The creator of Kind Bars is now investing in longevity. Here's what his firm is betting on.

Camino Partners founder Daniel Lubetsky and president Elle Lanning.

Camino Partners

• Kind Snacks founder Daniel Lubetsky is going all in on longevity.
• The boutique fitness chain Barry's is among his VC firm's first longevity investments.
• Lubetsky's Camino Partners joins a growing cohort of investors throwing cash at antiaging startups.

Kind Snacks founder and Shark Tank regular Daniel Lubetsky is making his next bet on longevity.

Lubetsky launched his own venture firm, Camino Partners, in 2023, three years after selling Kind Snacks to Mars in a deal reportedly valued at $5 billion.

He no longer has a stake in Kind. Now, he's looking for companies to back that share Kind's ethos — creating natural, healthy products accessible to consumers, as he described it to Business Insider.

With that strategy, Camino Partners has invested in the global fitness chain Barry's, joining lead investor Princeton Equity Group.

The firm also backed medical spa acquirer WellLabs and home health company LiveWell.

Those three investments kick off Camino's full turn into longevity, Lubetsky said. Camino's portfolio includes 17 total investments, most of which are food brands, including the fast-casual Mediterranean franchise Cava and the regional burger chain Whataburger.

"There's overlap between consumer-packaged goods and longevity, but we're now going to focus not just on that overlap but on other areas of longevity as well," Lubetsky said.

Camino is capitalizing on a surge of interest in the burgeoning longevity industry, with scientific advancements in longer living emerging alongside tech entrepreneurs like Bryan Johnson spending millions to reverse the aging process.

But Lanning said Camino isn't chasing a trend.

"This space is certainly having its moment, but we're not here for the moment. We're here for the long-term durable solutions that will truly better people's lives," she said.

Lubetsky has mostly invested in food brands to date. Now, he's going all in on longevity.

KIND

On nature's side

Johnson and much of the growing throng of tech bros following in his footsteps don't just want to extend their lifespans. Instead, they want to elevate their bodies to superhuman status and, perhaps, prevent death entirely.

While Lubetsky says he's comfortable with some degree of technological intervention in longevity, he's more interested in backing companies scaling proven wellness solutions in areas like exercise, nutrition, and sleep.

"My predilection as we go into longevity will be not to do things that don't feel like what nature intended," he said.

Within longevity, Lanning said Camino is considering investments in aging, women's health, digital health, and overall well-being achieved through those more natural means.

Many of Camino's investments, including the new longevity bets, draw on a $350 million sum Lubetsky committed to the firm in 2023. Camino Partners president Elle Lanning, who leads the firm's investing practice, didn't say how much of the $350 million Camino has deployed to date. However, she said the firm is able to invest capital beyond that initial funding to go after "high-conviction opportunities."

Camino Partners invested in the high-intensity fitness franchise Barry's, originally known as Barry's Bootcamp, as part of its longevity strategy.

Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images

Taking the long view

Camino exclusively makes growth-stage investments. Lanning said the firm is focused on backing businesses with demonstrated traction and efficacy.

In particular, she said good investment candidates have $20 million in revenue, great gross margins, and the ability to draw in customers organically by solving a problem in the market.

She's wary of point solutions popping up in longevity, such as companies that identify biomarkers with blood tests or other tools but don't follow up with care options.

"In the long term, a business that gives you problem identification only and isn't giving you tracked solutions is going to lead to consumer fatigue," she said.

Lanning said she's all for people like Johnson experimenting with their personal longevity routines. But she and Lubetsky noted that they're prioritizing evidence-based solutions in Camino's portfolio with the goal of building credibility in a sector often characterized by unsubstantiated claims.

"We want to build a brand where whenever we invest, consumers can trust," Lubetsky said.

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Gen Z is facing a career apocalypse

 

C.J. Burton for BI

Throughout his college studies, Ryan Kim always had a postgraduation game plan. First it was to become a database manager. Then it was to break into fintech as a business analyst. But during his sophomore and junior years, as the tech industry laid off nearly half a million workers, Kim struggled to secure an internship. So he set his eyes on a new career: public service.

Kim was far from the only Gen Zer making the same pivot. Last year, according to the job site Handshake, the share of applications it received from college seniors for entry-level openings in tech dropped by 19% from 2022, while the share to jobs in government nearly doubled. Even younger kids saw the writing on the wall. In surveys, high school students used to cite tech giants like Google and Apple as the places they most wanted to work. But last year, in a startling shift, both the FBI and NASA ranked higher than any of those tech companies. Silicon Valley was out. Capitol Hill was in.

It took Kim only a single application to land a yearlong paid internship at the Food and Drug Administration. His performance reviews were good, and he planned to stay on at the agency after he earned his degree in May. "You hear so many horror stories of people in tech being laid off with little notice," he tells me. "Government jobs are secure. What drew me into it was the stability."

So much for that plan.

This month, with his graduation fast approaching, Kim abruptly lost his internship amid the government-wide havoc Elon Musk has unleashed at DOGE. With most federal hiring on an indefinite hold, he's been scrambling to find a job — any job. "It's been a huge source of stress," he says. "Most of the private industry has already hired their graduating students."

Kim is one of the roughly 2 million students set to graduate this spring into an exceptionally shaky job market. Things were already looking tough for the class of 2025, given the steep hiring slump in industries like tech, finance, and consulting. But now, as Musk takes a chainsaw to the government, many college seniors are in panic mode. Some have seen their offers at federal agencies rescinded; others have received no word on jobs they applied to months ago.

It's not just government positions that are taking a hit — it's jobs at a whole host of businesses, nonprofits, and universities that rely on federal funding and contracts. And going to graduate school — the traditional backup plan for students during times of economic instability — may not even be an option, if the Department of Education winds up being unable to deliver financial aid in a timely fashion. As the government is slashed to the bone in the name of efficiency, the careers of many Gen Zers could suffer for years to come.

