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Space station startup Vast cut 4% of its employees this week, Business Insider has learned.
The startup is building a commercial replacement for the International Space Station.
A Vast spokesperson said the cuts were performance-related and the startup is looking to backfill them.
Space station startup Vast has cut 4% of its workforce as the new space race heats up.
The startup, which is developing a commercial replacement for the International Space Station (ISS), fired 46 employees on Wednesday, Business Insider has learned.
The cuts come months after Vast raised $500 million in a funding round aimed at launching the world's first commercial space station in 2027.
A spokesperson for the startup confirmed the cuts, which they said were performance-related. They added that the company was still hiring and had 277 open roles.
"As part of our mid-year review cycle, Vast parted ways with employees who were not meeting expectations. We are backfilling these positions and are continuing to grow and execute," the spokesperson said.
Business Insider spoke to two employees affected by the job losses, who said no issues had been raised about the quality or output of their work during their 1:1s with managers or in performance reviews over the past few months.
A rendering of Haven-2, Vast's proposed ISS replacement.
The California-based startup plans to launch Haven-1, its first space station, next year on a SpaceX rocket. Vast says it will begin launching Haven-2, the modular 12-person space station the company plans to use to replace the ISS, by 2028.
Like Elon Musk's SpaceX, Vast's long-term plans sound like something pulled from science fiction. The company's ultimate ambition is to build space stations that will rotate in orbit to produce their own artificial gravity.
Recently, Vast has expanded into satellite manufacturing and struck a deal with the European Space Agency to send its astronauts to the ISS.
It comes amid uncertainty over NASA's plans to fund a new generation of commercial space stations. In March, the agency proposed a new post-ISS strategy based around a single space station, but withdrew it in June after backlash from across the space industry.
On Tuesday's episode of the "Rodeo Time" podcast hosted by Dale Brisby, Sheridan said his purchase of the Four Sixes Ranch prompted him to sign a deal with Paramount and continue working.
"I was set up to retire. I was going to be done after 'Yellowstone,'" Sheridan said.
The writer and producer said he had already paid cash for another ranch in Weatherford, Texas, and "didn't owe anybody anything."
"I was going to put my feet up and show horses, and have my little hobby herd over here, and that was it," Sheridan said.
However, buying the Four Sixes Ranch meant Sheridan couldn't retire just yet. "I knew that if I bought this ranch, I was not going to be quitting my day job for a while," he said.
The opportunity to buy the ranch came after its then-owner, Anne Marion, died.
Sheridan, who had met her while filming "Yellowstone" there, said the ranch was set to be divided and sold, but Marion had asked her estate to find someone who would "maintain her vision."
"And, so, the person they came up with was me," Sheridan said.
When they approached Sheridan about buying the ranch, the property came with a heftyprice tag. "I said, 'Well, boys, I'm a little short. In fact, I'm about $300 million short,'" Sheridan said, recalling his response.
He said the prospect of buying the ranch led him to reconsider an "exclusive deal" with Paramount, which he had previously resisted.
"They were terrified that I was going to go to greener pastures and leave them and go somewhere else, which I probably was," Sheridan said.
"But once this happened, I called them, and I said, 'You know what? I think I'm ready to make an overall deal.' And they said, 'That's great. Do you have a number in mind?' And I said, 'Why yes, I do,'" Sheridan said.
However, Sheridan's partnership with Paramount may soon be winding down. Puck reported in 2025 that he was set to leave Paramount for NBCUniversal once his current deal expires.
Inside Sheridan's piece of Texas history
Founded by Samuel "Burk" Burnett in 1870, the Four Sixes Ranch is known for its Angus cattle and Quarter horses, per its website. It remained under the Burnett family for generations, eventually passing to Marion, Burnett's great-granddaughter.
Marion's will required the family's ranching operations to be sold after her death, according to the property's listing. The main Four Sixes Ranch, spanning 142,372 acres in King County, was listed for $192.2 million. It was offered together with two separate properties, the Dixon Creek and Frisco Creek ranch divisions, which were listed for $137.3 million and $12.2 million, respectively.
