Anthropic and OpenAI have partnered with influencers for paid promotions. Their comments sections are filling with a chorus of boos.
Bloomberg/Getty Images
Emma Orhun was caught in a hailstorm of negative comments after partnering with Anthropic.
"I was nervous that everything that they said was right," she told BI.
Orhun said she's worried that ongoing backlash will make people less candid about AI use.
Emma Orhun was alone in her apartment when a flood of harsh comments rolled in.
"The first hour was the scariest," she told Business Insider. "People are saying mean things, and then, I have no one to turn to and be like, 'Are they right? Are they not? Am I crazy?'"
Orhun, an Ottawa-based social media influencer and former Shopify design technologist, said she was "micro-canceled" for posting a promotion for Anthropic. She received another round of backlash after talking about that experience on "The Internet is Dead" podcast.
She's not alone. Influencers — including those who make money creating promotional content for their followers — have been getting virtual rotten tomatoes flung in their direction when they pair up with AI labs.
In late July, for example, OpenAI hosted a luxury retreat in upstate New York for roughly a dozen social media personalities. The weekend event included workshops on AI use cases and a beekeeping seminar. When the influencers posted pictures of their OpenAI-branded jars of honey and videos detailing their weekend learnings, the comment sections swarmed with angry followers calling the event everything from "dystopian" to "morally bankrupt."
Orhun didn't attend that event, but her paid promotion with Anthropic received a similar response. Some longtime followers told her AI was "bad for the earth" or said they would unfollow.
"I was nervous that everything that they said was right," she told Business Insider.
The comments made her doubt herself, but they didn't change her mind. "When you yell at people about it and say, 'I'm right, you're wrong' and 'you're a terrible person,' that is no way to get on the same page about anything," she said.
On the podcast, Orhun argued that women online are often expected to act as a kind of moral compass — and suggested that men could use the same AI tools without attracting the same scrutiny.
After the clip drew its own criticism, Orhun said she would now qualify that argument. She pointed to male creators who have also faced backlash for AI promotions and said the reaction to her Claude ad "might not be a gender thing."
She still believes the broader expectation is uneven, though. Women online, she told Business Insider, are more often expected to take the ethically correct position on everything from politics to technology.
Orhun said she now worries that negative comments are putting users in what amounts to an AI closet. Continued backlash could make people less candid about their AI use, she argued.
"I know a lot of people who use the tools," she said, but "they just won't talk about it."
In her own creations, Orhun draws a line between using AI to help with technical work and using generative AI to produce artwork. She uses tools like Claude to code and work through unfamiliar technical problems, but said she won't use AI to generate her art.
"I draw every single day," she said. "I love art, human-made art so much."
Andres Fernandez dropped out of his college in Florida to start his own business, which sells Pokemon cards.
Andres Fernandez
Andres Fernandez dropped out of his business degree program in college to found his own company.
The company, MintlyCollects, made $7.8 million in sales in 2025 and became a family business.
Fernandez said that he believes you can't "just go with the flow" and find a direction in life.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Andres Fernandez, founder and CEO of MintlyCollects, which specializes in selling Pokémon cards on the live selling platform, Whatnot. The company's two Whatnot accounts have around 500k followers altogether.The essay has been edited for length and clarity.
I was born and raised in Miami, and I've always been an out-of-the-box kid.
When I signed up for college, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I was going to college because my mom was making me go, and I was studying business, which I find to be cliché.
Rather than getting a business degree to work a corporate job, I ended up building a real business that's mine.
How I found my direction
I was super into video games, YouTube, Twitch, and content creation growing up. I had played Pokémon video games since I was 10, but I wasn't a collector. That changed when my little cousin's birthday came around, and I needed to get him a gift.
I went to Target and bought him some cards. We opened the cards together at his birthday party, and he pulled a $100 card from a $5 pack. As soon as I saw that, I was like, "I'm in. This is awesome."
I started collecting and ripping a lot of packs. At the time, I was working at a croqueta bar, frying food for $10 an hour. I was spending too much money on Pokémon cards, so I started creating content around Pokémon.