"The impact is broad scale," says Saskia Campbell, the executive director of university career services at George Mason University. "There is this sense of grief, of loss of opportunity. This is the first year I'm actually concerned."

To make matters worse, the outlook is likely to get even more dismal in the months ahead, as President Donald Trump's tariff wars spur companies to hold off on hiring. "Two years ago, the bulk of the uncertainty and fear was in Big Tech," says Briana Randall, the executive director of the career and internship center at the University of Washington. "Now it feels uncertain in a lot of areas."

All of that leaves America's soon-to-be new grads unsure of where to turn. Sarina Parsapasand, a public policy major who's graduating from the University of Southern California this spring, was hoping to land a job in government service. But now, given the chaos in Washington, she's switched to trying to land a job in the private sector. "I have bills to pay," she says. "I can't take the risk of being in a job that doesn't guarantee the stability for me to live my life."

It's a sentiment I hear over and over again from the students I speak with. "The job market just seems super unstable in almost any field," says Katie Schwartz, a sophomore at Tulane. "It's less about finding a job you really love now and more just about finding a job that's going to give you job stability."

I'm impressed by the clear-eyed pragmatism of these students — but I'm also saddened by how old they sound. Isn't job stability what you look for when you're middle-aged, with a mortgage to pay and kids to support? When I graduated from college in 2009 without a full-time job, I was panicked but still idealistic. These kids, in contrast, seem hardened by all the chaos they've endured from a young age. In high school, they watched their parents get laid off in the pandemic. In college, they watched older students struggle to land good jobs during the tech downturn — or worse, had their hard-won offers rescinded at the last minute.

The upheaval and uncertainty have taught today's graduates to prepare for the worst. Over the past year, one college senior tells me, she's been intentionally neglecting her studies so she could focus exclusively on her job search, sending out as many as 15 applications a day. The hustle paid off with three offers, including one she accepted from a government contractor. It's her "dream job," she says, because it would enable her to make a real difference in the world.

But now, given the chaos in Washington, she's leaning toward reneging on the offer and accepting a position at a finance company. (That's why she asked me not to use her name.) "I try to keep an optimistic outlook," she tells me. But when I ask her how she feels about taking her first steps into adulthood, she doesn't sound optimistic at all.

"It makes me pretty nervous," she says. "I think a lot of people in my generation have accepted that we're not going to live the same quality of life our parents provided us."

During hard economic times, we expect to hear stories about people losing their jobs. But the greatest casualties often end up being the young people who don't have jobs to lose in the first place. Hiring freezes hurt them the most, making it impossible for them to even get their foot in the door. And research shows just how long a shadow that can cast on someone's career. Five years after the Great Recession, my generation of millennials was earning 11% less than Gen Xers were at a comparable age. And our net worth fell 40% behind theirs, forcing us to delay many of life's biggest milestones: buying a home, starting a family, saving for retirement.

The effects go far beyond money. Students who graduated into the 1982 recession, for example, wound up with fewer kids and more divorces than those who entered better job markets. Even more shocking, the research shows, they were more likely to die early. Whatever gains in efficiency Trump hopes to achieve from DOGE, its most lasting legacy may end up being the harm it inflicts on the careers — and perhaps even the life spans — of his youngest constituents.

That leaves college seniors like Kim scrambling to find a foothold in a job market that is stacked against them. Many companies have already filled their entry-level positions, if they're hiring new grads at all. And he's now competing not only with his fellow students, but also with the flood of young government workers who have been laid off by DOGE — workers who have more experience than he does. As graduation nears, he's trying not to panic. But it's hard to retain a sense of hope when even lower-paying jobs in public service are no longer an option.

"I'm not sure how my future's going to turn out," Kim tells me. And that, when you think about it, is a future that should worry us all.

---

Aki Ito is a chief correspondent for Business Insider.

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History suggests Ukraine needs heavily armed peacekeepers to have a chance of success

Any peacekeeping force in Ukraine would be caught between two nations so armed to the teeth that nearly all forward positions are fortified.

Ukrinform/NurPhoto via Getty Images

• Peacekeepers have frequently failed to prevent wars, or have even become targets themselves.
• Peacekeeping forces tend to have more symbolic power than firepower.
• Ukraine's best chance is European mechanized brigades with a clear mandate.

As Europe mulls dispatching peacekeeping troops to Ukraine, the history of peacekeeping missions suggests the effort is far from a sure-bet. Peacekeepers have frequently failed to prevent wars, or have even become targets themselves.

Peacekeeping is usually associated with the UN, which first sent military observers to the Middle East in 1948 to monitor the armistice after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and today has 72,000 peacekeepers in 11 conflict zones. Russian peacekeepers served alongside NATO troops in Bosnia, and unsuccessfully acted as a buffer between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The African Union has also deployed forces from South Africa and African states in regional conflicts. For poorer nations, such as Bangladesh and Pakistan, volunteering their soldiers for relatively well-paid UN peacekeeping has become a source of revenue.

The idea of using European troops to maintain a shaky peace between Ukraine and Russia immediately runs into a definitional problem. Would they be there to keep the peace, or to protect Ukraine? Peacekeepers are typically supposed to be neutral and act primarily as monitors. Indeed, the UN lists four basic principles of peacekeeping: impartiality, consent of the warring parties, and not using force except in self-defense.

Accusations of bias against peacekeepers are not uncommon. Israel, for example, has long accused the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) of ignoring Hezbollah activities along the Israel-Lebanon border, which led to Israeli troops entering Lebanon in October.

But a European peacekeeping mission would be problematic. Even though the proposed peacekeeping force in Ukraine would be under European rather than NATO auspices, the troops would come from NATO or NATO-friendly nations. It is hard to believe that Russia would see it as anything other than a permanent Western expeditionary force to defend Ukraine against another Russia.

