Do you live near a data center? If not, you might live near one soon.
Business Insider's new map shows 1,416 data centers built or approved for construction in45 states and Washington, DC by the end of 2025.
Virginia is the historical epicenter of data center development in the US. Now developers are hungry for new sites. Hot spots have emerged in West Texas; outside Cheyenne, Wyoming; and in rural Wisconsin.
Our map shows every data center we found with an air permit issued through December 2025. The data table is searchable by county, state, zip code, or corporate parent, and sortable by estimated low-end, high-end, and average electricity use. Search by any address to identify the closest data centers. Select any data center on the map to see more details about the facility, and select any entry in the data table to see the data center on the map.
For any data center with an asterisk, Business Insider also identified a permit to build a dedicated power source, such as a natural gas plant, to provide electricity for that data center. Business Insider identified at least 20 permits issued to developers through the end of 2025 for power plants intended to serve data centers.
To investigate the rapid proliferation of US data centers, Business Insider filed requests with all 50 states and Washington, DC for the air permits that regulate backup generators installed at data centers. We used data in these permits to identify data center location and ownership, and estimate facility power use. This map is an updated version of the data center map we published last year. Read about our methodology in more detail here.
Business Insider's analysis of permits shows that Meta had 38 US data centers at the end of 2025, a figure that Meta says is too high. Meta says it currently has 28 data centers in the US, and that some of the permitted facilities in Business Insider's analysis are offices. Offices could have backup generators for small, on-site servers. Business Insider included these facilities because they received air permits issued with federal industry codes associated with data centers. These facilities represent 0.2% of Meta's total data center power use, according to Business Insider's estimate.
Business Insider's analysis is dependent on estimating data centers' electricity use based on the number and type of backup generators installed at each facility. Where developers are building entire power plants, some are forgoing installing backup generators altogether. As a result, Business Insider's electricity estimates are certainly an undercount, as facilities known to be huge and built with dedicated on-site or nearby power generation, such as xAI's data center complex in Memphis, Tennessee, or Meta's Hyperion Campus in Richland Parish, Louisiana, appear far smaller in Business Insider's analysis, due to a lack of permitted backup diesel generators.
Business Insider's methodology was developed in close consultation with industry and academic expertsand is the same methodology used for an award-winning series published by Business Insider last year. Amazon said Business Insider's methodology is misleading because it includes a range of electricity estimates. QTS said the company's current electricity use is lower than our estimates, which project future use. Equinix says it had 79 data centers either built or under construction at the end of 2025. Business Insider identified permits for 56 Equinix data centers.
Have a tip or a question about our reporting? Reach out to Business Insider's enterprise team at investigations@insider.com.
Legora's CTO said demos or hack days are better ways to encourage AI use.
Illustration by Thomas Fuller/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Legora's tech head said there are better ways to gauge AI usage than tokenmaxxing.
He said that demo days and hack days are more efficient ways of showing people how AI can be used.
Tech firms are now questioning tokenmaxxing costs and reassessing giving employees free rein.
There are far better ways to encourage AI use than tokenmaxxing, says Legora's chief technology officer.
"A lot of people, say, get a leaderboard and bring up token usage at performance reviews," said Jacob Lauritzen on an episode of the "20VC" podcast released on Saturday. "That leads to tokenmaxing, which is people just burn tokens just to look good."
"That's a really stupid way to do anything," he added.
Tokenmaxxing refers to using tons of AI tools like Claude, Codex, and Cursor to boost productivity and get ahead on internal AI use dashboards and reviews.
Lauritzen, who joined the legal AI startup in 2024, said that more intelligent ways to use AI include hack days or demos where employees can show others what they're building and the efficiency gains they have achieved.
"Reward them for being effective and efficient and having more output, not for necessarily using AI," he said.
That said, Lauritzen added that fast-growing companies like Legora have a lot to lose when they don't use AI.
"Is it worth us spending a ton of tokens to learn if it maybe gives us 20% efficiency for us? Yes, we have a really high opportunity cost," he said.
Lauritzen's comments come at a pivotal moment for the tech industry, as it moves from tokenmaxxing to token capping. Some tech companies are wondering if the dashboards they implemented as motivation to play around with AI are backfiring — and finance departments are increasingly concerned about how much it all costs.
Last week, Uber said it has limited all employees to $1,500 in monthly token spend per AI tool, after the ride-hailing company blew through its AI spend budget earlier this year.
Last month, the Financial Times reported that Amazon shuttered an internal dashboard that tracked AI use after some staff performed tasks to climb the leaderboard.
An Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider that the unofficial dashboard "was never intended to promote the use of AI for usage's sake."
At a Bloomberg conference last week, Andrew Feldman, the CEO of Cerebras Systems, said that the idea of giving employees unlimited tokens was "boneheaded from the get-go."
"You don't need a Ferrari to go to the grocery store, right? Use a lower-cost open source model," he said about being more efficient with tokens. "What we're learning is how to shop at Costco."