Texas Land Magazine reported in June 2022 that Sheridan put together a group of investors to buy the ranch. It said the deal closed in January that year, and "all parties signed a confidentiality agreement preventing disclosure of the final sale price."
"The deal was all-inclusive — three ranches and all inventory," Sam Middleton, the listing agent and broker who represented Marion's estate during the sale, told the magazine.
Sheridan, meanwhile, said the scripts he wrote while "Yellowstone" production was shut down during the pandemic helped him secure a controlling stake in the investment.
"I wrote a bunch," Sheridan said in an interview with The Land Report published in June 2022. "I sold enough scripts that I was able to become the majority owner in the partnership."
Americans' wallets are feeling the strain of inflation outpacing wages.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
US consumer sentiment is worse than in the pandemic years.
One likely reason is that wage growth isn't keeping up with inflation.
The sky-high inflation of a few years ago has had lingering effects on workers.
Americans' wages aren't keeping up with the cost of living, and it's likely dragging down how they feel about the economy.
The economy is still slowly growing, consumers are still spending, and both unemployment and layoffs are low. However, consumer sentiment, as measured by the University of Michigan's monthly survey, remains worse than during the COVID period. One big factor could explain why: Inflation has exceeded wage growth for four straight months.
"Consumers' frustration over the erosion of their purchasing power continues to mount," Joanne Hsu, University of Michigan's surveys of consumers director, said.
The survey showed almost three-quarters of consumers in August thought price growth would outpace their income growth over the next year. Hsu said many people are worried that higher energy prices will affect other parts of the economy.
"A sustained drop in gasoline prices over the course of several months (in contrast to temporary dips) would go a long way in boosting consumer views of the economy," Hsu said.
Wage growth lagging inflation is not the only concerning trend in the economy. For instance, labor force participation is at its lowest level in decades outside the pandemic. However, it can be tough for consumers to ignore the higher prices blasted on gas station signs and posted along grocery aisles.
Even though inflation is down from its post-COVID peak, it's still above historical norms, and the long-running impact of that spike is still being felt in Americans' wallets years later.
A new working paper from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business's Erik Hurst and Christina Patterson, and ADP Research's Nela Richardson and Liv Wang, used ADP's payroll data through 2025 to examine purchasing power. They found that the unexpected and temporary inflation shock as the economy reopened in the wake of the pandemic resulted in a "persistent downward shift in real wages, helping explain why Americans' dissatisfaction outlasted the inflation episode itself."
The researchers found that real wages fell between December 2020 and 2024 for nearly 40% of workers, higher than the roughly 24% of workers pre-pandemic.
"Inflation has slowed, but many people never fully recovered the purchasing power they lost when prices surged," Richardson said in a blog post about the findings.
She said that a 3% raise was usually sufficient to get a "modest" real income gain pre-pandemic. She added that when inflation skyrocketed in 2022, employers gave raises that didn't keep pace with the higher inflation.
"Hence this once-in-a-generation inflation shock led to a decline in U.S. consumer purchasing power that persists today," she said.
Despite an uptick in the average share of workers getting a bonus from 2021 to 2023 compared to 2017 to 2019, the researchers found bonuses "did very little to stem the real wage losses that workers experienced." Off-cycle raises helped moderate real wage declines for job stayers.
The importance of real wage gains
Mark Hamrick, chief economic analyst at The Hamrick Brief, told Business Insider that persistently high inflation above the Fed's 2% target is contributing to Americans' pessimistic feelings about the economy.
"Americans are literally paying the price for high inflation through elevated price levels," he said.
"Even if you're making more money numbers-wise, with the way prices are rising, you have less money left over at the end of the month," ZipRecruiter economist Nicole Bachaud told Business Insider. "That's really going to impact the large consumer base of America, middle- and low-income households, who are really dependent on wage growth to help them remain economically viable."