Irish troops with the UNIFIL mission in southern Lebanon dismounted an armored personnel carrier in March.

Niall Carson/PA Images via Getty Images

There are essentially two concepts for a peacekeeping force. One is to act as an armed conflict monitor, which can document which side has violated agreements. Another is to have sufficient force size and a mandate to defend an attacked party, similar to the US-led United Nations Command established to defend South Korea from re-invasion that has been in operation for over seven decades.

Either way, there is a danger: What happens when the peacekeepers themselves are attacked, either accidentally caught in the crossfire or deliberately targeted?

Some 4,423 UN peacekeepers had died as of February 2025, of which 1,134 were killed by "malicious action." In Lebanon, UN troops have been hit by both Israeli and Hezbollah fire. In January 2025, several UN peacekeepers were killed fighting M23 rebels in eastern Congo.

Peacekeeping forces tend to have more symbolic power than firepower. Those ubiquitous white armored cars used by UN troops may be enough to deter unarmed rioters and looters, or perhaps insurgents with light weapons and IEDs. But in Congo, UN forces are having difficulty confronting rebels armed with anti-tank missiles and drones.

Any peacekeeping force in Ukraine would be caught between two nations armed to the teeth with artillery, tanks, missiles and drones. Fully equipped European mechanized brigades, backed by airpower, might have the firepower to deter attacks. In fact, Ukrainian officials have said that a European peacekeeping mission only makes sense if the peacekeepers are prepared to fight.

On the other hand, Russia invaded to dominate Ukraine and steer it away from the EU and NATO. A strong force of British and French troops on the Russian border could be viewed by the Kremlin as a provocation.

Russia doesn't even need tanks or cannon to make peacekeeping untenable. There are numerous ways to harass peacekeepers, from IEDs laid by shadowy pro-Russian groups, to artillery barrages that "accidentally" hit a barracks. While this would risk escalation with Europe and perhaps NATO, Moscow could hope that even a few casualties would spur the European public to demand the troops come home.

Ultimately, the success of peacekeeping is measured by whether peace is kept, or at least the violence is toned down. The record here is spotty. Israelis still remember how in 1967 the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) — stationed in Sinai as a buffer between Israel and Egypt — abruptly left in response to Egyptian demands. The result was Israel launching a preemptive strike against Egypt in the Six-Day War. UNIFIL troops have been stationed along the Israel-Lebanon border since 1978, but this hasn't prevented wars in 1982, 2006 and 2024, as well as numerous border incidents.

However, the UN does claim that peacekeeping works, pointing to successful missions in places such as Cambodia and Namibia. Stationing troops in allied nations has also succeeded in maintaining peace: US troops in South Korea may well have deterred North Korea from invading, while those deployed in Germany during the Cold War helped prevent a Soviet invasion of Western Europe.

Peacekeeping seems most likely to succeed either when the peacekeepers either have overwhelming force, or when the warring parties themselves decide to stop fighting. A European peacekeeping force in Ukraine might enjoy neither.

Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds an MA in political science from Rutgers Univ. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn

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Hollywood is entering its Trump era

Hollywood is adapting to the new era of Trump.

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

• Hollywood is toning down liberal themes in response to the new political climate.
• Studios are being cautious about diverse characters and storylines.
• Economic factors were already driving a shift toward conservative, broadly appealing programming.

Hollywood is quietly bowing to the new era of Trump.

As big entertainment companies have cut back on their corporate DEI efforts, creatives and their reps say there's also been a perceptible chill on liberal themes in programming.

No one is issuing diktats, but the shift has manifested in subtle ways, according to 10 writers, producers, and talent reps who spoke with Business Insider. It's taken the form of studio execs asking producers to tweak storylines and characters — or nixing them altogether — and companies backing off past directives to ensure casts were diverse.

Zoe Marshall, a feature and TV writer whose credits include CBS's "Elsbeth," said producers and studios had explicitly told her that certain storylines — such as some involving queer and social justice themes — were no longer acceptable.

"Over the course of my career, I have never felt like I had to actually consider what was going on in the administration when I was thinking about what was going on on the screen," she said. Marshall, as well as some others in this story, avoided naming associates and studios to protect job prospects.

An entertainment lawyer previously told BI some financiers were scrutinizing filmmakers for their political views before deciding to invest. This person said several of their clients received notes from streamers or networks that they felt were designed to avoid provoking Trump or his allies. One of the notes was to avoid making a prominent trans character come across as too positive.

"I've never had a president figure so much in decision-making," this person said.

Independent films usually have more artistic freedom because they're financed outside traditional studios and institutions. But there's a chill in the air in the indie space, too.

Jonathan Handel, an entertainment lawyer, said a trans-related documentary had faced delays because its subjects were "terrified" about a backlash.

"There's more transphobia in the air than three months ago," he said.

Another entertainment lawyer, Harry Finkel, said some studios that once made great efforts to spotlight minority groups are now signaling they're more focused on not offending the right.

"There is a repetitive comment appearing along the lines of, 'We're looking for something with more broad appeal,'" he said.

One producer said a major studio told them to be race-blind in casting, a "stark departure" from what they were used to hearing a couple of years ago when diverse casting was paramount.

The rightward shift is being met with distress among some who have pushed for more diversity on the screen.

But others are feeling a bit more creative freedom.

Creators are taking more liberties to pitch jokes and other material they think could appeal to people on the right, two agents told BI. Talent like Shane Gillis, who landed on Netflix last year after being dropped by "Saturday Night Live" in 2019 over racist comments, are hotter than ever.

Shane Gillis is a hotter commodity than ever in Hollywood.

Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic for Clusterfest/Getty Images

Hollywood is self-correcting

Industry insiders see a clear-cut difference between now and Trump 1.0.

