• Amazon shifts AI focus to business impact, not just raw usage, in new developer guidelines.
• The company warns that AI metrics can create bad incentives, including “tokenmaxxing.”
• Managers are told to examine teams at both the highest and lowest levels of AI adoption.

Amazon just issued new guidelines for software engineers in the AI era: Prioritize business outcomes over raw usage.

Terk Terkowitz, Amazon's vice president and distinguished engineer, said in a memo published Tuesday that AI is changing software development more quickly and fundamentally than earlier shifts such as cloud computing. But engineers should be judged by their impact on customers and the business, he wrote, not simply how much they use AI.

"We all need to embrace this change and take the time to learn, or we risk being left behind," Terkowitz said.

AI coding tools and agents are upending the software industry and changing what it means to be a coder. Amazon calls this the "era of the Renaissance Developer," where human judgement and machine intelligence combine to create new products and services faster and more efficiently.

"This is a time of change for our industry, and a time of change for what it means to be a software engineer," Terkowitz wrote in the memo.

The updated guidelines reflect Amazon's growing effort to make AI adoption part of how it assesses engineers and engineering managers. The company has tracked measures including AI usage, token consumption, and lines of code internally, and used leaderboards to rank teams by some of those metrics.

But the memo warns that using such measures as targets can produce bad outcomes, including "tokenmaxxing" rather than better software or customer experiences.

"Using these metrics could, if used as a target instead of a measure, drive negative outcomes," Terkowitz wrote in the memo.

Amazon has been experimenting with ways to measure and encourage AI use across its engineering organization.

Earlier this year, the company was tracking engineers's use of internal AI tools and some teams used leaderboards tied to measures such as token consumption. The programs created friction among some employees, who worried that pressure to use AI could reward wasteful activity rather than productive work.

The new guidance offers Amazon's clearest public acknowledgment of that risk. Rather than lay out a detailed AI playbook that could quickly become obsolete, Amazon said its revised developer guidelines focus on long-term impact on customers and the business.

Still, the company said AI should be "at the center of software engineering practice" and urged engineers to incorporate the technology into their daily work.

Leaders are expected to use AI tools on production work themselves, understand where they help and where they fall short, and explain that judgment to their teams, according to the memo.

Terkowitz said Amazon has found that metrics such as token use, AI-tool adoption, and code reviews can correlate with the outcomes it values. But he said the measures must be used carefully. More token use can raise costs, while a focus on lines of code can create unnecessary complexity.

He also recommended that managers pay particular attention to teams at both ends of the AI adoption spectrum: those in the bottom 10%, to understand why they are not using AI effectively, and those in the top 10%, to determine whether heavier use is translating into faster delivery.

Terkowitz said Amazon's most AI-forward "frontier teams" have shown stronger productivity and delivery. He also said teams and individuals that are not adopting AI or increasing output metrics are falling behind.

But his memo left room for engineers whose work may not yet benefit from current AI tools. In those cases, he said, employees should document why and work toward a solution by sharing their findings with peers and managers.

"An engineer who can explain where AI does not yet help their work is demonstrating the judgement we are asking for," the memo said.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at ekim@businessinsider.com or Signal, Telegram, or WhatsApp at 650-942-3061. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• Anthropic is touting its ability to use different AI chips in its initial public offering filing.
• Analysts say a multichip strategy could weaken Nvidia's pricing power.
• Switching chips is hard and expensive, putting it out of reach for smaller players.

Anthropic is hedging its bets by using multiple chips to handle its AI work — a strategy that could eventually erode Nvidia's dominance.

The AI lab says it manages compute "as a single, fungible pool from multiple strategic partners" — with software that can direct its work to different chips depending on where they're most productive, according to Anthropic's S-1 filing, which came out Monday as the company prepares to go public.

Anthropic says it uses hardware from four chip families: Amazon Trainium, Google TPUs, Nvidia GPUs, and AMD GPUs.

That flexibility, which Anthropic said "took years and significant investment to build," could make major AI companies less dependent on Nvidia over time and give them more negotiating leverage, analysts said.

"The real exposure could be Nvidia's pricing power," said Patrick Moorhead, founder and CEO of Moor Insights & Strategy, "because a customer that can shift work across four platforms negotiates very differently than one that can't."

Ashish Nadkarni, an analyst at IDC, added that a multichip approach also makes Anthropic less vulnerable to fluctuations in Nvidia's chip supply.

Breaking Nvidia's grip isn't easy

Although Anthropic's chip mix isn't new, the company is now pitching it as a core advantage to investors, Moorhead said.

The threat has its limits. Switching between chips is still difficult — especially when it comes to training AI models as opposed to running them, Moorhead said — and only the biggest AI companies have the resources to do it.

Anthropic also continues to spend billions on Nvidia compute, Moorhead said.

Gil Luria, head of technology research at D.A. Davidson, said that while other major companies like OpenAI likely take a multichip approach, it may not be worth the effort and investment for smaller players.

Brad Gastwirth, global head of research and market intelligence at Circular Technology, said Anthropic's strategy doesn't represent a major near-term threat. Having more chip options doesn't erase Nvidia's advantages in performance, networking, and software, he said.

There's a broader risk for Nvidia if AI compute becomes more of a commodity.

Citadel CEO Ken Griffin has warned that if supply overtakes demand, it could drive down rental prices.

"GPUs, like airlines, have a very low marginal cost to run," he told Bloomberg last week. "The moment you have overcapacity, pricing goes into freefall."

Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at gweiss@businessinsider.com or Signal at @geoffweiss.25. Use a personal email address, a non-work WiFi network, and a non-work device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• Sam Bankman-Fried's Anthropic stake was liquidated in bankruptcy court two years ago.
• The feds seized shares belonging to two co-conspirators, Caroline Ellison and Nishad Singh.
• The government quietly sold those Anthropic shares last year. It's unclear where the money will go.

A little over a year ago, the federal government acquired a stake in Anthropic without paying a penny.

The shares were seized from associates of the crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried. From there, they disappeared into a legal black hole.

As Anthropic rockets toward what could be the biggest IPO in history, those shares could now be worth billions of dollars.

Bankman-Fried's own Anthropic stake was liquidated in the bankruptcy of his failed cryptocurrency exchange. The Anthropic equity owned by Caroline Ellison and Nishad Singh, two associates who invested alongside him, took a different path. The government seized those shares and sold them to existing Anthropic shareholders, according to a person familiar with the sale.

It's still unclear whether the proceeds will be paid out to victims of the $11 billion fraud case, or if the feds will just keep the money.

It also remains a mystery which investors bought Singh's and Ellison's stock and how much they paid, but Anthropic shares have been on such a dizzying climb that it's likely those investors made a killing on them.

Bankman-Fried was convicted in 2023 on fraud and money laundering charges and sentenced to 25 years in prison after the collapse of his cryptocurrency empire. Prosecutors said he used his crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research, to siphon billions of dollars from customers of FTX, his crypto exchange.

The story of the crypto criminals' Anthropic shares is a tale with extraordinary elements, including one of the biggest financial frauds in modern history, a messy bankruptcy docket, and a company that experienced one of the fastest appreciations in business history as the world suddenly realized AI's existential importance.

An intelligent investment

Bankman-Fried, Singh, and Ellison each invested in Anthropic's 2022 Series B funding round. Bankman-Fried bought $500 million worth, which according to court records represented 13.56% of Anthropic at the time. Singh acquired $40 million in shares, and Ellison acquired $10 million in shares, court records reviewed by Business Insider show.

The artificial intelligence company's valuation has soared over the past four years. On the secondary market, Anthropic has been valued at $1.5 trillion. It is the most valuable private company in the world, according to Crunchbase.

The Anthropic shares purchased by Singh and Ellison could together be worth between $4.17 billion and $5.03 billion today, based on the $965 billion valuation the company announced this May, according to Olav Sorenson, who teaches venture capital strategy at UCLA. Harrison Rolfes, an analyst at PitchBook, put the combined figure at $2.62 billion. If Anthropic went public at a $2 trillion valuation, the shares would be worth about $5.44 billion, Rolfes said.