I eventually grew an account to about 30,000 followers and started selling on Instagram Live. Then Whatnot reached out to me.
I joined in late 2020, when Whatnot had just started its Pokémon side. I was probably one of the first five Pokémon streamers on the platform.
I saw the vision immediately. I grew up watching YouTube and Twitch, so I thought, "Imagine being on YouTube when YouTube first started." If you're consistent, you're going to succeed because as the platform succeeds, you're going to grow with it.
I was 20, and I stuck with it.
I built a family business
MintlyCollects has since turned into a family business, involving Fernandez's girlfriend, cousin, and close friends.
Andres Fernandez
For the first two to three years, I did everything myself. I streamed six days a week, packed orders, shipped them, and repeated the process Monday through Saturday.
My uncle eventually sat me down and said, "You're onto something. Quit your job. Stop school, and run with it."
So I did.
At first, I didn't know anything about running a business. I wasn't paying myself for the first two and a half years.
But I learned.
Eventually, I realized I couldn't do everything myself. I'm a control freak, but then I took a huge risk and spent $150,000 on my first really large sealed-product investment, and I needed help.
I turned to my friends and family and gave them a commission on the profits. If they streamed and did well, they got paid.
Now, my girlfriend works for me. Her best friend and her best friend's boyfriend work for me. My brother works for me. My girlfriend's cousin works for me. My childhood best friend also works for me.
Today, I have 10 streamers. We can stream more than 20 hours a day on one account and 15 hours a day on another, with both accounts running simultaneously.
In 2024, we did $3.7 million in sales. In 2025, we did $7.8 million, and we're on track to do more than $10 million to $11 million this year.
You can't just go with the flow anymore
Fernandez said his team is aiming to grow its sales in 2026 to over $10 million.
Andres Fernandez
People aren't going to like to hear this, but being comfortable doesn't equal success nine out of 10 times.
People think, "Oh, I'll go to college, and it'll all work out." No. You should be doing internships. You should be working. You should be gaining real experience.
I sacrificed years paying myself zero dollars to get where I'm at. The idea that you can just go with the flow and everything will work out may be true in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, but we're in a different era now.
Find a direction and an interest. If something isn't working, pivot. If you're in tech, go work for a company for free. Volunteer, gain experience, and you will figure something out.
As Gary Vaynerchuk said, you could go to a garage sale, find something, make it nicer, and flip it. Or go to Walmart and get a job, and use that money to start a local business.
Even if my business somehow failed today, I know going to figure something else out — that's how I see life.
Cybersecurity startup Snyk was valued at $8.5 billion in 2021. The rise of new AI tools hit it hard.
The price of each Snyk share given to employees has plummeted to $1.16, a document says.
Snyk said it doesn't comment on employee share valuations.
Snyk was one of cybersecurity's brightest startup stars, worth $8.5 billion at the height of the software boom. Now, the value of the stock it gives employees has fallen to a fraction of that, underscoring how dramatically fortunes have shifted for many software companies in the AI era.
Snyk, which is headquartered in Boston, became best-known for selling a vulnerability scanner that quickly finds bugs in code. It was valued at $8.5 billion in a 2021 funding round and at $7.4 billion in a 2022 funding round. Snyk has raised more than $1 billion from investors since its founding in 2015.
People with Snyk equity have been watching the value of their shares slide over the past few years, two former employees told Business Insider.
One recalled that around Snyk's peak valuation, their shares were worth over $10. By the summer of 2025, that had declined to around $3, the other former employee said. That figure is now down to $1.16 per share as of late August, according to an internal document.
Snyk said it doesn't comment on employee share valuations and declined to provide a valuation for Snyk at this time. Snyk said that 2026 has "brought accelerating momentum" and added that it has launched three new solutions over the past few months.
Dramatic valuation drops have hit some software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies this year due to the rise of powerful new AI systems, said Dan Morgan, a senior trust portfolio manager at Synovus Trust. Morgan added that startups are particularly vulnerable compared to larger, well-established firms.
"I would say it's definitely a trend, not an exception," he said.
