The parasite panic didn't stop thousands of nutrition experts from chowing down on salad

The American Society for Nutrition's annual conference is one of the largest for cutting-edge research on all things food science.

EPNAC.com/American Society for Nutrition

• At a conference, I saw doctors and dietitians enjoying salad, despite the cyclosporiasis outbreak.
• They told me the risk doesn't warrant swearing off fresh produce, a key part of a healthy diet.
• It made me feel safer about eating salads at home — with a few extra precautions.

As a health reporter, I've spent weeks in the trenches of the cyclosporiasis outbreak, trying to decipher the gastrointestinal gamble of eating fresh produce right now.

I've talked to doctors, tracked case numbers, and tuned into FDA briefings all in the pursuit of one question: Is a piece of iceberg lettuce an accident waiting to happen right now?

Then I took a train to Washington, DC, for Nutrition 2026, one of the country's biggest nutrition conferences, where 3,000 doctors, dietitians, and food science researchers gathered to discuss healthy — and safe — eating.

The first thing that caught my attention wasn't research-related; it was lunch. Almost everyone was eating chopped salad.

A few people skipped the greens — some drenched their salad dressing on lower-risk veggies like cucumbers instead — but by and large, the nutrition community seemed OK with leafy greens.

I was a little surprised. The cyclosporiasis outbreak is still very much ongoing. To date, more than 11,000 people in 46 states have been sickened with a parasite that causes explosive diarrhea. The FDA, CDC, and local health officials recently expanded their investigation to include more states, and they are still working to trace the outbreak's sources and ultimately contain it.

So why were these health experts eating salad? I spent the weekend badgering dietitians and food safety experts about how they're deciding what's OK to put on their plates. Here's everything I learned about eating healthy food with less anxiety.

What's wrong with lettuce right now?

Cyclospora crops up in our food supply every summer.

How does it get there? Sorry to tell you… it's usually poop. Plants grow in the ground, and animals poop there. We water crops with water that may contain poop. And ultimately, fruits and veggies are picked, handled, and transported by many people before they get to your plate, and not everyone washes their hands for the full length of Happy Birthday like we were all taught in kindergarten.

While health officials still haven't identified the exact source of the current outbreak, iceberg lettuce supplied by Taylor Farms remains under investigation, and questions remain about lettuce, herbs, and berries.

Lettuce and other produce can be prone to contamination because they're harvested from dirt, which can be, well, dirty. Contamination can happen at every step of the supply chain, from water and soil to the many people who handle produce before it ends up on our plates.

Bloomberg/Getty Images

Products like bagged salads can be particularly problematic because greens are mixed and then spread across large batches, allowing any hitchhiking contaminants to travel far and wide.

Why dietitians aren't panicking about produce

I talked to over a dozen dietitians, doctors, and researchers over the weekend.

No one was particularly nervous about the greens at the buffet — not because they thought the outbreak was overblown. They simply understood that the absolute risk of getting sick from any given salad remains relatively low, while the health benefits of eating vegetables remain overwhelming.

"The anxiety people feel around this outbreak is understandable," Alyssa Pike, a registered dietitian and a senior manager of food safety at the International Food Information Council, told me. She's still eating salads herself, but paying close attention to recalls and avoiding products that health officials are actively investigating.

"If you aren't comfortable eating lettuce right now," she said, "the good news is there are lots of other types of produce."

Psychologist William Hallman, who researches food risk communication at Rutgers University, said the people attending the conference have a very different relationship with the food system (and food safety) than the average consumer.

They're more familiar with how outbreaks are investigated, how contamination spreads, and how to interpret evolving public health guidance.

"In short, many consumers are avoiding salads not because the statistical risk of Cyclospora infection is high, but because the public messaging around the outbreak has been contradictory and difficult to interpret," Hallman told me. "People want to feel in control of the food choices they make for themselves and their families."

That uncertainty has become one of the defining features of this outbreak. For non-experts, cutting back on greens offers only a limited sense of comfort amid a lot of confusion.

Investigators initially thought they had found cyclospora in a Taylor Farms lettuce sample, only to later determine the result was a false positive, leading to mixed messages about what is or isn't safe to eat.

Still, the overwhelming evidence points to the iceberg lettuce, which originated in Mexico, as the source of the outbreak. Since it's been voluntarily recalled from grocery store shelves and restaurants like Taco Bell, consumers can feel safer about lunch.