Four of Bankman-Fried's close friends and executives at his companies pleaded guilty as co-conspirators. Three of them, including Singh and Ellison, testified against him.

Ellison was the CEO of Alameda Research, which traded and invested funds that belonged to FTX depositors. She was also Bankman-Fried's on-and-off romantic partner. Singh, an FTX executive and early employee, misrepresented the exchange's revenue to investors.

After the collapse of FTX, Bankman-Fried's Anthropic shares — which were owned by Clifton Bay, an entity affiliated with Alameda Research — ended up in bankruptcy court along with the other dredged-up remains of his companies. His Anthropic shares were liquidated to pay FTX's creditors.

The estate in 2024 sold Bankman-Fried's Anthropic shares to a few dozen buyers for a total of $1.3 billion, more than double what he paid. The largest stake went to an entity affiliated with a United Arab Emirates sovereign wealth fund, bankruptcy court filings show.

The feds take a stake in Anthropic

As part of their sentences, a judge required Singh and Ellison to forfeit their Anthropic shares, which prosecutors said could be considered proceeds of their crimes.

At Singh's sentencing hearing, one of his attorneys, Andrew Goldstein, said Singh purchased his shares before participating in the criminal conspiracy and "he actually may have had a legitimate legal claim" to the shares but agreed to give them up as part of his plea agreement "because it was the right thing to do."

Reached for comment for this story, Goldstein told Business Insider that Singh hopes the government is able to quickly distribute proceeds of the sale to FTX victims. An attorney for Ellison declined to comment.

A federal judge ordered Ellison's and Singh's Anthropic shares to be transferred to the federal government, which took ownership of Ellison's shares in February 2025 and Singh's in April of that year, according to previously unreported court records.

Ordinarily, victims of crimes are compensated through a restitution process, which is overseen by courts. But the number of potential FTX victims could be in the millions, prosecutors said in court filings. As a result, the judge ruled, victim compensation would be handled through a process called remission, which is overseen by the Justice Department.

During Ellison's sentencing hearing, Justice Department prosecutors told the judge that the DOJ would either set up its own claims administration process to compensate victims, or work with the FTX bankruptcy process to identify victims and provide forfeited funds to them.

At the time, FTX's bankruptcy process was in full swing. A Delaware court appointed Sullivan & Cromwell, the elite Wall Street law firm, to untangle the company's assets, figure out who was owed money, and pay them.

The creditors in the FTX bankruptcy, prosecutors noted, largely overlapped with FTX's victims. They were generally depositors, lenders, and investors who were defrauded by Bankman-Fried and other executives. Prosecutors said the Justice Department could work with the bankruptcy estate's lawyers to get money back to them, as it had in previous large-scale financial frauds such as Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme.

There was an unusual twist that set the FTX bankruptcy apart. Bankman-Fried's investments — especially the Anthropic shares, along with some cryptocurrency — had grown substantially in value since FTX's collapse. Earlier in 2024, the Sullivan & Cromwell lawyers who'd taken over FTX projected that all the creditors would be repaid in full, with interest.

The Marshals take control

While prosecutors said they intended to use Singh's and Ellison's Anthropic shares for remission, the Justice Department could technically do whatever it wanted with them, according to Duncan Levin, a white-collar defense attorney who teaches a course on forfeiture at Harvard Law School.

"It's a very opaque process," he said. "It's completely at the discretion, by law, of the attorney general of the United States."

Typically, when the feds seize shares of private companies through criminal asset forfeiture, they send the shares to the US Marshals Service Complex Assets Unit for liquidation. The unit tries to value the shares as any other investor would, said Michael Bachner, a white-collar criminal and securities litigation attorney.

"They may look to: What would an institutional purchaser pay for these securities?" Bachner said. "Are there funds that are valuing the securities? Is there a secondary market already out there?"

For the sale of the Anthropic shares, timing was crucial. The Marshals Service is supposed to preserve as much value as possible, Bachner said. By the time the feds got hold of the shares, Anthropic had become an economy-shifting AI giant. In its March 2025 Series E fundraising round, Anthropic was worth $61.5 billion. By its Series G round at the start of 2026, it was worth $380 billion.

At the same time, each fundraising round diluted the Series B shares. The FTX estate told the bankruptcy court that Bankman-Fried's shares, which in 2022 represented 13.56% of Anthropic, represented 7.84% of the AI company in January 2024.

The Marshals Service sold Singh's and Ellison's shares to existing Anthropic investors sometime last year, according to the person with knowledge of the sale.

It's not clear when exactly the agency sold the shares, to which investors, how those investors were chosen, at what price the shares were sold, or how much money the government made in the sale. Depending on when they were sold in 2025, the combined shares could have been worth between $300 million and $1.1 billion, according to Sorenson, the UCLA professor. Rolfes, the PitchBook analyst, estimated a range between $250 million and $630 million, depending on the timing.

The Marshals Service declined to comment. A representative for the Justice Department said information about asset sales and victim compensation is confidential.

The revenue from the sale of Singh's and Ellison's Anthropic shares doesn't appear to have been transferred to the FTX estate as of the end of June this year, according to bankruptcy court filings from the estate, which continues to compensate victims and creditors.

The FTX estate received $638 million last year from assets seized by the Justice Department, according to the estate's annual report for 2025. It's not clear from the filings where those funds came from. The estate expects to receive about $400 million more from the government at some point in the future, according to the annual report. That would include proceeds from cryptocurrency and other investments made by Bankman-Fried.

One of Bankman-Fried's victims, Sunil Kavuri, told Business Insider that the Justice Department should use the proceeds of Ellison's and Singh's Anthropic shares to compensate victims. It would be "diabolical" for the government to hold onto the proceeds, he said.

Victims haven't actually been made whole, he said, because the bankruptcy court calculated the losses of FTX depositors using the time of FTX's bankruptcy declaration, when crypto prices were at a low ebb. Kavuri previously argued in bankruptcy court that the FTX estate should have held on to its Anthropic shares for longer to take advantage of the company's swift growth.

Representatives for the FTX estate declined to comment. The Justice Department spokesperson said the matter was ongoing, and that the DOJ "prioritizes victim compensation from forfeiture and takes all steps to ensure forfeited funds are provided to victims."

The government could end up just keeping the money, Bachner said.

"They've invested millions and millions and millions of dollars in prosecuting Bankman-Fried. And they want to get at least reimbursed for their costs, so sometimes they'll do that," he said. "It's really a unilateral government decision."

Jack Newsham and Katie Roof contributed reporting for this story.

Correction: August 31, 2026 — An earlier version of this story misstated the number of co-conspirators who testified against Sam Bankman-Fried. It was three.

Update: August 31, 2026 — This story has been updated to reflect Singh's role in the FTX fraud case.

Correction: October 27, 2026 — FTX bankruptcy court filings don't make clear where the Justice Department obtained the $638 million it transferred to the estate. A previous version of this story mischaracterized the filings.

• Machenta raised $40 million in seed funding led by Creandum and Union Square Ventures.
• It says robots can learn tasks from one demo using a model trained entirely in simulation.
• The startup remains focused on research as it takes on multibillion-dollar rivals.

A London-based robotics startup is betting it can teach robots new tricks without collecting the mountains of real-world data its much bigger rivals are chasing.

Machenta, founded by researchers from Imperial College London, has raised a $40 million seed round to build an AI model that can teach robots new physical tasks after seeing them performed just once, the company exclusively told Business Insider. Venture capital firms Creandum and Union Square Ventures co-led the round. Machenta declined to disclose its valuation.

While rivals building general-purpose AI models for robots are scrambling to amass real-world data, Machenta is taking a contrarian approach. Edward Johns, the startup's CEO and cofounder, and an Imperial professor, said the company trains its model in computer-generated environments that mimic how objects move and interact, without using a "single pixel of real-world data."

