• Entrepreneurship comes with risk and uncertainty. As one founder put it, "You have to be insane."
• Two successful founders share the mindsets that helped them push through when failure felt possible.
• They explain how anyone can develop the resilience and confidence to take entrepreneurial risks.

A traditional job typically comes with a regular paycheck and benefits — a measure of stability and predictability.

Entrepreneurship offers neither. It comes with risk and uncertainty. There is potential for a big payoff, but no guarantees.

Popsmith CEO Tal Moore put it bluntly: "You have to be insane to be an entrepreneur," he told Business Insider. "Because there's so much risk. There's so much turbulence."

He and his cofounder nearly ran out of money while building their high-end stovetop popcorn popper.

"I ended up selling $600,000 worth of my personal stock to keep us afloat," Moore said.

It was stressful, of course, but Moore felt he had to find a way through — not only because he had invested heavily in Popsmith, but because friends and family had, too.

"They bet on me. They bet on my brand," he said. "If you lose your own money, that's one thing. But there was just no f---ing way that I was going to lose my friends' and family's money."

Kyle Ray had a different source of motivation. In high school, one of his teachers told him he'd end up working at McDonald's.

Rather than feeling discouraged, Ray used the comment as fuel.

He never finished college, but he did turn a window-cleaning side hustle he started with $100 into a six-figure business, Geek Window Cleaning, which now serves hundreds of clients across multiple Texas cities.

Ray said he had doubts "all the time" that the business would work, but wanting to disprove that teacher meant adopting a failure-is-not-an-option mindset.

"I'm going to make this work," he decided. "I'm just going to figure it out."

Throwing "Hail Marys"

When Moore and his business partner had just two weeks of cash runway left, saving the business meant getting attention and moving product without spending much money.

"At this point, I had to throw some Hail Marys," Moore said.

His first idea, which he called "harebrained," was to send poppers directly to the CEOs of Williams-Sonoma and Crate & Barrel. He'd designed the product with those retailers in mind, but couldn't get their attention.

"I know my popper will sell on their shelves," he thought. "I just have to get it in their hands."

Moore bought the most upscale, high-quality paper he could find at Kinko's, handwrote notes to both CEOs, and "blind-shipped" poppers to them. Within two months, buying teams from both companies had reached out, he said.

Then came Oprah.

Moore had no idea how to get on Oprah's annual "Favorite Things" list — "it's just like a total black box," he said — until he spotted an opening on LinkedIn. A junior editor at Oprah Daily had posted about popcorn, so Moore sent her a cold message. She replied, requested a popper, and eventually helped get the product in front of Oprah.

An Oprah Daily editor told Moore that the team considers about 15,000 products each year before Oprah makes her final selections. In 2024, Popsmith made the cut.

After the list was announced, the company sold out of every popper within weeks. Popsmith went on to sell out three more times over the next five months.

As an entrepreneur, "there's a pressure and a will to win," Moore said. "There's an endless drive that just never goes away. I wake up hungry, and I will not stop."

Developing the entrepreneur mindset

Like Moore, Ray has a refusal-to-quit mentality. He views entrepreneurship as a highway without an off-ramp — no Plan B waiting at the next exit.

"If there is no exit, then there's just one path," he said. "And you just have to get through it."

That doesn't mean every business will succeed. In fact, many won't. But Ray believes entrepreneurs need to be willing to take risks, potentially look foolish, fail, and move on to the next idea if necessary.

Often, he said, fear of failure — and other people's judgment — is the real obstacle.

At the core of his mindset is a willingness to care less about both.

"If Geek fails now, I'm going to look stupid, but it's like, 'Okay, cool. What's next?' Like, I don't care," he said. "And the earlier you can develop that carelessness — the 'I don't care if I look stupid' or 'I can fall flat on my face. I am still going to go for it' — I think if you get to that point, anybody can go out and be an entrepreneur."

That mindset can be learned, he said. Like any other skill, from swinging a tennis racket to ballroom dancing, it takes time, consistent work, and patience. Ray recommends three steps:

1. Start with books. They're cheap — or free at the library. Ray's top picks include "Inner Excellence" and "Can't Hurt Me." Moore prefers biographies of entrepreneurs and business leaders, from Warren Buffett and Richard Branson to John D. Rockefeller.

2. Find someone who is already doing what you want to do at a high level. Then ask questions, Ray said: "What are you doing that I'm not? What am I doing that's preventing me from breaking through?"

3. Join a mastermind or hire a coach. Ray has multiple.

"When there's something I don't know, or I need to learn, I start to look for coaches," he said. "It's like a wormhole, right? If you can find somebody that knows something about where you want to be, they can help you collapse time and just jump forward to that spot."

• Taylor Kelly started running candle-making workshops in 2023 to get out of the house and meet people.
• He turned his side hustle into a full-time small business after he was laid off from his corporate job.
• His company offers classes like flower arranging, pasta making, and tea tasting and blending.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Taylor Kelly, the 34-year-old founder of Eventful ATL, who lives in Atlanta. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

If you'd asked me in the beginning if my side hustle of candle-making classes would become a business a year later, I would've had no clue.

It went from $2,000 in revenue in 2023, when it was an evening and weekend side gig, to $16,000 in 2024, when I created a legal business entity: Eventful ATL.

Then, in 2025, I was laid off from my corporate job.

It gave me more flexibility to really dive in, and we ended the year a little under $75,000 in revenue. I pushed into 2026 with a stable small business, and we're on track to end 2026 with around $100,000 in revenue.

We currently offer over 12 class topics, including candle making, flower arranging, pasta making, tea tasting and blending, charcuterie making, wine tasting, and cocktail making. We also recently added pottery-making and seasonal classes like wreath-making and gift-wrapping.

Sometimes I wonder, how the heck did I end up here?

I started hosting candle-making workshops after moving to Atlanta

I lived in New York for several years and worked for Ritani, a New York-based jewelry company, in a few different marketing roles from 2019 to 2025. I took two years off from Ritani between 2020 and 2022 to do a full-time MBA program at the University of Miami, and I rejoined the company in May 2022.

My side gig began in the winter of 2023. I'd moved to Atlanta, and in order to get out of the house and meet people, I started hosting candle-making workshops on evenings and weekends. Candle making had been my hobby during COVID and grad school.

It started to grow beyond candle making, into other types of classes. I teamed up with a venue partner who has a wonderful event space and added flower-arranging and caviar-tasting workshops.

Initially, I asked people whom I knew had specific hobbies, passions, or experience if they'd offer a class in it. Soon, I started getting emails and calls from small business owners and creatives who really wanted to teach but didn't want to deal with the logistics of coordinating classes or experiences.

It wasn't hard to balance it with my full-time job because I was working remotely and wasn't doing anything else after work hours. I'd spend my nights and weekends working on Eventful and focused on SEO for organic growth.

