Consulting's race to become AI native

Getty Images; Rebecca Zisser/BI

It's a question as old as the industry itself: What does a consultant actually do?

Traditionally, consultants have acted as an external support system, called in to crunch the numbers, trim head count, or identify growth opportunities.

Now, AI is reshaping what clients want from consultants and how work gets done, creating a new job profile that blurs the lines between tech and consulting.

Instead of generalist teams producing research and strategy decks, consultants are increasingly expected to provide something tangible: tools, systems, and holistic, ongoing support. The big firms aren't only advising on tech strategy, they're building and implementing it, often through multi-year transformation projects.

To win that work, consulting firms are racing to position themselves as "AI-native."

"The more they're perceived to be a technology firm, the more likely they are to win business," Fiona Czerniawska, CEO of Source Global, a consulting sector intelligence firm, told Business Insider.

But the transformation raises a key question: Are these companies fundamentally changing what they do, or merely how they describe themselves?

The race to become AI-native

Looking back at the top firms' actions and rhetoric over the past year makes clear just how central AI has become to the consulting business.

"There is no doubt that our firm is a tech company that delivers now on audit, tax, and advisory services," Tim Walsh, CEO of KPMG US, told Business Insider's Dan DeFrancesco at the World Economic Forum in January.

For the fourth-largest professional services firm in the US, with roots reaching back to 1897, Walsh's statement was striking. A decade ago, KPMG would have described itself as a time-and-materials business with "smart people doing smart things," Rob Fisher, vice chairman of advisory at KPMG, said about Walsh's comments.

Rob Fisher, global head of advisory and vice chair of KPMG US.

KPMG

Now, the firm is embedding AI across its traditional offerings, while responding to growing client demand for subscription-style products, alongside advice and managed services, said Fisher. "We have to become more of a technology organization because clients want to consume our expertise that way," Fisher said.

KPMG isn't an outlier.

PwC has rewritten its training agenda around 30 core skills: 15 AI-centric and 15 human-centric, both of which are "extremely critical" to its success, Yolanda Seals-Coffield, chief people and inclusion officer for PwC US, told Business Insider in February.

EY is using AI as a training assistant to help its staff anticipate how their roles will evolve, and McKinsey has started using Lilli, its internal AI chatbot, in its recruitment process.

Allison Heithoff, a consultant with five years of experience, has seen the change firsthand.

Before AI, most of Heithoff's consulting job was "hands-to-keyboard work." In her first years at the midsize firm West Monroe, she spent her time gathering client data, configuring systems, developing features, testing them, and deploying them.

Five years later, AI can do a lot of that work.

The shift has made her role more strategy-focused and technical. Heithoff, who studied business administration, has found herself using AI to code and develop client solutions in ways she never expected.

Consultancies are hiring differently, too, looking to fill their ranks with deeply skilled technologists. Recent annual reports show that Accenture — already known for its technology capabilities — has added nearly 40,000 AI and data professionals in the last two years, and EY has added 61,000 technologists since 2023.

In February, PwC introduced a new career track for the first time in its 170-year history: the engineering track. The move is a "signpost" for where PwC expects future value to be created, Matt Wood, the firm's then-chief technology and innovation officer, told Business Insider. (Wood left the firm in May).

Even the language of consulting is changing. As Business Insider reported in January, Deloitte is outright scrapping titles like "analyst" and "consultant" and giving all US employees more specific job titles.

Tech and consulting are bleeding into each other

Underpinning all of this is a deeper shift in what consulting firms do and the tools they use to do it.

The largest consultancies have struck multibillion-dollar partnerships with the biggest names in AI, such as OpenAI, Nvidia, Anthropic, and Microsoft, to build internal tools that automate work once handled by junior staff. Now they are rolling out networks of AI agents for employees, and launching AI-enhanced platforms to give clients direct access to their expertise.

The work is also starting to look different. The strategy consulting firm BCG reported in April that AI- and tech-focused services now account for over 40% of its total global revenue, driven by a 25% year-on-year growth in AI services. At McKinsey, AI initiatives now account for roughly 40% of the firm's work, Alex Singla, a senior partner who co-leads QuantumBlack, McKinsey's AI arm, told Business Insider in January.