There are foodborne outbreaks everywhere for those with eyes to see

Avoiding foodborne illness is tough.

The day I arrived at the conference, cyclospora wasn't the only hazard going around. The CDC announced an outbreak of Salmonella in eggs. As I was writing this, the USDA announced a recall of more than 12,000 pounds of bacon.

While I personally skipped lettuce on my trip, I was definitely loading up on scrambled eggs at the free hotel breakfast (so far, so good), and bacon wasn't on the menu. The alternative of eating ultra-processed convenience foods all weekend, plus the gallons of coffee I need to do journalism, would have led to a different kind of digestive disaster.

Just to be safe, I ended my conference with a big scoop of ice cream for dinner instead of a salad.

Gabby Landsverk

Back home in New York, greens have long been a part of my weekly meal prep. They still are — I've just switched to buying local, since the scale of the outbreak makes it more likely to be tied to a large distributor than to a small farm.

Holding off the iceberg lettuce this week might make sense if you're worried about this outbreak, but it doesn't mean you should swear off salad forever. If your risk tolerance is higher, you can still eat leafy greens, particularly if you know the source or if you're in an area with fewer cases of this particular illness.

If there's one thing I learned from the weekend, it is that there is no perfect way to eat. That's what the whole conference was about: how to advance the latest cutting-edge nutrition science on what's good for our bodies, while also aligning it with how we actually live our lives.

The takeaway: Be cautious, but don't panic. Stress can give you diarrhea, too.

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The 5 most interesting takeaways from Bernard Arnault's rare podcast interview

Bloomberg/Getty Images

• Bernard Arnault gave a rare interview about his life and career on the French podcast LEGEND.
• He said Steve Jobs sought his advice on Apple stores.
• Arnault described a "totally relaxed" dinner with Trump on the day of an assassination attempt.

Bernard Arnault, the 77-year-old billionaire founder and CEO of LVMH, rarely sits for long interviews. "Why give out information?" he joked when Guillaume Pley, the host of the French podcast "LEGEND," brought up how little is known about him.

In a rare conversation running over an hour and a half, released earlier this month, the man behind Louis Vuitton, Dior, and Tiffany & Co. opened up about everything from advising Steve Jobs to a surreal dinner with Donald Trump.

Here are the five most interesting takeaways.

1. Steve Jobs asked him for advice on Apple's stores, then told him Dom Perignon would outlast the iPhone

Arnault said Jobs approached him when Apple was launching its retail stores, at a time when "nobody in the technology business" sold its own products in boutiques.

"We told him: if you want to make beautiful stores, come and see what Vuitton is doing," Arnault said, adding that Apple sent someone to study the brand's boutiques and that he advised Jobs to put Apple Stores in the same prime locations as Louis Vuitton, including a flagship spot on Tokyo's Ginza that he said still draws crowds today.

The last time the two men met, Arnault recalled, Jobs paid him a compliment that stuck with him: "You know, my phone is great — but what you do is even better, because I'm convinced that in a century, your Dom Perignon will still be here, and my phone will be completely obsolete."

2. His investing regret: dumping a near-20% stake in Netflix too early

Arnault, who is today the 9th-richest person in the world, revealed that his family investment team was an early backer of Netflix, holding what he said was almost 20% of the company. The position was a big winner, but not nearly as big as it could have been.

"I sold too early," he said, estimating the stake would be worth 10 times more today.

He also described a stroke of pure luck from the dot-com bust: a dissolved American venture fund he'd invested in mailed him its remaining assets: a "good bundle" of Google shares, he said, that were then worth around 2 or 3 euros each.

"At the time, we didn't really know what it was," he said. "It was a good deal we had absolutely nothing to do with."

3. How he raised billionaire kids who still show up to work

All five of Arnault's children hold senior roles across LVMH, and he was candid about how involved he was in that outcome.

He said he brought his children into the business early, walking them through his deals and investments, and setting a clear condition: "I told them: if you one day want to take part in all this, in one way or another, you absolutely need to study hard — because otherwise, it's not possible."

He contrasted that with what he saw among other wealthy families, where children of fortune spend their time "buying big cars" and partying.