As the months went by, it became clear that there was an opportunity to keep growing Eventful, and I thought about the possibility of making it my full-time job. However, I liked having a stable paycheck.

I was laid off from my full-time job in May 2025

It wasn't a big surprise that it happened. I remember being stressed, like, Oh, crap, I don't have any income now. If I hadn't had this little business on the side, I would've spiraled. I'm so grateful that I had my side hustle to fall back on.

I started my job search in June while still working my side gig, but I wasn't getting much traction with interviews. I sent out hundreds of applications and got only a handful of interviews. I'd be so annoyed about spending a whole day applying when I could've spent that energy diving into my business.

There were so many jobs listed, and a recruiter would say, "We'd love to chat," and then the role would vanish. That was disheartening, and it made more sense to pursue something that I had going myself.

I also wasn't finding roles that were exciting to me, the way I had years ago when I lived in New York. Part of that was because I was so excited about working on my business. I knew there was potential; it wasn't huge at the time, but I knew we could continue to grow.

A couple of months later, I made the decision to pursue my business full-time

I'm not sure I would've pursued growing the company full-time anytime soon if it weren't for being laid off.

Now, we host 15 to 20 events a month. We have at least two public classes each week, and we're adding more throughout the holiday season, as well as multiple private group experiences throughout the week.

We have a lot of brands that leverage us to provide team-building experiences for clients and employees, including companies like Google, Salesforce, Chick-fil-A, and Home Depot.

We work with about eight to 10 contractors and instructors who teach classes. I like working on a team — I don't like sitting here alone. I've also started teaching a lot of our pasta-making and flower-arranging classes.

When I'm not instructing, I like being present at as many classes as possible to facilitate setup and breakdown. However, there've been many times when our team has handled classes without me present, and the goal is to ensure we're creating the right systems to make that the standard, in order to eventually scale and grow into new markets like Miami and New York.

Sometimes I'm the marketing person, and sometimes I'm the instructor for the day. Every day is a new day, and I wake up to an email of something cool that I didn't expect coming across my desk.

I'm excited for us to continue to grow

It took until September of this year, when my brain was like, This is it. This business is really bringing in money, and if I'm being lazy or not doing as much as I can, it impacts my life. I have a dog who's very expensive. I either make money and pay the bills right now, or it doesn't happen.

It's not just about the money, though. I also get to speak with so many passionate people every day. My business has been able to film on a Bravo show and has been featured in local news. We signed a lease for our first permanent space in downtown Atlanta early this year, in preparation for the World Cup this past summer.

Now that I've fully committed and we have people who are really invested in what we're doing — the business owners who love teaching and sharing these opportunities — I always think about scalability.

There are a lot of different moving parts right now. I'd really love to focus on brand partnerships and do a big partnership push in 2027.

That being said, who knows what I'd do if another opportunity came up? I don't have to always be there personally with my business.

We have a lot of events happening at the end of 2026, which is giving me anxiety — but I asked for it. It's either that, or we don't grow.

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is conflicted about how AI models are changing fields like mathematics.
• Altman said that he had some "sadness and melancholy" when he saw what OpenAI's models could do.
• Prominent mathematicians have blasted AI companies for pursuing some of the field's most complex problems.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he feels conflicted about OpenAI solving some of math's biggest problems.

"As I said, I don't think it was bad for AI," Altman told Stripe President John Collison during an episode of "Cheeky Pint" that was released on Thursday. 'And I think, on net, the world deserves to understand how the universe works. But I do have empathy for the method."

A number of prominent mathematicians have blasted AI companies for pushing frontier models to solve some of the most complex math problems. OpenAI pulled out of a Caltech "math hackathon" after current and former Caltech mathematicians and others in the field said the event was "likely to have destructive impacts for the mathematical community."

Separately, 28 Fields Medal winners published their own open letter, warning that "the push by AI companies to solve mathematical problems as a benchmark is detrimental to the science of mathematics, and to the mathematical community."

OpenAI received considerable attention after announcing that its models had solved a 90-year-old, unresolved problem related to the Navier-Stokes equations, a set of formulas that predict how liquids and gases move. The Clay Mathematics Institute had offered $1 million to anyone who could determine whether those formulas would always behave as we would expect in the physical universe, part of a series of difficult mathematical questions known as the "Millennium Problems." OpenAI said that its AI models found an example where the equations do not, and end up with a "singularity" where a vortex starts spinning infinitely quickly.

Altman said OpenAI is "working through" how to continue scientific research while also making sure those in highly specialized fields "get the best version of the future that they can have."

"I would like to figure out a way to do this that is as sensitive to the communities that have driven these fields forward for centuries as we can," he said, adding, "It's a hard thing."

Collison tried to assuage Altman's feelings, reminding the OpenAI CEO that "the longshoremen union weren't happy about the port automation."

Altman said part of the reason he feels differently about the whole experience is based on an OpenAI Slack channel that was named "Model Name-Hold My Beer" after the meme about if you think this is crazy just wait. (He did not explain if this was a released model or not.)

"People were just throwing that at the hardest problems they could," Altman said. "And people didn't think the model was going to do these things."

The AI model tackled "people's hardest research problems from their academic career." Altman said he was so excited, "I couldn't go to bed."

In addition to the euphoria, he said other feelings set in.

"I also had much more sadness and melancholy, and a feeling of something ending than I was expecting," Altman said.

The OpenAI CEO said it was "beautiful" that any mathematician could solve even the most formidable problem if only they worked hard enough. Altman said AI is changing that equation.

"I mean, certainly, most mathematicians never solve a Millennium Prize problem," he said. "But the idea that you might be able to."

• Halloween is the busiest day for Uber and Lyft drivers.
• Lyft's CEO called it "our biggest day" in 2025.
• It can be a lucrative day for gig workers — if they can stand rowdy passengers.

The busiest day of the year for Uber and Lyft drivers is almost here.

While you might guess that New Year's Eve or St. Patrick's Day would draw the most rider demand as people go out partying, Halloween actually wins the prize for ride-hailing drivers in the US, according to ride volume data and comments from executives.

The culmination of spooky season is likely to be big again this year, with Halloween falling on a Saturday, giving people more time to party — and creating more demand for rides.

Last year, the most ride-hailing trips occurred on October 31, according to Gridwise, a data analytics company. Ride volumes were 23% higher than median rideshare volume for the year, adjusted for day of the week and quarterly seasonal variation, Gridwise said.

The next-busiest days were November 1 and July 3, the day before Independence Day. Ride-hailing volumes were about 20% above the median on each day, Gridwise said. The day after Halloween may be big because rides run late into the night.