It's the kind of implementation work that tech companies often do with their own products. Last year, OpenAI launched its own consulting wing, offering clients tailored products and implementation support. Palantir, a tech company that sells software platforms, has teams of "forward-deployed engineers" and "customer success teams" that provide hands-on implementation and strategic advisory services to clients. (Palantir also partners with traditional consulting firms like Bain, PwC, and Accenture.)

Add in the surge of new AI-powered consulting startups — betting that AI can do strategy work just as easily as a team of consultants — and the lines between the two worlds get blurrier.

KPMG's Fisher said the firm's leadership team is out on the West Coast and Silicon Valley every six weeks to "stay connected to the action," meeting with founders, venture capital firms, and their large alliance partners. Previously, business development teams on the West Coast and client conversations would help senior leaders keep abreast of technology shifts.

The result of all this tech evolution is partnerships galore between the top firms and AI leaders. Consulting firms have become critical intermediaries in the AI boom, giving top AI companies access to a vast roster of Fortune 500 clients who still want to turn to a traditional firm for breadth of services, sector expertise, and global reach.

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From the early internet to cybersecurity to SaaS, consulting has adapted to technology before, layering fresh capabilities onto a familiar model. The difference now, industry insiders say, is that technology capabilities are becoming table stakes for all firms and evolving faster than ever.

Over the past decade, technology integration evolved gradually, Tony Farnfield, the CEO of the mid-market consultancy BearingPoint, told Business Insider. AI has disrupted the industry much more rapidly, significantly increasing the level of tech involvement in almost every project, he said.

"Very rarely do we do a project that doesn't have some technology element to it," said Farnfield.

Many firms are now moving toward an "Accenture model" that integrates business strategy with technology and execution in a combined offering.

One of the key drivers leading that transformation is economics. Over the last five years, technology-related services have outperformed the broader market, growing two to six times as fast as traditional sectors, said Czerniawska, the CEO of Source Global. The demand has led "every firm that can do so to invest in their technology services," she said.

"While everyone is offering more technology services, some want to go even further to say, 'If that's what the future looks like, then we need to turn ourselves into a tech services player that just happens to specialize," said Czerniawska.

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While the race to become AI native is undeniably on, the industry's reinvention may be more pronounced in pitch than in practice.

In terms of pure tech usage, consulting firms are still "a long way from the frontier of what's possible" with AI, Charlie Cheesman, a former senior AI consultant at EY, who helped to write the firm's UK AI strategy, told Business Insider.

Professional services firms' strength lies in "initiating large-scale organizational change," he said.

They "were never built to be technical organizations," he said, so they are having to change massively to keep up with AI progress.

Not every firm is rushing to recast itself as a technology company.

"I don't know if the identity of our firm is changing as a result of this," Errol Gardner, global head of consulting at EY, told Business Insider. Technology now drives about half of EY's business, and the firm is hiring deeply technical talent, but that doesn't change EY's core proposition.

Errol Gardner, global head of consulting at EY.

EY

"What we do is move clients from state A to state B in a safer way and as value-enabled a way as possible," said Gardner, and AI is a "new tool in the toolbox" to help with that.

Deploying AI at an enterprise-wide scale requires the kind of work consulting firms have long done — navigating regulation, data governance, organizational resistance, and budgets. "They need a business strategy that is powered by AI as opposed to a separate AI strategy," said Gardner.

The identity of a consulting job — being client-facing, delivering value to clients, developing the teams, and working collaboratively — hasn't fundamentally changed, he said.

PwC's Wood struck a similar note: "It's tempting to look at AI and think the firm needs to become a technology company," he said, but PwC's approach is to focus on how to become the best version of itself using AI.

"The real shift in consulting is not from strategy to implementation, or from generalists to specialists. It is that enterprise problems are now more interconnected," Kate Smaje, global leader of technology and AI at McKinsey, told Business Insider.

The employee experience

Five employees from top consulting firms — Deloitte, KPMG, and McKinsey — all said the job was undoubtedly more tech-heavy, but that AI's impact on consulting jobs is more complex than simply turning them into technologists.