Then, entertainment execs locked arms in their vocal opposition to the president's policies. Disney CEO Bob Iger called Trump's reversal of a Dreamers program "cruel and misguided" and resigned from a presidential panel in protest of the White House's withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement. Even Fox's James Murdoch criticized the president. On the screen, shows like CBS's "The Good Fight" and NBC's "Will & Grace" reboot confronted Trump and took on hot-button political issues. CBS set targets for its programs to meet diverse casting targets.

In his second term, Trump has revived complaints against TV networks, challenged the funding of public media, and blocked some news outlets from covering events. Studios, like many in corporate America, are overhauling DEI programs. TV networks that belong to media and entertainment conglomerates are on edge.

In March, Amazon announced it was bringing the Trump-starring reality show "The Apprentice" to Prime Video. It's also paying for a Melania Trump documentary that the first lady will executive produce.

Hollywood was already moving in a conservative direction before Trump's election to a second term. After long playing to the coasts, studios and streamers embraced faith-based, conservative-themed, and family-aimed entertainment.

Disney, often caught in the culture wars, had already begun to pull back on political messaging in its offerings before Trump. Netflix and Amazon both did deals for faith-based programming in 2024.

The incentives for the programming shift are economic as well as politically expedient. Studios and streamers are being conservative with their entertainment dollars as the cable business wanes and some streamers struggle for profitability. They're looking for sure things and pockets of audiences where there's opportunity. Faith-based and family-oriented shows can be made relatively cheaply, without the need for big-name stars, and can travel globally.

"I think the correction is more in the direction to more broad, less niche," one agent said. "More stuff that won't automatically turn off 50% of the country one way or the other."

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OpenAI is getting overwhelmed by 'Ghiblified' photo edits. So is the guy who helped popularize the craze.

Studio Ghibli

Stephane Cardinale - Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images

• There's a new craze for making "Studio Ghibli"-style photo-edits with ChatGPT.
• OpenAI's servers are getting swamped by demand — as is the engineer who helped popularize the trend.
• But it has also prompted discussion around the ethics and copyright implications of the images.

OpenAI is getting overwhelmed with photo creation prompts in the style of Studio Ghibli films — and so is the guy who helped popularize the craze.

Studio Ghibli is a Japanese animation studio known for films with vibrant animation styles like "Spirited Away" and "My Neighbor Totoro." Users on X flooded the service this week with AI-generated images in the style of Studio Ghibli films.

Grant Slatton, a software engineer in Seattle, helped popularize the "Ghiblified" AI photo edit trend. In a post on Tuesday afternoon, hours after OpenAI launched upgraded image-generation tools, he shared a photo on X of his family and dog at the beach in the animated style, captioning it: "tremendous alpha right now in sending your wife photos of yall converted to studio ghibli anime."

Slatton is not the first person to use AI to create anime-style imagery, of course. But his Tuesday tweet seems to have been instrumental in the growth of the current wave. The retweets and replies quickly rolled in as other users followed his lead. As of writing it has 42,000 likes and almost 27 million views, and he has been bombarded by messages from X users about their own attempts, he told BI.

"It's the single most net-positive day I've ever seen on Twitter," he said. "I got hundreds of DMs and replies telling me their spouse or kids or grandparents loved the pictures."

tremendous alpha right now in sending your wife photos of yall converted to studio ghibli anime pic.twitter.com/FROszdFSfN

— Grant Slatton (@GrantSlatton) March 25, 2025

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman joked on Thursday that the company's servers were "melting" after ChatGPT users flooded the service.

"we are going to temporarily introduce some rate limits while we work on making it more efficient," Altman said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. "hopefully won't be long! chatgpt free tier will get 3 generations per day soon."

Altman added that it's been "super fun seeing people love images in chatgpt."

OpenAI began blocking some requests for Ghibli-style content on Wednesday night after deciding to ban "generations in the style of individual living artists," the company previously told BI. ChatGPT does allow for generating images with "broader studio styles," the company said.

"Our goal is to give users as much creative freedom as possible,
a spokesperson said. "We continue to prevent generations in the style of individual living artists, but we do permit broader studio styles—which people have used to generate and share some truly delightful and inspired original fan creations."

OpenAI did not respond to a follow-up question from BI on Thursday afternoon about why some tiers of GPT users are still able to generate the images.

Slatton had previously made an animation-style photo of his family in December 2023, but the DALL-E model at the time required a "painstaking" process of describing exactly how he wanted it to look. But ChatGPT generated the new photo with a simple prompt of "convert to studio ghibli please," he said.

"It does it as easily as translating English to Spanish," Slatton told BI.

Slatton said the response to the post has been overwhelmingly positive with even some people who would normally be anti-AI art posting photos of themselves "Ghiblified."

Users who haven't been able to access the feature have also DMed him "heartwarming" requests with their family photos, he said, adding that he "probably did over 100" photos.

A backlash quickly followed the Ghibli-edit craze. Questions have been raised about the ethics and copyright implications of mimicking a specific artist or studio's style — issues that have bedeviled the artificial intelligence industry for years.

A clip from a 2016 documentary interview with Mizayaki also went viral, in which the director watches a zombie-esque 3D animation with disturbing movements produced by an artificial intelligence model.

"I can't watch this stuff and find [it] interesting," Miyazaki said, citing the experience of his friend with a disability and mobility issues. "Whoever creates this stuff has no idea what pain is whatsoever. I am utterly disgusted. If you really want to make creepy stuff, you can go ahead and do it. I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all. I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself."

Some X users have interpreted his comments as a blanket denunciation of all AI art, though others disagree. "I interpret this as him being opposed to artificial life, artificial emotions, artificial pain," Slatton said. "Whereas the ghiblification trend is an enhancement of real joy."

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2 recruiters have a message for frustrated job seekers: It's not your fault

Job market experts talked to Business Insider about why people might not be landing a job.

miodrag ignjatovic/Getty Images

• If you can't get a job right now, it might not be because of your talent or previous experience.
• Employers may be flooded with candidates, and they can't interview them all.
• Companies are getting more cautious about hiring and may be shortstaffed in talent acquisition as well.