Software startup Airtable, which was once valued at over $11 billion in 2021, entered into an agreement to be sold for $1.3 billion earlier this month. Another SaaS company, Domo, was once worth $2.8 billion and has a market capitalization of less than $200 million.
Snyk faces competition and a leadership shake-up
Snyk has been facing rising competition from AI labs like Anthropic and cybersecurity rivals like Wiz, which Google bought in March. Coinbase, for example, previously told Business Insider that it had used Anthropic's Claude to scan its codebase for bugs.
Snyk was growing steadily, though it remained unprofitable by the end of 2024, losing $188 million on $278 million in revenue, according to UK government records.
In December 2024, then-CEO Peter McKay told TechCrunch the company was "very close to break-even" and had plans for an initial public offering, though it wasn't rushing to do so.
Snyk has gone through at least two rounds of job cuts since 2025, according to former employees' LinkedIn posts. In June, Snyk said it was "flattening leadership" and "simplifying our structure" to move faster.
After about seven years as CEO, McKay announced in February he would step down, saying the company needed a new leader with "deep roots in product innovation and AI."
McKay now works as a "value accelerator advisor" for Goldman Sachs and as an advisor at Snyk. Snyk's chief financial officer, Kenneth MacAskill, stepped in as interim CEO.
Alcohol makers in the US and Canada say they're hurting as a result of the trade war.
John Fedele/Getty Images
The US-Canada trade war escalated on Saturday with new 50% tariffs on Canadian alcohol.
American booze was pulled from Canadian shelves last year and remains restricted in most of Canada.
Alcohol makers in the US and Canada say both industries are hurting.
What started as an eye-catching retaliation tactic to tariffs has become a sticking point in the US-Canada trade war — and neither side is standing down.
The booze battle began last year after President Donald Trump imposed broad 25% tariffs on Canadian goods. Canada responded with its own 25% retaliatory tariffs targeting alcohol, among other products. The country's provinces went further, pulling American alcohol from shelves and halting new purchases or distribution.
A year and a half later, American alcohol remains shut out of much of Canada. The boycott was so effective that Trump cited it as a driving force for his latest tariffs, including a 50% tariff on alcohol from Canada that took effect on Saturday after talks between the two countries broke down.
While there's been plenty of finger-pointing about who started what, alcohol industries on both sides of the border say they're losing.
"Our industry is really just an unfortunate victim," Chris Swonger, CEO of the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, said. "It's been devastating for the US industry over the last year and a half, and it's going to be significantly devastating for the Canadian spirits industry, but it'll trickle down and have an effect all the way from bartenders to our distributor partners to retailers to the American hospitality economy."
Alcohol represents just a tiny sliver of the hundreds of billions of dollars in goods traded between the US and Canada, but the impact of the trade war on the industry has been especially severe and visible, in part due to the outright bans as well as the direct impact on beloved alcohol brands.
For alcohol makers, the industry is also an unusual target for a trade war that's partially aimed at shifting manufacturing back to the US. Unlike other goods, alcohol is often prized specifically because of its country of origin. You can't make Canadian whisky in the US.
"An American consumer may love Canadian whisky, and someone else may love tequila," Swonger said.
The US and Canadian industries are calling for an end to the alcohol bans and tariffs
Canadian provinces, which control alcohol imports, enacted bans on American alcohol around March 2025, the same month Canada levied its retaliatory tariffs. While those tariffs were lifted in September 2025, most of the province-level bans remained in place.
Some provinces started allowing existing American stock to be sold, but continued to ban new imports. Eight out of 10 provinces still have some restrictions in place, with Alberta and Saskatchewan as the exceptions.
The bans turned out to be one of the more headline-grabbing results of the trade war. They were also effective at inflicting economic pain: Imports of US alcohol to Canada fell by 81%, from about $718 million to $137 million, from March 2025 through February 2026, compared with the preceding year, according to the White House. In comparison, total US exports to Canada fell 4.8% in 2025.