Every employee at McKinsey has become more technical than they were three years ago, said Louis-Charles Généreux, an associate partner at McKinsey, who first joined the firm in 2018. Using AI to enhance work has become a crucial part of remaining competitive in the industry, he said.

At Deloitte, AI hasn't caused the work to change overnight, said a US-based technology consultant who has been at the firm for six years. Instead, it's slowly shifted the job from creation to validation and has increased expectations for workers. "Teams are now expected to deliver more with the same or fewer people," the consultant said.

A senior consultant at Deloitte UK said that even after clients implement AI tools, they still return to the firm needing ongoing support. The "core identity of the profession remains rooted in adaptability," the consultant said.

Others said that, while leadership narratives emphasize AI in everything they do, daily use still mostly leans on generative AI rather than agentic AI.

Cheesman, the former EY AI consultant, said the industry's ability to deploy AI has yet to match the technology's potential: Consultancies can move clients "one or two steps forward" when AI could be taking them 5 or 10 steps forward.

There is no shortage of highly intelligent, capable people in the industry, Cheesman said, but 99% are not coders.

For now, it's still unclear how far consulting firms will go toward remaking themselves as technology companies. They may offer more technology services than they did a decade ago, but most clients still think of the top strategy firms as doing strategy, and the Big Four predominantly as doing finance-related work, said Source Global's Czerniawska. Ultimately, she added, it's for clients to decide the firm's identity, not vice versa.

Around 90% of clients believe AI will affect how firms deliver their services, yet the share who expect that impact to be significant has fallen — from 60% in 2024 to 40% more recently, according to Source Global's research.

There are also advantages to maintaining the consulting identity. Firms that lean too much towards presenting themselves as technology companies face a pricing risk, said Czerniawska. Clients associate technology with lower costs than traditional consulting, she said. Move too far in that direction, and firms risk eroding the premium they charge.

"Identities have shifted unquestionably, but they've not moved to a point where somebody's saying, 'this is a technology company,'" said Czerniawska.

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Space station startup Vast cuts 4% of employees, saying they did not meet expectations in review cycle

Max Haot, the CEO of space station startup Vast.

Sam Barnes/Sportsfile for Web Summit Qatar via Getty Images

• Space station startup Vast cut 4% of its employees this week, Business Insider has learned.
• The startup is building a commercial replacement for the International Space Station.
• A Vast spokesperson said the cuts were performance-related and the startup is looking to backfill them.

Space station startup Vast has cut 4% of its workforce as the new space race heats up.

The startup, which is developing a commercial replacement for the International Space Station (ISS), fired 46 employees on Wednesday, Business Insider has learned.

The cuts come months after Vast raised $500 million in a funding round aimed at launching the world's first commercial space station in 2027.

A spokesperson for the startup confirmed the cuts, which they said were performance-related. They added that the company was still hiring and had 277 open roles.

"As part of our mid-year review cycle, Vast parted ways with employees who were not meeting expectations. We are backfilling these positions and are continuing to grow and execute," the spokesperson said.

Business Insider spoke to two employees affected by the job losses, who said no issues had been raised about the quality or output of their work during their 1:1s with managers or in performance reviews over the past few months.

A rendering of Haven-2, Vast's proposed ISS replacement.

Vast

Founded in 2021 by crypto billionaire Jed McCaleb, Vast is one of several companies vying to build a commercial successor to the ISS, which is set to be deorbited in 2030.

The California-based startup plans to launch Haven-1, its first space station, next year on a SpaceX rocket. Vast says it will begin launching Haven-2, the modular 12-person space station the company plans to use to replace the ISS, by 2028.

Like Elon Musk's SpaceX, Vast's long-term plans sound like something pulled from science fiction. The company's ultimate ambition is to build space stations that will rotate in orbit to produce their own artificial gravity.

Recently, Vast has expanded into satellite manufacturing and struck a deal with the European Space Agency to send its astronauts to the ISS.

It comes amid uncertainty over NASA's plans to fund a new generation of commercial space stations. In March, the agency proposed a new post-ISS strategy based around a single space station, but withdrew it in June after backlash from across the space industry.