He also got hands-on. When one of his sons struggled with math before his baccalauréat, the French high school exams, Arnault said, "I would come home at 6 p.m. to help him with his math problems."

As for their futures at the company, Arnault insisted the same rules apply to everyone: "We progress, at LVMH, through a system of meritocracy."

4. His business advice? Forget marketing, perfect the product, and persevere

Asked whether he gets involved in the creative side of LVMH's 75-plus houses, Arnault said he did, "I have a certain aptitude, I believe, for seeing what will work."

That instinct extends all the way to the shop floor. Arnault said that when he visits a store, "I can clearly see what might need improving." He said he jokes to his Paris store managers that they should hire him as "director of visual merchandising" because he makes changes on a visit, returns the following week, and, by his telling, is told the boutique is performing better.

Arnault said long-term success in his business comes down to one thing: the quality of the product. He said he once told Louis Vuitton's own marketing department that a true luxury house shouldn't do marketing at all.

"You must not do marketing. You must create, and it's your products that must impose themselves," he said on the podcast.

Pressed at the end of the interview for the single indispensable quality for lasting in business, his answer was simple: "I think you have to be persevering."

5. He had dinner with Trump on the day of the second assassination attempt and found him 'totally relaxed'

Arnault, who says he met Donald Trump when they both were in real estate in 1980s New York, recounted a surreal evening with the president.

Driving to a planned dinner at Trump's home with his son Alexandre, Arnault heard on the radio that the Secret Service had found an armed man near Trump's golf course, the second apparent attempt on his life, after the rally shooting that grazed his ear.

"I said, 'Alexandre, it's over. The dinner is off," Arnault recalled. Instead, the dinner went ahead. When the Arnaults told him how terrible the afternoon's events were, Trump reportedly waved it off and said, "2-0," and was "totally relaxed."

Arnault also offered a glimpse of how he interacts with Trump on trade, saying he lobbies him directly on tariffs: "I don't always get what I ask for, but I discuss." During Trump's first term, he said that approach secured an exemption for French wines and spirits.

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Amazon overhauls its AI strategy, winding down most flagship models

Peter DeSantis, Amazon's SVP of Foundational AI Models, Custom Silicon, and Quantum Computing

Bloomberg/Getty Images

• Amazon is winding down most of its Nova in-house AI models.
• Amazon's AGI team was hit by layoffs.
• SVP Peter DeSantis wants to narrow the company's AI strategy.

Amazon is overhauling its AI strategy, winding down many in-house models, reorganizing teams, and focusing engineers on a new strategy to compete at the frontier, according to people familiar with the matter.

The changes follow layoffs in Amazon's Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI, organization last week and the shutdown of AGI Lab, a research group it created in 2024 after hiring most of the team behind AI startup Adept.

The restructuring suggests Amazon is refocusing its AI strategy. Rather than investing across a number of text, image, and video models, the company is concentrating engineering talent and scarce computing resources on its highest priorities.

"KTLO"

Amazon has begun deprecating most of its in-house flagship Nova models, including the high-end Premier and Omni models, Reel video-generation model, and Canvas image-generation model, according to people familiar with the matter.

Some Amazon employees described these models as operating in "KTLO," short for "keep the lights on," an engineering term for software that remains supported for existing customers but is no longer a major development priority.

FMR

According to the people familiar with the matter, resources have increasingly moved away from the existing Nova models and toward a new frontier-model effort led by researcher Pieter Abbeel, who came to Amazon through the acquisition of AI robotics startup Covariant. Known internally as Frontier Model Research, or FMR, the initiative has become a top priority this year.

Under that effort, Amazon is developing a new flagship foundation model that is expected to debut at this year's re:Invent annual conference, which typically happens in the fall.

An Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider the company has long supported AI models in production for extended periods because customers depend on them, and said Amazon remains committed to investing in frontier models.

"AI models remain one of the most important things we're working on, and that hasn't changed," the spokesperson said. "As with any AI portfolio, we continually evolve our model lineup based on what customers need, and we always provide customers clear guidance and migration paths as models advance."

Job cuts and departures

The organizational change does not necessarily mean Amazon is abandoning Nova altogether. The remaining Nova portfolio includes the Nova 2 Sonic and Nova 2 Lite foundation models, Nova Forge, a service for building and customizing models, and Nova Act, Amazon's AI agent technology. Indeed, the new model that FMR is developing could emerge under the Nova brand.