People with different levels of wealth aren't experiencing the economy equally. Hamrick said those lacking substantial wealth are constantly reminded of the gap. As an example, he noted that on many airlines, higher-paying passengers at the front of the plane typically receive a higher level of service than "those who sit in the back and are scrunched up."
"At the end of the day, it's affordability challenges and a growing wealth divide that ends up disenfranchising a good number of people," he said.
While Hamrick said there will always be divides in wealth, sustained wage gains adjusted for inflation would help mitigate the problem, which hasn't been happening in aggregate.
"A number of people are being taken financial prisoner by that," he said.
Reach out to this reporter to share how the economy has affected you financially, at mhoff@businessinsider.com.
The Hims and Hers CEO said that companies with their own datasets stand to save a lot of money by using open-weight models.
NYSE
Hims & Hers CEO Andrew Dudum touted the use of open-weight models to achieve cost savings in AI.
He said companies that generate large amounts of internal data can save up to 80% using open-weight models.
This is one of the hottest topics in the tech sphere as enterprises strategize to improve returns.
One executive is touting open-weight models, especially if your company produces lots of data.
In an interview with CNBC Squawkbox, released on Tuesday, Hims & Hers CEO Andrew Dudum said companies that already have large datasets should shift away from using big AI models and toward using open-weight models.
He cited his company, a telehealth provider that delivers prescription drugs and personal care products through a subscription-based service. He said the company has a large closed-loop dataset of patients it has worked with, which he called a "real asset" because it can be used to train AI models.
"I think for companies that have the resources and scale, if they have an independent dataset, that is a path that they will go, no question," he said to CNBC host Andrew Ross Sorkin. "The cost can be upward of 70, 80% less."
Open-weight models let users access and customize a model's trained parameters, and can be cheaper to run at scale. More importantly, Dudum said models trained on a company's actual use cases would perform better.
"And so what we launched, our first version, immediately outsurpassed what we could get in market," he said. "But the trajectory of what's possible in just six months is transformative because it's continuously learning on every new patient that comes into Hims & Hers."
Dudum's comments come as saving AI costs is one of the hottest topics in the tech and business spheres. Companies are phasing out tokenmaxxing, in which employees were urged to burn as many AI tokens as possible, and are now focusing on getting the most value from their spending.
Many are model routing, referring to matching tasks to AI models based on their complexity. Some executives, like Coinbase's Brian Armstrong, have implemented the use of Chinese models like Kimi K2.7 and GLM 5.2 as default models within their companies.
Kimi K3, an open-weight model developed by the Chinese AI lab Moonshot AI, made waves in Silicon Valley last month for promising to rival the capabilities of models from OpenAI and Anthropic at lower costs.
Meanwhile, data has become one of the most sought-after resources in the AI space, as it is crucial to model training. Earlier this month, Google paid $10 million for internal data from the shuttered carrier Spirit Airlines, which included internal documents, workflows, emails, and millions of Teams messages.
AI training firm Handshake AI has promised to pay $6 per page of "high-quality" work documents, capped at $30,000, in a bid to gain access to more data.
Ilia Penzin and Liliia Penzina at their café, T.O.L.K., in Bushwick.
Paola Chapdelaine for BI
Ilia Penzin and Liliia Penzina run T.O.L.K., a café in Bushwick, NYC, facing financial hurdles.
T.O.L.K., opened in 2025, serves as both a coffee shop and art gallery, promoting local artists.
Despite financial struggles, Penzin and Penzina remain hopeful, aiming to expand their NYC business.
Ilia Penzin and Liliia Penzina call their café and art gallery their baby.
"A big baby," Penzina said, laughing. The entrepreneurs' first year running T.O.L.K. in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bushwick has been defined by the personal sacrifice and precarity of running a small business in one of the most expensive cities in the US. To fund the startup costs, they moved in with roommates to save on rent, took a $30,000 loan from family, and went into credit card debt. Still, they remain optimistic and would encourage other would-be entrepreneurs to follow their dreams.
