"Shark Tank" investor Kevin O'Leary is planning a data center project in Utah.
Michael Buckner/Penske Media via Getty Images
Kevin O'Leary's Utah data center project may create fewer jobs than he initially said.
Wonder Valley's data center job estimates are closer to 4,000 construction roles.
Local residents have opposed the data center due to concerns about water use and air quality.
Kevin O'Leary has said his Utah data center development will create 10,000 construction jobs and 2,000 permanent roles.
There's one problem: It probably won't.
The "Shark Tank" investor may have overstated the data center's hiring potential during the construction phase, Business Insider learned in a conversation with O'Leary Ventures CEO Paul Palandjian.
The accurate estimate is closer to 4,000 new construction jobs over 10 to 15 years — and that isn't a guarantee.
"Look, these numbers are fluid, and they change by the day," Palandjian said, adding that the updated estimate is reflective of "our current thinking on the project."
Dubbed Wonder Valley, O'Leary's combined data center and power plant has the potential to reach 9 gigawatts of capacity. That would make Wonder Valley one of the world's biggest data centers if fully built out.
Data centers generally do not create large numbers of permanent, full-time jobs in local economies. Their impact on local economies is harder to measure, in part because the nascent industry is still being studied. They do come with an enormous demand for temporary skilled labor during the construction phase.
Once a data center of this scale is fully built and operational, the on-site workforce shrinks by an average of 78%, researchers at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business found.
Using the USC researchers' formula, a more likely estimate for permanent jobs at Wonder Valley is 1,350.
"It's all supply and demand-based, so we've analyzed it for its scaled potential," Palandjian said of his job estimate.
An FAQ sheet for the project, found on Utah Gov. Spencer Cox's website, said that the developer for Wonder Valley has "committed to a projected 2,000 permanent jobs in skilled trade, logistics, IT, and administrative positions to county residents."
Whether Wonder Valley reaches that scaled potential is an open question.
The data center doesn't have a tenant yet, though Palandjian said O'Leary Ventures is in "very early talks" with multiple large tech companies.
Wonder Valley's proposed site occupies a portion of a broader 40,000-acre zone backed by Utah's Military Installation Development Authority, a state agency tasked with raising tax revenues through economic growth.
A final development agreement is still being negotiated and is expected to be signed "in the next month or so," a MIDA spokesperson wrote in an email to Business Insider.
A draft version of the agreement posted on MIDA's website, dated April 24, shows that the data center will receive multiple tax breaks, including a 100% personal property tax rebate and an 80% real property tax rebate, for up to 30 years.
The agreement does not specify a required minimum number of jobs. Utah offers tax breaks to data centers without a job-creation requirement.
The Box Elder County community has expressed fierce opposition to the data center, citing concerns about water use, air quality, and lack of transparency from local officials. Residents of the county filed two referendums on Monday to overturn local officials' approval of the site.
O'Leary has dismissed the protesters, suggesting they were bused in from out of town, and has argued that their claims are based on misconceptions about data centers.
"Think about the number of jobs," O'Leary said in a post on X on Friday.
Thinking Machines Lab CEO Mira Murati and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Getty Images
Thinking Machines Lab has lost a third of its founding team to rivals amid fierce AI talent wars.
Meta, OpenAI, and xAI lured the founders of Thinking Machines Lab with huge compensation offers.
CEO Mira Murati's startup has also hired top talent and recently unveiled a new type of AI model.
Thinking Machines Lab has raised billions in capital while assembling one of AI's most elite technical teams. Now it's watching some of that talent walk out the door.
As Big Tech rivals dangle eye-popping pay packages and early employees unlock their first slice of equity, the buzzy, 1-year-old startup has become ground zero for tech's escalating talent wars.
Nearly a third of its 42-person founding team — 13 people — have left since its launch, a Business Insider review of LinkedIn profiles and conversations with four sources found. Those departures include three of its six co-founders.
Thinking Machines Lab's head count has more than quadrupled to over 150 people since it launched, a person familiar with the matter told Business Insider.
The departures have been driven by a mix of factors, though a major one is the huge packages offered by rival AI labs like Meta and OpenAI, as well as the passage of an important milestone in startup compensation: the one-year cliff, four sources familiar with the matter said.
It's not unheard of for early members of a startup to jump ship over time, though Thinking Machines Lab was supposed to be different. It emerged from stealth last year as one of the highest-profile AI labs thanks to its leadership's deep ties to OpenAI. CEO Mira Murati previously served as OpenAI's chief technical officer, while other key figures helped train the early versions of ChatGPT.
Investors eager to back the next breakout AI company flocked to the startup, which raised $2 billion before launching a product.
The startup's reputation as a talent hub has put a target on its back.
Thinking Machines Lab declined to comment.
An opportunity they couldn't refuse
Some of the offers to founding members have reached well into nine figures — hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and stock over several years — according to one defector who shared notes with peers.
"I got an opportunity that I couldn't turn down," the person said.
Meta — which considered buying Thinking Machines Lab last year, The Verge reported — has been the most aggressive poacher, quietly luring away seven founding team members, plus a star AI researcher.
Such was the case of veteran software engineer Joshua Gross. Last year, Gross was deep in the trenches of AI development at Thinking Machines Labs, helping launch the flagship product, Tinker.