American alcohol makers felt they were being unfairly targeted. Lawson Whiting, CEO of Brown-Forman, the parent company of Jack Daniel's, said last year the bans were a "disproportionate" response to the tariffs. On an earnings call in June, the company said its organic sales in Canada fell nearly 60% in its 2026 fiscal year, as its products remained off shelves in most Canadian provinces.
Canadian provinces banned American alcohol in early 2025. Most of those restrictions are still in place.
VCG/VCG via Getty Images
Now, Canadian makers, which are far more dependent on the US market than their American counterparts are on the Canadian market, face Trump's new 50% tariffs, which he said were a direct response to "Canadian discrimination" against American-made booze.
The tariffs impact spirits, wine, and beer, with the most popular Canadian booze export to the US being Canadian whisky. Popular brands like Crown Royal, Canadian Club, and Fireball — the latter of which is made in America with imported Canadian whisky — could be affected.
"Both the Canadian and American spirits industries have felt significant impacts of this broader trade dispute," Cal Bricker, President and CEO of Spirits Canada, said in a statement in July.
Canadian spirit makers rely more heavily on exports to the US than American makers do on exports to Canada. Before the bans, Canada accounted for about 10% of US spirits exports. But 93% of all of Canada's spirits exports by value went to the US, according to Spirits Canada. Of all the spirits produced in Canada, nearly 50% are tied to US demand, the group says.
The bans on American alcohol didn't necessarily translate to an increase in sales for Canadian makers, either. Following the bans, overall spirits sales in Canada fell about 4.4% by volume, while sales volumes of Canadian-made spirits were essentially flat, according to Spirits Canada.
The alcohol bans were a key part of the failed negotiations
The provincial bans became a major talking point last week as Canadian and US officials sought to make a deal to avoid new tariffs.
Swonger said the alcohol industry feels it has unfairly become a "leverage point in broader trade negotiations." He said that while distillers appreciated Trump's efforts to prioritize the US alcohol industry going into negotiations, they also wanted to avoid the new 50% tariffs and get the bans lifted instead.
Prime Minister Mark Carney asked Canadian provinces to return US alcohol to their shelves last week as the countries closed in on a deal. Officials in two provinces, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, signaled they were ready to lift bans on American alcohol if a broader deal was reached.
Newfoundland said Thursday it would resume ordering American products, but changed course days later after the trade talks failed.
Canadian makers have also been telling the Canadian provincial governments that the policy intended to punish America is endangering them as well.
"While intended as a response to broader trade tensions, those measures have now become the stated basis for direct US retaliation against Canadian spirits exports," Spirits Canada said in July, encouraging the federal and provincial governments to work together to avoid US retaliation.
Now, trade associations in Canada and the US are pushing for the same goal: end the mini trade war over alcohol.
"We like to compete by sip and taste," Swonger said. "Not by trade barriers."
Before her death, Dolly Parton had several projects underway to give fans new ways to experience her world.
Terry Wyatt/WireImage
In the months before her death, Dolly Parton was still building out her business empire.
The musician had a Nashville hotel, museum, and Broadway musical set to launch later this year.
In an interview days before her death, Parton also said she was working on a new line of dog treats.
A new Nashville hotel, museum, and Broadway musical were among the projects set to carry Dolly Parton's legacy into a new chapter this fall.
The country music superstar died on Tuesday in Nashville after "bravely facing a brief battle with cancer," her representatives told Business Insider. She was 80.
Before her death, Parton had been building new ways for fans to step into her world.
One of the projects planned for the months ahead is the SongTeller Hotel, a 245-room Nashville property set to open this fall.
The hotel'sreservation system showed rooms are available to book from September 14. Nightly room rates start at $386.
The hotel is designed around Parton's music and storytelling, with two live-music venues, Parton's Live and Jolene's.
Dolly's Life of Many Colors Museum is also scheduled to open this fall. Housed on the third floor of the SongTeller Hotel, the museum is set to be the "largest exhibit celebrating her life anywhere in the world," per its website.
Tickets are on sale for visits beginning September 29, and visitors will not need to book a hotel stay to see the museum.