Halloween kicks off the busiest season of the year for Uber and Lyft. Besides getting a ride home from Halloween parties, riders also request trips to the airport for flights home around Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Earlier this month, Uber offered some drivers hundreds of dollars in bonuses for driving more — a potential sign that the company needs more drivers working as ride demand ramps up.

For Lyft, Halloween 2025 was "our biggest day" and "our biggest week, and not by a little bit," CEO David Risher said a few days after Halloween 2025 on an earnings call last November.

A company spokesperson declined to say how many trips Lyft drivers completed on Halloween but said that it amounted to "millions of rides."

Uber, meanwhile, "hit a new record over Halloween weekend" in 2025, with about 130 million ride-hailing and delivery trips worth $2 billion, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said on an earnings call last November.

While lucrative, working on Halloween also comes with risks for drivers.

Raymundo Rodriguez, who drives for Uber on the island of Oahu in Hawaii, said he started driving for the app around Halloween two years ago.

There were plenty of riders, he said, but some trips involved dealing with rowdy or drunk passengers. Costumes can also pose risks: One rider dressed as a stripper left glitter on the black leather seats of his car after she got out — a mess that Rodriguez said he had to clean up himself.

This year, Rodriguez said, he's planning to skip driving for the app and take his kids trick-or-treating.

"I don't want nobody throwing up in my car," he said.

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• Carolyn Tisch Blodgett said she sets an example for the brand by integrating her family and work.
• She said bringing her children to big games helps encourage working parents "to be their full selves."
• Blodgett spoke to Deputy Editor Nathan McAlone at Business Insider's The Long Play.

Attend a Gotham FC game, and you can expect to see Olympic gold medalists like Rose Lavelle, Emily Sonnet, and Tierna Davidson in the spotlight.

What you may not expect is children taking over the pitch by 10 pm after each game.

"It's kind of like a Gotham daycare on the field," said the club's lead owner and governor, Carolyn Tisch Blodgett, whose three kids are part of the crowd.

Under Blodgett's leadership, the club has become the reigning champion of the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) and one of the hottest brands in the rising tide of women's sports.

Bringing family to work is a key part of the brand's success, she said at Business Insider's "The Long Play" event on Thursday.

Blodgett is also the CEO and founder of Next 3 Ventures, a New York-based investment firm focused on sports, tech, and media. She is a member of the NWSL board and serves as chair of the executive committee.

Integrating work and family can help working parents "show up as their full selves," she told Deputy Editor Nathan McAlone.

That's why her husband and three children show up to all the big games — she said her six-year-old is obsessed with the team's goalie, and ran onto the field to celebrate when the team won the NSWL championship last year.

"You need to walk the walk. If I showed up to every game and pretended that my kids didn't exist, and no children were around, I think players might not feel as comfortable," she said.

The end goal is not only to build a winning team but to shape a brand that fans can connect with, increasing attendance, engagement, and ultimately, revenue.

Blodgett, formerly the global head of marketing at Peloton, said she takes a page straight from the Peloton playbook by focusing on players' personalities to cultivate fan loyalty.

"So much of people's relationship through their favorite sports team is through the players," she said.

For instance, one of the biggest stars in women's soccer, Alex Morgan — Olympian, World Cup Champ, and a mom — has more than 9 million Instagram followers. The San Diego Wave, her most recent club before retiring in 2025, has fewer than 1 million followers.

Morgan has also been outspoken about the challenges of being a working parent, advocating for more systemic support for athletes who become moms.

Balancing a career with parenthood isn't only a problem for athletes — it's also increasingly a point of friction for women in leadership roles across industries, including finance and tech.

But athletes can face specific challenges, such as navigating long seasons of travel and training at sports facilities that haven't historically offered childcare benefits.

Blodgett's bet is that everyone wins, from the players to brand leadership, if you build a culture of normalizing parenthood at work.

In July, the Gotham FC made history by playing before a sold-out Citi Field crowd of more than 40,000, a record-high attendance for a women's sporting event in New York City.

For Blodgett, business (and sports) has long been a family affair: her family has helped run the NY Giants since 1991. For most of that time, the vast majority of investment has gone toward male athletes, she said.

Her hope is to eventually bridge the gap until enthusiasm for women's sports becomes so pervasive that it won't be interesting to talk about.

"I think you'll have less panels like this saying, 'wow, let's talk about the future of women's sports' because women's sports will just be another chapter in all of sports," Blodgett said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Layoff concerns

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

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

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

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

Misconceptions and differences

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why the latest buyout looks so big

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

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

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

The Cloud + AI group took a different approach

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

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

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

Cutting costs and avoiding layoffs

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

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

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

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

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• I schmoozed with CEOs, founders, and investors at Business Insider's The Long Play in New York.
• Attendees heard from speakers ranging from Barry Diller to Ashley Graham — and spent a whole lot of time networking.
• Some attendees tried pitching deals. Others debated the future of work.

The New York venue was bustling with executives, some of whom governed companies with thousands of employees.

I met my first one within seconds of walking in.

On Thursday, I attended Business Insider's The Long Play event at Perelman Performing Arts Center. (Full disclosure: Business Insider is my employer, and you're probably reading this on its website.) I entered the event with a mission: to chat, network, and maybe learn a thing or two about my own career.

Mingling among the crowd, I chatted with the founders of AI startups and communications chiefs. They debated remote work, asked about management styles, and discussed working together. "I've got to work on my elevator pitch," one CEO told me.

I sat down for lunch with some attendees to discuss a question: Is workplace loyalty dead? Most said no, or that it was more complicated. One brave soul, the content creator Colin Rocker, said yes.

"I still think it's dead," he told me after the lunch chat. "But, I will say, I got more context that it's not necessarily working across the org chart."

He added: "That hurts managers, too."

Others at our table traded mentorship techniques and thoughts on leading an office. Nitzan Shapira said that, while working at Intel and Cisco, meetings were crucial. He has more flexibility while leading his AI startup, Harmony. "I'm kind of allergic to meetings," he said.

Munching on my plate of salmon, salad, and a caprese sandwich, I continued to chat with the crowd. Then came the dimming of the lights and the voice on the loudspeaker. The interviews were about to begin.

A who's who of the audience

You can tell a lot about the crowd from when people raise their hand — and when they don't.

I learned, for example, that much of the crowd had played "Grand Theft Auto." What better way to blow off some steam after a career-building conference than with some virtual vice? The attendees didn't consider themselves avid gamers, though; only a few hands shot up when Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick asked.

There were also a handful of investors in the crowd. Supermodel Ashley Graham asked for a show of hands, and I spotted three. During one of the breaks between talks, I talked shop with yet another venture capitalist.

As for GLP-1s, the crowd was less eager. Senior correspondent Melia Robinson asked while interviewing Ro CEO Zach Reitano, and she got only a few raised hands. (I bet, if we swapped the public hand-raising for a blind survey, that number would go up.)