Gross "had a blast" shaping Tinker's early vision, he wrote in a LinkedIn post at the time. After helping build and ship the product from "zero to one," he's no longer at Thinking Machines Lab. Wired first reported on details of the compensation packages.
Subject line: $1.5 million cash 'and up'
The race for elite AI talent has become hotter than ever across tech, said Sam Agre, cofounder of recruiting firm People In AI.
While the pool of people with hands-on experience building leading AI models and products is small, it runs deep at Thinking Machines Lab. It's so difficult to poach rank-and-file workers from there that Agre said he has resorted to sending them LinkedIn messages with subject lines touting $1.5 million in cash compensation "and up."
That's more than three times the annual salary for software engineers offered by Thinking Machines Labs on its careers page, which mentions a range of $350,000 and $475,000 a year.
While the nine-figure offers are reminiscent of deals for major athletes, Big Tech firms like Meta covet people who can help them pull ahead in AI, Agre said.
"You don't want to fall behind in that type of arms race," he said.
Meta isn't the only tech giant circling Thinking Machines Lab. OpenAI has hired five founding members, and Elon Musk's xAI has poached one more. OpenAI and Meta declined to comment, and xAI didn't respond to a request for comment.
One-year cliffs opened the floodgates
Meta first began trying to lure away Thinking Machines Lab talent when it launched its superintelligence team last year. It scored a major coup by bringing on cofounder Andrew Tulloch. OpenAI brought on two more of Murati's cofounders, CTO Barret Zoph and researcher Luke Metz.
Then this year, the floodgates opened.
Because the company launched a little over a year ago, many founding employees started hitting their "one-year cliffs" — a standard startup threshold that unlocks the first chunk of equity after 12 months, after which it vests monthly.
Once they get their shares, employees can leave without walking away empty-handed, making it a natural moment for Thinking Machines Lab staffers to entertain outside offers, according to three people familiar with the matter.
One-year cliffs are supposed to help retain talent, though they have become something of an Achilles' heel for startups ever since the AI boom began, said Dan Walter, an independent compensation consultant. He told Business Insider that retention rates in tech startups are the lowest he's ever seen due to the ease of building a startup and rampant poaching.
"The entire model is being challenged," he said.
Some in the compensation industry are now arguing for the cliff to start at five years, not one, to lock in early team members, he added.
Thinking Machines Lab still attracts top talent
Despite the rampant poaching, Thinking Machines Lab has scored wins.
Its CTO — Soumith Chintala, the creator of the open-source AI project PyTorch — left Meta to join Murati's startup. Thinking Machines Lab regularly brings on research talent from Meta, including Kenny Yu, a member of the tech giant's hotshot TBD lab — a small team of AI all-stars launched for its superintelligence push.
Murati's startup has been putting that talent to use. On Monday, it announced that it had built a new type of AI model that interacts with people seamlessly, handles interruptions, and translates languages in real time. The model will launch more widely later this year.
The company is also taking steps to stem the losses. It's hiring a person to build a fresh framework for doling out equity and to implement systems that "attract and retain highly sought-after talent," a job listing says. The position, which pays between $250,000 and $425,000 in base salary, was posted in March.
For all the departures, Murati's reputation as a talent magnet hasn't faded.
When Business Insider asked Carina Hong, CEO and founder of Axiom Math — already valued at $1.6 billion — which company tries to poach most of her researchers, she didn't hesitate: Thinking Machines Lab.
A few weeks ago, Marco Bario texted his landlord with an unusual request.
Bario and his wife, Tracy Neill, rent a four-bedroom townhouse in Frederick County, Maryland, about an hour outside Washington, DC. When they got the place in June 2024, they felt lucky to find respite from a sizzling rental market. Recently, however, they'd noticed comparable rental homes in the area going for hundreds of dollars less — some landlords were even cutting asking rents in a desperate bid for tenants. With their lease renewal date fast approaching, Bario posed a simple question to his landlord: What would he consider a fair monthly rent for the next year?
The text kicked off a cordial but pointed back-and-forth. "You've been great tenants," the landlord replied, but he felt the rent was "already within a fair range." Bario persisted, noting that similar four-bedroom listings online were charging in the low $3000s — well below the $3,650 he and Neill were paying. After a few more exchanges over the ensuing week, the landlord sent a message with a new offer: he'd lower their rent to $3,375. A sharp eye and a handful of texts had saved the couple $275 a month.
"We like the relationship, but the market's the market," Bario tells me. "Why not ask?"
Such a request might have been met with a "😂" from a landlord just a couple of years ago. These days, though, many property owners are bracing for similar conversations. A historic wave of apartment construction, particularly in the lower half of the US, has put a lid on rent growth and shifted the balance of power in favor of tenants. Forced to compete with a glut of new units, property managers are more focused on keeping their buildings full than jacking up rents. It's not uncommon for lease renewal offers to go out with no change to the monthly payment, a far cry from the days of double-digit percentage increases at the housing reshuffle's peak. For prospective new tenants, landlords are doling out "concessions" like a month or two of free rent in hopes of getting them through the front door.
"It's definitely a renter's market right now," says Caitlin Sugrue Walter, the head of research for the National Multifamily Housing Council.