I flew in a unique "Apex Suite" business class cabin that usually costs less than Qatar or Emirates but is still very comfortable.
Courtesy of Angelo De Guzman
I find Gulf Air's "Apex Suite" offers competitive business class comfort at a lower price point.
The Boeing 787 provides aisle access and coziness despite the 2-2-2 layout.
My Gulf Air fare from Bahrain to Bangkok was $2,044, much cheaper than Emirates or Qatar.
Middle Eastern giants Emirates and Qatar Airways used to be my go-to airlines for business class. But after flying Bahrain-based Gulf Air, I can't justify their higher fares anymore.
I first flew Gulf Air's "Apex Suite" business class in 2023 and was surprised by how competitive it felt. Despite a 2-2-2 layout that would usually signal limited privacy and mobility, the Boeing 787 offered coziness while still allowing every passenger to freely access the aisle.
The unique cabin may not be as posh as Emirates and Qatar's modern premium seats with sliding doors or mini bars, but it offers the privacy, space, and comfort I want at a significantly lower price.
My most recent trip from Dubai to Bangkok reinforced this: Emirates was selling business-class tickets for $3,460, Qatar for $2,940, and Gulf Air for $2,044. Gulf Air was an easy choice.
While there are a few easy ways it could improve its premium experience, Gulf Air delivers everything I need for a long-haul flight — and I haven't booked Emirates or Qatar on comparable routes since.
I flew Gulf Air from Dubai to Bangkok via Bahrain in May.I flew to Bangkok via Bahrain from my home in Dubai. I could fly nonstop on Emirates, but I don't mind the layover to save money.
Courtesy of Angelo De Guzman
I enjoyed a drink at Gulf Air's luxe "Falcon Gold Lounge" in Bahrain before my 7-hour trek to Bangkok.
It was well-stocked with Champagne and spirits. The buffet had a salad bar, Arabic dishes, live cooking, and desserts. There's also a business center, a pool table, and even PlayStation 5 consoles.
Falcon Gold strikes a happy middle ground between its bigger competitors: less flashy than Qatar's flagship lounge, but quieter and more relaxed than Emirates' often-crowded Dubai offering.
I boarded my red-eye flight to Bangkok around 10 p.m. via a dedicated jetbridge for premium flyers.
Courtesy of Angelo De Guzman
There were two jet bridges, one mainly for priority groups, which meant I was among the first on the plane.
Boarding was well organized, with dedicated lanes for business-class and higher-status passengers.
The Boeing 787-9 featured Gulf Air's unique Apex Suite.
Courtesy of Angelo De Guzman
The unique suite has 26 seats in a 2-2-2 layout, with two seats by each window and two in the middle. Window seats sit slightly further back than aisle seats, creating a private walkway into your space that doesn't force anyone to climb over their neighbor.
Once settled, I raised the privacy shield and cocooned myself away from the other passengers.
My favorite seats are by the window, but not all are equal.There was a large gap between the windows at my seat.
Courtesy of Angelo De Guzman
One neat design element of the Apex Suite is that most window seats have three or four windows.
My seat, 3K, however, only had two due to the fuselage design. I normally book 2A or 2K to avoid this, but they were both taken.
The pre-boarding service is five-star, but the amenity kit was inconsistent.
Courtesy of Angelo De Guzman
A welcome drink and cold towel were offered during boarding, followed by gahwa — a traditional Arabic coffee — and dates.
Slippers and pajamas were also handed out before departure, a nice touch for an overnight flight. Qatar and Emirates also offer sleepwear on select long-haul flights.
At the seat were menus in English and Arabic, water, and an amenity kit. The kit was noticeably stripped back from previous flights, with only an eye mask, socks, and earplugs.
Earlier kits included lip balm, hand cream, body mist, and a toothbrush. It may have been a one-off, as the kit on my return flight had the missing items.
The 22-inch screen matched newer cabins, but don't expect 8,000 movies.The inflight screen is standard size but far away from the seat.
Courtesy of Angelo De Guzman
The seat had a 22-inch screen, standard for business class, and a touchscreen remote that doubled as a controller. Gulf Air's smaller entertainment library is inferior to Emirates' or Qatar's, but it's ample for a long-haul flight.
Emirates' refurbished 777s — which ditched the 2-3-2 layout for one without middle seats — offer 23-inch displays. Qatar's Qsuite comes in at around 21.5. Their older aircraft typically have smaller screens.
There was more storage than expected, and the massage function actually worked.
Courtesy of Angelo De Guzman
The storage was better than most business-class seats I've used, with dedicated space for water bottles, a phone, headphones, and even a backpack and shoes under the screen.
The tray table easily fit my 14-inch MacBook Pro and headphones, while the built-in massage function was a relaxing touch at 35,000 feet.
The bathroom had a bidet.Japanese carriers like All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines also have bidets.
Courtesy of Angelo De Guzman
The two business-class-only lavatories up front were kept clean throughout the flight and featured Japanese-style bidet toilets.
Though the amenities were basic, a light upgrade would go a long way to match the premium cabin experience.