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Taylor Sheridan says he wanted to retire after 'Yellowstone,' but he needed money for his $330 million ranch

Taylor Sheridan said he had planned to retire after "Yellowstone."

Omar Vega/Getty Images

• Taylor Sheridan said buying a $330 million ranch derailed his retirement plans.
• He planned to retire after "Yellowstone," but was approached about buying the historic Four Sixes Ranch.
• Sheridan said the $330 million price tag led him to reconsider an exclusive deal with Paramount.

"Yellowstone" creator Taylor Sheridan said buying a $330 million ranch kept him from retiring.

On Tuesday's episode of the "Rodeo Time" podcast hosted by Dale Brisby, Sheridan said his purchase of the Four Sixes Ranch prompted him to sign a deal with Paramount and continue working.

"I was set up to retire. I was going to be done after 'Yellowstone,'" Sheridan said.

The writer and producer said he had already paid cash for another ranch in Weatherford, Texas, and "didn't owe anybody anything."

"I was going to put my feet up and show horses, and have my little hobby herd over here, and that was it," Sheridan said.

However, buying the Four Sixes Ranch meant Sheridan couldn't retire just yet. "I knew that if I bought this ranch, I was not going to be quitting my day job for a while," he said.

The opportunity to buy the ranch came after its then-owner, Anne Marion, died.

Sheridan, who had met her while filming "Yellowstone" there, said the ranch was set to be divided and sold, but Marion had asked her estate to find someone who would "maintain her vision."

"And, so, the person they came up with was me," Sheridan said.

When they approached Sheridan about buying the ranch, the property came with a hefty price tag. "I said, 'Well, boys, I'm a little short. In fact, I'm about $300 million short,'" Sheridan said, recalling his response.

He said the prospect of buying the ranch led him to reconsider an "exclusive deal" with Paramount, which he had previously resisted.

"They were terrified that I was going to go to greener pastures and leave them and go somewhere else, which I probably was," Sheridan said.

"But once this happened, I called them, and I said, 'You know what? I think I'm ready to make an overall deal.' And they said, 'That's great. Do you have a number in mind?' And I said, 'Why yes, I do,'" Sheridan said.

However, Sheridan's partnership with Paramount may soon be winding down. Puck reported in 2025 that he was set to leave Paramount for NBCUniversal once his current deal expires.

Inside Sheridan's piece of Texas history

Founded by Samuel "Burk" Burnett in 1870, the Four Sixes Ranch is known for its Angus cattle and Quarter horses, per its website. It remained under the Burnett family for generations, eventually passing to Marion, Burnett's great-granddaughter.

Marion's will required the family's ranching operations to be sold after her death, according to the property's listing. The main Four Sixes Ranch, spanning 142,372 acres in King County, was listed for $192.2 million. It was offered together with two separate properties, the Dixon Creek and Frisco Creek ranch divisions, which were listed for $137.3 million and $12.2 million, respectively.

Texas Land Magazine reported in June 2022 that Sheridan put together a group of investors to buy the ranch. It said the deal closed in January that year, and "all parties signed a confidentiality agreement preventing disclosure of the final sale price."

"The deal was all-inclusive — three ranches and all inventory," Sam Middleton, the listing agent and broker who represented Marion's estate during the sale, told the magazine.

Sheridan, meanwhile, said the scripts he wrote while "Yellowstone" production was shut down during the pandemic helped him secure a controlling stake in the investment.

"I wrote a bunch," Sheridan said in an interview with The Land Report published in June 2022. "I sold enough scripts that I was able to become the majority owner in the partnership."

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One big thing is dragging down Americans' vibes about the economy

Americans' wallets are feeling the strain of inflation outpacing wages.

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

• US consumer sentiment is worse than in the pandemic years.
• One likely reason is that wage growth isn't keeping up with inflation.
• The sky-high inflation of a few years ago has had lingering effects on workers.

Americans' wages aren't keeping up with the cost of living, and it's likely dragging down how they feel about the economy.