The attendees around me were rapt. My seatmate, who worked for an AI startup, took notes with pen and paper. I saw some others jotting down learnings in the Notes app on their phones.

WeWork CEO John Santora described upping the once-freewheeling company's dress code. When he got there, Santora spotted pajamas and shorts; he now spots some salespeople in sport coats.

It prompted me to look around and check out what the audience was wearing. There were lots of blazers, button-ups, and slacks. A handful went more casual with their denim jackets and colorful blouses.

There were belly laughs, like when my talented colleague Sarah Needleman flubbed "how do you define success" with "how do you define sex" while interviewing Zelnick. He chuckled; the crowd joined in, and it bonded the audience.

And there were sobering moments, like when Noa Argamani described her drive to fund Israeli startups after spending 246 days in Hamas captivity.

The list goes on: There were chats with media mogul Barry Diller, banking entrepreneur Cristina Junqueira, and Nadia Carlsten, the CEO of the sneaker-company-turned-AI-infrastructure-provider Smartbird.

The event was really about meeting other people, though, and being inspired. I endlessly looped around the room, talking to C-suiters at startups and public relations agents. You could always hear the hum of new connections coming from the back of the room.

It ended with glasses of wine and hors d'oeuvres. After biting into a surprisingly delicious slider — Graham talked about pairing her wine with Korean barbecue and lasagna, and it made me hungry! — I had officially reached my schmoozing limit.

I ended the day with a full heart and a handful of new phone numbers. If you gave me yours, expect a text soon with plans to get coffee.

• A Korn Ferry report said "workers will zigzag more than they climb" the career ladder next year.
• This fluid career lattice has its positives, such as skill expansion.
• However, there are also benefits to the traditional linear path, such as raises and a clear goal.

Instead of going straight from junior to senior to manager to executive, you might find yourself bouncing between managerial gigs for different departments or taking a step back to focus on individual contributor work.

Organizational consulting firm Korn Ferry finds, based on a global survey of over 1,300 talent and senior leaders, that while traditional linear career ladders of moving up into higher-paying and more prestigious job titles within a particular specialized profession still exist, fluid career paths that end up looking like a lattice are becoming more important.

Career lattices may mean moving to a different team instead of being promoted, taking on a new role within the company to expand your skills, or moving down the career ladder. There can be all kinds of movements someone can take in the career lattice format.

Sixty-four percent of surveyed leaders said linear career paths will be less common, and 85% said progression will depend on skills and capabilities, rather than tenure or job title. Most said employees will be taking on greater ownership of their career development.

"In 2027, workers will zigzag more than they climb, landing in places no succession plan accounted for," the report said. "It will take a broader range of skills to rise through the ranks, so people will be searching for ways to learn them."

To learn whatever skills they need to before moving up, the report said people might be willing to move to a different team or position so they can develop their skill set. The report noted adaptability is the most sought-after skill among employers. AI fluency could be another attractive skill as the tech becomes more prevalent in the workplace.

A blog post from the workforce solutions provider Careerminds, by career and business coach Cynthia Orduña, listed examples of lateral moves. A sales representative could move to a customer success manager role because "strong relationship-building skills help improve customer retention and account growth." An IT support analyst could become a cybersecurity analyst because they can expand their technical knowledge.

Cathleen Beetel, senior client partner at Korn Ferry, thinks both employers and employees should embrace lateral transitions because they allow employers to tap into existing talent they have vetted and know works well for their company.

A guide from job-search platform Indeed said career lattices encourage workers to try new opportunities, learn what they're best at, acquire new skills, and understand more about company operations. Indeed said another bonus of career lattices is that it gives workers more control over their careers.

"You have to not see a lateral move or a sideways move as stagnant," Beetel said. "It could potentially be the fastest route forward for an employee because they can gain those skills that are perhaps adjacent to what they have today that actually puts them in a better position for a promotion in the future."

Career ladders have their own benefits, beyond thinking about the likely pay increase that comes with a title bump. Indeed said that having a well-defined ladder can raise employee motivation, encourage deep expertise in a specific area, and be an incentive to work toward a clear goal.

The Careerminds blog post said workers might decline lateral moves if they think it isn't beneficial to them — such as not bringing a raise, concerns about what this means for career progression, and concerns about leaving their well-established team.

So there are trade-offs in employers offering lateral moves over a step up. It's the company's responsibility to communicate why someone is being offered this move and why it could be beneficial.

"Employees are more likely to accept a move when they understand why they were selected, what they'll gain, and how the opportunity supports their long-term career growth," Orduña wrote. "Instead of focusing on the business need alone, communicate the value that the lateral move in career creates for the employee."

• Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, and SpaceX all reported increased capex spending for Q3.
• There's no sign of slowing down, as company executives pledge to increase spending in 2027.
• Total spend for 2026 is forecast to be between $803B and $828B.

The hyperscalers are investing big to build out the physical backbone of the AI economy, and there's little sign of it slowing down.

Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, and SpaceX each reported a jump in capital expenditures in their latest earnings reports and are on track to spend between $803 billion and $828 billion this calendar year based on their guidance and disclosed fourth-quarter plans.

That figure covers broad capital spending, not just on AI. However, executives at each company have consistently pointed to AI infrastructure as the main driver in the spending surge. And they've all indicated that they plan to keep it up.

"We continue to expect our CapEx to increase significantly in 2027," Anat Ashkenazi, Alphabet CFO, said during its Q3 earnings call on Wednesday.

Here's a quick breakdown of some of the numbers:

$227 billion spent in Q3

Across all five companies, total spending for the third quarter of the calendar year was about $227 billion.

That represents about a 20% increase from the $188.5 billion the companies spent the previous quarter.

Amazon was the biggest spender, reporting $75.9 billion in cash capex. CFO Brian Olsavsky said on Thursday that the figure is primarily related to AWS and AI.

$556.2 billion spent in 2026 so far

Tallying up the total capex for all three quarters, the five hyperscalers have spent a whopping $556.2 billion so far in 2026.

Elon Musk's SpaceX remains the smallest spender in the group with a capex of $48.1 billion, but its CFO, Bret Johnsen, has indicated that it expects to ramp up spending by the next quarter.

Up to $272 billion forecast for Q4

Next quarter's implied capex forecast ranges between $247 billion and $272 billion.

The low end of the range assumes Meta and Alphabet hit the low ends of their full-year capex ranges.

Based on the implied fourth-quarter calculations, Amazon is the only company whose spending would decline from its third-quarter level.

CEO Andy Jassy said during Thursday's earnings call that Amazon expects to spend "meaningfully more in 2027."

Up to $828 billion forecast for 2026

Microsoft expects calendar-year capex of about $170 billion, down from its prior outlook due to delays in third-party data-center capacity. Amazon, meanwhile, maintained its forecast for about $220 billion in cash capex this year.