This state of affairs won't last long. Landlords are hustling to fill all those freshly built studios and one-bedrooms, betting they'll be able to bring back the rent hikes later. They're already looking ahead to next year, when developers are expected to deliver far fewer new units than during the 2024 peak.
For now, though, renters have a chance to flip the pandemic-era script. Landlords across the country no longer have free rein to lift prices and preside over rental bidding wars. Savvy tenants are embracing a time-worn mantra: If you don't ask, you don't get.
If you do manage to snag lower rent, there's one group of people you should thank: builders.
Current rental trends are mainly a story about new supply. Apartment developers and homebuilders pay close attention to the shifting winds of the real estate market. They track how many people are moving, where they're headed, and why, then try to adjust construction accordingly. Back in 2020 and 2021, the signals were obvious: build, build, build.
Coastal defectors were flocking to Sun Belt cities like Austin, Phoenix, and Denver, where they could get more bang for their buck than in, say, New York or San Francisco. Roommates were also striking out on their own, opting for studios or one-bedrooms instead of cramming into two- or three-bedrooms. Eager to meet the surge in demand, developers got busy. At the end of 2022, more than 971,000 apartment units were under construction, according to the real-estate software company RealPage, the second-largest number on record.
It's definitely a renter's market right now.Caitlin Sugrue Walter, head of research for the National Multifamily Housing Council
Even in the smoothest of scenarios, apartment construction typically takes a couple of years. This is why, despite all those bustling job sites, it didn't feel like renters were getting any relief. Between 2020 and 2024, the typical rent nationwide jumped by nearly 30%, according to Zillow. Behind the scenes, though, a wave of new supply was about to upend the rental market. In 2024, more than 600,000 new multifamily units opened their doors — the most in a single year since the mid-1980s, according to an Apartment List analysis of Census data. Last year, developers wrapped construction on a little under 500,000 units.
"It really has been a pretty historic surge," says Chris Salviati, the chief economist at Apartment List.
Apartment demand has held up better than expected, but it hasn't been enough to keep up with the construction boom. People are no longer moving at the breakneck pace of 2021— given the rise in both home prices and rents, an anxiety-inducing job market, plus economic uncertainty around borrowing rates and inflation, many are choosing to stay put. Immigration to the US is way down, slowing population growth and hampering housing demand. A lack of new hiring also means fewer reasons for Americans to relocate, which, in turn, means less leasing traffic for property managers. A recent college graduate who might have happily rented a studio apartment may instead be forced to shack up with their parents while continuing their job hunt from home.
The ultimate result is that nationwide rents have either fallen or flatlined, depending on who you ask. Apartment List data shows the national median rent was down 1.7% from a year ago and 5% from its 2022 peak. RealPage found a more modest 0.4% year-over-year decrease in April, while Apartments.com, a subsidiary of the real estate giant CoStar Group, reported a slight 0.4% increase in average rents from a year prior (the company also noted, however, that setting aside 2020 weirdness, rent gains in April were the weakest since 2014). These companies are all working with their own datasets and use slightly different methods to calculate their results, hence the minor variance. But regardless of the source, analysts and property managers are reporting more concessions, flat renewals, and outright rent decreases. Apartments.com, for instance, found that roughly 41% of multifamily properties nationwide were offering rent concessions, an almost 10 percentage-point increase from a year ago.
"For years, you'd post a vacancy, and you'd get a lease," says Tony Julianelle, the CEO of Atlas Real Estate, which manages more than 6,000 units across 15 states. These days, however, "leasing is just harder."
"If we're break-even on rent growth right now, that's something we should celebrate," he adds.
The national numbers obscure some significant regional differences. Because builders focused so much of their efforts on the Sun Belt, those metros are seeing the biggest slowdown. In April, multifamily rents were down 2.2% year over year in the South and essentially flat in the West, RealPage found. The Midwest and Northeast, however, didn't see the same construction boom: now rents are up 1.7% year over year in the Midwest and 1% in the Northeast.
If we're break-even on rent growth right now, that's something we should celebrate.Tony Julianelle, CEO of Atlas Real Estate
Some of the pandemic era's star cities are now home to the biggest rent declines. Rents are down 6.5% year over year in Austin and 6.2% in Denver, with San Antonio, Tampa, and Phoenix rounding out the top-five metros with the deepest rent cuts, according to RealPage. If you're bargain-hunting, keep an eye on Charlotte, Dallas, Las Vegas, and Raleigh, which have also posted significant year-over-year decreases.
In Denver, Kevin Tanner spent much of the past year trying in vain to find a tenant for his three-bedroom rental home in the Green Valley Ranch neighborhood, about 15 minutes from the airport. The previous tenants had been paying about $3,000 a month before they moved out last May. Tanner, who lives in Idaho, tells me he flew back to Colorado for a handful of tours over a few weekends, but returned each time with a still-empty property. Several dozen others started filling out applications, but never followed through. After the house sat vacant for almost half a year, he relented and hired a property management company, which advised slashing the rent by hundreds of dollars. In February, they finally secured a tenant at a monthly rent of $2,350 — almost $700 less than Tanner had been charging a year earlier.
"It's a 100% loss when I'm not making any rental income," says Tanner, who owns two other rentals and tells me he's never had to lower the rent on any of his properties before. "My hands are kind of tied."
