Louisiana regulators held hearings in October on the proposed power build-out for the campus. The state's Public Service Commission will issue a decision in December.
PORTS-Pike Technology Campus — Ohio
Breaking ground at the Portsmouth Site on March 20
US Department of Energy
The Department of Energy said SB Energy broke ground in March in Ohio on the planned AI and cloud campus at the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, known as PORTS. The campus will span private land and remediated federal land leased from the DOE.
The Nvidia-backed project is expected to include up to 10 gigawatts of data-center capacity, with OpenAI set to use up to 8 gigawatts of it for its workloads.
While the DOE says the historical PORTS site is in active remediation, the project has raised concerns about potential health and environmental risks associated with the site's history as a uranium enrichment plant. SB Energy told the Guardian in August that it is "committed to paying for accelerated cleanup and remediation at the site" and that the company "performs thorough site reviews and due diligence for each of our infrastructure projects, including soil sampling."
SB Energy said in October that it would begin initial clearing and grading work for the campus’s first phase.
Project Matador — Texas
Construction work at Project Matador's 17GW Private Power Campus
Fermi America via PR Newswire
Fermi America's Project Matador, also called HyperGrid, is an AI data center and private power campus being built near Amarillo, Texas.
Fermi, which was co-founded in 2025 by former Texas Gov. and US Energy Secretary Rick Perry, said it is pursuing roughly 17 gigawatts of private power for the campus, up from the initially planned 11 gigawatts. That means the campus would generate much of its own electricity on-site rather than relying entirely on the public grid. The company says 6 gigawatts have been permitted so far.
Fermi has a 99-year land lease with the Texas Tech University System for the core site, and the project could span roughly 8,400 acres at full build-out. Fermi says construction is underway, with completion planned for the 2030s, and AI cloud company TensorWave has signed a 15-year lease expected to generate about $6.5 billion in contracted revenue for the first phase. Fermi is also developing a cooling system designed to substantially reduce water use.
The company was hit with a class action lawsuit earlier this year. The investor lawsuit alleges Fermi misled investors about the status and prospects of Project Matador; its shares fell after Amazon withdrew a $150 million construction advance in December 2025.
SpaceX, Meta, Google, Oracle, Fermi America, CloudBurst, and xAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. SB Energy did not offer a comment.
Meta's AI gamble is suddenly looking like a win for Mark Zuckerberg.
That was far from a given. Even the Meta CEO was doubting himself. His company had poured hundreds of billions of dollars into AI investments with largely unproven results.
"Are you sure this is going to work?" he asked his 29-year-old AI chief, Alexandr Wang, at the end of last year, he recalled on a recent episode of the "Cheeky Pint" podcast.
Those risky AI bets — which one analyst compared to throwing spaghetti at the wall — as well as the massive layoffs and reorganization that came with them, are now starting to pay off. Meta beat its AI rivals to the punch with its new AI assistant, Muse, and it finally released a frontier AI model. Although Muse is bleeding cash amid high compute costs, analysts are excited by its moneymaking potential.
Zuckerberg is riding high, too. Sipping a Guinness alongside Wang during a recent podcast interview, the pair extolled Meta's AI prowess.
"You never know when you launch something how it's going to be received," the CEO said. "There's always the case where you get a home run, which in this case it was, right? And it's just like extremely well received right off the bat."
And Meta seems to believe in Zuckerberg's leadership more than ever. His latest coup: Convincing the company to issue a new class of shares after he threatened to list his Palo Alto compound and leave California as voters weigh a billionaire tax.
The big question is how long the good vibes will last. Meta is still spending gobs of money on AI without a concrete financial payoff. Some remain skeptical.
"The bill is huge," David Wagner, a portfolio manager at Aptus Capital Advisors, told Business Insider.
"He's won the narrative. He hasn't proven the return yet."
Meta's social reckoning era
Zuckerberg is no stranger to public discourse. He's undertaken multiple personas: the nerdy wunderkind in hoodies, the jacked wife guy, the unapologetically masculine Trump ally.
At the beginning of this year, it looked as if he was headed for a new reckoning, and it wasn't just because of the aptly named sequel to "The Social Network."
Zuckerberg was on trial, taking the stand in a landmark lawsuit that alleged Meta's platforms harmed the mental health of young people. (Meta was found negligent and is appealing.) It was one of three major lawsuits this year that put the company on the defensive against claims that its technology posed safety risks to children.