Once trained, the model can direct a robot to perform a new task, such as tidying a table or putting objects into a box, after watching it done just once, without further training, Johns said. In a video shared with Business Insider, three robots pack and close a box on an assembly line, a task Johns said they learned this way.

The startup has 11 employees and remains focused on research, with no near-term plans to commercialize its technology. Its model can learn some tasks immediately, but more precise tasks and complex movements remain challenging.

Machenta faces rivals with multibillion-dollar valuations in one of robotics' most competitive and well-funded fields. Its California-based competitors include Physical Intelligence, valued at roughly $11 billion, and FieldAI, which is raising funding at a $10 billion valuation, Business Insider reported this month.

Another rival, Skild AI, which is valued at over $14 billion, is already selling technology with similar capabilities. In August, Skild unveiled a model that it said could perform previously unseen tasks lasting up to 10 minutes after a single video demonstration. Last month, it said that it had reached $100 million in annual recurring revenue from more than 60 customers.

From research lab to startup

Six years ago, Johns began investigating whether robots could learn new physical tasks as quickly as humans at his Imperial College lab.

In the lab's early experiments, researchers physically guided a robot through a task, such as picking up a spatula and scooping an object. The robot then spent about 30 minutes collecting additional data about the object and its surroundings before it could perform the task on its own.

Johns and former Ph.D. student Vitalis Vosylius spent the next few years working to eliminate that extra step, founding Machenta late last year after seeing early signs that their model could perform new tasks immediately after a demonstration.

Companies are increasingly buying and collecting data to teach robots how to interact with the real world. But Johns believes simply collecting more data isn't the answer. It also remains unclear how much training data will be needed to make general-purpose robots a reality. Johns said that Machenta is taking on the harder challenge of designing algorithms that can generate synthetic data useful for teaching robots physical tasks.

Machenta plans to use the funding to expand its team and train its model with more computing power and simulated data, hoping to teach robots to perform more precise and complex tasks.

Have a tip? Contact Rya Jetha via email at rjetha@businessinsider.com or Signal at rjetha.07. Use a personal email address and a non-work device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• Amazon launched a series of new devices this month, including Alexa tablets and Bee AI wearables.
• Rising memory costs forced "difficult trade-offs" on Amazon's device prices, sales, and profit.
• Amazon is seeking more Alexa revenue from enterprise sales, licensing, and ads.

Amazon launched a flurry of new consumer devices this month. Behind the scenes, rising memory costs are adding pressure to its already money-losing hardware business.

An internal planning document obtained by Business Insider shows Amazon forecasting a $612 million gross loss this year for its first-party devices business, compared with a leadership target of a $438 million loss.

The document said rising memory costs were "putting pressure" on the business's profitability, forcing "difficult trade-offs" among sales volumes, average selling prices, and gross profit.

The projected $612 million loss was at the gross profit level, meaning it did not account for all operating expenses, such as R&D, sales and marketing, and administrative costs.

The figures offer a rare glimpse into the pressure on Amazon's hardware business as it absorbs rising component costs. Other tech hardware companies, including industry leader Apple, face similar pressure from surging memory chip prices.

An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment.

A new wave of AI devices

Despite the pressure, Amazon continues to expand its consumer hardware lineup. Even if the company loses money on device sales, it can make money in other ways, such as subscription services, as more customers use its gadgets.

In October alone, the company introduced new Kindles, Alexa-powered tablets, Ring smart locks, and AI wearables under its Bee brand. The August planning document identified Bee and new smart glasses as strategic products still in an investment phase.

Amazon has historically used low-cost hardware to pull customers into a broader ecosystem of shopping and digital content. Rising component costs could make that strategy more expensive, forcing the company to raise prices.

The clearest shift is in Amazon's tablets. Earlier this month, the company phased out Fire tablets after 15 years and replaced the budget-friendly lineup with pricier Alexa Tablets powered by Alexa+. The new devices cost between $229.99 and $499.99, a notable increase from previous generations.

Not just Amazon

The planning document was prepared in August, the same month Amazon raised prices on products including Echo speakers, Kindle e-readers, and Fire TV devices.

The pressure extends beyond Amazon. Apple has raised prices on some Macs and iPads, while Microsoft and Sony have increased console prices. Dell, HP, and Lenovo also face higher memory costs.

The AI boom is helping drive the squeeze. Huge data center investments have increased demand for memory chips, while manufacturers have devoted more capacity to high-bandwidth memory used in AI servers. That has tightened supplies and raised prices for components used across consumer electronics.

Amazon is experiencing both sides of the boom. It expects roughly $220 billion in capital expenditures this year, largely to expand AWS data centers for AI demand, while higher component costs squeeze its consumer hardware business.

The rising cost of Alexa+

The August planning materials show Amazon reassessing both Alexa+ revenue and operating costs. They called for updated forecasts, expansion through enterprise sales and advertising, and more detailed AWS cost modeling.

Amazon is now confronting the cost of operating Alexa+ at scale. Business Insider reported in July that internal forecasts put Alexa+'s AWS cloud costs at roughly $1.7 billion in 2026, nearly triple the prior year's figure. Amazon was working to lower those costs by relying less on Anthropic's AI models and routing more requests to its own, cheaper systems.

A separate project called Moonraker, intended to give Alexa more advanced AI-agent capabilities, was projected to require more than $100 million in GPU spending this year. Amazon internally considered delaying or scaling back the initiative as one option for easing cost pressure, Business Insider previously reported.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at ekim@businessinsider.com or Signal, Telegram, or WhatsApp at 650-942-3061. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• Infrastructure startup Hyperbolic raised a $30 million round led by Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan's VC firm.
• The startup connects companies with neoclouds and makes their AI chips easier to use.
• Hyperbolic also wants to let customers resell unused computing power.

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan is backing an infrastructure startup that has raised $30 million to help companies rent compute across hundreds of different AI cloud providers.

Hyperbolic, an AI chip marketplace and software startup, has raised $50 million to date.

Walden Catalyst, the venture capital firm founded by Tan and former Samsung president Young Sohn, led the Series A-1 funding round. Dell Technologies Capital, General Catalyst, Vista Equity Partners, and Cambium Capital also participated.

As companies scramble for computing power, one challenge is that AI cloud providers, or neoclouds, use a mix of different chips, networking, and software. Hyperbolic helps customers find compute resources from different providers and creates software that makes it easier to use them all, rather than dealing with each one separately.

"It's been a really fragmented market that makes the customer experience really painful," said 31-year-old founder and CEO Jasper Zhang.

Hyperbolic also wants to let customers resell compute that they're paying for but no longer need.

The four-year-old startup works closely with about 30 neoclouds, including WhiteFiber and Vector Core Compute. It says it has roughly $200 million worth of compute connected to its software annually.

Hyperbolic previously raised a $12 million Series A round in 2024, led by Variant and Polychain Capital, following a $7 million seed round earlier that year. The company expects to have 50 employees by the end of the year and will use its funding to expand software tools for managing AI chips across different neoclouds.

Zhang said the company is aiming for $150 million in annual recurring revenue by the end of the year and is already breaking even. More than 250,000 developers, including teams at Modal, Higgsfield, and Daytona, use Hyperbolic.

Before founding the company, Zhang worked as a quantitative researcher at Citadel Securities. As Wall Street explores ways to financialize AI chips, he said his startup's plans to let companies resell unused compute could help pave the way for a futures market.

Here's a look at the pitch deck Hyperbolic used to raise its $30 million Series A-1. Slides have been redacted so that the deck can be shared publicly.

• Anthropic shows strong profit potential, with revenue growing way faster than expenses.
• Anthropic's revenue per employee exceeds $6.6 million, outpacing estimates for Meta and Google.
• Anthropic has a surprisingly diverse customer base and huge cash reserves.

For years, one of the biggest unanswered questions about the artificial intelligence boom has been surprisingly simple: Can the companies building the world's most powerful AI models actually make money?

After spending hours poring over Anthropic's IPO filing on Monday, we finally have an answer: Yes. And potentially lots of it.