Other landlords, hoping to dodge this exact scenario, are handing out bonuses to keep residents in place. One beneficiary is Ben Trepp, a 29-year-old who works for a government contractor and rents a one-bedroom in a large apartment building in Denver's Lower Highlands neighborhood, right outside downtown. Last fall, he got the offer for his January lease renewal: no increase to his monthly rent. But Trepp had been keeping a close eye on the market and saw there were deals to be had elsewhere — heck, his own building was offering a month of free rent to new tenants. He responded to the property manager with an email outlining the prices at comparable units nearby. The property manager countered with a one-time $800 renewal bonus.
"They probably knew what they were going to offer before that," Trepp tells me. "They just wanted to see if I was paying attention or not."
Bario, the Maryland tenant who scored a rent cut of nearly $300 a month, may have a better grasp of the housing market than most: his company, Porch Swing Funding, deals in real estate debt. Bargaining down your rent doesn't require an intimate knowledge of finance or a penchant for negotiations, however. Oftentimes, the "comps" — comparable rentals nearby — speak for themselves. After all, landlords across the spectrum also rely on cues from nearby properties to price their units. Much of this information is also readily available to the average renter via sites like Zillow or Apartments.com.
"Having that information was probably more helpful than I could have imagined," says Neill, Bario's wife.
A note of caution: If you threaten to leave unless your landlord cuts you a deal, be prepared to follow through. "Don't be afraid to move," Trepp tells me. "That's your leverage."
Landlords always fear leaving an apartment empty for an extended period. They may also be more willing to cut you a break because they're wary of the costs of a "turn," property-manager parlance for freshening up a unit for the next tenant. This process has never been more expensive, Julianelle tells me.
"The cost of paint has gone up. The cost of carpet has gone up," Julianelle says. "All of that stuff is just more expensive." A thorough turn for less than $1,500 "just doesn't really exist anymore," he adds.
Don't be afraid to move. That's your leverage.Ben Trepp, 29-year-old renter in Denver
Renters may have the upper hand for now, but their leverage is not long for this world. Walter, the researcher at the National Multifamily Housing Council, expects rent growth to be "fairly low this year," but she says it could pick up a little next year as fewer new units hit the market. In the group's most recent quarterly survey of the multifamily industry, a third of respondents said their expectations for construction starts this year had soured. The supply wave is undeniably receding: CoStar expects deliveries of new apartment units to drop by 55% this year, with a further decline in 2027. That said, this year's delivery volume should still come in roughly in line with the past decade's average, says Salviati, the economist at Apartment List.
"We're past the peak of that boom," Salviati tells me. "But it also hasn't really fallen off a cliff by any means, either."
Demand remains more of a question mark. Construction timelines are fairly easy to project, whereas the consumer psyche is subject to a vast range of economic forces. "Your forecast for demand is going to be as good as my forecast for demand, which is going to be as good as anyone else's," Sam Tenenbaum, the head of multifamily insights for Cushman & Wakefield, tells me. Things could change, in other words, and no one's got the crystal ball. If demand holds up over the next couple of years, though, "it's going to be much more landlord-friendly than it is tenant-friendly," he adds.
Salviati says he'll be keeping a close eye on the job market and inflation, the two factors that will play the biggest role in determining whether renters get footloose again. While the timing remains up in the air, he expects the market to eventually absorb the influx of units.
In the interim, renters are getting a welcome break from the usual housing-cost climb.
"You never hear of being able to go down in rent, right?" Neill tells me. "Historically, it just keeps going up and up, and there's no room for negotiation."
James Rodriguez is a correspondent on Business Insider's Discourse team.
Now, the longtime iRobot CEO wants his next home robot to do something harder to measure. His new startup, Boston-based Familiar Machines & Magic, has built a four-legged, pet-inspired robot meant to offer companionship, emotional support, and gentle nudges toward healthier routines.
The company calls the robot the Familiar, a reference to the supernatural animal companions associated with witches. Familiar Machines will start selling it next year, and while Angle declined to say how much it will cost, he said its upfront price will be comparable to buying a pet.
Familiar Machines said it has raised $30 million from undisclosed investors and recruited talent from iRobot, Boston Dynamics, and Disney. The company also hired Hollywood screenwriters to create stories that define the Familiar's character and help train the AI model that powers the robot.
In the near term, Familiar Machines plans to market the robot to older adults who want some of the benefits of a pet without the responsibilities, as well as consumers looking to support their own well-being. Over time, the company hopes to license its AI to other companies.
He sees physical AI creating two big markets: machines that do physical work, and machines that can connect with people.
"Robots have long been associated with dull, dirty, dangerous, angular metal," Angle told Business Insider. "What we're trying to do is create something that uses robotic technology to a very different end."
The interview has been edited for clarity and concision.
Business Insider: Tell us about the Familiar. How is it different from a Roomba?
Colin Angle: The Familiar is a pet-inspired robot that lives in your home, pays attention to you and your world, and supports you as an attentive physical presence that coaches you toward healthy routines.
It's not trying to be a copy of a pet, though it's certainly cute and accessible. It can understand what's going on at home and nudge you in positive directions. The Roomba was much more single-purpose. It's a vacuum. You know what it does, and you don't expect to have a human connection to it. People did name their Roombas, but that was hardly the point.