In February, Mark Zuckerberg appeared at a Los Angeles courthouse to defend the company in a landmark social media addiction trial.
Jon Putman/Anadolu via Getty Images
And there were the more typical Zuckerberg cringe moments, too, like his front-row appearance at a Prada fashion show that raised eyebrows across the internet.
On the inside, employee morale was waning. Though the billionaire CEO had called 2026 "the year of AI," Meta had little momentum, and unpopular decisions — including a program to track employee keystrokes — amplified the discontent.
Also, Meta had one of its largest rounds of layoffs, ever. Meta began trimming staff in March, followed by a huge round in May, when it laid off about 10% of its workforce.
Separately, Meta reshuffled another 7,000 workers as part of an AI-focused reorganization of its tech and product teams. Many engineers were relegated to individual contributor status. Meta later asked some of the employees it had demoted to return to their managerial roles.
The AI push didn't seem to be paying off: In the second quarter of this year, 98% of revenue came from its traditional advertising business — not AI.
Morale was "maybe not the worst it's ever been in 20 years here, but it's probably up there," Meta's chief technology officer, Andrew "Boz" Bosworth, said during an internal call in June.
The groundwork for Meta's comeback
Amid the chaos, Zuckerberg laid the groundwork for a comeback. Wang and Meta's elite AI researchers moved their desks to sit near Zuckerberg.
Starting last year, Zuckerberg and Wang also went on a talent-hiring spree, dangling pay packages worth hundreds of millions of dollars to poach top researchers.
Zuckerberg empowered key lieutenants, including former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, to go ham on any vision they had, including on his pet project, an AI assistant. It all fit into Zuckerberg's longtime playbook of embracing small teams and overseeing reorgs until something works — move fast and break things, as he has infamously put it.
It worked.
Muse, the long-awaited Meta AI agent, became a breakout hit. A week after it launched, it shot to the top of the app store, and has since achieved more than 10 million downloads in North America. The team was stunned to have beaten OpenAI to market, a person familiar with the matter said. OpenAI's rival product, Dots, launched three weeks later.
Jolly is the mascot for Meta's Muse AI agent, which launched successfully last month.
Bloomberg/Getty Images
Meta also threw unprecedented compute and talent at building a series of frontier AI models, called Muse Wonder, that could keep up with those from giants like OpenAI and Anthropic.
On Meta's third-quarter earnings call, Zuckerberg was optimistic that Meta's AI and hardware investments could soon become cash cows, as people shop through Muse and buy more virtual-reality glasses powered by the company's growing AI chops.
Meta, meanwhile, views Zuckerberg as more critical than ever to its long-term fortunes.
Key board members abruptly excused themselves from a dinner with Zuckerberg in September after he told them he was going to sell his Palo Alto estate in response to California's proposed billionaire tax, Meta disclosed in a filing on Wednesday.
Four days later, a special committee returned with a deal that would give Zuckerberg $20 billion in "immediate liquidity" to cover the tax — if it passes — without reducing his controlling stake in Meta. Meta also made plans to ensure that billions in fresh AI fundraising wouldn't dilute Zuckerberg's control.
"Meta's track record of significant value creation for its shareholders is in large part due to his strong leadership, unique and creative vision, and exceptional management abilities," the company said in a press release.
The personal win comes as some of his other problems have blown over. Meta settled a major lawsuit brought by attorneys general across states, Washington, DC, and US territories. As part of the settlement, the company committed to make changes to its apps, such as daily time limits and pausing notifications overnight. The agreement was part of an August settlement, a move that allowed Meta to call out its competitors such as YouTube and TikTok.
"All platforms should empower parents and support teens by putting the same measures in place, because we know that when teens are restricted on one app, they simply move to another," the company said in a blog post at the time.
Big questions still loom. The day after Meta reported strong earnings and Muse adoption, its stock fell 7% as investors absorbed the scale of the company's hundreds of billions of dollars in future spending commitments.
And the legal troubles keep on coming. This week, a New Mexico jury also ordered Meta to pay a staggering $25 billion over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, a case that Meta plans to appeal.
Whether Zuckerberg's strategy is sustainable or not, the vibe shift has been notable — and may have proven naysayers wrong, at least until the next period of chaos erupts.
"Meta is cool again," Jesse Cohen, an analyst at Investing.com, said in a note. "That's the Muse effect."
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