Even so, 2026 is turning out to be a huge spending year. Altogether, the companies are projected to spend between $803 billion and $828 billion this year.

The companies haven't shared concrete numbers for 2027 capex, but all signs point upward.

"Looking beyond 2026, we are still developing our budget and capacity plans for next year," Meta CFO Susan Li said during the company's earnings call on October 21, "but we expect to continue investing aggressively to support both our core business and emerging AI initiatives."

• Once experimental tech, AI turrets are now becoming an "integral part of air defense" in Ukraine's war.
• These are guns that can detect and lock onto targets by calculating speed and trajectory.
• Ukraine has deployed over a dozen of these and is looking to surge their production and use.

Ukraine is using machine gun turrets controlled by artificial intelligence in battle, and they're working well enough that Kyiv wants to roll them out at a faster pace.

While Ukraine began revealing prototypes of these systems last year, Brave1, the country's defense innovation platform, said on Thursday that they've now become "an integral part of air defense" for its forces.

"In the last month alone, automated turrets have destroyed dozens of enemy drones over Kyiv," Brave1 said, adding that it started work on these weapons in 2024 as experimental technology.

Not much is publicly known about the core capabilities of these turrets, such as their range or how their software works, but they've primarily been described as an air defense tool against Russian drones.

The idea is that artificial intelligence helps the turret detect, acquire, and track a target, making it more accurate than human operators at engaging high-speed air targets such as jet-powered Gerans.

More than a dozen such systems are now deployed in the Kyiv area, with another eight planned for the region, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in early October.

In a sign that Ukraine plans to lean further into the technology, Zelenskyy later praised the systems further, saying on October 19 that AI-powered turrets have "proven highly effective against shaheds."

"We are increasing orders, and it is important to accelerate every process as much as possible — organizational, financial, and production-related," Zelenskyy said.

One such system, the Sky Sentinel, is a .50-cal M2 Browning turret developed and operated by private air defense firm Carmine Sky. It can spin 360 degrees and lock onto a target while firing by calculating speed and trajectory.

Each one costs about $150,000, a Ukrainian commander told Business Insider's Jake Epstein last summer, and can distinguish between birds and drones. The turret still requires a human operator to authorize when to fire, the commander said.

Brave1 released a montage on Thursday indicating that Ukraine is also fielding other types of automated turrets, showcasing clips of several designs.

It said turrets had shot down at least 60 targets under its Private Air Defense Project, a pilot that allows private Ukrainian firms to buy air defense equipment and train civilian staff to use them against drones threatening factories, warehouses, and other important sites.

Notably, Brave1 said these turrets took down Russian Geran-5s and Banderols — jet-powered drones and cruise missiles that can reach speeds of 375 to 400 mph.

A similar claim was made by Yuriy Ihnat, the Ukrainian air force's spokesperson, in early October, when he said that AI-powered turrets had shot down Russian jet-powered drones for the first time. Ihnat did not say which system was used.

Kyiv has eagerly integrated AI into much of its war effort, using machine learning models for other functions, such as predicting enemy drone strikes and autonomously conducting supply runs with robotic buggies.

The turrets do have limited range, making them more useful as a final defense against drones or against low-flying targets.

They'll likely be one of several tools Ukraine is developing to counter Russian jet-powered threats.

Over the last few months, the Kremlin has been ramping up production and deployment of cheap cruise missiles or drones equipped with turbojet engines. These weapons, flying at nearly half the speed of sound and launched by the thousands every month, have become a major challenge for Ukrainian air defenses.

• Reddit is testing a departure from its open-internet roots.
• The platform will soon require users to log in to view its content to prevent content scraping.
• CEO Steve Huffman said Reddit can also better target ads to logged-in users.

Your lurking days on Reddit may be numbered.

Reddit plans to begin testing a primarily logged-in experience, a shift that could make it harder for casual visitors to browse the site without an account.

CEO and cofounder Steve Huffman said on Thursday's earnings call that Reddit will test the change in select markets outside the US in the fourth quarter. The company has not said when it will roll out a fully logged-in experience globally.

The tests will help Reddit determine how much content logged-out visitors can still access, including through shared links, search, and its front page.

This is a departure from the open platform it has been for over two decades, where internet users could view its content without logging in.

"It's a big one for us, and it's a big one for me," Huffman said to investors about the change. He gave a few reasons for the shift.

First, logged-in users mean Reddit can target ads more effectively, as they provide the platform with more information to make ad decisions. COO Jen Wong added that more than 80% of Reddit's monetization "sits on the shoulders of logged-in and app users," calling them the company's "bedrock."

Second, the move aims to protect Reddit content from third-party scraping.

"The vast majority of the scraping and stealing of Reddit happens in our logged-out user base," Huffman said. He did not specify who the third parties involved in content scraping were, AI agents or otherwise.

Reddit addressed similar concerns in 2024, updating its "Robots Exclusion Policy" to put guardrails in place against unknown bots crawling its site. It also sued Anthropic, Perplexity, and several other data-mining companies last year, accusing them of scraping Reddit comments for AI training.

Reddit reported a 53% increase in third-quarter revenue, from $584 million in 2025 to $895 million in 2026. Its global daily active unique users in the quarter rose 12% to 130.3 million, even as US users declined 2%.

Huffman said Reddit's search-referral traffic was down in the third quarter. In October, search traffic fell by more than 1 million referrals per week on average, he said. If that rate continues, he said Reddit could lose a significant percentage of its current 130 million daily active unique users in the fourth quarter.

The company's stock dropped more than 17% in after-hours trading on Thursday.

• Alex Rodriguez says baseball gave him a "Ph.D. in failing."
• He says the teams that win aren't always the ones with the biggest or most talented stars.
• He now brings that same resilience to running his investment firm.

Alex Rodriguez says baseball taught him the value of failure.

Speaking on Friday's episode of "The Sebastian Maniscalco Show," Rodriguez said his professional baseball career shaped his approach to managing his business, A-Rod Corp.

"I think the greatest thing that I've learned from sports is to develop thick skin, because baseball specifically is a major sport of failure," Rodriguez said.

The former baseball player said he ranks fifth all-time in strikeouts in the history of the game.

"That means only four people in the history of mankind have failed more than me, right?" Rodriguez said. "I often tell my girls I have a Ph.D. in failing, but I also have a master's in getting back up."

He said the key is to keep coming back and trying again. No matter how many missed hits or strikeouts came before, each new at-bat is a fresh chance, he said.

"That's a real gift, and I think that this generation of young kids lacks that a little bit," Rodriguez said.

He also said success requires a strong work ethic, a team with complementary skills, and the ability to work together toward a shared goal.

Rodriguez then referenced a quote that resonated with him. "Great players often don't win championships. The best teams do, even though they may not have the most talent," he said.