"Dolly: A True Original Musical" is expected to begin Broadway previews at the St. James Theatre in December, ahead of its planned opening night in January. The musical will feature some of Parton's top hits, like "Jolene" and "9 to 5," along with new music she wrote for the show.
The musical's producers told Variety that the production is set to continue as planned, "as was Dolly's wish."
Those three projects were part of a wider slate of ventures tied to Parton's brand this year.
Parton opened her Tennessean Travel Stop in Cornersville in June. An April press release said additional locations were planned across the country, but provided no further details.
She also partnered with Community Coffee to launch Cup of Ambition, a coffee line that debuted at the travel stop in June. Cup of Ambition's website said it planned to roll the brand out to consumers nationwide later this year, but has not officially announced when or where it will be sold.
In an August 21 interview with People, days before her death, Parton said she expected the coffee to be available online nationwide in September. In the same interview, she also said she was working on a dog-treat line with Purina, but did not share specifics.
Her representatives did not respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours.
Chauncey Thompson (foreground) inspects a Waymo at the company's Nashville depot.
Lyft
Former Lyft drivers are ceding the roads to robots, and helping the machines get five-star ratings.
In Nashville, Lyft's Flexdrive subsidiary plans to open its largest vehicle cleaning and maintenance depot yet in October — to service Waymo robotaxis. The 80,000-square-foot facility will employ about 70 full-time workers, about half of whom formerly drove for Lyft. The situation offers an early glimpse at what AI may mean for millions of workers: eliminating some jobs while creating new work around the machines taking over.
Jonathan Baines drove for Lyft for about a decade to help support himself while pursuing a career as a pop and soul singer-songwriter. Now, as a fleet operations lead at Waymo's existing Nashville depot — which Lyft took over in June — he helps direct robotaxi traffic through the facility and determine whether the cars are ready to return to passengers.
"The general idea is to keep cars rolling through," Baines says.
For him, the best part of the job is that it gives him experience in an industry he expects to be part of the future. "It's new. It's innovative," Baines says. "This is going to give me opportunities within the AV industry, here within Lyft and Flexdrive, that I wouldn't otherwise have."
Similarly, Chauncey Thompson, who played college basketball and later spent about a decade working in the rental-car industry before driving for Lyft, says he strongly prefers being a fleet operations associate to being a driver. He cites the opportunity to work with new technology, consistent hours, and the camaraderie of working on a team. (Lyft arranged the interviews with Thompson and Baines.)
Thompson says servicing Waymos is more hidden and repetitive than when he was driving for Lyft, but he finds the job more future-proof.
Lyft
Flexdrive's internal tech tracks diagnostics and maintenance, alerting the company when cars need service, but workers are still responsible for visually inspecting the vehicles, cleaning and charging them, and flagging anything that needs extra attention. After a storm, Baines might notice mud on a car's rocker panels or an issue with a window's calibration and send it for further inspection by a technician.
Thompson inspects each car, charges it, wipes it down, vacuums it, and checks tire pressure. For now, deciding whether a car is clean enough to return to passengers still relies on human judgment.
Thompson's background also made the transition feel natural. While driving for Lyft, he used his own car, which meant paying close attention to how it looked and whether it was ready for customers. "I wanted my car to look nice on the road and my tires to be in perfect condition before I hit the road," he says.
For Lyft, which sold its division that built self-driving cars in 2021, this work offers another way to participate in autonomous transportation. Its Flexdrive unit, which cleans and services cars that Lyft drivers rent from the company, is now trying its hand at cleaning and servicing vehicles without drivers. Riders will be able to hail Waymos through Lyft's app, in addition to Waymo's, later this year. That puts Lyft on both sides of the operation: providing the platform through which passengers request rides, and the human and physical infrastructure that keeps the vehicles clean and running.
Flexdrive CEO John Parks says autonomous-fleet management is more labor-intensive than the company's traditional rental business because work once handled by drivers, who kept their cars for 14 to 16 weeks, now must be handled by Lyft daily.
"Autonomous vehicles can't clean themselves, they can't charge themselves and they can't repair themselves," Parks says. "Now all of those come back to our depot."