Dinner was tasty and well-paced.
Courtesy of Angelo De Guzman
I had mushroom soup to start, which was hot enough to be comforting. Warm bread, including multigrain, white, and garlic, came on the side.
Prawn salad followed, with green papaya, cucumber, carrots, and chili salsa. For mains, the options were Bahraini chicken biryani, Thai beef curry, Cajun salmon, and Pad Thai.
I was tempted by the Thai options but held off for Bangkok. I went with the salmon, which tasted fresh. Champagne flowed throughout, with other solid wine options also available.
I was served dessert from a dedicated trolley.The dessert trolley is a fan favorite.
Courtesy of Angelo De Guzman
The dessert trolley had several options.
I went with the cheesecake, fruit, and the cheese platter, which they plated on the spot.
The turndown service has changed.The 22-inch seat converts into a 78-inch fully flat bed.
Courtesy of Angelo De Guzman
In the past, the crew would usually mention turndown service, especially on red-eye flights. Now, you have to ask. Still, I slept very well.
A mattress topper and fitted bedding made a real difference to what, underneath it all, is a converted seat.
The cabin ran slightly warm at night.
Courtesy of Angelo De Guzman
The cabin was well dimmed and quiet.
The only downside was the temperature. The 787-9 doesn't have individual air vents, so you're at the mercy of the cabin setting, which ran slightly warm. I prefer it colder.
Breakfast was simple but well-timed.Breakfast was well-timed for a 9:45 a.m. arrival in Bangkok.
Courtesy of Angelo De Guzman
The lights gradually brightened, signaling it was time for breakfast.
There were no hot options, but I could choose from fruit, yogurt, pastries, and drinks.
Gulf Air is overall a better value for me than Emirates and Qatar.There are a few areas Gulf Air could improve, but it's a better bang for my buck than Qatar and Emirates.
Courtesy of Angelo De Guzman
The Apex Suite gets the basics right: the privacy works, the bed is comfortable, and the service is good.
But there are a few gaps. I had to request turndown service and the inflight library trails both Emirates and Qatar. Those are easy wins left on the table.
Despite all that, I won't stop booking the Apex Suite. Gulf Air runs roughly $1,400 less than Emirates and $900 less than Qatar on this route — that's equal to a few nights at a five-star hotel in Bangkok and a Michelin-level dinner.
If it's your first time in business class, this is a smart place to start. If you already fly often and are open to a unique way to fly business class, you're getting the same experience without the brand premium.
I flew in a one-of-a-kind electric airplane and got a glimpse of what the future of aviation could look like.
Taylor Rains/Business Insider
Beta Technologies aims to revolutionize travel with its electric aircraft, the Alia CX300.
I flew on the plane during Beta's media day and thought it was smooth and quiet.
There are still questions around certification, infrastructure, battery life, and public acceptance.
The future of aviation isn't a sleek jet — it's a tiny whale-shaped airplane that could turn The Jetsons fantasy of aerial commuting into reality.
Vermont-based startup Beta Technologies aims to convince US consumers that electric aviation has arrived in ways that will change how they travel for work and leisure, and invited media to ride in the state-of-the-art all-electric aircraft that it calls the Alia CX300.
For 20 minutes, we zipped above Burlington at over 100 miles per hour as test pilot Chris "Pooter" Caputo showed us how it banks, glides, and manages energy. The ride was smooth, quiet, and surprisingly fast, with sweeping views of Lake Champlain and the Green Mountains below.
This new industry believes electric aircraft like the Alia CX300 will take over short regional routes from today's small fuel-powered turboprops and helicopters — making travel cleaner, cheaper, and quieter.
Beta's CX300, a type of aircraft designated cTOL, already has orders from carriers like Air New Zealand and is expected to begin revenue-cargo flights later this year under a Transportation Department pilot program. Full certification is expected in late 2027.
Beta is also developing an electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, or eVTOL — the Alia 250 — to certify in the years after its CX300. It mirrors much of the CX300's technology but takes off from a vertiport rather than a runway, making it particularly suitable for city commutes.
This approach differs from that of other US competitors, such as Joby Aviation and Archer Aviation, which are primarily focused on eVTOL aircraft instead of stepped certification.
Beta president and CEO Kyle Clark said it's a pragmatic strategy that ultimately makes vertical certification easier: "By the time you get the cTOL certified, you effectively have 80% of the requirements for the eVTOL."
Still, the company faces major hurdles, particularly around charging infrastructure, certification, and public acceptance — especially if expected cost savings don't translate into affordable fares. And the up to $13 million in projected battery replacement sales over each aircraft's lifetime, outlined in a 2025 SEC filing, could spook potential customers.
Alia CX300 can carry five passengers and one pilot.
Taylor Rains/Business Insider
The Alia CX300 can carry five passengers and one pilot, with no divider between the cockpit and the cabin.
Inside, two rows of seats sit behind the pilot. My colleague Dan Allen, who sat in the back row at over six feet tall, said he had plenty of legroom. I sat in the front and felt the same.