Instead, the shift reflects a broader reorganization of Amazon's AI efforts that has unfolded over the past year.

Amazon created its AGI organization in 2023 to build foundation models and other technologies capable of powering future AI products across the company. Rohit Prasad, a longtime Alexa executive, led the organization until he departed in December 2025.

The AGI organization oversaw several specialized groups. One was AGI Lab, which Amazon established in 2024 after hiring AI startup Adept's cofounders and licensing its technology. Led by Adept cofounder David Luan, the lab focused on long-term AI research. Luan left Amazon in February, and the company shut down the AGI Lab last week as part of the latest reorganization.

Separately, Frontier Model Research was created within the AGI organization to develop Amazon's next generation of frontier AI models. After Prasad's departure, Amazon tapped Abbeel to lead the group. People familiar with the transition said FMR has since become the organization's primary focus.

DeSantis narrows the focus

The broader AGI organization was also reorganized. In December, Amazon placed it under senior vice president Peter DeSantis, combining it with the company's silicon development and quantum computing organizations.

People familiar with the transition said DeSantis has pursued a more focused AI strategy than his predecessor. Under Prasad, Amazon pursued multiple model families spanning text, image, and video generation. DeSantis, however, has concentrated Amazon's engineering talent and computing resources on a smaller number of frontier-model efforts, they said.

Employees said they have received little guidance about the long-term future of Nova models, fueling uncertainty across the organization.

The layoffs surprised many employees, the people said, because frontier model researchers had long been among Amazon's most prized technical talent. Employees said AGI also operated differently from the rest of the company, maintaining separate leveling and compensation systems to compete more aggressively for AI talent.

The changes mark a major shift in Amazon's AI ambitions. Just last year, AWS used its re:Invent conference to unveil Nova Omni 2 as its flagship multimodal reasoning model. In 2023, CEO Andy Jassy personally championed AGI as the team that would build Amazon's most ambitious foundation models, prompting the creation of six new research groups.

Less than three years later, the organization is retiring parts of its flagship Nova lineup and reorganizing around a new frontier model effort.

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Discord and Meta accused of giving predators 'unfettered access' to a teen girl and failing to stop the abuse

Discord is a popular messaging platform.

Samuel Boivin/NurPhoto via Getty Images

• Criminal groups allegedly groomed and abused a teen girl on Discord and Meta, a lawsuit says.
• The victim's case could test Section 230 liability protections on tech platforms, her lawyers say.
• Meta wants the case bundled with social media addiction litigation. Discord wants it dismissed.

A woman alleges child abuse rings found her on Discord and Instagram as a teen, then blackmailed her into sending them nude and self-harm photos that they shared across the internet—leaving her with mental and physical scars.

Now she's suing both tech companies in a case her lawyers hope will be a "watershed moment" for holding social media sites accountable, as the FBI warns parents about a rising network of online extortion groups targeting kids.

The anonymous plaintiff made the allegations in a previously unreported lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court in April.

The suit names three groups — CVLT, 764, and Greggy's Cult — that the FBI says groom children online and blackmail them. Multiple members of each group have been arrested by law enforcement.

Discord and Meta have faced scrutiny over their impact on children's mental health and safety. The case could also test whether these social media companies could be liable for criminal activity on their apps and whether Section 230 — the federal law shielding social media companies from user behavior — applies to such cases.

Discord and Meta declined to comment on this specific case. A Discord spokesperson said that disrupting the 764 network is one of its top priorities and that it has been cracking down on the group since 2021, when it first became aware of it. Discord says it works closely with law enforcement, has removed thousands of servers, and has banned hundreds of thousands of users associated with 764 and its affiliates.

The bulk of the plaintiff's claims are against Discord, "due to the stronger causal link between Discord's conduct and her injuries," her lawyers wrote in a filing. She also sued Meta because, she alleges, a CVLT member first contacted and groomed her on Instagram, which Meta owns.

The anonymous plaintiff's case is ongoing. In legal filings, Meta moved to have the case bundled with social media addiction cases. Discord wants the case dismissed entirely, arguing that federal law shields it from liability for content posted by its users.

A Meta spokesperson said CVLT is banned from its platforms and that it has strict policies to prevent child exploitation, suicide, and self-harm.