Familiar Machines CEO Colin Angle left iRobot in 2024 after three decades of leading the company.
Familiar Machines & Magic
Why would someone buy a Familiar over, say, a pet?
The core of a Familiar is that it has a personality. It has an appreciation for how humans like to interact with each other and with other creatures in our world.
How does it find a role in your life? That's going to be a very individual exploration. Is it the thing that makes you happy because it's waiting to greet you when you come home? Is it the thing that plays with your 5-year-old so they aren't on their iPad? Do I have my Familiar smack me in the leg when I've been doomscrolling on the couch for 45 minutes and could have gone outside for a walk? Say your Familiar's name is Daphne. You say, "Daphne, I've been doing this too long." Daphne will get up from being curled up at your feet and run over to the door. The Familiar can play a role kind of like a pseudo-coach.
Let's talk about the design. It's cute, it doesn't speak, and it's meant to be emotionally intelligent. How did you arrive at that combination?
We wanted a beautiful, expressive physical form that people are not intimidated by and that doesn't create expectations that will disappoint. There's a reason why it doesn't look like a human, cat, or dog. All of those morphologies create expectations that are challenging to deliver on. We're more of an abstract bear.
Our coat is beautiful to touch. We're layered in sensors, so as you touch it, it can respond. Even though the Familiar does not speak, it does understand human speech and will respond in an emotionally intelligent way.
That intelligence starts with us writing stories about what it means to be a Familiar. The stories were written by Hollywood scriptwriters, who wrote about these intelligent creatures that have a special connection with a person and about a day in their life. We then use generative AI to translate those stories into tens of thousands of mini stories and variations, and we use that to train the model that runs on the Familiar.
The Familiar robot can provide gentle nudges toward healthier routines.
Familiar Machines & Magic
There are a lot of social robots that have failed in the past. How is this time different?
I have seen almost zero robots that are supposed to be about human connection take advantage of touch. Same with physical agency. We can move in your space. We can go for a walk with you. When you go to the kitchen to cook dinner, we could follow you and demonstrate, by that act, that we actually are part of your world. If I only live on a table, I don't have much physical agency.
Then you add the fact that generative AI has given us the ability to perceive our environment and social context, recognize faces and emotional states, feed that into a small multimodal model trained on stories of supportive Familiars, and have that model output high-level, socially appropriate things to do.
Six months ago, some of this technology didn't exist. We are combining all three things — touch, agency, and AI — to create something distinct from any robot that has ever existed.
Some people may be uneasy about bringing an emotionally intelligent robot into their home. How do you think about privacy, and how much of the AI runs on the robot itself?
Our whole AI stack runs on the robot. We do not need to stream anything to the cloud. Since the Familiar does not speak, it's not going to convey information or bad advice, so you don't need to worry about leaving your Familiar to talk about dating advice with a 4-year-old.
You can choose to connect it to the cloud, which lets its behavior take better advantage of what it has learned, adapt over time, and download new behaviors and features. If you do choose to connect, I call it Roomba Rules: you get control, transparency, and benefit.
You've spent decades building robots, and the industry has seen plenty of hype cycles. Does this moment feel different?
We are absolutely at an inflection point. Physical AI, this coming together of robotic technology and generative AI, has created the opportunity to disrupt the world in exciting ways. It's estimated that $5 trillion of market value will be created over the next few decades. There's a lot of energy focused on humanoids and manufacturing, but that's about half of the theoretical value creation. The other half, $2.5 trillion, is focused on building machines that can actually connect and interact with people.
While most of the world is going one way on doing physical work, I am building a company that is going to lead the human-connection part of the physical AI transformation.
Like a lot of guys of the era, Eli Cohen had a great idea for an app back in 2010. But unlike many of his peers, whose musings were confined to bar hangouts and bad dates, he actually invested about $20,000 of his own money to try to bring the project to life. Unfortunately, his gumption only got him so far. Back then, "building software was painfully hard," he says. He burned through his budget well before it got off the ground.
What bugs him isn't that the endeavor failed, it's that a similar concept — the online education platform Udemy — launched that same year and went on to IPO at a $4 billion valuation in 2021. "I assume they had more resources, better developers, of course, luck,," Cohen says, emphasizing that he's not bitter about it. The main lesson he took from the experience is that sometimes the difference between success and failure is not the idea but the ability to execute.
Cohen's entrepreneurial journey didn't end there. The 45-year-old, who lives in Israel, is now building a meditation app he's dubbed MediTailor. He and his brother used AI to create in weeks what would have taken a development team 18 months not long ago. "For the first time in 20 years, the wall between having an idea and actually building it has come down," he says.
Cohen is verbalizing a sensation familiar to many people in the AI era. Armed with a Mac Mini and a Claude subscription, starry-eyed entrepreneurs can vibe code their way into the App Store with relative ease. Gone are the days of that stereotypical guy who insists he has a killer idea for an app… if only he could bring it to fruition. The former Silicon Valley punchline is now a credible threat: New app releases worldwide so far this year have more than doubled from last year.
The tech industry's technical moat may have shrunk to a puddle, but just because any guy (or gal) with an idea for the next "Uber for whatever" can make it happen doesn't mean they'll create the next internet giant. Execution still matters, and the vast majority of apps still fail. A more saturated market also makes it harder to stand out, and most ideas are not hugely scalable, easily marketable, or particularly unique.