Flying from the cockpit gave me a bird's-eye view, and the visibility below seemed to eliminate some blind spots.
That said, you do feel every bank and bump in a small aircraft like this, and some passengers may get motion sickness. Dramamine probably wouldn't hurt.
It runs on rechargeable battery packs.The charging cubes are left of the aircraft. One unit charges the batteries, while the other cools them during the process.
Taylor Rains/Business Insider
Up to five battery packs stored in the belly of the aircraft provide around 250 kWh of energy — roughly 390 miles of range under ideal conditions. The redundancy in case a battery fails is crucial for safety and certification.
Beta has spent years developing its electric propulsion system in-house, with separate versions for its cTOL and upcoming eVTOL aircraft.
The batteries can be recharged in about an hour using large, cube-shaped charging units, which Beta also builds and sells to other operators for hundreds of thousands of dollars. The charging business is part of its broader strategy to diversify revenue beyond aircraft sales.
By designing and building much of its technology in-house, Beta has greater control over quality and costs, Clark said — a vertical integration strategy similar to SpaceX, which also builds much of its rockets and supporting infrastructure itself.
Our pilot cut the engines halfway through the flight.
Taylor Rains/Business Insider
To demonstrate the CX300's glide, Caputo cut the engines at about 1,300 feet. While it was slightly rattling, the aircraft maintained a controlled glide and gradually lost altitude.
Caputo said that even in the event of complete power loss away from an airport, the aircraft could glide down onto a suitable landing strip.
The engine itself is also built with redundancy. The rear-mounted electric propulsion unit is designed with independent power paths, meaning one can fail while the other continues operating.
Our flight cost a few dollars. That doesn't mean fares will be cheap.BETA is also making an electric aircraft for the US military.
Taylor Rains/Business Insider
Our flight technically cost only a few dollars in electricity, Caputo said. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy similarly took a demo flight with Beta last week that cost $3, per the company. A similarly sized fuel-powered Cessna would cost a few hundred dollars.
But that doesn't necessarily translate into cheap fares. Operating costs still include pilots, maintenance, insurance, and infrastructure — so the true economics are still a big question.
But electricity is still cheaper than jet fuel, especially as oil prices remain sky high amid the US war in Iran.
Alia CX300 has already been tested on real-life missions.Caputo performed deep banks to show us the cTOL's maneuverability.
Taylor Rains/Business Insider
Beta has partnered with several airlines, including Republic Airways, Air New Zealand, and the UK's Loganair, to conduct real-world test flights. For example, Beta and ANZ completed more than 100 flights — including organ deliveries — across 12 airports and roughly 7,000 miles earlier this year.
In the US alone, there are more than 4,000 public-use airports that are too rural or small for larger commercial jets, yet still need more affordable connections to the broader air network — think leisure places like the Hamptons and Catalina Island, or remote Alaskan communities that rely on regular supply flights.
That network could become the backbone for the Alia CX300, flying short-haul routes within airline fleets or as a standalone service opening untapped routes at lower cost — ultimately laying the groundwork for Beta's vision of eVTOL flying taxis.
"We're ready to go today with cargo cTOL aircraft," Clark said. "Tomorrow it's going to be passenger cTOL aircraft, then cargo VTOL aircraft, then passenger VTOL aircraft."
In a tougher job market, job seekers may overlook warning signs of job scams.
People should watch out for opportunities with unreasonably high pay and other common red flags.
Scammers may use public information about someone to make their outreach messages sound more authentic.
Even the people helping others find work aren't immune to suspicious job offers.
Colleen Paulson, the founder of Ageless Careers, typically helps older executives find new jobs. She received an email for a position that matched her past experience with an eye-popping offer: The gig offered at least $900,000 a year.
Even though Paulson thinks the email was well-written and included a photo, the high pay for the job struck her as a red flag. There was another sign: It didn't seem to come from an official company email domain.
"No one's going to come and email me for a $900,000 a year job from a Gmail account," Paulson said. "So you have to take that discretion and say, 'If it's too good to be true, then it probably isn't real.'"
Paulson suspects the sender did their research to gather information about her online; Paulson's location and work history are on her public LinkedIn account. She suggests people who aren't sure about whether a reachout is legit ask a friend for another opinion.
Take this quiz to see if you can spot job offer red flags
You may have received something similar: a text promising a high-paying work-from-home opportunity, a time-sensitive job offer, or a message saying to deposit a check before starting a job. Experts, job seekers, and workers shared some of the most common red flags to watch out for. As the job market gets trickier, people are more likely to fall for scams because they are desperate.
"The scams are getting more and more complex and harder to detect," Paulson said. "I am afraid for people. It's honestly horrible."
It's a tough time to find work in general, but especially rough for young people joining the workforce. A LinkedIn survey conducted by Censuswide of over 8,000 workers in various countries showed that Gen Z is more likely to experience scams.
Oscar Rodriguez, vice president of trust product at LinkedIn, said Gen Z may ignore warning signs because the job market for entry-level roles is competitive, and many newcomers aren't familiar with standard hiring practices since they are newer to the workforce.