Meta also says it has specialized teams — including former law enforcement and prosecutors — working with the FBI on the issue, plus a 24/7 incident response team for imminent cases.

The lawsuit describes a 'cycle of fear'

According to her complaint, the plaintiff's ordeal began at age 15, when a member of Greggy's Cult contacted her through a public Discord server. The New Mexico man, Zachary Dosch, allegedly persuaded her to send a video of herself masturbating and livestreamed it to other group members.

Dosch pleaded guilty to federal charges of distributing child-sexual-abuse material in 2023. He, along with four other Greggy's Cult members, was charged again in 2025, on allegations of extorting children, and he pleaded not guilty. A lawyer for Dosch didn't respond to a request for comment.

At 17, after the plaintiff began posting on Instagram about her mental health struggles, another man contacted her on Instagram, the suit alleges. The lawsuit says he turned out to be Collin John Thomas Walker, a member of CVLT, a child exploitation group described as "Neo-Nazi" by the FBI. The lawsuit claims Walker spent months "love bombing" her before finding out her home address and threatening her.

Walker allegedly coerced the plaintiff into obtaining her sexually explicit photos, which he then sent around CVLT's Discord server. He also allegedly coerced her to carve his username into her body, burn herself with candle wax, and starve herself to stay attractive — all while his account remained active on Instagram. Walker was later arrested and pleaded guilty to child exploitation charges in October 2025; a lawyer for Walker didn't respond to a request for comment.

The plaintiff's parents confiscated her phone and returned it when she turned 18 — at which point another online child abuse group called 764 recruited her on Discord, the suit said. She finally escaped by faking her own death, and by the end of May 2022, she "escaped the online hell she had been living in," the lawsuit states.

US law enforcement has arrested and charged multiple 764 members. The FBI said in a warning letter to parents in February that it's investigating more than 350 people tied to 764 and its affiliates.

The lawsuit alleges Discord and Meta's "permissive environments provided these predators with unfettered access, anonymity, and the ability to disseminate images and messages that deepened Plaintiff's trauma," resulting in a "cycle of fear, shame, and emotional despair."

The plaintiff suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, permanent scars, and poor grades, her complaint says.

Discord and Meta face scrutiny in other states

Julie Erickson, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiff, told Business Insider she hopes the lawsuit will pave the way for tech companies to be held accountable for child exploitation rings operating on their platforms.

"We are hopeful that this is sort of a watershed moment," she said.

The suit follows other legal action against Discord over child predators allegedly operating on its platform. The states of Texas, Arkansas, New Jersey, and Nevada have each separately sued Discord since last year for allegedly failing to protect children online. The lawsuits are all ongoing.

Earlier this year, the parents of 13-year-old Jay Taylor — a Washington teen who died by suicide in 2022 after a 764 member allegedly pushed him toward it in a group chat — filed a wrongful death suit against Discord, alleging the company "abetted one of the most depraved and dangerous child abuse cults in modern history." Discord seeks to move the case to private arbitration, citing its terms of service. A Discord spokesperson said the company doesn't comment on legal matters.

Meta was previously found liable in a child exploitation case, a ruling it strongly disputes. In March, a New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay $375 million for, in part, exposing children to sexual predators. New Mexico's attorney general says Meta plans to appeal.

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Travis Kalanick says he's the only CEO with a 5-minute jet ski commute

Travis Kalanick travels to his new Austin office at Atoms by jet skiing across Lake Austin.

Theo Wargo/WireImage; Screenshot via @travisk

• Travis Kalanick commutes to his Austin office by jet ski across Lake Austin.
• The former Uber CEO moved from California to Texas and owns a home on Lake Austin.
• "Who else do you know is jet-skiing to work?" he asked on TBPN.

Most people battle traffic to get to work. Travis Kalanick appears to be skipping it altogether.

The Uber cofounder and former CEO posted a video on X in June showing what he called his "5 minute jet ski commute" across Lake Austin to his new office, giving followers a glimpse of his unconventional trip.

First day at our new Austin office. Video of my 5 minute jet ski commute to work.. 😏😅😂 pic.twitter.com/xMT0C85vW3

— travis kalanick (@travisk) June 29, 2026

On Wednesday, Kalanick said on TBPN that he recently went roughly 70 miles per hour on his jet ski to work. The ride was still five minutes, unless it rained, he said.