"I'm a big believer in that," he added.

Rodriguez is not alone in seeing setbacks as part of the path to success.

Professional field hockey player Boris Burkhardt told Business Insider in July 2025 that sports made him comfortable with losing, a lesson he has carried over into building his businesses.

"When you lose a deal or you didn't manage to close the deal, then you dive into it — where did it go wrong?" Burkhardt said. "Failure is something you should embrace when you play sports or when you're building a business to get better."

Conan O'Brien has similarly said that his long career has depended on treating setbacks as a way to reset and look ahead.

"It keeps happening over and over and over again, and then it's just learning to roll with it and say, OK, what's my next opportunity? Reset, recommit, and look for the next opportunity," O'Brien said in a March podcast appearance.

• Marissa Goldstein and her husband traveled to Vietnam for work in 2016 and decided to move there soon after.
• Now, a mother of two sets of twins, Goldstein says her family of six is happily settled in Ho Chi Minh City.
• The city's low costs and kid-friendly culture make family life easier — though international school fees are high.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Marissa Goldstein, a 40-year-old entrepreneur from the Boston area who lives in Ho Chi Minh City. It has been edited for length and clarity.

In 2016, my husband and I flew to Vietnam with our 1-year-old twins and two bags. We told everyone we'd be back in three months.

Ten years later, we have four kids — two sets of twins — and a life in Ho Chi Minh City that I wouldn't trade. We've taken our kids to about 50 countries and spend summers with our families in Boston, then come back to the chaos of a city we love.

Asia had my heart long before Vietnam

I grew up outside Boston. I studied communications at the University of Maryland, and a trip to Thailand during my junior year abroad was my first taste of Asia. I fell in love.

My husband and I met in high school and married after I graduated. I worked in PR and sales, then got my MBA at Babson College. Around 2015, there was an opportunity to help US companies diversify their supply chains away from China, so we started The Timroon Group, a manufacturing and sourcing company focused on Vietnam.

Being home with two babies overwhelmed me. Even though we had an incredible support system, living with my parents in a six-bedroom house in the suburbs. I quickly realized that staying home wasn't for me.

When traveling, though, I felt unstoppable. We headed to Ho Chi Minh City the day after their first birthday.

Vietnam won me over through my kids

I loved it right away, especially how people treat children. We'd bring the twins to dinners and big brunches, and the staff would take them and play. I felt really safe. Within a month, we had friends from all over the world. Three months turned into 18.

When the twins were 18 months old, we took an overnight train to Sapa in northern Vietnam. Hmong women were selling their textiles, and I decided to start my own travel accessories brand, working with women artisans. On that same trip, we decided to have one more child. Soon after, we found out we were having twins again.

In January 2020, we returned to Boston, where I grew Raffi Nova, my textile accessories brand. But by 2022, my husband's business was picking up, and we had the itch to return to Vietnam.

Ho Chi Minh City works for a family of 6

We live about 15 minutes from the city center. There are a lot of foreigners living here, several international schools, and everything is within a 10-minute drive.

There are good doctors and hospitals, Michelin Guide-rated street food, French bakeries, and plenty of activities for the kids, from taekwondo to tennis.

The cost of living is much lower, though school and housing add up. Housing in our area ranges from about $1,500 a month for a smaller apartment to around $10,000 for a villa. We're somewhere in between, in a five-bedroom serviced apartment.

We spend about $1,000 a month on groceries, buying fruit and vegetables at the local market, and spending more on meat and imported food. A latte at a cute, bougie café is about $2, so I treat my friends to coffee without thinking twice.

We have a live-out helper who we pay about $900 a month. She cleans, preps groceries, and helps with the kids. Health insurance for our family runs under $10,000 a year.

I get serious sticker shock when I go home in the summer. I take the kids out for bagels, and it's $100 or more.

Schooling is by far our biggest cost. International school fees in the city range from about $8,000 to $30,000 per child per school year. We're at the higher end, but we strongly believe in a good education.

With fees for four kids, we probably spend about the same as we would in the US, where we wouldn't have to pay for school. But there, we wouldn't eat out or travel as much.

Being far away is hard, but travel makes up for it

Both our big families live in the Boston suburbs.

There's also the weather: hot, hotter, and wet. In rainy season, it pours at school pickup every single day, even when you're sure it won't. The upside is that the kids need only one wardrobe all year.

I see Vietnam is our launchpad to the world.

Last spring, we spent a night in the jungle in Phong Nha, home to Vietnam's largest cave. We've been to Thailand about 20 times. Last February, we rented an RV and drove around New Zealand's South Island. On a trip to Sri Lanka, the kids learned to surf, and we stayed at a homestay in the mountains.

Traveling as six is hard. Most hotels don't allow four children in a room, and we can't fit in a regular car. Our best trips have never been at nice resorts. They're homestays, campsites, and RVs.

That's probably why this life suits us. I never wanted to say, "This is the house we'll live in for the next 50 years." Predictability scares me. I thrive in chaos, and with two sets of twins, there's always plenty of it — I wouldn't have it any other way.

• Binance and Polymarket reported potential security breaches on Thursday.
• Binance is investigating a possible hack, with over a billion in losses potentially at stake.
• Polymarket also temporarily halted trading after a suspected breach.

Two major trading platforms — Binance and Polymarket — were investigating security incidents on Thursday, with the former facing potential losses in the billions. There's no evidence the incidents were related.

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, said it was actively investigating reports of a "potential security issue."

In an update late Thursday, Binance said that its initial investigation suggested that the incident may involve a compromised development operations engineer's laptop. This allowed an attacker to access a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawal transactions.

"We have found no evidence of any wallet private key leak," the company added.

Binance said the estimated total impact is about $6.3 billion, and it has worked with its blockchain partners to freeze around $3 billion in assets so far.

"Deposits remain unaffected and continue to operate as normal," Binance wrote on X early Friday morning. "Withdrawals remain paused while our team completes a security revamp of the withdrawal service and its related addresses. We expect to resume within 48 hours."

The company previously said on X that it would cover all losses and suspended both deposits and withdrawals while it conducted security checks.

The company did not respond to a request for comment.

Binance founder and former CEO, Changpeng Zhao, said on X a hack seemed likely.

“User funds are safe! It does look like a hack on Binance,” Zhao wrote in a post on X. “I don't manage Binance anymore, but as a shareholder, I expect all user funds will be fully covered.”

Zhao expressed appreciation to Tether and Circle, issuers of cryptocurrencies traded on Binance, for quickly freezing funds.

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said on X the company froze more than $1.5 billion related to the potential Binance hack. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said the company froze over $800 million in connection with the incident and that it was coordinating with law enforcement.

Polymarket also reported a security incident

Also on Thursday, Polymarket, the world's largest prediction market by trading volume, temporarily halted trading after users reported unauthorized withdrawals.