Here are some of the things to watch out for if you're worried about getting scammed in your job hunt.
Leveraging public information
It's easy for scammers to get information about job seekers in today's digital world, so they can craft emails that seem familiar to the person's experience. It also makes it easier to imitate real recruiters, so scammers come across as offering an actual opportunity.
"Recent advancements in AI have made it cheaper, faster, and easier to pretend to be someone that you're not," Rodriguez said.
Even though Bill Hague, executive vice president at media consultancy and research company Magid, isn't looking for a new job, he suspects he has received job scams leveraging his public information. He cited one email that mentioned his past experience on his public LinkedIn profile. "At first, it didn't strike me as a scam because they referenced my background," he said.
Several things in the email made him skeptical, however — links to social media pages that didn't work, "United States" as the address rather than a more specific location, and no posts made on the independent recruiter's LinkedIn. The email also noted it was time-sensitive, high-priority, and was for a major company. "In any major corporation, you know they've all got internal HR and search folks. So that obviously set off another alarm," he said.
Hague sees how it's easy for people to fall for something that looks like it could be a real offer.
"There's so much fraud going on across the internet, and obviously, mobile devices all make access pretty easy," Hague said, adding, "people who get taken advantage of, whether it's the elderly or people who are desperate or aggressively looking for a job, they're the easiest targets."
People worried about their LinkedIn profiles can check their settings to see how much they share with connections and search engines. People can also report accounts that seem suspicious.
Be skeptical of high-paying offers
Priya Rathod, workplace trends editor at Indeed, said job scams tend to increase when the job market is more challenging. She said common job scams involve being asked to hand over money, share personal details, or do free work.
"If you get a message and it sounds too good to be true, it probably is," Rathod said. That can include a reachout promising high pay and flexibility, two factors job seekers tend to seek, but doesn't lay out a specific position. "They keep these details vague on purpose because specific details would give you something to verify," Rathod added.
Meanwhile, Rathod warned about messages that include a position that can't be corroborated on an employer's career page, as well as messages that promise a job without an interview.
Deanna Denham-Hughes tends to spend three days a week working on her portfolio and scouring job sites after being laid off in March.
Amid all the grunt work, she also has to be wary of too-good-to-be-true offers. One email said it was a "confidential" opportunity and promised high pay, but when Denham-Hughes reached out to the recruiter on LinkedIn, they said they hadn't sent it.
"I don't know what's harder to receive: 'Thank you, we're not interested in you' email from an actual employer or a fake offer from a con artist," Denham-Hughes said.
Job seekers have to be careful of email addresses and URLs. Recruiter emails from personal accounts rather than an employer domain could be suspect. Other red flags include any extra or missing letters, or even letters used to make it look like another — for instance, an "r" and "n" together made to look like an "m." People can also hover over email links without clicking them to check the address for typos or other red flags.
Asking for money
Job seekers should also not send money to get a position. "No one who's trying to hire you for a legitimate job listing is going to ask you for a payment prior to it," Rathod said.
A blog post from the Federal Trade Commission said payment for equipment or expenses is a red flag. A company check can also be another scam technique. "The 'check' usually comes with instructions to send some of the money to someone else, often in the form of a wire transfer, crypto, or gift cards (or gift card PIN numbers)," the post said.
"The enthusiastic new hire will deposit the check and front the forwarded funds out of their own pocket, assuming the deposited check will cover the costs," the FTC added. "By the time the bank tells the person the check is a phony, the 'employer' is long gone — with untraceable cash or cards in hand. It's a fake check scam dressed up as a job opportunity."
Rathod said if you've been targeted by a scam, stop contact, don't click links, and if you shared personal or financial information, change passwords and reach out to your bank or credit-card company.
Moving the chat elsewhere
Paulson said job seekers should also watch out for messages that try to move the conversation over to a chat app or similar.
Rodriguez said there's a vulnerability window, where early on in the job-search process "bad actors basically try to move professionals or job applicants away from platforms like LinkedIn, and at the same time, job applicants have far less signal about the job or the recruiter or the company."
Posing as an employer
Job seekers can also check against career pages to see if there are any known job scams. Job seeker Marcia Simmons took advantage of those warnings when she was trying to figure out whether emails from supposedly high-profile tech companies were real. They turned out not to be from the actual employers.
"Even though I was still suspicious, it's just a letdown, especially when you think that possibly a company of that caliber saw something that you did or talked to somebody that you worked with and thought that you were worth approaching," Simmons said.
False offerings aren't stopping Simmons from powering through her job search.
"I have received some legitimate interest that I was a little bit skeptical about, and did research and found out it was a real email from a real person," she said. "So while it's made me more cautious, it definitely hasn't made me say no to somebody who ended up being a real person offering a job."
Have you experienced one of these job scams? Reach out to this reporter to share at mhoff@businessinsider.com.