He described the ride as a "notch on the belt," asking: "Who else do you know is jet-skiing to work?"

Kalanick said that he did a ChatGPT search for other CEOs who took a jet ski to work. There were one or two, he said, but nobody at a company with over a thousand people.

One of the hosts chimed in: "Only a Texas resident."

"Texas resident, that's right," Kalanick said. "Primary residence, let's go."

Kalanick owns a home on Lake Austin. The billionaire entrepreneur said in his first appearance on the TBPN podcast in March that he has owned the place for five years, drawn in part by the lake and his love of water sports.

There's a growing list of tech leaders who have traded Silicon Valley for Texas. Billionaires and companies alike have been drawn by lower taxes, cheaper real estate, and a friendlier regulatory climate than California, where rising costs and talk of a one-time billionaire wealth tax have rattled some executives. Tesla, Oracle, and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise are among the companies that have shifted major operations to the state.

Kalanick is now leading Atoms, the newly renamed version of City Storage Systems and the parent company of CloudKitchens. The startup is developing AI-powered robots designed to automate repetitive physical work in industries such as food service, mining, manufacturing, and logistics. He previously described Atoms' goal as building "gainfully employed robots" that can take on specialized tasks at an industrial scale.

Kalanick co-founded Uber in 2009 and helped turn it into a ride-hailing giant before resigning in 2017. Since then, he's been focused on building software and robotics for kitchens, mining, and logistics.

And while his move to Austin gives him the choice of several robotaxis, it seems like Kalanick will be boating his way to work.

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I’m a former McKinsey consultant who finally found joy after leaving the corporate world to start my own microbakery

Hali Mo, a former consultant and product manager, quit her corporate job to start Hali Home Bakes after attending pastry school in Paris.

Katherine Li/Business Insider

• Hali Mo quit her corporate job to start Hali Home Bakes after attending pastry school in Paris.
• Mo said she found her corporate job unfufilling and that she used to wake up to a sense of dread.
• Mo is still navigating the challenges of being a small-business owner, but her brand is growing.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Hali Mo, founder of Hali Home Bakes, a San Francisco microbakery specializing in laminated pastries. The essay has been edited for length and clarity.

When I graduated from Stanford in 2018 with degrees in economics and computer science, I did what I thought I was supposed to do. I joined McKinsey as a business analyst, then moved into design consulting before becoming a product manager at a startup. On paper, everything looked right: good salary, clear career progression, prestigious companies.

After five years in corporate America, I realized I was waking up every day dreading work. I turned 29 and thought, "I don't want to live like this."

I quit my job, planning to take a year off — not to become a baker, but simply to figure out what actually made me happy.

That decision eventually led me to pastry school in Paris, a microbakery that started in my apartment kitchen, and a completely different life than the one I'd imagined for myself.

I followed the path I thought I was supposed to

Growing up, I never had a crystal-clear dream job. Consulting appealed to me because it was practical.

After two years at McKinsey, I moved into product management for a startup. I thought changing roles might solve the problem.

It didn't.

The work itself wasn't fulfilling for me. Every morning, I'd wake up dreading the day ahead while feeling guilty because I knew I was fortunate. I had stability, a good paycheck, and a career that made sense from the outside. Walking away from that felt almost irresponsible.

Eventually, I realized I needed to stop asking what looked impressive and start asking what actually brought me joy.

Pastry school in Paris changed everything

Baking was my serious hobby for years. If someone had asked me for one bucket-list item, it would have been attending pastry school in France.

So in early 2024, I quit my product management job and moved to Paris. I loved being a student again. After years of working, it felt like such a privilege to ask questions without worrying about performance reviews or promotions.

I started posting videos about pastry school. Those videos unexpectedly took off on social media, and by the time I returned to the US, I had an audience that gave me the confidence to ask, "What if I tried selling pastries?"

I moved to New York, where my partner lived at the time, bought a tiny convection oven and a countertop dough sheeter, and started baking under a cottage food license.

My first preorder sold just 40 pastries.

For the first few months, selling even a dozen boxes felt difficult. But gradually people came back, word of mouth spread, and social media continued to grow. By spring, I realized this could actually become something. By fall, I was consistently selling out pop-ups with lines of customers.