A couple of Chinese AI labs went public earlier, revealing appalling financial results that sowed doubt about the industry's economics. Now Anthropic has provided a much more compelling demonstration of how this business can work at enormous scale.

The numbers are remarkable. Anthropic generated $11.6 billion in revenue during the second quarter of 2026, up 1,368% from a year earlier. During that same period, spending on computing and infrastructure increased 300%, while other expenses rose 741%

So, the company is bringing in money much faster than its most important costs are rising.

For every dollar Anthropic spent on computing in the second quarter, it generated $2.08 in revenue, up from just 40 cents in the first quarter of 2025. That's a more than fivefold improvement over five quarters.

The result: Anthropic recorded $974 million in quarterly operating profit, representing an 8% margin. Its adjusted operating profit margin reached 19%, compared with -129% a year earlier.

"Frontier-lab unit economics can turn positive at scale," Mark Mahaney, a top tech analyst at Evercore ISI, wrote in a research note on Monday.

Better than Meta and Google

There's more evidence that Anthropic has built an unusually efficient business.

Over the year ending September 30, revenue increased roughly 1,200%, while its employee count grew about 170%. Revenue per employee jumped from $1.4 million to more than $6.6 million.

For comparison, Mahaney estimated that Meta generates about $3.2 million in annual revenue per employee, while Google generates about $2.5 million.

That comparison isn't perfect. Anthropic relies heavily on cloud providers, whose employees handle much of the computing infrastructure and distribution work. The improvement is still striking.

Customer surprise

Another surprise: Anthropic doesn't depend as much on a handful of enormous customers, as some investors had feared.

The company had more than 11,900 customers generating at least $100,000 in annual revenue as of September, compared with over 950 a year earlier. More than 1,900 customers spend at least $1 million annually.

No single customer accounted for more than 10% of revenue during the first nine months of 2026. Its five largest customers represented about 21% of third-quarter revenue, down from roughly 36% in the first quarter.

"Concentration may be better than feared," Mahaney wrote.

Cash cushion

Anthropic has a formidable financial cushion. Its June 30 balance sheet showed more than $130 billion in cash and short-term investments.

And Mahaney estimated that the company has burned through just $9 billion since it started more than five years ago. That's a long runway.

Now, don't ask me whether all this makes Anthropic worth $2 trillion, $1.5 trillion, $1 trillion, or considerably less. If I knew that, I'd be making a lot more money as an investor. And even professional investors don't know.

An $800 billion caveat

Some enormous caveats: Much of Anthropic's revenue comes from customers paying for what they use, rather than signing long-term contracts. Meanwhile, some of its computing agreements require minimum payments whether or not it needs all the capacity.

Mahaney estimates that Anthropic has entered into nearly $800 billion in computing arrangements, although only about $266 billion was fixed or guaranteed as of June.

That's still a staggering amount.

"The commitments assume revenue compounding that is not contracted," Mahaney wrote.

Translation: While the company has committed to spending hundreds of billions of dollars on AI computing infrastructure, it hasn't secured the future revenue needed to pay for all of it.

Importantly, most of the potential $800 billion exposure isn't fixed. Many arrangements depend on capacity being delivered, can be adjusted, or include cancellation provisions.

In-house compute and capex

Another wrinkle: Anthropic warned Monday that its spending will increase as it shifts toward leasing AI chips and operating more of its own computing infrastructure, rather than relying entirely on Amazon, Google, and other cloud providers.

That could make future cash flow considerably less attractive, even if operating profits continue to improve.

Still, the central takeaway from Anthropic's IPO filing is difficult to ignore.

For years, investors have wondered whether selling AI could become a genuinely profitable business, rather than an extraordinarily expensive scientific experiment.

Anthropic has now shown that it can. The next question is whether it can keep doing so as the bills get much, much bigger.

Sign up for the AI Insider newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com

• Microsoft is offering buyouts to about 60,000 employees.
• The offers are individualized to each employee based on their level, location, and tenure.
• Business Insider reviewed offers to show what employees get when they leave the company.

As Microsoft sends out its buyout offers to more than a quarter of its workforce, specific offers reviewed by Business Insider reveal exactly what employees get if they choose to leave the company.

The offers are individualized for each employee based on their level, location, and tenure. Those reviewed by Business Insider confirm that the US buyouts align with the company's US standard severance offers. A Microsoft spokesperson said about 60,000 employees would be eligible for the buyout.

Microsoft uses a levels system to represent seniority, from entry levels starting at 59 to senior levels at 70, or vice president. The company offered buyouts to employees on select teams in the US, Canada, India, and the UK at level 70.

Offers reviewed by Business Insider show employees at internal levels 64 and below were offered one week of base pay per six months of service, and employees at levels 65 to 67 were offered two weeks of base pay per six months of service.

Buyout offers also include continued regular stock vesting and health insurance. The standard stock-vesting severance offer is six or 12 months for levels 67 and below, based on years of service.

Eligible employees will have until early December to decide whether to take the offer and exit at the end of the year, and there are no plans for another buyout at this time, a Microsoft spokesperson said.

Standard severance is capped at 39 weeks of base pay for levels 67 and below, while the standard severance offer for level 68 includes 12 months of salary.

Earlier this year, Microsoft rolled out a voluntary retirement program for employees. About 7% of Microsoft's US workforce, or about 8,750 people, were eligible at the time. As Business Insider previously reported, Microsoft's voluntary retirement program offer also aligned with the company's standard severance offer, including continued regular stock vesting for six or 12 months, based on years of service.

Earlier this year, another tech giant, Google, offered buyouts to staff in its business unit, Business Insider previously reported.

As more tech companies offer buyouts, some human resources professionals previously told Business Insider that this approach could soften job cuts, and also that when they're made available to workers of all tenures, companies risk losing talent.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at astewart@businessinsider.com or Signal at +1-425-344-8242. Use a personal email address and a non-work device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• Instagram is opening its arms to long-form video again.
• Adam Mosseri, Instagram's top exec, said longer videos will help the app stay "relevant."
• Instagram is testing tools for creators making episodic content. But will it pay for them?

Instagram's top executive, Adam Mosseri, has a plan to keep the platform "culturally relevant" — by making it more like YouTube.

Meta-owned Instagram unveiled an overhaul of long-form video features on Monday, including a test of horizontal videos called "Features." Taken together, the changes make the app feel a lot more like YouTube.

"We want to be the most culturally relevant platform," Mosseri said in an interview with content creators and founders of Press Publish, Colin Rosenblum and Samir Chaudry. "To do that, we just need to show up where people are."

The context: YouTube has become a major hit on TV screens, and there's a growing appetite for Instagram-native shows with recurring episodes.

"Subway Takes," hosted by Kareem Rahma, is a prime example of Instagram's strengths and limits. The show started in 2023 as a short-form interview series and, as it grew, expanded with longer-form cuts on YouTube and the streaming platform Tubi. Instagram, however, is where Rahma's show still has its largest audience of 2.4 million followers.

Instagram doesn't want people to go to YouTube or Tubi to see longer versions of shows like "Subway Takes." That's leaving ad revenue and user engagement on the table. Its new tools are designed to entice creators and viewers to stay on its platform.

Here are Instagram's latest video tools and how creators can use them:

• "Features" keep viewers within the Instagram ecosystem. Instead of leaving Instagram to watch the extended version of an interview or episode, it'll be relatively seamless to stay on Instagram and watch that longer-form content. Instagram's "Features" can be as long as 90 minutes, although the new format is, for now, only available to a limited number of creators in the US and Brazil.
• Instagram is feeding more content to its TV apps. Instagram is also pushing its "Instagram for TV" app further. The app will feature various video content on TV services like Samsung, Amazon Fire TV, Google TV, and now Apple TV. People can now watch a feed of content their friends are also liking or resharing on TV.
• Instagram-native shows can label their episodes more clearly with "Series." Within the main Instagram feed, Instagram is testing a way for shows on the app to seamlessly connect episodic content. Eligible creators can add videos to a Series, and a label appears over the content indicating that there are additional episodes. People can then watch those episodes in order from the start. This test is expanding to more countries through the end of the year.
• Clips can directly drive engagement back to the original video. Instead of clipping content and praying that the audience will go the extra mile of clicking on an account and finding the original, longer-form video, Instagram is letting creators link up to 8 clips to one long video.