Katie Anne Hayes felt like her Garmin watch was giving her a lot of valuable information, at least at first. She took particular interest in the "Body Battery" feature, which purports to tell users how much energy they've got left in the tank. Hayes says she started checking it "pretty religiously" to gauge whether she could handle a workout or weekend concert. If her battery was low, "that was usually a good predictor of how I'd feel at the end of the day," she says.
Hayes, 29, wasn't doing all this for fun: Her doctor shrugged off long Covid symptoms she developed in 2023, and she got the Garmin to try to manage the condition herself. But what began as a simple way to track her daily stamina quickly turned into an unhelpful obsession. She'd get frustrated if her battery level was unexpectedly low ahead of an important work meeting and wake up anxious to see what happened while she slept. Eventually, her family members suggested she ax the watch.
"I got into this bad negative feedback loop with it," Hayes says. "Taking off the watch, and having it be less of a mental reminder of the fatigue that I might experience, I think, was helpful."
Thanks to technology, we can know more about our bodies than ever before. From wearables to full-body scans, deep-dive blood and DNA tests, and even at-home vaginal microbiome kits, we have a wealth of insights at our fingertips. In a matter of seconds, chatbots can turn heaps of data and metrics into personalized advice that sounds right. But at what point does so much data become too much? Where does the balance tip from self-knowledge into self-surveillance?
Doctors, researchers, patients, and consumers are trying to figure out where that line should be. People are increasingly outsourcing their relationships with their own bodies to the algorithm. Consumer wellness tech is generating mounds of quasi-medical data without the systems or expertise to interpret it.
"You stop asking, 'How do I truly feel?' and you may start asking, 'What does my app say?'" says Dr. Sandeep Kishore, a physician-scientist and associate professor at the University of California, San Francisco. "This is subtle, but it is a significant shift."
In the wellness space, "longevity" is the word of the day. People are increasingly focused on preventive medicine and optimizing their health. The "quantified self" phenomenon, first coined in 2007, has snowballed into a multi-billion-dollar web of gadgets, tests, and analyses that promise to help you live your most perfect life.
The flood of health metrics raises a hard-to-answer question: How much of this is actually useful?
The global wearables tech industry hit nearly $100 billion in revenue in 2025, according to Grand View Research, and is expected to reach $230 billion by 2033. About a third of Americans wear smart watches, rings, and bands to track their health and fitness. Tens of thousands have signed up for elective whole-body MRI scans that can cost $2,500 a pop. Function Health, a personalized health testing platform that lets patients get upward of 150 tests, is valued at $2.5 billion. Smart ring maker Oura, valued at $11 billion, is expected to go public later this year.
Few people have taken the pursuit of optimization as far as the "Don't Die" entrepreneur Bryan Johnson, but less extreme versions of this impulse have gone mainstream. You've likely noticed friends, family, and coworkers chatting about their sleep scores, step counts, and stress levels — or maybe you're fretting about it yourself. Yelp searches for "full body MRI scan" and "genetic testing" are up more than 200% during the first three months of this year compared to last, and searches for "VO2 max testing," "body composition analysis," and "metabolic testing" have increased, too.
The flood of health metrics raises a hard-to-answer question: How much of this is actually useful?
Self-tracking can be a positive experience if it sparks motivation to move more, eat better, or go to bed earlier. Ten thousand steps a day is an arbitrary number made up by marketers, but if your smartwatch goal inspires you to get off the couch, so be it. Deborah Lupton, a sociologist at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, says trackers may also give us a sense of control over our health, and they can help those with chronic or contested conditions gain better acknowledgment, "because they have 'real data' to show healthcare providers."
But it can also be a slippery slope — much of the tech is designed to give people a lot of noise and not much signal. "The vast majority of metrics that we can measure are a complete waste of time. They don't tell us anything meaningful about health," says Nick Tiller, an exercise scientist and research associate at the Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.
While wearable consumer technologies have improved in recent years, they still have limitations in terms of accuracy and usefulness. Take the example of sleep.
Kelly Baron, a clinical psychologist at the University of Utah who specializes in behavioral sleep medicine, tells me devices have come a "long way" in their ability to track sleep, though their estimates of sleep stages remain limited. And even so, she tries to encourage people not to fixate on their REM or how much rest they get in a single night. Certain medications can affect sleep stages, and people may not realize this unless they talk to a doctor. And as much as we all aim for that perfect eight hours every night, life often gets in the way. What matters are averages and patterns.
Just like anything, we can take sleep tracking too far. "Is it making you feel better or for worse? Do you get up in the morning and look at the number and decide that's how your day's going to go?" Baron says. She's one of the researchers who coined the term "orthosomnia," where people's preoccupation with their sleep readings actually makes their sleep worse and leads to insomnia. It's modeled after "orthorexia," where people become fixated on healthy eating to an unhealthy degree.
Users may also misunderstand what their trackers do and do not tell them. Apple Watches have an FDA-approved feature that can look for breathing disturbances and alert wearers if they show signs of potential sleep apnea (which they should then take up with a doctor). What many of those wearers don't realize is that if the watch doesn't send an alert, that doesn't mean they don't have a problem, and most devices aren't cleared to detect sleep apnea at all.