The economy is still slowly growing, consumers are still spending, and both unemployment and layoffs are low. However, consumer sentiment, as measured by the University of Michigan's monthly survey, remains worse than during the COVID period. One big factor could explain why: Inflation has exceeded wage growth for four straight months.

"Consumers' frustration over the erosion of their purchasing power continues to mount," Joanne Hsu, University of Michigan's surveys of consumers director, said.

The survey showed almost three-quarters of consumers in August thought price growth would outpace their income growth over the next year. Hsu said many people are worried that higher energy prices will affect other parts of the economy.

"A sustained drop in gasoline prices over the course of several months (in contrast to temporary dips) would go a long way in boosting consumer views of the economy," Hsu said.

Wage growth lagging inflation is not the only concerning trend in the economy. For instance, labor force participation is at its lowest level in decades outside the pandemic. However, it can be tough for consumers to ignore the higher prices blasted on gas station signs and posted along grocery aisles.

How has your financial circumstance changed over the past year? Have you dipped into savings, got a raise that didn't keep up with inflation, or had to cut back on certain expenses? Reach out to this reporter to share at mhoff@businessinsider.com.

Even though inflation is down from its post-COVID peak, it's still above historical norms, and the long-running impact of that spike is still being felt in Americans' wallets years later.

A new working paper from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business's Erik Hurst and Christina Patterson, and ADP Research's Nela Richardson and Liv Wang, used ADP's payroll data through 2025 to examine purchasing power. They found that the unexpected and temporary inflation shock as the economy reopened in the wake of the pandemic resulted in a "persistent downward shift in real wages, helping explain why Americans' dissatisfaction outlasted the inflation episode itself."

The researchers found that real wages fell between December 2020 and 2024 for nearly 40% of workers, higher than the roughly 24% of workers pre-pandemic.

"Inflation has slowed, but many people never fully recovered the purchasing power they lost when prices surged," Richardson said in a blog post about the findings.

She said that a 3% raise was usually sufficient to get a "modest" real income gain pre-pandemic. She added that when inflation skyrocketed in 2022, employers gave raises that didn't keep pace with the higher inflation.

"Hence this once-in-a-generation inflation shock led to a decline in U.S. consumer purchasing power that persists today," she said.

Despite an uptick in the average share of workers getting a bonus from 2021 to 2023 compared to 2017 to 2019, the researchers found bonuses "did very little to stem the real wage losses that workers experienced." Off-cycle raises helped moderate real wage declines for job stayers.

The importance of real wage gains

Mark Hamrick, chief economic analyst at The Hamrick Brief, told Business Insider that persistently high inflation above the Fed's 2% target is contributing to Americans' pessimistic feelings about the economy.

"Americans are literally paying the price for high inflation through elevated price levels," he said.

"Even if you're making more money numbers-wise, with the way prices are rising, you have less money left over at the end of the month," ZipRecruiter economist Nicole Bachaud told Business Insider. "That's really going to impact the large consumer base of America, middle- and low-income households, who are really dependent on wage growth to help them remain economically viable."

People with different levels of wealth aren't experiencing the economy equally. Hamrick said those lacking substantial wealth are constantly reminded of the gap. As an example, he noted that on many airlines, higher-paying passengers at the front of the plane typically receive a higher level of service than "those who sit in the back and are scrunched up."

"At the end of the day, it's affordability challenges and a growing wealth divide that ends up disenfranchising a good number of people," he said.

While Hamrick said there will always be divides in wealth, sustained wage gains adjusted for inflation would help mitigate the problem, which hasn't been happening in aggregate.

"A number of people are being taken financial prisoner by that," he said.

Reach out to this reporter to share how the economy has affected you financially, at mhoff@businessinsider.com.

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Companies with huge datasets can save up to 80% in AI costs by using open-weight models: Hims CEO

The Hims and Hers CEO said that companies with their own datasets stand to save a lot of money by using open-weight models.

NYSE

• Hims & Hers CEO Andrew Dudum touted the use of open-weight models to achieve cost savings in AI.
• He said companies that generate large amounts of internal data can save up to 80% using open-weight models.
• This is one of the hottest topics in the tech sphere as enterprises strategize to improve returns.