This isn't Instagram's first time dabbling in long-form content.

In 2018, it launched IGTV, a long-form video format and stand-alone app. In 2020, Instagram rolled out a program that let creators earn money from those videos on IGTV. Four years after launching, the company sunset the IGTV app and shifted its video efforts to Reels.

There are a few key elements missing from Instagram's big leap (back) into long-form video.

You can't watch the video while continuing to scroll through Instagram, or multitask by opening other apps while keeping the Instagram content in a picture-in-picture pop-up. There also aren't automated transcripts and subtitles yet. A spokesperson for Meta told Business Insider that there are plans for these features.

Will creators get a slice of the ad revenue pie?

For creators, one key question and pain point looms: Will Meta share the honeypot?

Mosseri told Rosenblum and Chaudry that Instagram is thinking about ways to test pre-roll and mid-roll ads that could lead to a revenue split. However, he said previous attempts by Instagram to build a creator monetization system comparable to YouTube's Partner Program didn't prove beneficial for the platform.

"We spend more money than we make back by a long shot," Mosseri said of Instagram's previous efforts at broad revenue-sharing programs.

Mosseri said that in its previous iterations of content monetization, creators typically didn't produce more content than they already did for free, and the content they did create tended to be lower quality.

Still, Instagram will need to "figure it out" as it tries to crack longer-form content, Mosseri said.

"I don't think of platform payments or performance-based incentives or bonuses as a revenue driver," Mosseri added. "I'd be psyched to scale them up for any of these formats — as long as we're breaking even."

• The feds seized Anthropic shares last year from Sam Bankman-Fried's associates.
• Several months later, the government sold them for $627 million.
• If Anthropic IPO'd in November at $1.5 trillion, those shares would be worth nearly $4 billion.

Last year, the federal government made a windfall of $627 million when it sold Anthropic shares it had seized from associates of crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried.

If it had held on to that stake, its windfall could have been a lot bigger.

The federal government last year sold shares of Anthropic that had belonged to Caroline Ellison and Nishad Singh, two co-conspirators in the FTX fraud case. The proceeds went to compensate victims of the fraud, a Justice Department spokesperson told Business Insider.

Anthropic's S-1 filing on Monday revealed how much the federal government made from the sale of those shares. The prospectus doesn't name Ellison and Singh specifically. It says the government in October 2025 sold 4,453,900 Series B shares of Anthropic that "had been forfeited by former holders in legal proceedings to which we were not a party."

The figure matches up exactly with the combined $50 million in shares that Singh and Ellison purchased for $11.2261 each in Anthropic's 2022 fundraising round, and later forfeited to the government.

The shares represent about a quarter of a percent of Anthropic today. But given the company's explosive growth, they are still worth a fortune.

Anthropic hasn't yet announced the stock price for its expected November initial public offering. At a $1.5 trillion valuation, the shares would be worth a total of about $3.94 billion. That would be six times as much as the government sold the shares for a year ago.

"One of the Justice Department's top priorities is returning forfeited funds to victims through the asset forfeiture program whenever the law allows," the DOJ spokesperson said.

The feds' stake in Anthropic

How the federal government came to own a chunk of Anthropic in the first place is a story involving a notorious fraudster and a complicated criminal forfeiture process.

Bankman-Fried participated in Anthropic's 2022 Series B fundraising round with Singh and Ellison. Singh purchased $40 million of the Series B shares, and Ellison acquired $10 million.

Singh and Ellison later pleaded guilty to crimes related to their work with Bankman-Fried and testified against him at his Manhattan federal criminal trial. The jury found Bankman-Fried guilty, and a judge sentenced him to 25 years in prison. The federal government took ownership of Singh's and Ellison's Anthropic shares by April 2025.

The US Marshals Service sold Singh's and Ellison's shares, rather than hold on to the red-hot Anthropic stock, Business Insider previously reported. The US Marshals Service Complex Assets Unit is typically tasked with dispensing shares of private companies acquired through criminal forfeiture.

Now we know that Anthropic purchased the stock from the feds in October 2025 at the price of $140.9676 per share, which is the same price Anthropic set for its Series F-1 stock in a fundraising round a month earlier.

Anthropic resold the shares to nine investors at the same $627 million total price it paid to purchase them from the federal government, so it didn't make a profit from the sale, according to the S-1 filing. It's not clear which nine investors purchased the shares originally owned by Singh and Ellison. Representatives for the US Marshals Service didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Anthropic shares owned by Ellison and Singh took a different path than the $500 million in Series B shares owned by Bankman-Fried himself. His shares ended up as part of FTX's bankruptcy estate, which sold them in 2024 to a few dozen buyers for a total of $1.3 billion.

The federal government sent the proceeds from the sale of Ellison's and Singh's shares to the FTX bankruptcy estate, the Justice Department spokesperson said. Bankruptcy court filings show that the Justice Department transferred $638 million to the bankruptcy estate in late 2025.

The money has gone to repaying creditors, including FTX customers and investors who were scammed by the former crypto wunderkind.

Update: October 26, 2026 — This story has been updated to include a comment from the Justice Department.

Correction: October 27, 2026 — The federal government transferred the proceeds of the sale of Caroline Ellison's and Nishad Singh's Anthropic shares to the FTX bankruptcy estate, according to a DOJ spokesperson. An earlier version of this story misstated whether the funds had been transferred.

• Skydance, formed by the merger of WBD and Paramount, told employees to return to the office five days a week or take a buyout.
• Many Paramount employees had been working fully in person, while WBD staffers were generally at three days a week.
• Read the memo from Skydance's HR team detailing the standard buyout offer.

David Ellison's Skydance just shared its buyout offer for employees who don't want to return to an office five days a week.

Staffers across the company, which was formed by the merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, were told on Monday that they'd soon have to work fully in person. The company didn't say if there were any exceptions to its new RTO mandate.

Eligible employees who aren't willing to work in person can opt to take a standard buyout package of two weeks of severance for every year they've been at Paramount or WBD, two people familiar with the offer told Business Insider.

Most eligible employees will receive that offer, a person familiar with Skydance's proposal said, though there could be exceptions on the timing or the amount received.

Staffers who've been offered severance must decide whether they're leaving the company by 11 p.m. ET on November 8, an HR email viewed by Business Insider said.

Paramount staffers assigned to an office had been required to work from an office five days a week since earlier this year, while WBD workers had been working in an office at least three days a week.

"We recognize that as we bring our teams together, not everyone will see their future here," Skydance's HR team said in an email to staffers.

Skydance's HR email said this buyout "is a one-time offer" and told employees that there are "no additional" offers planned.

Read the full email Skydance's HR team sent below:

As David and Ynon shared earlier today, we recognize that as we bring our teams together, not everyone will see their future here. For some, it may be the in-office policy or the pace of change. For others, it may instead reflect personal or professional goals. To give employees the option to decide what is best for them, we are offering a one-time Voluntary Buyout (VBO) Program to eligible employees.

A VBO gives an eligible employee the opportunity to volunteer to leave the organization in return for a separation package. You are receiving this email because you meet the eligibility criteria and may choose whether to participate in this program. We recognize this is an important personal decision. Please carefully consider the opportunity and notify us of your decision to accept or decline no later than 8:00 p.m. PT on November 8, 2026.

Before you decide, please keep the following in mind:

• Participation is entirely voluntary.
• This is a one-time offer; no additional BO programs are planned.
• If you do not respond by the deadline, you will be considered to have declined the offer.
• Once submitted, your decision may only be changed during your opt-in window.
• You may wish to consult a personal financial, tax, or legal adviser before making your decision.