Dr. Jesse Greer, a former Special Forces physician and the founder of Preamble Health, a preventive healthcare clinic, tells me he's had a number of patients who "if I had to bet five bucks, they've got some sleep apnea," but they insist they don't because of their device data. "I can't tell you how many times we've actually tested, found pretty bad sleep apnea, and the Oura ring is sitting there telling them that they've got a 90 sleep score," he says.
The Oura ring does not detect sleep apnea, nor is it FDA-approved to do so. A spokesperson told me that its sleep and breathing insights "are intended for general wellness purposes only."
Catching a dangerous tumor or detecting heart abnormalities early can be critical. As Dr. Kishore puts it, imagine if the Titanic had shifted by a degree when it left port — it probably would have missed the iceberg. At the same time, many devices and tests are causing people to get worked up over ice cubes.
Full-body scans can detect cancers and other issues life-savingly early, but they can also lead to a lot of unnecessary spending, testing, and anxiety. If you look hard enough, you'll almost always find something. It's only after expensive, invasive follow-ups that you discover that little something was often nothing.
"I think we're setting ourselves up for a lot of physical harm and a lot of financial harm," says Dr. Adam Cifu, a general internist and professor of medicine at the University of Chicago and an editor at Sensible Medicine on Substack. He warns that this can put a financial strain on individuals and the broader health system, as going down the rabbit hole for a benign speck can cost thousands of dollars.
Indeed, major medical groups advise against full-body MRIs for the general public. Dr. Cifu discourages it among his patients because in many cases "they'll just give you something else to worry about."
Doubts from the medical community aren't keeping patients away from all of this testing. Victoria Usher, who runs a communications firm in London, tells me she's become "completely addicted to" the extensive checks she undergoes every year in Bangkok. She spends $1,000 for five hours of "every test known to mankind," including MRIs, CTs, cancer markers, ultrasounds, chest x-rays, and more. "It's health tourism at its best," she says. A friend caught a cancerous growth on her leg this way a few years ago, but thus far, Usher's endeavors have resulted in the detection of an unproblematic heart abnormality and the realization that, like a lot of women as they age, her bone density is low and she's got some plaque in her arteries. She doesn't tell her doctor back home about the tests in Thailand for insurance purposes, though, when the heart thing was detected, and a Bangkok clinician didn't have time to talk it over, she got it double-checked while back in the UK.
"There's a couple of weird birth defects that they found in me that wouldn't ever become a problem, but at least you know they're there," Usher says. She's addressing bone density and arterial issues through lifestyle changes.
As people are swimming in this sea of information, they're turning to AI, not their doctors, to make sense of all of it.
Dr. Kishore tells me he regularly has patients show up in his clinic with scores and metrics from wearables that aren't yet clinically validated. To complicate matters further, patients are tossing test results and readings into ChatGPT and then presenting to their doctors with AI-generated diagnoses or agenda items for discussion. He says the AI is about "fifty-fifty" in terms of accuracy right now. When it's right, it's quite good and directionally helpful, but it's also led to instances where he's ordered extra workups largely to assuage patient anxieties. "I was reassured the AI was perhaps wrong, but we spent some resources in doing that and some emotional energy," he says.
Many people aren't taking their AI-generated medical records to their doctors. Instead, they're keeping it to themselves and self-directing care. According to a recent KFF survey, 29% of American adults say they've used AI tools for information or advice about their physical health, and of those, 42% did not follow up with a doctor.
AI will bullshit you until you're convinced that it's giving you the right answer.
The issue is that AI often gets it wrong. Tiller, from Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, recently published a study that found that half of responses to 250 health-related questions posed to five popular chatbots were "problematic," including 20% that were so problematic as to be dangerous. In many instances, the bots were ingesting online misinformation online and spitting it back out.
"The research shows that actually a lot of the advice that AI is giving is not always based on rigorous science," Tiller says.
Separate research from Mass General Brigham found that publicly available LLMs home in on single answers and diagnoses prematurely when prompted with basic, early-stage queries, getting it wrong most of the time. When the chatbots had all of the pertinent patient readings and insights, they generally got diagnoses right — but often, when someone is asking AI health questions, they're not bringing a complete picture.
"That's the problem, people just assume that it's right," Tiller says. Whereas a doctor or fitness coach would question a patient or be honest when they're not sure about an answer, AI is sycophantic, and it won't say when it doesn't know.
"AI will bullshit you until you're convinced that it's giving you the right answer," Tiller says.
It's not that AI doesn't have potential in this space. It's that patients, doctors, and consumers need to be clear-eyed about where it is right now.
To be sure, people aren't turning to all of these trackers and AI analyses in a vacuum. They're emerging because preventive care feels inadequate and inaccessible, healthcare is fragmented, and patients feel unheard. Consumer tech is eagerly but haphazardly filling in the medical system's many gaps.