It felt like every small success gave me permission to keep going.

Starting over in San Francisco

Mo is testing a July special pastry in her kitchen.

Katherine Li/Business Insider

Then my eight-year relationship ended. Suddenly, it felt like every part of my life was starting over.

Personally, I was rebuilding after the breakup. Professionally, I was leaving behind the customer base I'd spent months building in New York.

I moved back to San Francisco in January and essentially started from scratch. Fortunately, I knew much more than I had the first time around. Within months, I rebuilt my customer base and found a commercial kitchen that could support the specialized equipment I needed.

Now I'm producing around 400 pastries each week and plan to expand to 1,000 with the help of a part-time baking assistant I'm looking to hire.

The trade-offs are real — but so is the joy

Running your own business comes with freedoms I never had in corporate life. I love setting my own schedule and building the kind of workplace culture I want.

But there are trade-offs.

There is no paid time off. If I get sick, there are no pastries to sell and no income. I pay for my own health insurance. I haven't had employer 401(k) contributions, and in my first two years as a business owner, I couldn't contribute to a traditional retirement account because I wasn't paying myself enough.

Starting a small business also means funding your own runway. You're spending money long before you're making much of it.

I think the biggest mindset shift has been believing in myself

When I first started the bakery, I was half in and half out. Part of me assumed I'd probably end up going back to corporate. That hesitation made me pass on opportunities and avoid investments that would have helped the business grow.

Now my mindset is completely different. I believe this business will succeed because I believe in my product and my ability to make it succeed.

I don't think everyone should quit their corporate jobs. Some people genuinely love traditional careers, and that's wonderful.

But if you've done the introspection, you have the financial runway, and you know deep down that your work is making you miserable, don't be afraid to take the next reasonable step.

Life is too short to wake up every morning with a sense of dread. I feel incredibly lucky that now, when I wake up, I feel joy instead.

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This Silicon Valley city is quietly becoming Robot Row. Here's who's clanking around.

iStock; Tyler Le/BI

• Fremont has been the manufacturing and industrial hub of Silicon Valley for the past few decades.
• Today, robotics companies are drawn to the city's mix of talent and manufacturing expertise.
• Agility Robotics, Tesla, Meta, and Zoox are among the players that have a foothold in the city.

On a Thursday afternoon, about 70 people gathered around a nearly six-foot-tall humanoid robot outside an unassuming office building.

Employees, executives, and board members of Agility Robotics, along with local officials, had come to christen the humanoid startup's new engineering hub: a 60,000-square-foot facility where nearly 200 existing and new employees will work on the AI and skills for its Digit bipedal robot.

The ribbon-cutting didn't take place in San Francisco, Palo Alto, or San Jose, where some leading robotics companies have decided to cluster. Agility chose Fremont — an East Bay city better known for its industrial parks than for Silicon Valley startup mythology — to plant its new center.

Agility Robotics held a ribbon-cutting ceremony to open its new R&D hub in Fremont.

Lloyd Lee/BI

Agility is the latest robotics startup to have a foothold in the area. Over the past 15 years, Fremont has seen companies tied to robotics or autonomous vehicles set up shop in the city.

Tesla, Meta, Zoox, Pony.ai, and DoorDash are among the big-name players that have established a footprint in Fremont to support their robotics ambitions.

At Agility's new facility, engineers will teach Digit new tasks and improve the skills it already has.

"This is going to be the robot school," Jonathan Hurst, Agility's cofounder and chief robot officer, told Business Insider. "This is where we teach robot skills. It's really going to be centered here."

The hardware side of Silicon Valley

Fremont's rise as a robotics center builds on an industrial history that Mayor Raj Salwan said the city deliberately preserved.

For more than 25 years, the city was home to New United Motor Manufacturing, or NUMMI, a joint venture between General Motors and Toyota. When the plant shut down in 2010, other cities might have converted the site into office space or housing.

Salwan said the city chose another direction.

"We doubled down on industrial," the mayor told Business Insider. "We preserved our industrial land, and we said we're all in on manufacturing."

Tesla acquired the NUMMI plant that year, preserving Fremont's automotive ties and attracting a network of suppliers. Meanwhile, the city courted other industries, such as semiconductor, biotech, and advanced manufacturing companies, Salwan said.