The café is located at 286 Stanhope St, Brooklyn, NY 11237.
Paola Chapdelaine for BI
"The United States is the best country to try a business," Penzin said. "We love coffee, we love hospitality. We decided to open a café."
For Business Insider's Cost of the City series, the couple detailed what it took to get off the ground, the day-to-day costs, and why they have yet to turn a profit.
Managing the costs of a business in NYC
Penzin and Penzina, who met in school in Russia 15 years ago, applied for asylum in the US after the start of the Russia-Ukraine war. Knowing little English, they worked in hospitality and cafes to get by, but they desired to build something for themselves.
With a dream in mind, they cut personal expenses, including moving from a one-bedroom apartment into a $1,150 room in a three-bedroom apartment. Penzin spent three months building the space that would become T.O.L.K. while Penzina worked three barista jobs.
Now that they're open for business, Penzin handles management, vendors, budgeting, and banking, while Penzina handles the café and art gallery's daily operations. The café's white walls are normally covered with local artwork, and the rest of the open space is taken up by a sofa, a few circular tables, and a dog station with water and treats.
Ilia Penzin and Liliia Penzina have been together for 15 years, and married for six.
Paola Chapdelaine for BI
Nearly a year in, the coffee shop is not making enough to cover its costs. Records provided by the owners show the café generated an average of about $5,600 net sales a month from January to June and paid $2,700 in monthly rent, almost half of the monthly net sales. After paying rent, food expenses, and additional costs, the café was left with a cash shortfall of roughly $900 a month.
Penzin said the main challenge is getting more customers. The café has averaged 24 checks per day at around $8.76 each, totaling roughly $212 in gross sales per day — not enough to have the business pay for itself.
To supplement the income, Penzin works as a handyman, assembling furniture, doing small renovations, and painting. He uses the same tools and the 2008 Toyota Highlander he bought for the coffee shop.
The couple has only taken three days off this year and put all their energy into running the café, but they consider it worth it.
"It's not making us unhappy. We're just working; it's our job to make this business operate," Penzin said. Penzina added, "You are motivated already because you try to survive. If you don't have money, it's your motivation."
Ilia Penzin helping out a T.O.L.K. customer.
Paola Chapdelaine for BI
Think, Observe, Listen, Know.
T.O.L.K. stands for: Think, Observe, Listen, Know — reflecting how the couple wants customers to experience the space. The name also transcends its English acronym. In Russian, tolk means "meaning, understanding, and having a sense or purpose," while in various Scandinavian languages it refers to an "interpreter," someone meant to translate and understand ideas for others — something T.O.L.K. strives to do by being a community space.
"That felt especially fitting for a space built around art, coffee, conversation, and community: a place where people can exchange perspectives, discover new ideas, and find meaning in what they see and experience," he said.
The café strives to be a place where beginner artists can display their work affordably; T.O.L.K. doesn't take commission. At the same time, guests who may not have time to visit galleries can enjoy art on their daily coffee runs.
Temporary art exhibition displayed on the café walls.
Paola Chapdelaine for BI
"Everybody has the time at least once a day to go to any coffee shop and get coffee," Penzin said. "But they never go to see the local arts."
Penzina usually creates a special drinks menu inspired by the current artist and exhibition at the coffee shop.
"I try to find how to combine coffee and art," she said. "It's like a liquid version of the person and a liquid version of their art."
With all the money, energy, and time the couple has put in, they don't see quitting or burning out as an option. Their dream is to expand their business and open more spots in the future, possibly moving upstate or to Long Island.
T.O.L.K. daily menu.
Paola Chapdelaine for BI
"We definitely will not give up on our entrepreneur journey — we definitely will fight until we succeed."
For them, the cost is worth it to live in NYC. They find the business and cultural opportunities in the five boroughs unmatched.
"You pay for those opportunities, for convenience, for your dream," he said. Referencing a popular Russian phrase that alludes to the feeling of relief, he emphasized: "When we drive back from different states, and we see the sign 'New York City,' we feel a stone, a rock, fall from our soul."