A lot of people are looking for work right now, and while that's great news for employers, it's a bit more of a rough spot for job seekers.

If you're blaming yourself for not getting a job despite actively looking, consider factors outside your control in a job market with more competition and slower hiring than a couple of years ago.

Veteran recruiters and labor market analysts told Business Insider those factors include many people applying for the same role, not enough workers to review applications, and low demand in the field you're applying for.

"We're in a situation where it is harder for people to find a new job because the balance of power has shifted back toward employers," Daniel Zhao, the lead economist at Glassdoor, said, adding that hiring has been sluggish and more like the 2010s than the booming market of a couple of years ago.

Kathleen Nolan, who's been a technical recruiter for about seven years, knows how tough the job market is. She said in a LinkedIn post that she reassured a job seeker she rejected that it was the job market, not him.

Nolan thinks companies "are only opening roles when and if they are truly needed, and they are doing their best to not pad head count more than necessary."

"If you've never had a problem getting a job before and suddenly you do, you can't look at it and think, 'I'm the problem,'" Nolan said. "You've got to look at what's going on around you."

Some industries have more opportunities than others. Zhao said healthcare is not as subject to the business cycle as other sectors. Cory Stahle, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab, said there's a lot of hiring happening in this sector, while tech and other knowledge worker gigs aren't seeing as much hiring.

"You don't choose what time you're in the job market, but you can choose which part of the job market you focus on," Zhao said.

Too many applicants for a role

For the jobs that are available, employers may not have enough hands to go through or respond to each applicant. Nolan said talent acquisition and similar roles took a hit during the pandemic, and companies haven't expanded these teams to their previous levels.

"You have fewer people to go through more résumés and to fill fewer jobs, but it's still quite a bit of work," she said.

Bonnie Dilber, a recruiter for about a decade, said her current employer, a software company, had to pause an application for a job with a few openings after getting 700 applicants within a few days of being posted. Dilber said many of the people were well-qualified for the role.

"It was just seeing that a lot of people who really have the skills and could probably do the job pretty well are not even going to be able to get interviews because there are just so many people who are also on the market competing for a small number of jobs," she said.

There's no true formula for getting a job

There could be things you can do to try to move along the job process.

Dilber doesn't recommend applying to every job opening you see and instead focusing on postings you are "well qualified" for. "Mass applying is actually hurting people because they're putting in lower quality applications that aren't going to stand up in a competitive applicant tool," she said.

Nolan doesn't think there's a clear formula for standing out in the job search or getting that first interview. However, she recommends strategic networking, like reaching out to existing connections and to people you admire in your field of work.

"Something that can sometimes be underrated is asking for what you want, putting it out there, whether it's on LinkedIn, whether it's writing an email to folks you might know in your industry," she said.

Nolan said your LinkedIn profile should be a version of your résumé because recruiters tend to check it in addition to résumés submitted.

Beyond doing the typical grunt work of finding a job, Nolan said to be patient and to take care of yourself. She said applying for work can be a full-time job.

"Just like with your full-time job, it's important to set parameters so you don't get burnt out," she said.

It's tough to say how the job market will continue to play out, even in the short term. Nolan is hopeful that things will improve one day.

"We've been in tough spots in the market before," she said.

Do you have a story to share about job searching? Reach out to this reporter at mhoff@businessinsider.com.

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DeepIP has developed an AI assistant for drafting patents. Check out the pitch deck it used to raise $15 million.

DeepIP's cofounders, Edouard d'Archimbaud and François-Xavier Leduc.

DeepIP.

• DeepIP has secured a $15 million Series A investment to modernize patent drafting with AI.
• The startup's AI assistant summarizes large documents and helps attorneys draft patents faster.
• Check out the 17-slide pitch deck used to secure the fresh funding.

A startup that has developed an AI assistant to help draft patents has just secured a $15 million Series A.

Paris and New York-based DeepIP wants to modernize and simplify the process of filing patents — which can be notoriously lengthy in the US — for attorneys and professionals.

"Patents are the foundation of capitalism. Without patents, companies can't invest in research and development," François-Xavier Leduc, the cofounder and CEO of DeepIP, told Business Insider in an interview.

The startup says its platform can summarize large documents, simplify complex jargon, highlight novel aspects of the innovation, and spot any omissions in the patent draft.

It also helps users draft patent claims by suggesting alternative ways to structure their arguments. Leduc said DeepIP's AI assistant is designed to work alongside a human patent practitioner rather than replace them.

"When you start developing an invention, you have to understand the entire space to make sure it's novel. Before, all this work was extremely limited due to human capabilities," Leduc said. "AI allows us to fully understand at scale, the entire space, helping companies to identify how to position their inventions, and make sure it's novel."

The startup also says it regularly tests and validates its AI models to ensure there are as few hallucinations as possible.

Investor appetite for legal technology is high, with upstarts such as Harvey raking in $300 million in funding last month at a $3 billion valuation. DeepIP says its platform is gaining traction among corporations, as well as law firms such as Schwegman Lundberg Woessner, and has already helped draft 8,500 patent applications.

DeepIP's Series A was led by VC fund Resonance, with participation from Headline, Serena Capital, and Balderton.

With the fresh funding, DeepIP plans to continue growing its product teams.

Check out the 18-slide pitch deck used to secure the fresh funding.

DeepIP

DeepIP

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Meet a decades-old software company hitching a ride on the Nvidia rocket ship

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang during his keynote address at the GTC AI Conference in San Jose, California, on March 18, 2025.

OSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images

• The AI boom is changing the trajectory of decades-old computing companies.
• DDN, known in the supercomputing field, now offers crucial data storage for AI data centers.
• The company recently raised $300 million from Blackstone at a $5 billion valuation.

As Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang gave his keynote address at the company's annual GTC conference to an audience of roughly 17,000 people in San Jose, California, last week, dozens of companies sat on the edge of their seats to find out if they'd get a mention. Some had a glimpse of the slides ahead of time, but no one knew for certain until the words came out of Huang's mouth.

DataDirect Networks, or DDN, was one of the lucky ones to leave the arena happy. Huang named the company alongside Dell, HP Enterprise, Hitachi, and IBM. But while those firms have enjoyed broader name recognition in the tech world for decades, DDN was invited on the rocket ship that is Nvidia just a few years ago — and everything changed.

DDN makes hardware, but more importantly software that allows GPU users to access their stored data fast. It cuts down on latency, which is the industry term for lag in AI systems that can delay, for example, the answer to a question asked of a chatbot like ChatGPT.

When Nvidia sells $100 worth of GPUs, DDN's opportunity is $5-10 dollars.

"You have to have the right amount of performance, reliability, and stability to extract your data at full speed, real-time, to feed the GPUs," Paul Bloch, DDN's 64-year-old President, told Business Insider.

The company has been working with Nvidia for about eight years. Before that, it served the stable, but much smaller industry of supercomputers for decades.

Bloch and CEO Alex Bouzari are fixtures of the supercomputing world. Before the AI boom, top research universities, government labs, and the oil and gas industry knew them well. But mainstream data centers didn't need them. They do now.

"For the very first time, your storage system will be GPU-accelerated," Huang said at GTC.

DDN President and Cofounder Paul Bloch

DDN

As data sets grow larger and AI is used at scale for data-heavy applications like real-time video, Bloch can see a day when the company scales independently of Nvidia.

"All of a sudden it's much easier to deliver the value in AI because we've already done it in the past with similar market,' Bloch said. "That's why the success of the company has gone exponential."

DDN has found a new gear in the age of AI. Conversations, fixes, new features, and deals that used to take weeks and months now take days. And Bloch and his team are learning to work at Jensen Huang's pace — what he calls the "speed of light."

"Jensen's emails are fantastic. They are 10 words or less," Bloch said.

Moving into the era of AI has taken some adjustments, but today, DDN and its competitors are essential to the parallel computing that enables AI. When a company seeks to set up a GPU cloud, it has to have a version of DDN's tech. And DDN is part of Nvidia's reference architecture, which is the recommended setup for maximal GPU performance.

Not all of Nvidia's customers choose to use these instructions, but the mere fact has brought DDN new customers. Hyperscalers have traditionally preferred to use their own recipes of parts and players in their data centers, but Bloch said that in the era of Nvidia's Blackwell, they are starting to come around.

Now it's preparing for a blockbuster third decade. In January, the company raised $300 million in growth funding from Blackstone at a $5 billion valuation, and Bloch got a congratulatory email from Huang at 6:30 a.m. the morning of the announcement, he said.

"DDN does not need the money, per se," Bloch said. "We're profitable. We're EBITDA positive, we're growing very quickly."

What he wants, though, is access to the C-suites that come with a Blackstone affiliation. DDN used to sell through researchers and developers — after all, the technology was so niche that it was far below top executives' notice. Now, AI infrastructure is one of the most important expenditures a company can make, and decisions around it are scrutinized at the highest levels.

DDN has received acquisition offers over the years, but Bloch said the company is his and Bouzari's "life's work" and they stay independent by choice.

"We are control freaks," Bloch said, adding that he sees two to five years more of break-neck AI infrastructure buildout.

"I'm not even sure it's going to stop," he said.

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Chappell Roan says she dresses in minimalist blacks and whites in private because 'crazy' fashion is part of her job now

Chappell Roan dresses minimalist in private to separate life and work.

Erika Goldring/WireImage

• Chappell Roan said she dresses in earthy, muted tones and "very modest" clothes in private.
• In a Call Her Daddy episode, she said she used to dress "crazy" before becoming famous.
• But then wild outfits became part of her job, and she needed a separation between work and life.

Chappell Roan, known onstage for her colorful drag-inspired outfits and makeup, said her style is much more muted when she's out and about in private.

In a podcast episode of "Call Her Daddy," released on Tuesday, the pop star said she dresses in a "very modest" way when she isn't performing. She's also "not in a lot of color" on a daily basis.

"I'm in a lot of blacks and a lot of like taupes, and whites, and creams," Roan said to host Alexandra Cooper.

She said that she used to dress "crazy" even off-stage before she became famous.

But Roan, whose real name is Kayleigh Rose Amstutz, said that dressing in wild outfits is now part of her job, and she wants to make sure there is a difference between her work self and her private self.

"I would be out as Kayleigh in that, and then I would be onstage as that, and then there was like no separation," Roan said, referring to her colorful, maximalist stage outfits.

Roan is known for her daring wardrobe choices, from her latex wrestler bodysuit at Lollapalooza in August to her chainmail dress at the MTV Video Music Awards in September.

Dressing inconspicuously in private is one of several ways the star has tried to separate work from life.

She's publicly slammed fans who overstep boundaries, stalk her, and get upset when denied a selfie or a hug.

"I don't care that abuse and harassment, stalking, whatever, is a normal thing to do to people who are famous or a little famous," she said in a viral TikTok in August.

"That does not make it OK, that doesn't make it normal," Roan, 27, added.

She also withdrew from the "All Things Go" music festival in September to prioritize her health, just about a day before the first of her two performances there.

A representative for Roan did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

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3 everyday signs of a potential recession to watch out for

iStock; Rebecca Zisser/BI

• Recession fears are increasing as economic uncertainty rocks markets.
• While the US isn't in a recession, there are some troubling signs of a struggling consumer.
• Keep an eye out for these three everyday signs of an upcoming recession.

Talk about a potential recession is heating up among investment experts and economists, but you don't need to be a Wall Street forecaster to spot signs of weakness in the economy.

A recession is often defined as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. Economists track indicators such as a rising unemployment rate, lower industrial output, and depressed household spending.