He didn't share specifics on the relative servicing time, but noted that robotaxis, which aren't constrained by a human driver's need to sleep or take time off, could travel as many as 100,000 miles a year, compared with roughly 40,000 miles for a car in Flexdrive's rental fleet. More mileage means more charging, cleaning, tire replacements, and repairs.
"The big difference is the frequency with which you have to touch the cars," he says, noting that depot workers are charging and cleaning robotaxis about two to three times per day, rather than every few months, when Lyft drivers return their rental vehicles.
What they lost in passing interactions with passengers, they say, they gained in sustained relationships with coworkers.
Flexdrive manages about 15,000 traditional rental vehicles across 24 markets with only about 100 employees, Parks says. Its Nashville Waymo depot, built to accommodate a growing fleet, will employ 70 people. About 50 Waymos are currently operating in the city, though that number will grow gradually over time.
Some of that work is routine. Other problems require human judgment. A broken charger may need troubleshooting; a badly positioned car can disrupt the depot's flow. Even when the vehicles move themselves around parts of the facility, Parks says workers still need to notice when something is wrong and figure out what to do next.
The new structure has also changed the social experience for the former drivers. Driving put Baines and Thompson in contact with a changing cast of passengers and required them to read people and situations in real time. Depot work is more hidden and repetitive, but both men find it more compelling.
"I miss driving because I love interacting with people," Baines says. "But in terms of the actual work itself, I love this more."
Thompson says he is "definitely less visible" now, though both men still occasionally drive for Lyft. What they lost in passing interactions, they say, they gained in sustained relationships with coworkers, and the potential for more career opportunities.
"These jobs where blue-collar workers get to work on something that is more tied to AI, it's not a surprise to me at all that those workers feel much more secure about their career prospects going forward," says Daniel Zhao, the chief economist at Glassdoor. People, he says, "would rather be working on a product that they think is where the future is headed."
The Nashville depot is one small example of a broader phenomenon economists and labor researchers are trying to measure: AI doesn't simply eliminate jobs. It can also break them apart, automate some tasks and shift others to new workers.
Jonathan Baines drove for Lyft for about a decade. Now he helps direct robotaxi traffic and determine whether the cars are ready to return to passengers.
Chad Ziemendorf
Alexander Alonso, chief knowledge officer at the Society for Human Resource Management, says the shift from driving to depot work illustrates a more useful way to think about AI and employment. He calls it the "redesign of work."
"The big metric is not only jobs lost," Alonso says. "It is: How are jobs changing?"
SHRM's research suggests that change is already underway: 42% of workers expect AI to significantly change their roles. Meanwhile, 35% of the skills in current job postings did not appear in postings for the same jobs a year and a half earlier.
But Alonso isn't yet seeing massive growth in AI-related jobs to offset those potentially lost to AI. "We're not seeing a one-for-one replacement," he says.
SHRM estimates that 22 million U.S. jobs have the technical potential to be displaced by AI and automation by 2030, but after accounting for consumer preferences, regulations, and jobs that combine automatable and nonautomatable tasks, it considers about 8 million realistically at risk.
"The technology might automate one responsibility, but if the organization still needs the person for the other tasks, it doesn't actually create savings," Alonso says.
Waymo, for its part, argues that autonomous vehicles can create new jobs without eliminating driving as a viable source of income. The company would not disclose how many people it takes to clean, charge, and service its national fleet of more than 3,500 vehicles.
Robotaxis may remove the driver from behind the wheel, but they have not removed people from the work of providing a ride. As it stands, some of that work has moved out of the driver's seat and, increasingly, out of the passenger's view.
Rani Molla is a technology journalist with nearly 15 years of experience covering Silicon Valley, AI, labor, and the companies reshaping society.
Ted Mengiste, chief operating officer of Genesis Motor North America, said the luxury brand operates like a startup within Hyundai, a nearly 80-year-old company.
David Dee Delgado/Reuters
Genesis began as a Hyundai luxury model before becoming a stand-alone brand in 2015.
It now sells sedans, SUVs, and EVs, and notched 5 straight years of record global sales.