The company said in a statement on X that one of its third-party providers was compromised and that the incident had been referred to law enforcement. It also said trading had resumed by 3 p.m. Eastern time.

A Polymarket spokesperson told Business Insider that the malicious activity occurred in the UK and that the company will reimburse affected users. The company was unable to confirm the amount that may have been stolen.

Polymarket's US exchange was not halted and did not appear to be affected.

A person familiar with the matter attributed the Polymarket hack to a compromised third-party provider called DebugBear, a web performance monitoring platform designed to help businesses optimize website speed. It's unclear exactly how Polymarket uses the platform.

DebugBear did not respond to a request for comment. The company said in an X post on Thursday that it was aware of a security incident and was treating it as a "top priority."

• John Santora took the helm of WeWork in 2024, shortly after it emerged from bankruptcy.
• Two years later, the company is making money.
• At Business Insider's Long Play Event, Santora told Executive Editor Cadie Thompson how he did it.

For WeWork's CEO, Fridays are for sneakers. Sometimes.

At Business Insider's The Long Play event on Thursday, John Santora told Deputy News Chief Cadie Thompson that he rebuilt WeWork in part by establishing a sense of trust and decorum among employees.

In pursuit of that goal, Santora instituted a dress code for employees, but also gave them one day a week to work from home.

"I didn't have the ability to go watch my son play a 3 o'clock baseball game," Santora said, adding, "We have to give our employees that flexibility to do all that."

Santora, formerly the chief operating officer at Cushman & Wakefield, a real estate firm, became WeWork's CEO in 2024 as the once-buzzy office startup emerged from a disastrous Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.

Santora had a short time to decide whether to join the faltering company, he recalled. And it wasn't exactly an easy choice.

"I was kind of at that point of, 'Should I retire?'" he said. "My daughter Nancy said, 'Dad, you know we love you, but when you have too much time on your hands, you're a pain in the ass.'"

Since those deeply red days in 2019 when WeWork's valuation plummeted from $47 billion to roughly $8 billion before it was bailed out, the company has stabilized. It posted eight quarters of EBITDA profitability and expects a fourth straight quarter of cash-flow profitability.

In 2025, it reported about $2.3 billion in revenue.

Though it hasn't hit the valuation it once had, the fact that the company could be revived at all is remarkable. WeWork, founded in 2010, rents out office space, spruces it up, and parcels it out to freelancers, startups, and other businesses.

Its first CEO and founder, Adam Neumann, made bold pronouncements that WeWork would "change the world" and "elevate the world's consciousness" by renting out office space to startups.

But after a bungled IPO, it became clear to the new stakeholders that a different type of leader was sorely needed.

As it turned out, Santora was that leader.

Having worked for 47 years at Cushman & Wakefield, Santora had the real estate experience that Neumann lacked, albeit without the magnetism of a Silicon Valley whiz kid.

"From a leadership standpoint, I'm a very structured, disciplined person," he said. "I'm a suit and tie, buttoned-up real estate person."

Santora recalled an early trip to one of the offices, where he discovered employees wearing jeans, pajamas, slippers, and shorts.

"I grabbed my head of HR," he said. "See that? I don't want to see it anymore."

Santora, who at one point described himself as an "old chubby guy from Staten Island," didn't just force employees to wear sports coats to important meetings. In his words, there was some "give and take."

"I don't look at what time they leave, what time they come in," he said of his employees. "As long as they're getting their work done and they're keeping their clients happy."

And Santora allows himself one exception to his suit-and-tie persona.

"Fridays, I'll actually sometimes wear sneakers, depending on what my schedule is," he said.

Ashley Graham is a model and entrepreneur who has spent her career challenging who is seen, heard, and marketed to, transforming that influence into a growing business.

Ten years after her "Sports Illustrated" cover, Graham took the stage at Business Insider's The Long Play to unpack how she has built a personal brand across fashion, beauty, entertainment, and consumer products without losing what's at the core of her identity.

Graham spoke about Lucci, her new venture in the wine business, and her longtime partnership with JCPenney during her interview with Business Insider's executive editor, Leena Rao.

During the conversation, titled "Breaking the Mold," Graham also said that getting lots of rejection early on in her career has made her into a better businessperson.

"If it's not for you, there's another thing for you. And you can't take it personally," Graham told Rao.

• Supermodel turned businesswoman Ashley Graham spoke at Business Insider's The Long Play on Thursday.
• Graham has invested in startups and launched her own ventures, including Lucci sparkling wine.
• She said that raising money for the alcohol brand was "very, very hard and humbling."

Ten years after making history as the first plus-size model on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, Ashley Graham has built a business portfolio spanning skincare and clothing to baby care and alcohol.

The 38-year-old supermodel turned businesswoman spoke at Business Insider's The Long Play event in New York City on Thursday to discuss her breaking barriers in fashion and navigating the difficult world of investment and entrepreneurship.

"I realized quickly that my body is my business," she told Business Insider's Leena Rao. "So how can I scale this?"

That crossover appeal has helped her build a massive social media audience — nearly 30 million followers across platforms — with whom she connects and brings along as she expands her ventures.

Among her latest projects is Lucci, a sparkling Italian Lambrusco wine brand she co-founded in February. Graham said Lucci was started from the ground up and was the first time she had to ask investors to come in.

"Asking people for money is very, very hard, and humbling," she said, adding later that it's been a "great learning curve" as it was the first time she had to answer to investors for the 'why' behind decisions.

From swimsuit model to leading a brand empire

In 2016, Graham appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit issue, becoming the first plus-size model to do so.

The following year, she was named one of TIME's most influential people of the year, had a Barbie doll modeled after her, and released her first book, "A New Model: What Confidence, Beauty, and Power Really Look Like."

Forbes listed her as one of the highest-paid models in 2017, with an estimated income of $5.5 million; she was the first plus-size model to break the top 10. Her namesake JCPenney collection, which launched in October 2025, is made exclusively for customers who wear size 14 and up.

Building beyond the runway

After the SI cover launched her to international fame, Graham said she monetized on the viral moment by releasing swimsuit and lingerie lines. Today, she still regularly releases collaborations with intimate brands like Knix, for which she serves as Global Ambassador and investor.

"When your body is your brand, you're always talking about it," she said.

She's also become an investor: Graham has backed the period-care brand Rif Care, the infant-formula company Bobbie, and the sustainable skincare brand Fig.1 Beauty. In 2022, she joined Fig.1 as both an investor and a partner, saying she wanted involvement beyond a typical celebrity endorsement.

As the years have passed, Graham said she's learned from past mistakes, learned how to say no, and has leaned into being very intentional about building teams around her that she can trust.

Graham also said she was surprised by "just how ruthless [VC] can be," as well as by how much success there can be.