While the economy isn't officially in recession territory, the American consumer is definitely worried — the University of Michigan's Consumer Sentiment Index posted a 10.5% decline in March, reaching its lowest level since November 2022.

"Declining consumer confidence, the fact that they might reduce their consumption, would be an important sign that there may be a recession coming," Shengxing Zhang, an economist and visiting professor at Carnegie Mellon University, told Business Insider.

Chances are, you've already been sensing an economic vibe shift in your day-to-day life. Here are three unconventional indicators of a recession to watch out for. While these indicators don't definitively signal an imminent recession, they point to broader weaknesses in the economy.

Dining out

Reduced restaurant and bar sales are one indicator that Asher Rogovy, the chief investment officer at investment firm Magnifina, is monitoring.

"Restaurant spending provides an early view into consumer confidence because it's one of the first expenses people cut when they're worried about finances," Rogovy said. "Unlike necessities, dining out is optional — when consumers pull back from restaurants, it often signals they're preparing for economic turbulence."

Consumers might be incentivized to buy a pack of beer to take home instead of spending more to drink at the bar, said Jack Buffington, an associate professor of supply chain management at the University of Denver.

According to the US Census Bureau, bar and restaurant sales declined by 1.5% from January to February of this year. While a month-over-month decline doesn't signal a recession, Rogovy believes it's part of a worrying trend worth monitoring. For context, during the 2007 - 2009 financial crisis, restaurant spending dropped 11.5% on an inflation-adjusted basis.

"That 1.5% move in February is already a significant decline," Rogovy said.

Costco sales

Groceries aren't cheap, and people's shopping habits at Costco could indicate a recession — such as buying more food to cook at home or buying cheaper types of meat.

Costco's Chief Financial Officer Gary Millerchip also flagged that customers are pulling back on dining out. "We are seeing what we think is a little bit of a shift from food away from home to food at home, and that's certainly reflected in strong meat and produce sales that we've seen in our own business," Millerchip said on the company's earnings call back in December 2024.

It looks like Costco customers are making some serious changes to their consumption habits, such as swapping out expensive cuts of beef for cheaper protein options like pork and chicken.

"We continue to see a shift toward lower-cost proteins such as ground beef and poultry," Millerchip said on the company's earnings call earlier this month.

Groceries are one of the top expenditures for consumers after shelter and transportation, according to Bank of America, so it's one of the first areas that people trim down on when their wallets start getting pinched. The impact on lower-income households is even more acute as they spend a greater proportion of their earnings on necessities like groceries.

Traffic levels

People travel less in times of economic hardship. Job losses, rising costs of household essentials, and economic uncertainty might incentivize you to press "pause" on your vacation plans this summer.

Just look at airline companies like Delta, United, and Southwest, who have slashed their revenue expectations this year. Airlines have also cited lower levels of anticipated government travel thanks to DOGE budget cuts and layoffs.

It's not just airplane traffic, either. Road traffic tends to decrease during periods of economic downturn as fewer people commute to work or go out to eat. As commercial activity slows down, you might also notice fewer large trucks on the roads.

The connection between traffic levels and a recession might not seem that important at first glance, but it can be a revealing indicator of an economic downturn. Zhang pointed out that hedge funds have used satellite images to analyze indicators like electricity consumption, traffic, and retailers' parking lots. So, the next time you drive to the grocery store, watch for how many other cars are on the road.

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A former Point72 exec's new data startup hopes to strip away big funds' deep-pocketed advantage

Kirk McKeown is the cofounder of Carbon Arc.

Carbon Arc

• Carbon Arc, a startup from former Point72 executive Kirk McKeown, launched Thursday.
• The data platform allows small funds and businesses to purchase data by the megabyte, sometimes for less than $1.
• The startup raised $55 million, and its backers include former celeb agent Michael Kives' K5 Global.

Carbon Arc is hoping to level the playing field.

The new company, which is the brainchild of former Point72 data wizard Kirk McKeown, aims to upend how data is sold and structured by making it cheaper and more accessible to anyone looking to use data to trade or feed AI models.

The startup, which already has dozens of vendors and buyers on the platform, launched publicly Thursday but had been building in stealth for years, ever since McKeown left billionaire Steve Cohen's Point72 in 2021.

If the company progresses as its cofounder hopes, it will eliminate one of the biggest advantages mega-funds like McKeown's old employer have: Their deep pockets.

Carbon Arc offers anyone — small asset managers, local businesses, AI bots — structured, private data at a reasonable price. Buyers, including asset managers, healthcare systems, and the NHL's Florida Panthers, purchase the datasets they want and pay by the megabyte. The total price can be less than $1, and McKeown expects that to continue to drop as more buyers come onto the platform.

The goal, in part, is "making the competitive advantage not whether or not you can afford it", said McKeown in an interview with Business Insider. Instead, users can focus on "what you can do when you have it."

"Who does better work with the same dataset" will become the differentiator, he said, adding that it brings "creativity and skill" back to different industries.

Data budgets in the asset management industry have soared for the biggest hedge funds, with top players spending millions a year on both vanilla market data and exotic alternative data that tracks different metrics using phone geolocation data and satellite images. A survey of 60 alternative data buyers last year by consultancy Neudata found that managers, on average, were spending $1.6 million on alt data — with plans to increase their budgets.

While the elimination of trading commissions for equities has allowed individuals and niche asset managers to trade stocks cheaply, the price of data has allowed the biggest firms to hold an insurmountable information advantage.

McKeown, a tattooed alum of Harvard and MIT's Sloan School of Management, said the venture "didn't start out this mission-driven, but it's become a little bit of that." He raised $55 million from investors such as former Boston Celtics co-owner Jim Pallotta's Raptor Group and former Hollywood agent Michael Kives' K5 Global.

McKeown sees the growth of AI as another area where the firm can set itself apart.