When I point out to Cohen that there are already countless meditation apps, he tells me he's well aware. "Maybe I will not succeed, but at least I have the tools," he says.
So does everyone else.
To be sure, it's not the case that literally anybody can vibe code an app these days — many people don't have the time, energy, or desire to figure out how to use OpenClaw or Claude Code. "The barrier isn't zero right now," says Rebecca Kaden, a managing partner at Union Square Ventures. While vibe coding allows for a new level of "efficient entrepreneurship," we're not at true democratization of technology. Vibe coding tools aren't plug-and-play yet — it's not a "no brainer" for any random consumer to wake up one morning and start doing it.
The former Silicon Valley punchline is now a credible threat.
For those with the will, however, the way is more accessible than ever. That's leading to an avalanche of apps: Data from market intelligence firm Appfigures shows that 414,000 new iOS and Android apps were released in the first quarter of 2026, up 115% from the same period in 2025. Also during that same period, three times as many apps were updated compared to the prior year, signaling rapid shipping, experimentation, and churn.
It's super hard to get attention, though. A mere 118 new apps achieved what Appfigures calls "high-traction" status — meaning more than 50,000 downloads in the US — during the first three months of the year, a measly 0.02% hit rate. It's also a relatively tiny increase from the 94 apps that did so in 2025.
"The app stores may be entering a higher-noise era: more experiments, more fast launches, and a smaller share that turn into meaningful businesses," says Ariel Michaeli, the CEO and cofounder of Appfigures.
There's a famous '90s episode of "South Park" where the crew meets a group of "underpant gnomes" who develop a questionable three-phase business plan. They have a handy chart that shows three steps to riches: Phase one is to collect underpants. Phase three is profit. And phase two is a giant "?." The vibe coding environment is leading to a bit of "underpants gnome logic," explains Charity Majors, an operations and database engineer and the CTO and cofounder of Honeycomb.io. People can collect the underpants — as in code the thing — but there's a giant question mark before arriving at profits.
Code that's spun up, more or less for free, still requires modeling and maintenance. Plenty of people could vibe code a Slack clone, but the hard part of building Slack wasn't writing the code in the first place, Majors says. It was thinking up the design that made it easy to use, intuitive, and scalable to billions of people. "Nobody wants to launch Slack every day and see their buttons move around," Majors says.
One risk of vibe coding an app without any technical knowledge is that people have no idea how to fix something when it breaks — it creates a cottage industry for software engineers who can address bugs or manage security.
The idea's not great because you don't understand how many millions of people need to agree with you.
Building and maintaining are not the only gaps between "genius idea" and "sustainable company." There's also — very importantly — marketing and reach. Getting into Google Play or the App Store doesn't mean anyone will ever see or use your app. Kate Minogue, an AI advisor who works as a fractional chief product officer for consumer tech startups, says distribution remains the hardest problem to solve, and the proliferation of apps makes it worse, not better.
"There's always an Uber-for or Duolingo-for, and you're like, 'OK, well, it exists, or there isn't actually a market for it,'" Minogue says. "A lot of that time it's like, 'Well, the idea's not great because you don't understand how many millions of people need to agree with you that this is a great idea for it to make money.'"
A bunch of people sitting around an apartment in a high-income city is not exactly a focus group for what a massive amount of the population wants or needs. Your awesome business idea may not sound so awesome to everyday people — or even to yourself in the cold light of day.
Wannabe entrepreneurs do what they can to optimize their performance in app stores, search engines, and LLM responses in order to try to climb the rankings, or pray they make a viral hit. If that doesn't work, they've got to go to paid marketing and advertising. "When I talk to companies that are building an app, I try to prepare them for having to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get scaled distribution of their apps," Minogue says.
Some businesses are navigating this by taking a "studio-based" development approach where they release five, 10 different fitness or productivity apps at once and test in real time whether any of them stick. They don't necessarily need a banger — they just want one or two to get enough traction to generate some cash. In the meantime, the orphans contribute to the growing mass of apps.
Amjad Masad, the CEO of vibe-coding platform Replit, says it's a good thing for more "wantrepreneurs" to be able to give their ideas a go — democratization, or however close this is to it, will inevitably mean variations of quality.
Not everyone's setting out to make a gazillion-dollar product, either. Some people are vibe coding tools and widgets to make it easier to get by at work. Others are making apps that, while not enough to support a full-blown corporation, are enough to support their day-to-day expenses.
"The cool thing about it is that those apps, a lot of them don't have to be venture-scale, multi-billion-dollar apps," Masad says. "They can still make a lot of money for the founders, and they can serve a need."
For some of the Silicon Valley old guard, this is starting to feel like an identity crisis: If a random guy can vibe code a functional product in a weekend, what was the point of fighting over exclusive talent and battling competitors to the death over the past 20 years? Sure, the big players who've already made their millions — and billions and trillions — are thrilled about the prospect of cutting costs and speeding up via AI, but what about the people who've been slogging to break in?