Her most recent exit as an investor was with Wonderbelly, a clean antacid startup, which was acquired by Procter & Gamble in January.

Balancing a business with raising 3 children

Graham has managed to balance that growing career with motherhood. She and her husband Justin Ervin, whom she wed in 2010, welcomed their first child in 2020, followed by twin boys in 2022.

In 2024, she walked the Victoria's Secret runway for the first time. In making the decision to join the fashion show, she said she asked the company about its plans to expand its size range.

"I don't want to just come on as a token," she said. "I don't want to be the one-trick pony."

During the years she was having her children, she said, her investments also took on a family focus, leaning into brands she "felt like they were in [her] zeitgeist at the moment," including babycare and women-led brands. Now, her businesses are growing with her kids.

At Business Insider's event, she teased about her next business venture launching next summer: A home company partly inspired by her children.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"We can fund this plan"

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

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

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

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

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

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• Nadia Carlsten, CEO of Smartbird, spoke on the public company's shift from sneakers to AI.
• When the AI pivot was announced, the company's stock skyrocketed. It has since come back down.
• Carlsten said Smartbird has a different approach to AI infrastructure, focusing on customer needs.

Before Smartbird was powering large language models, it was making shoes.

The CEO of the AI infrastructure company, Nadia Carlsten, spoke about the transition with chief correspondent Ben Bergman on Thursday at Business Insider's The Long Play.

Its roots are the sustainable sneaker company Allbirds, which skyrocketed in the late 2010s. The shoes were particularly popular among the Silicon Valley crowd. Allbirds went public in 2021 before the market turned on many direct-to-consumer businesses. The stock quickly fell, and it sold to American Exchange Group in March for $39 million.

"The short answer is the shoe business wasn't doing that well," Carlsten said.

The company then sold off its footwear business and shed most of its workforce, rebranding as Smartbird. The AI pivot skyrocketed the stock and was briefly up 800%, though it has since come back down. Carlsten, who became CEO in June, said she had never worn those wool shoes.

"The goal of the company was to do something valuable and meaningful. And for me, I knew I wanted to do AI infrastructure," she said.

After looking at the emerging AI infrastructure sector, she believed with the company's transformation, it was the "right place at the right time" for her to join.

In the five months since she took over, Carlsten said the experience can be described in one word: exciting.

"Never in my life thought that I would be the CEO of a former shoe company and managing what is essentially a startup." Since taking on the role, she has focused on building out a new team, scouring new technologies for the company to look into, and producing a new pipeline of customers.

While the stock price has gone down since the initial pivot-induced spike, Carlsten does not regret taking on the challenge. She is betting on the company's long-term potential.

"The stock market is going to do what the stock market does," she said. "What I care about is making sure that we're putting the company on the right path, and that we're able to build it quickly enough and well enough that we have a sustainable business that investors will love. So what happens in the short term? Not that important. What happens in the long term is very important."

When asked why the company decided to reinvent itself in the public eye instead of beginning as a private start-up, Carlsten countered with a question: "Why not?" she said, "It will come back up."

Having to reinvent the company from scratch can be challenging, and the public's presence is clear, she said. Yet, Carlsten said reinvention is inevitable for companies.

"This is a very public reinvention of the company, and people are watching," she said. "I think every company needs to reinvent itself every now and then."

When asked why the company is fully remote, Carlsten said most of the work at Smartbird is done virtually or at data centers, meaning an office would not be of much use.

"We spend a lot of time actually building things, which I actually love. So if my people are sitting in an office, something's wrong," she said.

Working within the emerging AI sector

Carlsten said that although her competitors are building similar AI infrastructure, the way Smartbird is going about it is unique.

"For us, it's about the right infrastructure for the right company at the right time," she said. "Our business model allows us to work more closely with customers, but it also is a lot less capital intensive."

Smartbird is looking to work with companies that have yet to explore implementing AI in their systems, she said. As more companies outside the tech realm look to adopt AI into their businesses, they have the choice to build infrastructure themselves or outsource it, and Smartbird wants to be the one to do it for them, she said.

"We'll do the infrastructure part. We'll let you focus on the actual business," she said.

The most common misconception Carlsten said she has encountered in the business is that it's all about GPUs. She said the company does a lot more than just run GPUs.

"It's really about having a holistic system that a customer can use to do AI," she said.

Another rumbling that's taken over the tech company discourse is whether there's an AI bubble and if it will pop. Carlsten said that depends on how people go about defining the bubble.

Excitement in the sector means funding might be going into companies that may not prosper in the future, but this is something that happens with the arrival of new technologies, she said.

"Every time there is a transformational technology, this happens," she said. "Even if we assume that there is a bubble, that doesn't mean that the technology is not good. It also doesn't mean that the adoption of the technology is going to go away."

• Take-Two's CEO says his 13,000 employees share a collective goal: make the world's best entertainment.
• His philosophy to get there? A formulaic pay program aligned with that mission, empathetic listening, and direct CEO access.
• Take-Two Interactive is getting set to launch its hotly-anticipated GTA 6 in November.

Strauss Zelnick is relentlessly focused on making "the best entertainment on earth." There's no confusion about that mission among his employees, he said.

"I have 13,000 colleagues," the Take-Two Interactive CEO said at Business Insider's The Long Play event in New York City on Thursday. "100% of them can and will tell you exactly what I just said."

His management philosophy — "establish a mission, establish a strategy, and promulgate collective culture" — is about to get its biggest test in years.

Take-Two is the publisher behind popular games like "Red Dead Redemption" and "NBA 2K," and, on November 19, they'll launch a new "Grand Theft Auto." The wildly popular series hasn't had a new mainline installment since 2013 and has delayed its launch twice in an effort to meet the studio's exacting standards. GTA 6 is central to Take-Two's forecast for at least $8 billion in net bookings for fiscal 2027.

Zelnick has run the company since 2007. To align employee incentives with Take-Two's big expectations, he believes compensation should be based on a formula aligned with the company's mission — not left to manager discretion.

"I personally believe that discretionary compensation programs are toxic," he said, adding that they create "politics and get you the wrong results, especially over time."

"So, we're all formulaic," he said. "You perform, the company performs — you get paid. You perform, the company doesn't perform — you don't get paid. Company performs, you don't perform — if you still have your job, you get paid."

Zelnick also said he has no chief of staff, is available on Slack 24/7, and shares his cellphone number with employees.

"If you're not president of the United States, you have no reason to have a chief of staff," he said.

That doesn't mean he will swoop in and override an employee's manager, said Zelnick, who considers himself an empathetic listener. He said workers should feel heard — and that he will try to help them solve a problem.

Still, he doesn't believe his formula at Take-Two is necessarily the right approach for every leader.

"Leadership comes in all flavors," he said. "You have to be your own kind of leader, and I don't think anyone should adopt my skills, because you're not me."