One executive is touting open-weight models, especially if your company produces lots of data.

In an interview with CNBC Squawkbox, released on Tuesday, Hims & Hers CEO Andrew Dudum said companies that already have large datasets should shift away from using big AI models and toward using open-weight models.

He cited his company, a telehealth provider that delivers prescription drugs and personal care products through a subscription-based service. He said the company has a large closed-loop dataset of patients it has worked with, which he called a "real asset" because it can be used to train AI models.

"I think for companies that have the resources and scale, if they have an independent dataset, that is a path that they will go, no question," he said to CNBC host Andrew Ross Sorkin. "The cost can be upward of 70, 80% less."

Open-weight models let users access and customize a model's trained parameters, and can be cheaper to run at scale. More importantly, Dudum said models trained on a company's actual use cases would perform better.

"And so what we launched, our first version, immediately outsurpassed what we could get in market," he said. "But the trajectory of what's possible in just six months is transformative because it's continuously learning on every new patient that comes into Hims & Hers."

Dudum's comments come as saving AI costs is one of the hottest topics in the tech and business spheres. Companies are phasing out tokenmaxxing, in which employees were urged to burn as many AI tokens as possible, and are now focusing on getting the most value from their spending.

Many are model routing, referring to matching tasks to AI models based on their complexity. Some executives, like Coinbase's Brian Armstrong, have implemented the use of Chinese models like Kimi K2.7 and GLM 5.2 as default models within their companies.

Kimi K3, an open-weight model developed by the Chinese AI lab Moonshot AI, made waves in Silicon Valley last month for promising to rival the capabilities of models from OpenAI and Anthropic at lower costs.

Meanwhile, data has become one of the most sought-after resources in the AI space, as it is crucial to model training. Earlier this month, Google paid $10 million for internal data from the shuttered carrier Spirit Airlines, which included internal documents, workflows, emails, and millions of Teams messages.

AI training firm Handshake AI has promised to pay $6 per page of "high-quality" work documents, capped at $30,000, in a bid to gain access to more data.

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These café owners started a shop with credit cards and a $30,000 loan. They say it's worth it to run a business in NYC.

Ilia Penzin and Liliia Penzina at their café, T.O.L.K., in Bushwick.

Paola Chapdelaine for BI

• Ilia Penzin and Liliia Penzina run T.O.L.K., a café in Bushwick, NYC, facing financial hurdles.
• T.O.L.K., opened in 2025, serves as both a coffee shop and art gallery, promoting local artists.
• Despite financial struggles, Penzin and Penzina remain hopeful, aiming to expand their NYC business.

Ilia Penzin and Liliia Penzina call their café and art gallery their baby.

"A big baby," Penzina said, laughing. The entrepreneurs' first year running T.O.L.K. in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bushwick has been defined by the personal sacrifice and precarity of running a small business in one of the most expensive cities in the US. To fund the startup costs, they moved in with roommates to save on rent, took a $30,000 loan from family, and went into credit card debt. Still, they remain optimistic and would encourage other would-be entrepreneurs to follow their dreams.

The café is located at 286 Stanhope St, Brooklyn, NY 11237.

Paola Chapdelaine for BI

"The United States is the best country to try a business," Penzin said. "We love coffee, we love hospitality. We decided to open a café."

For Business Insider's Cost of the City series, the couple detailed what it took to get off the ground, the day-to-day costs, and why they have yet to turn a profit.

Do you have experience opening or running a business in NYC? Share your story with a reporter at mros@businessinsider.com.

Managing the costs of a business in NYC

Penzin and Penzina, who met in school in Russia 15 years ago, applied for asylum in the US after the start of the Russia-Ukraine war. Knowing little English, they worked in hospitality and cafes to get by, but they desired to build something for themselves.

With a dream in mind, they cut personal expenses, including moving from a one-bedroom apartment into a $1,150 room in a three-bedroom apartment. Penzin spent three months building the space that would become T.O.L.K. while Penzina worked three barista jobs.