Please click here to indicate your decision and to review additional information, including an estimate of your severance and benefits.

We value your contributions and we want you to feel supported and informed as you consider your decision. For FAQs related to the VBO and our return-to-office policy, please visit the Skydance Integration Hub. For additional questions about the program or your individual offer, please visit My Paramount.

• David Ellison's Skydance is telling staffers to work in the office five days a week.
• Employees who aren't willing to work in person may be eligible for a voluntary buyout.
• Skydance was formed with the merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery this month.

Skydance wants employees back in the office five days a week — and staffers who aren't willing to comply may be eligible for a buyout.

CEO David Ellison and co-CEO Ynon Kreiz informed employees at the media giant about the change on Monday afternoon. They said in a memo that the RTO order applied "across all of Skydance."

"We truly believe this is in the best interest of our company and our people," Ellison and Kreiz wrote in a memo to employees, which was viewed by Business Insider. "We've seen the benefits firsthand at Paramount, and we want every part of Skydance to share in them."

The memo did not mention whether there were any exceptions or say who's eligible for a buyout. It said employees who qualify for a buyout would get an "individual communication with their personalized details and terms, and a window to decide whether to accept this one-time offer."

Eligible employees can take a buyout package of two weeks of pay for each year they've been at the company. They must decide whether to take the offer by November 8 at 11 p.m. ET.

Skydance was formed earlier this month when Paramount completed its $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. (The company previously went by Paramount Skydance.)

Most WBD employees have been required to work in person three days a week.

Paramount Skydance, for its part, had mandated that staffers in its New York and Los Angeles offices return to work in person five days a week in January. Staffers who weren't willing to work in person were offered a severance package. The company also called hybrid workers back in September for Phase 2 of its RTO policy.

Working in person will lead to employees "communicating openly and collaborating efficiently across every part of the organization," Ellison and Kreiz told staffers in the Monday memo.

"We believe in-person collaboration is vital to our culture and to the success of our business," Ellison and Kreiz said.

Read the full memo from Ellison and Kreiz:

Team,

At Skydance, our goal is to build the next-generation media and entertainment company, powered by creativity and technology. We are creative-first, audience focused, tech-forward and globally scaled. And in a world of endless choice and fierce competition for attention, we don't just want to succeed. We want to win.

To do that, we must be a strong, connected and agile company. Among our business and creative priorities, none matters more than building a strong culture, because it's the foundation of everything we want to achieve. Winning requires us to work as one team: one company, fully aligned. That means communicating openly and collaborating efficiently across every part of the organization.

In-Person Collaboration

We believe in-person collaboration is vital to our culture and to the success of our business. Especially in a creative company like ours, the best ideas come from people in the same room, sharing perspectives, challenging one another and solving problems. Being together isn't just about showing up. It's about inspiring one another, learning and coaching, forming friendships and having the casual conversations that spark something great.

With that in mind, we will adopt a five-day in-office policy across all of Skydance. We truly believe this is in the best interest of our company and our people. We've seen the benefits firsthand at Paramount, and we want every part of Skydance to share in them.

While many of you are already in the office five days a week, we understand this may be a significant change to the daily routines of others. To give you time to plan and adjust, we will take a phased approach by location. You will receive ample notice before changes take effect, and we will work closely with managers to support you through the transition.

Voluntary Buyout Program

As we bring our teams together, we recognize that not everyone will see their future here, and we respect that. To give eligible employees the option to move on in a way that works for them, we are introducing a Voluntary Buyout (VBO) Program. Those who qualify will receive an individual communication with their personalized details and terms, and a window to decide whether to accept this one-time offer.

We recognize this is a significant decision, and we want you to feel informed and supported. If this applies to you, please review your materials carefully and reach out to your leadership or HR representative with any questions. FAQs and other resources are available on the Skydance Integration Hub, and HR support is also available through My Paramount (legacy Paramount employees) or Ask Employee Connection on WBD One (legacy Warner Bros. employees).

Please know we don't take any of this lightly. We are clear about what we're building: a company that tells the stories people around the world love, embraces new ways to connect with audiences, and leads the next era of media and entertainment. We have the talent, the creative firepower and the ambition to do it, and we will get there together.

Thank you for your commitment, and for the creativity and passion you bring to your work every day.

Best,

David and Ynon

• Film producer Tommy Harper is shutting down his micro drama app VeYou after about six months.
• Harper, who sought to build the "HBO" of the genre, said he would still produce for other platforms.
• The micro drama space has shifted as tech giants push in.

The app that wanted to be the "HBO" of micro dramas is shutting down.

Prolific film producer Tommy Harper is shutting down his app, VeYou, after about six months. A message on VeYou said the service would end November 6.

Harper told Business Insider he would continue producing series, distributing them via TikTok's micro-drama app PineDrama, YouTube, and other partners.

Harper, whose credits include "Star Wars" and "Top Gun: Maverick," is one of several Hollywood vets trying to bring their prestige sensibility to micro dramas, the soapy, low-budget series that got their start in China and have exploded in the US.

The move shows how fast the space is changing as Big Tech companies lean in. Micro dramas — also called "verticals" — cost a fraction of a traditional feature-length movie, but apps often lose money because of the high cost of marketing, and VeYou didn't have massive financial backing.

"In the past year, TikTok, Meta, and YouTube all moved hard into short drama," Harper emailed. "When the three biggest attention platforms commit to a format, distribution is decided. The opportunity for an independent company is to be the best supplier to those platforms, not to compete with them for installs. So we're focused where we have the edge: making the shows."

Harper raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding for VeYou from investor S32, a venture firm started by Google Ventures founder Bill Maris, who's also backed 23andMe, Impossible Foods, and Nest. VeYou has made a handful of originals, starting with "Love Under Fire," a romance drama starring Kasey Esser, who wrote the series alongside Harper.

The micro drama market is changing fast

The micro drama space has changed dramatically in recent months.

In the past year, AI-generated characters have increasingly taken their place alongside human actors, and free, ad-supported offerings are competing with the "freemium" apps that had dominated the landscape.

A report by media consultancy Owl & Co. found two-thirds of films released by leading apps in the third quarter of this year outside China were AI-generated, up from 3% in the first quarter.

TikTok's free app PineDrama rolled out in January, and by the third quarter, it accounted for more than half of all micro drama views across 16 leading apps, according to the Owl & Co. report.

Other tech giants have also moved quickly into the space and made themselves bigger viewing destinations for micro dramas.

YouTube released a new feature that allows creators to bundle their short videos in a series of episodes or seasons, designed to be viewed sequentially.

On Meta, the dominant platform used by micro drama apps to acquire customers, some apps are running portions of their films lasting 20 minutes or more as ads to get people to subscribe.

Lori Golden-Stryer, the CEO of RIVR Media, a producing partner for VeYou, said VeYou's films set themselves apart through their scripts, acting, and direction. She said she was encouraged to see its series perform well on TikTok, based on platform data and her company's monitoring.

"People want live characters," she said. "I don't think they want AI. I've seen a lot of different verticals, and I'd like to think ours were a little cut above."

• Microsoft is offering buyouts to around 60,000 employees.
• The offers will go out later today, and resemble Microsoft's standard severance offer.
• The buyout offer could help Microsoft cut costs and reshape its workforce for the AI era.

Microsoft is offering buyouts, according to a memo Chief People Officer Amy Coleman sent to employees Monday.

"The Voluntary Exit Offer reflects an important part of how we're evolving our approach to change: creating greater flexibility and, where possible, more ways for employees to shape their next chapter," Coleman wrote.

Microsoft's voluntary exit offer is the company's latest attempt to slim its workforce without another round of involuntary cuts. After spending heavily on AI infrastructure and reducing headcount this year, Microsoft is offering remaining employees a chance to leave, testing whether voluntary departures can cut costs.

Eligible employees in the U.S., Canada, India, and the U.K. at level 70, which includes senior leaders at the company, and below, will receive an email later Monday with the terms of the offer. Only some teams are participating, excluding sales organizations, some engineering, and some corporate functions.