Tesla's Fremont factory is being converted into a production hub for the company's Optimus humanoid robot.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Now, the manufacturing base is supporting Fremont's latest transition.

Robotics companies need some of the same things that have attracted earlier hardware businesses to the East Bay city, namely large buildings, production expertise, and enough open floor space for machines to move around.

The city tried to make it easier to open such large facilities. Salwan said Fremont streamlined regulations, developed in-house expertise, and changed some zoning rules to allow qualifying projects to move forward without lengthy hearings.

"We tell you everything up front, and then we help fast-track the process," Salwan said. "If you want to build things, Fremont is the place."

The lab meets the factory floor

Large floor space is only half the equation for robotics companies. They also need talent.

Fremont doesn't exactly sit in the heart of the research and venture capital ecosystem found near Stanford University and Sand Hill Road. But it's close enough to tap into the same pool of engineers, investors, and business partners.

The city is roughly 15 miles east of Palo Alto, across the Dumbarton Bridge. The proximity keeps companies like DoorDash and Zoox close to the talent, their headquarters, and their manufacturing hubs throughout the Bay Area.

DoorDash, which is headquartered in San Francisco, designs and builds its delivery bot, Dot, in Fremont through a partnership with Sonic Manufacturing. The partnership allows engineers from DoorDash Labs, the company's robotics arm, to work "shoulder-to-shoulder" with Sonic employees, a DoorDash spokesperson said.

Sonic Manufacturing Technologies has a 120,000-square-foot campus that supports DoorDash's production of its delivery bot, Dot.

Lloyd Lee/BI

"In some situations, going from designing the line to rolling out our first robot could take months or even years," the spokesperson said. "Thanks to the collaboration between the team working at Sonic and our Labs facilities, it only took a matter of weeks."

Anyware Robotics, a small startup founded in 2023 that builds mobile warehouse robots, fits its entire operation inside one 11,000 square-foot Fremont facility.

Torsten Schreiber, Anyware cofounder and VP of go-to-market and product, said everything from software development to robot testing happens in the same building, allowing the startup to iterate quickly.

"Fremont sits at the intersection of Silicon Valley software talent and the East Bay's hardware and manufacturing," he said. "It's a combination that is hard to find anywhere else."

Schreiber said the location also puts his company near its customers' warehouses and distribution operations.

Zoox, Amazon's robotaxi venture, also planted its manufacturing operations in Fremont and the neighboring city of Hayward. Its Fremont site retrofits test vehicles and configures sensor pods, while the Hayward facility assembles the purpose-built robotaxi.

Zoox retrofits its robotaxi testing fleet in Fremont.

Carlos Barria/Reuters

Zoox said the locations are close enough to its headquarters in Foster City to allow daily collaboration between the engineering and manufacturing teams. A Zoox spokesperson said the company is hiring for several positions supporting the two sites.

Physical AI needs physical space

In 2022, Meta expanded operations not far from its Menlo Park headquarters with a Fremont campus. Today, that campus is heavily focused on hardware research and development, particularly robotics and virtual- and augmented-reality devices, a Meta spokesperson said.

Across the street is Agility's new hub.

Fremont is not about to replace San Francisco or the Peninsula as the Bay Area's startup and venture capital centers. Instead, the city's role has proven to be more physical, enabling companies to expand their robotics ambitions and place engineers near the factory floor.

Tesla earlier this year said its first large-scale Optimus humanoid production line would replace the Model S and Model X lines at its Fremont plant.

Agility, meanwhile, will continue to manufacture its Digit humanoid in Salem, where the startup is headquartered, while expanding its engineering pool in the Bay Area, Hurst, the cofounder, said.

Agility Robotics' Fremont center will also host investors and customers passing through Silicon Valley.

Agility Robotics

In Fremont, Digit will undergo extensive testing as engineers teach the humanoid new skills.

As the robotics race heats up, investors are hungry to see robots work beyond a demo video. Hurst said that Agility's new Fremont presence will also give customers and investors already passing through the Bay Area a chance to see Digit in action.

"It's no longer acceptable to show just a demo or a video of a robot doing a thing," Hurst said, adding that the Fremont location saves visitors from making a trip to Agility's Salem HQ.

"Having this here so people can swing through is really convenient."

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