Kylan Gibbs, the cofounder and CEO of Inworld AI, who previously worked for Google DeepMind, tells me a lot of Silicon Valley natives are starting to "freak out" over recent AI developments. The fear is that either apps are now so easy to build that 100 competitors are about to pop up, or that OpenAI or Anthropic can launch a similar product that will squash their budding firms overnight. Say you've been working on an awesome fitness app for five years, grinding to get downloads and perfect the offer. Suddenly, the app store is flooded with options that, to potential users, are indistinguishable — even if they're actually buggy or clunky. At the same time, there's a sword hanging above your head: What's to stop one of the big players from making its own fitness add-on? They're already slurping up your customers anyway, because who needs a special app for workout advice when they can ask Gemini to create a plan for free?
For some of the Silicon Valley old guard, this is starting to feel like an identity crisis.
"I've literally in the last few weeks had a good handful of friends and colleagues who are other founders say, 'Yeah, I'm just basically giving up,'" Gibbs says. "You think about this group of people who have felt so special for so long, and then to have that ripped away."
Terrence Johnson, a software engineer in Colorado, is looking at the bright side of the everybody-can-code attitude: It means fewer people bugging him to cook up their projects. He recently dealt with a particularly pushy individual who was trying to enlist him into making some sort of car dealership management system without any concept of what it would entail or how long it would take. He realized the person was getting their ideas from AI in the first place, so Johnson nudged them toward other tools that would let them do some cursory stuff on their own. "It functioned as enough of a distraction that they left me alone," Johnson says. "Empowering people to try and get their ideas out is good, but they just don't quite grasp what it all entails."
New crops of entrepreneurs may be in for a rude awakening on the lessons many startup veterans are familiar with. It's next to impossible to build a blockbuster. Most endeavors flop. Making money has to, at some point, turn from a future problem into a now problem.
Viaano Spruyt, who lives in Singapore, is excited that vibe coding has allowed him to turn his online community focused on mental health — which formerly lived on Discord — into an app called Huddle. The new app allows them to add more features and functionality, and he and his cofounder have even secured some investor capital. They're pivoting their concept from mental health to catering to fandoms, but the profit part of the plan remains a question mark, and they're relying on word of mouth for distribution. "What's becoming harder is getting people to care," he says.
Spruyt and his cofounder are learning what a lot of vibe-preneurs are beginning to realize: Business basics are extra important, and excellence in sales, marketing, and logistics is a way to get ahead — or at least manage to claw your way out of the crowded trenches.
Relatively speaking, there are worse problems than having 900 too many productivity apps in the App Store and forcing the Silicon Valley elite to try harder. A builder economy is a fun one to be in. And hey, if it shuts up the killer app idea guy who's talking your ear off over at a bar holding an IPA, it's a win for everybody.
Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.
Starbucks' Green Dot Assist is one of many AI "assistants" designed to help in-store staff with recipes, policies, and guest interactions.
Illustration by Budrul Chukrut/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
AI "assistants" are transforming fast food with real-time data analysis and staff coaching.
Chains like Burger King and Starbucks want AI to streamline tasks and improve customer service.
Critics aren't sure that the digital coworkers are helpful — and some think they're a hindrance.
At some Burger King drive-thrus, an AI assistant named Patty is quietly listening in.
The system can hear when employees tell customers an item is out of stock and check the store's inventory. It can compare restaurants' "friendliness" scores by clocking when staff say "thank you" to guests. It can suggest what metrics managers should focus on each day. And eventually, executives say, it'll help automate everything from staffing schedules to ingredient orders.
Across the fast-food industry, a new kind of coworker is moving into restaurant kitchens and back offices: AI assistants trained on recipes, staffing policies, inventory systems, and customer complaints. More than simple resource guides, these tools have becomedigital managers that can answer workers' questions, monitor performance, and increasingly tell employees what to do next.
Starbucks baristas can now ask the company's "Green Dot" assistant for recipes or operational guidance instead of "fumbling through a computer" or sticky laminated pages behind the counter, Starbucks COO Mike Grams told Business Insider in January. Similar tech has been rolled out at Chipotle, McDonald's, and Yum! Brands' restaurants, like KFC and Taco Bell.
Restaurant companies say the technology is designed to simplify work, speed up service, and free workers from administrative headaches. Critics — and some workers — may see something else: at best, some say, it's an unpredictable tool that can both help and hinder their workflow. At worst, some fear it's an algorithmic boss that never stops watching.
Fast-food bosses have gone digital
"Green Dot has been hit or miss," one San Francisco-based Starbucks barista told Business Insider. "Where it works, it's great, though slow — takes about 10-20 seconds to process and respond to an inquiry if it doesn't freeze out because it's confused, which will take up to a minute or several more before it just tells you it doesn't know, and it has a limited scope."
A second barista said that "no one" in their store uses the Green Dot, since they don't trust the AI system to provide "proper answers" to their questions. The barista said that since Starbucks changed how internal information is organized to accommodate the bot, it's now harder to find answers on their own, too.
A third Starbucks staff member, a shift supervisor in the south, said the Green Dot "really discourages" baristas from asking questions, and gets in the way of their training by offering conflicting responses to common questions and giving staff the "easy way out" rather than memorizing recipes or store policies.
At Burger King, a system called "Patty" listens to drive-thru conversations in real time and nudges managers toward what the company calls "next best actions," the chain's chief digital officer, Thibault Roux, said in February.
Online, some Burger King fans threatened to boycott the chain after the Patty system was announced, with some on platforms like Reddit arguing that the tech amounts to unreasonable "surveillance" of staff.