Genesis North America's COO said the brand has a "startup mindset" that helps it pivot quickly.
Genesis is, by now, a nearly 20-year-old name.
When Ted Mengiste joined the Hyundai brand five years ago as an executive director of sales operations, he described the internal workings of Genesis as "ground floor."
His team was about 37 people, Mengiste told Business Insider, and along the way, he had to build the processes, go-to-market strategies, and the reports they'd use to measure how the business was doing.
"That's tough, but you find some bright minds that are eager to create something new — like a startup," Mengiste said. "We were really a startup."
Mengiste now oversees a team of roughly 200 employees.
Of course, Genesis isn't really a startup. Under the hood, the brand is backed by the multibillion-dollar Hyundai Motor Group — South Korea's national pride and one of the world's largest automotive companies.
A decade after Genesis spun out of Hyundai and became a stand-alone luxury brand, its executives say that operating with the mentality of a young company while tapping into the resources of an auto giant has helped Genesis grow quickly.
"When you have that type of, not just economic and investment backing, but the level of talent and experience to draw on, I think it gives you confidence to be bold and daring," Mengiste said.
A startup backed by a legacy brand
The first Genesis model was introduced in 2008 under the Hyundai name. At the time, the rear-wheel-drive sedan was a major departure for the automaker, which was best known for affordable, mass-market cars.
Hyundai launched the first Genesis model in 2008.
Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images
In 2015, Hyundai spun Genesis out into an independent luxury brand, with ambitions to compete more directly with the BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes of the automotive world. Hyundai later said it established an "autonomous business unit," with dedicated teams for marketing, product, brand, and sales planning.
Since then, Genesis has expanded its portfolio from sedans into a lineup of SUVs, EVs, and performance cars. On Wednesday, the brand unveiled its first full-size SUV, the GV90.
While Genesis still accounts for a fraction of Hyundai's overall sales, it's become an important part of the parent company's push into more profitable luxury cars.
In 2025, Genesis sold a record 221,482 vehicles, while Hyundai Motor Company sold 4.1 million vehicles.
A company spokesperson said Hyundai has increased support for Genesis as it has grown, citing investments in product development, design, manufacturing, and customer experience. Last year, Genesis opened a dedicated design center in El Segundo, California. It also announced plans for 22 new or "significantly enhanced" vehicles through 2030.
The upside — and limits — of Hyundai's scale
An automaker startup could only dream of having the kind of backing Genesis has.
Nowhere is that clearer than Hyundai's massive global manufacturing network, with a total annual production capacity of more than 4 million vehicles — not including Kia Corporation, another car company it owns.
Mengiste, who previously worked at Nissan, Infiniti, and Ford, said Hyundai's manufacturing prowess allows the brand to move quickly between different models and powertrains.
"It's an amazing thing to see," Mengiste said. "I've never seen the speed and the flexibility that I have seen at Hyundai Motor Company."
The COO added that Genesis draws from other critical Hyundai resources, such as its advertising firm, engineering and research, steel production, and shipping.
"When the cars are done, the ship is waiting right there — our ships," Mengiste said. "We build the ships, and we have the Glovis logistics firm that ships our cars for us."
Hyundai Motor Group's resources include a global manufacturing network and Glovis, its logistics and shipping affiliate.
SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg via Getty Images
At the same time, Genesis doesn't always get first priority.
Hyundai recently moved production of Genesis' GV70 SUV — the brand's most popular car in North America — out of Alabama and back to South Korea. The move came months after Genesis said it was doubling down on US production.
Mengiste said Hyundai's own growth in the US tightened capacity at the Alabama plant. The decision made more room for Hyundai production, he said.
It's a clash that's familiar to many large companies. Uber COO Andrew Macdonald recently called it the "classic innovator's dilemma" — a massive core business can swallow the resources and management attention that newer ventures need.
Still, Mengiste said Hyundai has been "doubling down on Genesis a lot." The imperative remains to show results.
"The company will invest and maybe even be patient," he said of Hyundai. "But at some point, you have to deliver. And if you show signs of delivery and consistency, you get more investment, and you can then increase the speed of your growth."