It's natural to want to be your best self, but some of us are optimizing ourselves so relentlessly it's a little miserable. It's fine to want to get enough sleep and eat well, but if that means you become so rigid in your schedule that you refuse every mid-week dinner with friends, is that trade-off really worth it? After all, social connections boost longevity, too. If missing your step goal sends you into a spiral, maybe it's time to put down the fitness tracker. What's important to pay attention to is the overall trend — there's no upside in weighing yourself every day if it means panicking over an extra pound or two the morning after a salty meal. Many of the best runners in the world don't do fancy analyses; they just … run. Even Bryan Johnson has admitted that most of the most effective life-elongating hacks are basic and free.
Dr. Cifu says it sounds like some of the health-tracking obsessives "need a better hobby, because in a way, that's what it becomes." If it nudges you toward better behavior, fine. But also, you don't need an Oura ring to tell you heavy drinking isn't good for you, and you can record your sleep with a notebook.
The direct-to-consumer health market is booming, meaning there's no shortage of new gadgets and tests. If you want to treat your body like a dashboard, you can. But people will be wise to remember that these data points are just that — data points. And as hokey as it sounds, the best data point you have is how you feel.
Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.
GM designed its electric Hummer in 20 months, a process the company called "heroic." Its chief product officer told Business Insider it wants to make that more common.
Josh Lefkowitz/Getty Images
General Motors tells Business Insider it's trying to cut the time to develop a new model to two years.
Automakers are trying to make cars faster amid tariffs, EV stumbles, and competition from China.
GM shared some tools it's using to virtually test cars before building prototypes.
General Motors wants to find its "uh oh" moments earlier.
For years, automakers have built physical prototypes to learn how a car behaves on the road, cools passengers down, burns through energy, or even crashes. Those builds can be expensive and time-consuming.
In an interview with Business Insider, GM's chief product officer, Sterling Anderson, and executive director of virtual integration engineering, Jason Fischer, said the automaker is using AI, simulation, and decades of engineering data to move more of that discovery work into the virtual world.
GM — which runs brands including Chevrolet, Cadillac, and GMC — is targeting a two-year vehicle development process. That's down from the standard four- to six-year vehicle development cycle.
"Physical properties are really becoming confirmation builds," Fischer, a 28-year GM veteran, said, rather than "the first time we've discovered something that we've missed."
The push comes as the auto industry is facing several headwinds at once. Chinese automakers are launching new, lower-cost vehicles at a rapid clip. America's EV appetite has not met initial expectations, forcing automakers to write down billions of dollars in production investments. And federal emissions rules, tariffs, and consumer incentives for vehicle sales have swung back and forth between presidential administrations.
Those pressures are forcing automakers to rethink how long they can afford to spend developing new vehicles. Executives at Nissan and Hyundai have previously told Business Insider that they are trying to cut down the time it takes to bring cars to market.
Now, GM tells Business Insider it's confident it can meet its timeline goal because it's done it before: The GMC Hummer EV took them 20 months to move from concept to production.
"We want that to be the norm, not an exception," Anderson, a former Tesla and Aurora Innovation executive, said. "The team did a number of Herculean things to make that happen. These tools are making it possible for our entire product development organization to do the same thing without the heroics for every vehicle we build."
GM is testing the car before it exists
General Motors told Business Insider it's conducting virtual tests — including Consumer Reports' avoidance maneuver testing — on computer-generated models. In this image, a Cadillac Lyriq runs through the test.
General Motors
GM's faster-development push is powered by a mix of bespoke virtual tools and AI models trained on or informed by the automaker's own engineering data.
Fischer said GM rarely uses an "exact off-the-shelf tool." Instead, the company works with software suppliers to customize tools for its own vehicle programs and has also built some of the technology internally.
"We have a lot of IP ownership on some of the techniques that we've developed," Fischer said.
GM declined to specify how much it budgets for AI usage by product designers or engineers. Instead, the company said it's focused less on token volume and more on whether AI solves real business problems.
In one demo, GM showed a Cadillac Lyriq running a cone avoidance maneuver — a common safety test run by Consumer Reports — with several engineering and design teams brought into "a single virtual environment," Fischer said.
That lets GM test how hardware and software behave together earlier — and under more weather conditions. Fischer said engineers can rerun the tests in different road conditions, including ice, snow, and rain.
The same approach applies to less flashy parts of the car, too. Fischer said GM can use co-simulation to model airflow, refrigerant behavior, cabin comfort, range, energy efficiency, and fuel economy together. Work that might have taken months can now happen in "hours or days," he said.
The models even suggested different designs for a bracket in the Corvette's rear hood. Fischer said it was developed using topology optimization and turned out to be 30% stiffer, 20% lighter, and about 95% more durable than the original design.
GM then added the Corvette symbol in the middle.
GM says this bracket was initially designed with its software tools.
This latest push goes into the belly of a car's development process: validating how the vehicle handles, cools, crashes, and integrates hardware and software before GM spends more time and money proving it with a physical build.
"The winners of this industry are those who iterate like next-gen software companies," Anderson said.