Lance Yan, Kavitta Ghai, and Boris Skurikhin shared four days of sleep schedules with Business Insider.
Lance Yan; Kavitta Ghai; Boris Skurikhin
As Silicon Valley embraces hardcore work schedules, founders debate the best sleeping habits.
Business Insider tracked the sleep schedules of three young founders for four days.
One founder got admittedly bad sleep. Another had a clear regimen to get her seven hours.
The young class of AI founders has gone hardcore, with sober lifestyles and 996 schedules.
Sleep, however, remains an open question.
There are two competing sleep cultures in Silicon Valley. The biohackers say that rest helps optimize performance. The hustlers say that founders should work through the night. To sleep or not to sleep, that is the question.
Business Insider asked three young founders to share their sleep habits. And to be scientific about it, we didn't just take their word for it. We spent four days tracking their shut-eye, requesting early morning texts detailing their prior night.
Some founders demanded their Zzzs. Others stayed up grinding.
Lance Yan knows he doesn't sleep enough
Traverse founder Lance Yan said he knows there has to be "a balance between chilling and locking in." He hasn't found it.
Lance Yan
Lance Yan knows sleep is important. Bryan Johnson gave a talk to his Y Combinator batch, after all.
And yet, the 19-year-old founder of the AI startup Traverse often gets only 5 to 6 hours of sleep. "If there's any work, I usually end up staying on longer and dragging it out," he said.
It's still better than his YC days. "We would wake up when it was dark, and go to sleep when it was sunny," Yan said.
Yan works late, then doomscrolls in bed until he falls asleep. When he wakes up, he starts working almost immediately. He knows it's bad.
"There has to be a balance between chilling and locking in," he said.
Yan's sleep diary:
Monday: 3 hours of sleep. Slept "horribly" and was in bed from 4 to 8 a.m.
Tuesday: 6.5 hours of sleep. Worked late, but let himself sleep in. Was in bed from 3 to 10 a.m.
Wednesday: 5 hours of sleep, from 4 to 9 a.m. His health stats "got cooked" because he had only one meal and a "tiny bit" of water.
Thursday: 5 hours of sleep, between 3 and 8 a.m. It was "also not the best," but he felt good after eating regular meals.
Kavitta Ghai has firm sleeping rules
Kavitta Ghai wears a sleep mask and takes magnesium every night.
Kavitta Ghai
Kavitta Ghai will never, ever pull an all-nighter.
The 29-year-old cofounder of the ed-tech startup Nectir can see instantly when she hasn't slept enough. It shows up in her work and in her cognitive function. So, she'll stop everything to get her 7 hours.
Ghai's best thinking comes in the late evening and early morning, so she often doesn't sleep until 3 a.m. Her chief of staff knows: no meetings until 11 a.m.
She wants her employees to be able to work when they function best, too. Nectir is remote, and will always remain remote, she said. "It allows people to do their work on their schedule," she said.
Ghai is exacting about her sleep. She takes magnesium every night and sets the temperature between 66 and 68 degrees. She wears a sleep mask and a Whoop band. Her body doesn't touch the bed until it's bedtime.
It works: Ghai said that she falls asleep in under 3 minutes.
Ghai's sleep diary:
Monday: 7 hours and 32 minutes of sleep. Had "a ton of dreams," but forgot to journal them in the morning.
Tuesday: 8 hours and 2 minutes of sleep. That's "a little longer than I prefer," Ghai said. So she woke up groggy.
Wednesday: 7 hours and 28 minutes of sleep. Usually meditating before bed helps her dream, but this night she had no dreams that night, "which sucks."
Thursday: 7 hours and 7 minutes of sleep. Ghai wished she had gotten 30 more minutes.
Boris Skurikhin is not a grindmaxxer
Boris Skurikhin has yet to build his IKEA bed frame.
Boris Skurikhin
Boris Skurikhin has an expensive mattress with no bed frame.