Now that they're open for business, Penzin handles management, vendors, budgeting, and banking, while Penzina handles the café and art gallery's daily operations. The café's white walls are normally covered with local artwork, and the rest of the open space is taken up by a sofa, a few circular tables, and a dog station with water and treats.

Ilia Penzin and Liliia Penzina have been together for 15 years, and married for six.

Paola Chapdelaine for BI

Nearly a year in, the coffee shop is not making enough to cover its costs. Records provided by the owners show the café generated an average of about $5,600 net sales a month from January to June and paid $2,700 in monthly rent, almost half of the monthly net sales. After paying rent, food expenses, and additional costs, the café was left with a cash shortfall of roughly $900 a month.

Penzin said the main challenge is getting more customers. The café has averaged 24 checks per day at around $8.76 each, totaling roughly $212 in gross sales per day — not enough to have the business pay for itself.

To supplement the income, Penzin works as a handyman, assembling furniture, doing small renovations, and painting. He uses the same tools and the 2008 Toyota Highlander he bought for the coffee shop.

The couple has only taken three days off this year and put all their energy into running the café, but they consider it worth it.

"It's not making us unhappy. We're just working; it's our job to make this business operate," Penzin said. Penzina added, "You are motivated already because you try to survive. If you don't have money, it's your motivation."

Ilia Penzin helping out a T.O.L.K. customer.

Paola Chapdelaine for BI

Think, Observe, Listen, Know.

T.O.L.K. stands for: Think, Observe, Listen, Know — reflecting how the couple wants customers to experience the space. The name also transcends its English acronym. In Russian, tolk means "meaning, understanding, and having a sense or purpose," while in various Scandinavian languages it refers to an "interpreter," someone meant to translate and understand ideas for others — something T.O.L.K. strives to do by being a community space.

"That felt especially fitting for a space built around art, coffee, conversation, and community: a place where people can exchange perspectives, discover new ideas, and find meaning in what they see and experience," he said.

The café strives to be a place where beginner artists can display their work affordably; T.O.L.K. doesn't take commission. At the same time, guests who may not have time to visit galleries can enjoy art on their daily coffee runs.

Temporary art exhibition displayed on the café walls.

Paola Chapdelaine for BI

"Everybody has the time at least once a day to go to any coffee shop and get coffee," Penzin said. "But they never go to see the local arts."

Penzina usually creates a special drinks menu inspired by the current artist and exhibition at the coffee shop.

"I try to find how to combine coffee and art," she said. "It's like a liquid version of the person and a liquid version of their art."

With all the money, energy, and time the couple has put in, they don't see quitting or burning out as an option. Their dream is to expand their business and open more spots in the future, possibly moving upstate or to Long Island.

T.O.L.K. daily menu.

Paola Chapdelaine for BI

"We definitely will not give up on our entrepreneur journey — we definitely will fight until we succeed."

For them, the cost is worth it to live in NYC. They find the business and cultural opportunities in the five boroughs unmatched.

"You pay for those opportunities, for convenience, for your dream," he said. Referencing a popular Russian phrase that alludes to the feeling of relief, he emphasized: "When we drive back from different states, and we see the sign 'New York City,' we feel a stone, a rock, fall from our soul."

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We tracked how much 3 young startup founders actually sleep

Lance Yan, Kavitta Ghai, and Boris Skurikhin shared four days of sleep schedules with Business Insider.

Lance Yan; Kavitta Ghai; Boris Skurikhin

• As Silicon Valley embraces hardcore work schedules, founders debate the best sleeping habits.
• Business Insider tracked the sleep schedules of three young founders for four days.
• One founder got admittedly bad sleep. Another had a clear regimen to get her seven hours.

The young class of AI founders has gone hardcore, with sober lifestyles and 996 schedules.

Sleep, however, remains an open question.

There are two competing sleep cultures in Silicon Valley. The biohackers say that rest helps optimize performance. The hustlers say that founders should work through the night. To sleep or not to sleep, that is the question.

Business Insider asked three young founders to share their sleep habits. And to be scientific about it, we didn't just take their word for it. We spent four days tracking their shut-eye, requesting early morning texts detailing their prior night.

Some founders demanded their Zzzs. Others stayed up grinding.