As AI models hoover up all available public data, these cutting-edge companies will need access to cheap, private data to continue to grow and learn.

McKeown believes Carbon Arc can fill that need, in part because it structures the datasets for sale on its platform in an easily digestible way.

"We think we are a financial services business selling data structure," McKeown said.

His lofty goal for the company: "Ubiquitous access to data from Carbon Arc."

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Here are the 20 startups that sponsor the most H-1B visas for immigrants looking for work

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Joel Saget/Getty Images; Jenny Chang-Rodriguez/BI

Even as Silicon Valley giants cut jobs like a hot knife through butter, the competition among startups for the best global talent remains as fierce as ever. And with critical skills, particularly in artificial intelligence, still in short supply, startups like OpenAI and Anthropic rely on the H-1B visa program to bring in skillful foreign workers and secure their place in the race.

For a startup to hire a foreign worker, it sponsors their petition for an H-1B visa, which lets them work in the US for up to six years. The job candidate is entered into a lottery for one of 85,000 visas. Despite challenges, including a demand for visas that has outstripped supply and ongoing discussions about reforms, startups continue to recruit talent abroad through this Rube Goldberg system to gain a competitive edge.

Using data from the Department of Labor and US Citizenship and Immigration Services, we ranked the startup employers that filed the most H-1B requests during the 2024 government fiscal year. The data comes from applications submitted by businesses seeking to sponsor workers' visas.

Here are the startups leading the charge, ranked by their number of filings.

Ripple: provides crypto infrastructure for financial services

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse.

Stephen McCarthy/Getty Images

Headquarters: San Francisco

Total funding: $325 million, according to PitchBook

Total certified H-1B filings: 26

Grammarly: writing assistant that edits and corrects language

Grammarly CEO Shishir Mehrotra.

Coda

Headquarters: San Francisco

Total funding: $400 million, according to PitchBook

Total certified H-1B filings: 28

Plaid: collects and shares personal financial info with apps and other services

Plaid CEO Zach Perret.

Cody Glenn/Sportsfile for Web Summit via Getty Images

Headquarters: San Francisco

Total funding: $734 million, according to the company

Total certified H-1B filings: 28

Carta: helps businesses track ownership and manage equity plans

Carta CEO Henry Ward.

Carta

Headquarters: San Francisco

Total funding: $1.19 billion, according to PitchBook

Total certified H-1B filings: 30

Thumbtack: allows users to search for and hire local service providers

Thumbtack CEO Marco Zappacosta.

Thumbtack

Headquarters: San Francisco

Total funding: More than $500 million, according to the company

Total certified H-1B filings: 31

X Corp.: social media platform

X Corp. owner Elon Musk.

Andrew Harnik/Getty Image

Headquarters: San Francisco

Total funding: Elon Musk took X private at a purchase price of $44 billion in 2022.

Total certified H-1B filings: 32

Anthropic: develops foundation AI models aimed at business users

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei.

Chesnot/Getty Images

Headquarters: San Francisco

Total funding: More than $17 billion, according to the company

Total certified H-1B filings: 35

Zipline: develops and operates drone delivery fleets

Zipline CEO Keller Rinaudo Cliffton.

Taylor Hill/Getty Images

Headquarters: South San Francisco, California

Total funding: $1.23 billion, according to PitchBook

Total certified H-1B filings: 35

Turo: car rental marketplace

Turo CEO Andre Haddad.

Lea Suzuki/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

Headquarters: San Francisco

Total funding: $527 million, according to the company

Total certified H-1B filings: 36

Scale AI: data labeling company helping apps and models scale

Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang.

Scale AI

Headquarters: San Francisco

Total funding: $1.6 billion, according to PitchBook

Total certified H-1B filings: 42

Gusto: payroll and HR solution for small businesses

Gusto CEO Joshua Reeves.

Gusto

Headquarters: San Francisco

Total funding: $751 million, according to PitchBook

Total certified H-1B filings: 48

Verkada: cloud-managed security cameras

Verkada CEO Filip Kaliszan.

Verkada

Headquarters: San Mateo, California

Total funding: $700 million, according to the company

Total certified H-1B filings: 52

Nuro: develops self-driving tech for robotaxis and delivery vehicles

Nuro CEO Jiajun Zhu.

Nuro

Headquarters: Mountain View, California

Total funding: More than $2 billion, according to the company

Total certified H-1B filings: 59

Cohesity: develops software for securing and managing cloud data

Cohesity CEO Sanjay Poonen.

Cohesity

Headquarters: San Jose, California

Total funding: $1.8 billion, according to the company

Total certified H-1B filings: 61

OpenAI: develops cutting-edge AI models and apps like ChatGPT

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

picture alliance/dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images

Headquarters: San Francisco

Total funding: $63.92 billion, according to PitchBook

Total certified H-1B filings: 74

Chime: provides fee-free mobile banking services

Chime CEO Chris Britt.

Kimberly White/Getty Images

Headquarters: San Francisco

Total funding: $2.65 billion, according to PitchBook

Total certified H-1B filings: 101

Stripe: provides financial infrastructure for businesses

Stripe CEO Patrick Collison.

Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for WIRED

Headquarters: San Francisco and Dublin

Total funding: $8.73 billion, according to PitchBook

Total certified H-1B filings: 265

Databricks: cloud-based platform to help enterprises build, scale, and govern data

Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi.

Ali Ghodsi

Headquarters: San Francisco

Total funding: More than $14 billion, according to the company

Total certified H-1B filings: 283

ByteDance: Chinese internet technology company

Headquarters: Beijing

Total funding: $18.95 billion, according to PitchBook

Total certified H-1B filings: 997

TikTok: video-based social media platform

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew.

Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Headquarters: Los Angeles and Singapore

Total funding: TikTok is a subsidiary of ByteDance, which has raised $18.95 billion in venture capital, according to PitchBook.

Total certified H-1B filings: 614

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