Well, he does have a bed frame, but he hasn't gotten around to assembling it. "I will do it soon," the 26-year-old cofounder of the AI startup Docket said. "I keep telling myself this."
Skurikhin gets in bed around 12 a.m. and then starts watching something on his laptop. He's not scrolling. He prefers a documentary or a long YouTube video.
He's not one to cut down on his sleep. He described what might be called a "grindmaxxer" in his coworking space who works constantly and never sleeps.
"He was also the hospitalmaxxer," he said. "It's just not healthy."
Skurikhin's sleep diary:
Monday: 7.5 hours of sleep. Fell asleep at 2 a.m. to UFC videos. Woke up briefly at 7:30 a.m. because he "drank too much tea before bed."
Tuesday: 8 hours and 40 minutes of sleep. Fell asleep at 1:30 a.m. and woke up at 10:10 a.m.
Wednesday: 7 hours of sleep. Fell asleep at 1:30 a.m. to videos about athlete rivalries in sports. Woke up early because he left his window open.
Thursday: 7 hours and 20 minutes of sleep. Fell asleep at 2 a.m. while watching the 2002 movie "Copenhagen."
A higher share of US job postings mentioned 401(k) plans than several years ago.
Daisy-Daisy/Getty Images
Small businesses can attract and retain staff with 401(k) plans.
Business owners can offer it in lieu of more costly benefits that they can't yet afford.
It can help reduce first-year quits, a Gusto analysis found.
Sara Marye wanted to get more serious about the benefits she offered.
Several months after promoting a part-time employee to full-time status at her school-curriculum small business in 2024, she wanted to ensure it remains an attractive place to work.
"If I want to keep her, I need to give her reasons to stay," said Marye, an educator turned entrepreneur in 2015 when she started The Stellar Teacher Company. The employee had been working there since 2021.
Marye thought about what she could afford that she could add on top of the existing flexible perks. Offering a 401(k) plan was the answer, a perk that would also benefit Marye herself and help with retention beyond the full-time worker.
Most of her four part-time workers are former teachers who still want to be involved in education while staying home as parents.
"The fact that they are able to have a part-time job with a 401(k), I think, gives them just a lot more comfort in the fact that they aren't having to sacrifice their future financial security for the time that they want to spend raising their family now," said Marye, who has been offering the 401(k) plan since 2025.
When small businesses are starting out, they have to figure out how to get off the ground, market their work, and manage their expenses. As businesses make a name for themselves, grow their profits, and staff up, they need to figure out how to attract and retain employees. Having a 401(k) plan — the kind of benefit that's typically more often offered by larger employers — can help, especially if they can't yet afford more costly benefits, like healthcare. It can also be a financial perk for business owners on payroll.
Maintaining staff
A Gusto analysis of its internal small-business data shows that offering a 401(k) to workers translates to roughly 8% fewer quits in the first year of employment compared to those that don't offer one.
Nich Tremper, a senior economist at Gusto, said these employers don't have to face a gap in work coverage until they can backfill a position, which can affect productivity, or waste time and money looking for and training a new hire. Tremper said employers face the greatest risk of an employee quitting in their first year, so they can try to reduce that risk by offering retirement plans, even if employees can't enroll right away.
"We see 401(k)s having the highest ROI on retention," Tremper said, adding, "because it's a benefit that tells your employees that you are invested in their long-term financial future."
Howard Telson has been running the remote accounting firm Scale CPA since 2022. He started offering a 401(k) plan about a year and a half ago.
He likes it as a recruiting tool, since his firm hires pretty consistently, and to keep his current staff, many of whom come from larger companies where they're accustomed to this perk.
"We're often competing against bigger companies or bigger firms that do offer these types of benefits," he said. "It's been important to be competitive in the marketplace."
Telson works with small businesses at his firm, where he discusses tax-optimization strategies, such as retirement plans.