Around 60,000 employees — or more than a quarter of the company's workforce — about will be eligible, a spokesperson told Business Insider, and the terms will be similar to Microsoft's standard severance.

The US severance package offered when Microsoft laid off employees earlier this year included a minimum of 60 days of base pay, during which employees will remain on the payroll, and, for most employees, up to a maximum of 39 weeks of base pay, based on seniority and tenure.

Employees at internal levels 64 and below received one week of base pay per six months of service, for example, and employees at levels 65 to 67 will receive two weeks of base pay per six months of service, according to offers reviewed by Business Insider.

Eligible employees will have until early December to decide whether to take the offer and exit at the end of the year, and there are no plans for another buyout at this time, Microsoft's spokesperson said.

The buyout offer follows Microsoft's Voluntary Retirement Program, which offered a retirement buyout to about 9,000 eligible employees based on age and tenure.

About one-third of eligible employees took the buyout, in line with expectations, a person familiar with the turnout told Business Insider in June. That buyout allowed Microsoft to lay off a lower percentage of its workforce compared to last year, the person said at the time.

Read the memo:

Introducing a Voluntary Exit Offer

Today, we're introducing a new Voluntary Exit Offer (VEO) to eligible employees within participating organizations. This offer gives eligible employees who may be considering a future outside the company a new choice to make that transition now with support. It also gives participating orgs another way to adapt their workforce to changing needs.

The Voluntary Exit Offer reflects an important part of how we're evolving our approach to change: creating greater flexibility and, where possible, more ways for employees to shape their next chapter. This builds on what we learned earlier this year through the Voluntary Retirement Program.

What employees should know

This offer will be available to eligible employees in participating teams in Canada, India, United Kingdom and United States at level 70 and below. This is a time-limited, voluntary program that gives those who are eligible the opportunity to leave Microsoft with financial support and career planning resources. Some organizations are providing the Voluntary Exit Offer, and some are not. Participation varies based on each business's priorities, customer commitments, and workforce needs.

Eligible employees will receive an email with a link to their Voluntary Exit Offer details within the next few hours.

Looking ahead

The Voluntary Exit Offer is new for us. We'll learn from it. At the same time, we'll keep helping people focus on the work that matters most, build new skills, and, where it makes sense, find new opportunities across Microsoft. There is no one-size-fits-all approach for every team or every employee. These are a few of the ways we're trying to meet different business needs while continuing to create opportunities for our own people to grow and contribute.

My promise is to continue to provide clarity, listen and learn, and keep improving.

Thank you for everything you continue to do for our customers, Microsoft, and for one another.

Amy

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at astewart@businessinsider.com or Signal at +1-425-344-8242. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• A version of this story originally appeared in the AI Insider newsletter.
• Sign up for Business Insider's weekly AI Insider newsletter here.

A few weekends ago, my wife left on a business trip with one instruction: fix the Wi-Fi before I get back.

Her Zoom calls kept dropping during important meetings, so I tracked an old Cat 6 ethernet cable from our data closet so I could hardwire her laptop to the interwebs. The only problem? It ended as a raw, cut end, and I had no idea how to terminate it with an ethernet plug.

So I did what I do these days whenever I'm out of my depth: I asked ChatGPT.

I sent it photos at every stage. It told me which tools to buy, showed me how to strip the cable, arrange the eight tiny wires in the right order, and even drew little diagrams when words weren't enough. When I got frustrated, it gave me a pep talk.

My first attempt only delivered about 100 Mbps instead of our 1 Gbps internet connection. ChatGPT guessed two wires were faulty, suggested an inexpensive cable tester, interpreted the flashing lights from a photo, and confirmed the diagnosis. I cut the connector off and started again with a simpler plug it recommended.

The result? Around 850 Mbps.

My only complaint: ChatGPT would occasionally disappear down a rabbit hole with advice that was far more complicated than I needed, so I'd remind it I wasn't rewiring Silicon Valley. I just wanted my wife's Zoom calls to stop dropping.

So far, her video calls have been perfect. Without ChatGPT, there's no chance I'd have pulled this off.

Sign up for the AI Insider newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com

• Nvidia's sales and marketing leadership is changing as its sales pitch evolves.
• Veterans are retiring, opening the door to internal succession and outside hires.
• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's daughter Madison is also gaining influence.

Nvidia's sales and marketing organizations are seeing a changing of the guard as the AI boom reshapes demands on leadership.

Veterans at Nvidia are retiring, opening the door for longtime employees. And CEO Jensen Huang is tapping talent from outside the company — and outside the chip industry — to meet new challenges.

Nvidia's sales pitch has evolved. It has already convinced companies to choose its chips. To keep growing, it has to convince more businesses to adopt AI. These customers care less about hardware specifications than how Nvidia's AI can be put to work.

Leadership changes are most visible in sales and marketing, said former vice president of corporate marketing Greg Estes, while other areas of the company, such as finance, legal, operations, and software and hardware engineering, have remained relatively stable.

In marketing, Nvidia tapped Google Cloud executive Alison Wagonfeld to become its first chief marketing officer earlier this year, while Microsoft veteran Nick Parker became its new sales chief in August. Neither comes from the chip industry, though both bring years of experience helping businesses adopt software and cloud services.

At the same time, Huang's daughter Madison has gained influence beyond her formal marketing role, two former employees said.

Huang regularly reshapes Nvidia as the business evolves, said Scott Baker, a sales VP who retired in July after 26 years.

"It's truly a battleship spinning on a dime, and everyone gets aligned," he said.

Nvidia did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

A 'deep bench' of younger Nvidia talent

Retirees this year include former sales EVP Jay Puri, VP of enterprise marketing Laura Fay, SVP of enterprise business Shanker Trivedi, and sales VP Kevin Connors.

Fay said Huang doesn't want to lose longtime executives, many of whom he personally recruited. But as they move on, the next generation is getting a chance.

Before leaving in April after 17 years, Trivedi made mentorship part of his mission. He was ready to pass the baton after years of grueling travel and seven-day workweeks.

"Time stops for nobody," the 69-year-old said.

Trivedi said Nvidia has a "deep bench" of younger sales and marketing talent who know its culture, market, and partners inside out, including Raj Mirpuri in AI cloud infrastructure, Kimberly Powell in healthcare, and Kari Briski in AI software.

When he retired, the company divided Trivedi's responsibilities among multiple leaders. As Nvidia's revenue soared during the AI boom, his job had ultimately become too big for one person.

"Better to flatten the structure and gain velocity," he said.

Another Huang is gaining influence

One insider bringing an unconventional background to Nvidia's marketing ranks is Jensen Huang's daughter, Madison Huang.

Madison formerly worked at French luxury conglomerate LVMH in hospitality marketing before joining Nvidia as an MBA intern in 2020. She has quickly ascended to senior director of product marketing for physical AI.

One former employee said Madison's experience working on luxury brands brought a fresh perspective to a marketing team traditionally staffed by semiconductor veterans.

Job titles can be fluid at Nvidia, and a second former employee said Madison's remit extends beyond physical AI marketing. They said she exerts authority across multiple parts of the company and directs teams at all levels on strategy and business decisions.

Madison is also among a small circle of executives known to travel with her father. And their close relationship gives her the ability to anticipate his needs during high-level meetings and appearances, the first former employee said.

"She 'speaks Jensen' very well," the former employee said, "so he doesn't have to explain himself to her."

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at gweiss@businessinsider.com or Signal at @geoffweiss.25. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• Micro1 pledged to spend $1 billion on licensing companies' data for AI developers.
• The startup snags Slack messages, Canva files, Google Docs, and as much other data as it can get.
• By selling company data, CEOs have a new revenue stream that popped up this year.

As AI labs go on the hunt for real-world data, Micro1 is throwing everything at getting it for them.