Executives frame the technology differently.
Grams said the Green Dot pilot program has been successful at providing real-time insights for staff, and the tech will continue to improve as it is rolled out across more stores. Roux said Patty is designed to "assist" workers — not surveil, manage, or replace them — by helping store leadership spend less time in back offices and more time with customers.
"We almost joke about it like it shouldn't even be called BK Assistant," Roux said. "We should call it assistant manager."
That framing may be the point.
Restaurant chains are under pressure from nearly every angle at once: higher labor costs, more demanding — and price-sensitive — customers, and already razor-thin margins. As other industries cut middle managers entirely, restaurant chains are racing to find efficiencies without sacrificing speed or hospitality. AI promises both.
The new systems are designed to turn restaurants into constantly monitored feedback loops. Patty can listen for phrases like "we're out of stock," prompting managers to update inventory across ordering platforms with a single click. At Starbucks, Grams described a future where AI handles labor scheduling from start to finish.
"Imagine a world where you have an AI-generated schedule," Grams said. "It knows your on-demand forecast, it knows the local weather information, it knows what's going on in your community."
The goal, executives say, is to eliminate time-consuming tasks so managers can spend more time coaching employees and interacting with customers.
The AI assistant manager
However, some industry veterans are skeptical that workers will embrace being coached by software.
"I'm not so sure I'm sold on the idea that employees are going to embrace being nudged by a system saying, 'Hey, you're not working fast enough,'" said Ray Camillo, founder and CEO of Blue Orbit Restaurant Consulting.
Camillo said restaurants have always been difficult businesses to standardize because of the sheer number of variables involved: fluctuating demand, inventory management, staffing shortages, and food prep. AI, he said, is naturally suited to production planning, scheduling, and forecasting. The managerial side is murkier.
Still, the industry appears all in.
During Chipotle's latest earnings call, CEO Scott Boatwright said its "Ava Cado" system, a virtual manager that helps screen applicants and onboard new staff, received "a standing ovation" at the company's recent leadership conference. At Starbucks, Grams said veteran store leaders have responded positively to Green Dot Assist.
And the technology is also changing how the industry thinks about labor itself. Most executives insist the technology is about support, not replacement. Others see automation moving steadily toward frontline work.
"I think the next thing that's going to happen is robotic burger flippers," Camillo said. "You can't even go into McDonald's and talk to somebody these days, it's all kiosks."
For now, though, the restaurant industry's AI revolution looks less like humanoid robots and more like invisible infrastructure: assistants whispering in workers' ears, generating schedules, tracking friendliness scores, and quietly collecting data from every interaction.
Whether workers see them as helpful tools or digital micromanagers, restaurant AI assistants are quickly becoming part of the crew.
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The Giro d'Italia kicks off the Grand Tour season.
Massimo Valicchia/NurPhoto via Getty Images
The first of the three Grand Tour races has arrived, and it brings cyclists on a three-week journey through Italy (plus a bit of Bulgaria and Switzerland). We've rounded up all the details on how to watch Giro d'Italia, including free and global streaming options.
If you don't want to scroll any further, you can live stream the race on HBO Max in the US, TNT Sports on HBO Max in the UK, RAI Play in Italy, and SBS On Demand in Australia. Below, we'll break down additional worldwide broadcast options and show you how to tune in to the event from anywhere.
How to watch Giro d'Italia for free
The Giro d'Italia is available for free in select regions. In Australia, coverage is available for free via SBS On Demand. In Italy, the host country, the race will be shown for free on RAI Play.
How to watch Giro d'Italia from anywhere
If you happen to be away from the location where your streaming service works, you can still access your favorite watch options with the help of a VPN. Short for virtual private networks, VPNs are handy tech tools that let people temporarily alter the location on their devices. They're especially popular among those hoping to boost their cybersecurity or access their usual services while traveling abroad.
NordVPN is one of the best VPNs on the market. It has a fantastic reputation thanks to its fast speeds, massive global server selection, and 30-day money-back guarantee. You can learn more in our NordVPN review.
How to watch Giro d'Italia in the US
The Giro d'Italia will live stream on HBO Max in the US. Sports streaming is available through B/R Sports, which is included in the ad-free tiers of HBO Max. These plan start at $18.49 a month.
How to watch Giro d'Italia in the UK
TNT Sports on HBO Max will carry coverage of the Giro d'Italia in the UK. TNT Sports-only plans on HBO Max start at £31 a month for flexible options, but you can save a bit each month by opting for a contract.
How to watch Giro d'Italia in Canada
Giro d'Italia coverage will be available through FloBikes in Canada. Subscriptions cost $50 a month, but you can find some major savings in an annual plan.
How to watch Giro d'Italia in Italy
The host country offers free coverage of the Giro d'Italia for Italian fans. In Italy, coverage is available through RAI and live streams on Rai Play.
How to watch Giro d'Italia in Australia
In Australia, coverage of the Giro d'Italia is also available for free. The race will show on SBS Viceland and be available to live stream through SBS On Demand.
Note: The use of VPNs is illegal in certain countries, and using VPNs to access region-locked streaming content might constitute a breach of the terms of use for certain services. Business Insider does not endorse or condone the illegal use of VPNs.