"It's kind of a multi-tier benefit that we'll recommend, a 401(k) plan or another type of retirement plan to clients, one, to allow them to basically have some tax deferral and save on their personal taxes, two, to attract talent, and three, it also offers some tax credits as well for the first three years when you set up the program," he said.
Affording retirement plans
Marye worried about whether she would be able to afford having a retirement plan as a small-business owner, and setting it up seemed daunting. However, she said it wasn't complicated and wasn't as big an expense as she thought it would be.
Payroll platforms like Gusto and ADP offer 401(k) plan management services at relatively low costs for small businesses, charging a modest base fee and then single-digit monthly fees per participant. Retirement offerings also tend to be less expensive for small business owners than healthcare benefits; Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed the average employer contribution for family medical care coverage at businesses with fewer than 50 workers has surpassed $1,000 per employee since 2021.
Ashley Kent also offers 401(k) benefits to her workers and herself. Kent, who has been in business since 2018, said she can't justify offering healthcare just yet since the cost is too much for the business's size.
"It allowed me to then offer this to employees and was something that was very attractive to new employees coming in here," said Kent, founder and CEO of Clearstart, a marketing brand and growth consultancy for healthcare organizations.
Kent has 10 full-time workers, and they were eligible to enroll after a year of employment, so she thinks it helps with retention. "Agencies are known for very high turnover, and so that was something that was important to me to try and retain individuals," Kent said.
As she hires more senior workers, she would consider adding healthcare benefits, since they could be important for job seekers weighing the trade-offs of different job opportunities.
Looking beyond small business
Small businesses aren't the only organizations offering 401(k)s to boost recruitment and retention.
Indeed's data covering all sizes of employers showed that job postings mentioning 401(k)s have increased since 2020. Laura Ullrich, the director of economic research in North America at the Indeed Hiring Lab, thinks employers could be doing so to improve their recruiting. Some reasons for the uptick in advertised plans, she said, include employers publishing more thorough job descriptions, job seekers wanting to know the full compensation package, and companies dealing with the mismatch between available jobs and people's skills.
"If you look at the immediate post-COVID period, you might have seen companies start advertising it more because it was a really hard time to find workers, and then I'm guessing over time, it's just more and more companies have realized that it's a good way to show more total compensation versus just value," Ullrich said.
Mentions in education and instruction were 15% in spring 2026, the lowest share among the occupations, and up from 7%. Ullrich said pensions, rather than defined contribution plans like 401(k)s, are more common in that type of work, so that could explain why the share is relatively low.
Employers are also advertising better 401(k) matches, which Ullrich said could help make employees more hesitant to switch jobs.
"When indexed to January 2020, the three-month-moving-average share of postings advertising a 401(k) match of 5% or higher has risen more than fivefold, outpacing the growth in any other category of retirement benefit," a report by Indeed Hiring Lab economist An Nguyen said, adding that postings just saying "retirement plan" didn't change much from the baseline.
Waymo's robotaxis captured roughly one in every seven dollars spent on rides in its San Francisco operating zone in June.
Yalonda M. James/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
An Uber executive shared third-party data on X showing Waymo's standing in its most mature markets.
The data showed Waymo taking 15% to 19% of rider spending in SF, LA, and Phoenix.
Waymo maintained its foothold as it expanded its geofence in some of the regions.
Alphabet's Waymo is taking a bite out of ride-hailing in its most mature markets, third-party data showed.
And that share is large enough that its effects on human drivers could be detectable, Gad Allon, a Wharton professor who studies the gig economy, said.
Just don't expect it to look like a visible wave of displaced drivers.
"My initial view is that the impact would not first appear as large numbers of drivers suddenly losing their jobs," Allon told Business Insider. "Because driver supply is flexible, the earliest effects would likely show up in utilization, longer waits between rides, fewer trips per hour, and possibly more unpaid repositioning."
Utilization refers to the percentage of a driver's time online spent on paid trips.
Data from Yipit, a market research firm, estimated that Waymo accounted for 15% of gross bookings — dollars spent on rides — in San Francisco and Los Angeles in June and 16% in Phoenix. In January, the figures were 16%, 17%, and 19%, respectively.