The startup is one in a new class of fast-moving data brokers, gobbling up companies' internal data and packaging it for the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic, and other model developers. The executives who sell their companies' data to Micro1 find themselves suddenly participating in a new sector of the economy, where terabytes of mundane workplace interactions can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Ilya Brotzky, the CEO and cofounder of the recruiting startup VanHack, told Business Insider he was shocked when he filled out a Micro1 survey about his company's data and received a "substantial" offer.

"I didn't believe it, to be honest," he said. "I felt like it was a little too good to be true."

Micro1 says it pays $100,000 to $2 million for a single midsize company's data. It recently announced plans to spend $1 billion on the project over the next year. Brotzky and the other executives Business Insider spoke to for this story wouldn't share the exact amounts their companies received.

For Micro1, the new focus on workplace data matches a broader evolution in the industry, as Business Insider has written about in The AI Data Grab, a series about how tech giants are increasingly turning to workers, users, and the physical world to get data to train AI.

First, AI companies gobbled up text from the internet and corpora of old books. Then they realized that humans grading AI responses could improve their models. And now, companies are using complex simulations, built on real-world data, to improve the tenacity and skill of their AI.

Gartner estimated that spending on AI data is likely to surge from less than $1 billion last year to almost $6.5 billion in 2027. Micro1's chief revenue officer, William Almeida, told Business Insider in September that his company has been explaining to prospective customers why their data is suddenly so valuable for those simulations.

"Every time I talk to companies, I tell them, 'Hey, I see this as a booming business,'" Almeida said.

Slack DMs, Google Docs, Canva files: Micro1 wants all it can get

Micro1 has three ways of working with AI model developers.

First, it can take a company's raw data, transform it to protect privacy, and license it to a lab. In addition, Micro1 provides an in-progress AI agent to companies and gets feedback on how it works. The third route is the simulation: Micro1 takes a company's data up to a certain timestamp, freezes it, and then provides that "environment" to a model developer trying to teach its AI how to work from existing context.

Micro1 pays more for larger, more complex datasets, as well as for data that represents a unique type of work or knowledge. It usually wants to license a company's entire data corpus, so that an AI model can replicate what it would be like to be a human employee.

"The connection, the diversity, the traceability of all of these data points, they matter a lot when you think about model training," Almeida said.

Brotzky also received an offer from AI data startup Mercor to buy his company's data, though he opted for Micro1. Once Brotzky dug into Micro1's privacy process, he said he felt comfortable sharing all the data they requested. That included VanHack's Google suite, Confluence data, Slack messages, and customer relationship management software.

Grant Gooley, the CEO of the marketing agency MyPortal Marketing, also views his deal with Micro1 as an innovation. He has sold internal design files from Figma and Canva, as well as checklists from Monday.com.

"When we were building these processes years ago, I didn't think that we would be using it to support AI learning," Gooley said. "But doing that, it's very fulfilling."

CEOs pitch the deals to their workers

Micro1 and its rivals are full steam ahead. Still, there are open questions. Former and current employees aren't likely to get any compensation from — or a voice in — their work becoming AI fodder. Ifeoma Ajunwa, a law professor at Emory University, previously told Business Insider that data sales are an "ethically gray area."

When pitching to potential customers, Almeida tells them this business is in the early days.

"If you wait too much, you won't get the premium that the first companies are getting," he said.

VanHack's team got a confidence boost from the Micro1 deal, Brotzky said, because of the additional revenue stream it represents

Gooley said he's kept MyPortal Marketing's employees in the loop about the deal with Micro1 and hasn't heard any complaints.

"I told my team that this is something that you're going to tell your grandchildren about one day, because we are literally supporting the future growth of marketing agencies," Gooley said.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at scouncil@businessinsider.com, or over text, Signal, Telegram, or WhatsApp at 415-757-8198. Use a personal email address, a non-work WiFi network, and a non-work device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• Big Law has plenty of competition for its best lawyers.
• Some of the most ambitious lawyers want to work for clients in their legal departments.
• New Pirical data shows which law firms have the most alumni working in Big Tech.

Big Law has a hard time keeping its lawyers.

It's not just rival firms dangling basketball-player salaries, extra vacation, and branded merch to lure away top talent.

Big Tech is competing for those lawyers, too.

New data shared with Business Insider reveals which firms send the most lawyers to the biggest names in tech.

Pirical, a legal people-analytics company, tracked lawyers who previously worked at the 200 largest law firms by revenue in the United States and now hold legal roles at seven tech companies: Google, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX. Pirical filtered out summer associates and interns.

Morrison Foerster and Wilson Sonsini tied for the top spot, each with 40 alumni working in legal roles across the seven companies. Both firms regularly represent tech startups and the investors backing them.

Latham & Watkins followed with 33 former lawyers. Kirkland & Ellis, the industry's revenue leader, ranked 11th with 21 former lawyers working at those companies, tied with Paul Hastings and Sidley Austin.

Pirical's analysis may have missed lawyers whose job titles fell outside its search criteria, said Craig Savitzky, its insights and content editor. He said newer companies, particularly Anthropic, are also likely undercounted because their legal teams are growing faster than public profiles are updated.

Big Law-Big Tech pipeline

For attorneys hoping to land a coveted job at a tech giant, a stint at a white-shoe law firm can be a stepping stone. They can trade billable-hour quotas for a seat closer to the business, attractive pay, and just one client to keep happy instead of dozens.

That combination makes these roles "some of the most highly desirable and sought-after positions" for law firm associates, said Casey Sullivan, a recruiter with CMW Legal Search.

There's another draw, Sullivan said. The companies at the forefront of artificial intelligence are wrestling with some of the thorniest legal questions of the day, from intellectual property to regulation.

"That's where the most interesting work is for lawyers," he said.

Not all law firms are equally effective launch pads. Pirical's Savitzky noted that the firms near the top of the list have deep ties to the tech industry, if not the deepest pockets.

Cooley brought in $2.4 billion in revenue last fiscal year, placing it 29th on The American Lawyer's ranking of top law firms by revenue. But it tied fourth on Pirical's list, with 29 alumni working at the seven tech companies, including nine at Nvidia, a longtime client.

Davis Wright Tremaine, which has represented Microsoft in antitrust and employment lawsuits, has 13 alumni working in the software giant's legal department. Fenwick, which advised Wiz and Fitbit on their sales to Google, has 13 lawyers at the search giant.

Business Insider also sliced the data another way, looking at which of the seven tech giants employ the most alumni from the top 25 firms on Pirical's list.

Big Law is effectively a feeder school for Google's legal team. The company employs 322 alumni of the top 25 law firms on Pirical's list, more than any other tech company studied.

That doesn't necessarily mean Google is the most desirable location for lawyers leaving Big Law. Savitzky said the numbers likely reflect the sheer size of Google's legal department and the decades it has had to recruit from top firms.

• A version of this story originally appeared in the AI Insider newsletter.
• Sign up for Business Insider's weekly AI Insider newsletter here.

Software engineers in the Bay Area still earn far more than their peers almost anywhere else in the US, even after accounting for the region's eye-watering cost of living.

Recent data from Levels.fyi found total compensation is 77% above an employment-weighted national median. Adjusting for local prices narrows the gap, but Bay Area engineers still come out 53% ahead.

The analysis used federal employment counts to help account for where software engineers work, rather than relying solely on where people submit their pay to Levels.fyi.

Seattle also remains well above average after the adjustment, while cities such as Boston and Washington, DC, lose most of their advantage once living costs are factored in.

The chart below shows the pay differences before adjusting for local prices.

One important caveat: The cost-of-living comparison does not account for differences in state and local taxes.

These numbers are also based on submissions to Levels.fyi, so they could over-index toward areas where people like to brag about their pay, wherever that is!

Sign up for the AI Insider newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com

• A version of this story originally appeared in the AI Insider newsletter.
• Sign up for Business Insider's weekly AI Insider newsletter here.

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.

My colleague Eugene Kim exclusively reported this week that even Amazon, one of the world's most experienced data center builders, is struggling to get enough electricity to power its expensive AI equipment.

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.

Sign up for the AI Insider newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com