Lance Yan knows he doesn't sleep enough

Traverse founder Lance Yan said he knows there has to be "a balance between chilling and locking in." He hasn't found it.

Lance Yan

Lance Yan knows sleep is important. Bryan Johnson gave a talk to his Y Combinator batch, after all.

And yet, the 19-year-old founder of the AI startup Traverse often gets only 5 to 6 hours of sleep. "If there's any work, I usually end up staying on longer and dragging it out," he said.

It's still better than his YC days. "We would wake up when it was dark, and go to sleep when it was sunny," Yan said.

Yan works late, then doomscrolls in bed until he falls asleep. When he wakes up, he starts working almost immediately. He knows it's bad.

"There has to be a balance between chilling and locking in," he said.

Yan's sleep diary:

• Monday: 3 hours of sleep. Slept "horribly" and was in bed from 4 to 8 a.m.
• Tuesday: 6.5 hours of sleep. Worked late, but let himself sleep in. Was in bed from 3 to 10 a.m.
• Wednesday: 5 hours of sleep, from 4 to 9 a.m. His health stats "got cooked" because he had only one meal and a "tiny bit" of water.
• Thursday: 5 hours of sleep, between 3 and 8 a.m. It was "also not the best," but he felt good after eating regular meals.

Kavitta Ghai has firm sleeping rules

Kavitta Ghai wears a sleep mask and takes magnesium every night.

Kavitta Ghai

Kavitta Ghai will never, ever pull an all-nighter.

The 29-year-old cofounder of the ed-tech startup Nectir can see instantly when she hasn't slept enough. It shows up in her work and in her cognitive function. So, she'll stop everything to get her 7 hours.

Ghai's best thinking comes in the late evening and early morning, so she often doesn't sleep until 3 a.m. Her chief of staff knows: no meetings until 11 a.m.

She wants her employees to be able to work when they function best, too. Nectir is remote, and will always remain remote, she said. "It allows people to do their work on their schedule," she said.

Ghai is exacting about her sleep. She takes magnesium every night and sets the temperature between 66 and 68 degrees. She wears a sleep mask and a Whoop band. Her body doesn't touch the bed until it's bedtime.

It works: Ghai said that she falls asleep in under 3 minutes.

Ghai's sleep diary:

• Monday: 7 hours and 32 minutes of sleep. Had "a ton of dreams," but forgot to journal them in the morning.
• Tuesday: 8 hours and 2 minutes of sleep. That's "a little longer than I prefer," Ghai said. So she woke up groggy.
• Wednesday: 7 hours and 28 minutes of sleep. Usually meditating before bed helps her dream, but this night she had no dreams that night, "which sucks."
• Thursday: 7 hours and 7 minutes of sleep. Ghai wished she had gotten 30 more minutes.

Boris Skurikhin is not a grindmaxxer

Boris Skurikhin has yet to build his IKEA bed frame.

Boris Skurikhin

Boris Skurikhin has an expensive mattress with no bed frame.

Well, he does have a bed frame, but he hasn't gotten around to assembling it. "I will do it soon," the 26-year-old cofounder of the AI startup Docket said. "I keep telling myself this."

Skurikhin gets in bed around 12 a.m. and then starts watching something on his laptop. He's not scrolling. He prefers a documentary or a long YouTube video.

He's not one to cut down on his sleep. He described what might be called a "grindmaxxer" in his coworking space who works constantly and never sleeps.

"He was also the hospitalmaxxer," he said. "It's just not healthy."

Skurikhin's sleep diary:

• Monday: 7.5 hours of sleep. Fell asleep at 2 a.m. to UFC videos. Woke up briefly at 7:30 a.m. because he "drank too much tea before bed."
• Tuesday: 8 hours and 40 minutes of sleep. Fell asleep at 1:30 a.m. and woke up at 10:10 a.m.
• Wednesday: 7 hours of sleep. Fell asleep at 1:30 a.m. to videos about athlete rivalries in sports. Woke up early because he left his window open.
• Thursday: 7 hours and 20 minutes of sleep. Fell asleep at 2 a.m. while watching the 2002 movie "Copenhagen."

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