Yipit calculated the shares among Waymo, Uber, and Lyft by looking at trips that begin and end inside Waymo's operating zones, a Yipit spokesperson said. Estimates are based on email receipts from a sample of about 1.5 million active US consumer accounts.
The figures don't represent the number of trips. Waymo's share of actual rides could be higher or lower depending on its prices compared with Uber and Lyft.
Yipit also cautioned that Waymo's share can appear to decline as it expands into new areas, where the service may initially be less popular. In May, Waymo said it expected to expand its Bay Area footprint by 60 square miles.
Despite the caveat around expansions, Waymo's share remained in the mid-teens in all three markets through June.
Uber CFO Balaji Krishnamurthy also shared Yipit's data on X this month while discussing Uber's competitive position. He said Uber uses internal tracking for decision-making and shared Yipit's figures as an externally available reference.
Driver displacement may not look like layoffs
There have been hints that the rideshare workforce is changing as robotaxis grow.
Allon, the Wharton professor, said Waymo's 15% share is a "serious shock" to the labor market, even if the impact on human drivers is diluted because they also work beyond Waymo's geofences.
"The reason it doesn't look like one is that the adjustment runs through hours and exits rather than layoffs," Allon said, referring to drivers working fewer hours or not returning to the platform.
Last year, data from Gridwise, a ride-hailing data platform, showed hourly driver wages declined in Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco — areas where Waymo operates — while the national median rose 1%. Researchers told Business Insider that the data couldn't establish that robotaxis were the cause.
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told Fast Company in a June profile that his company is recruiting fewer drivers in some cities where AVs operate. At the same time, Uber has said more drivers are signing up organically as rider demand grows.
A Lyft spokesperson pointed to CEO David Risher's prepared remarks for the company's second-quarter earnings call on August 6.
"We believe the future is hybrid and, as AVs scale, the market will expand," he said, adding that Lyft rides within SF's AV operating area grew about 20% year over year.
Spokespeople for Waymo and Uber did not respond to a request for comment.
The fallout is hard to measure
Katie Wells, a senior fellow at the AI Now Institute who has studied Uber drivers, told Business Insider that the lack of certain data makes it difficult to measure driver displacement.
"We don't know how much, we don't know when, we don't know where," Wells told Business Insider. Researchers would need data such as utilization and wait times to identify the effects, she said.
Part of the challenge lies in the nature of gig work. Wells said that because drivers are independent contractors rather than employees, robotaxi displacement may not show up as a measurable decline in employment.
Wells has documented how the prospect of automation affected drivers before commercial robotaxis arrived.
She said that she and her coauthors tracked a cohort of 40 Uber drivers over five years. During that time, she found that drivers feel less incentivized to push for better working conditions because they believed their work would eventually disappear.
"Uber drivers kept saying to us, 'Well, automated vehicles are coming, so they won't need me anymore,'" she said. "This is temporary."
Altman said he thinks that maybe four years might be too long for others, too.
Altman shared other thoughts and advice, including why it's often a waste to try to be taken seriously.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said two years in college was "the exact right amount of time" for him. It may be for others, too.
"I think I learned a lot, and it would have been like vastly diminishing returns," Altman recently told investor Cory Levy during a surprise appearance at Internapalooza, Levy's networking summit for tech interns.
Altman said the four-year college experience may not be necessary in today's world.
"I've sort of thought that maybe the way the world has evolved, college just shouldn't be as long as it is, but it was still great to meet people and kind of like live on your own and get to work on projects," he said.
In 2005, the future OpenAI chief dropped out of Stanford after two years to cofound Loopt, an app that allowed users to share their location with friends. Loopt went on to be part of the first Y Combinator batch, which paved the way for Altman's eventual rise to running the famed startup incubator himself.
Altman said two more years of college "would have not been that great."
"So, I was very happy with how it went, but you don't get to run the experiment twice," he said. "I know a lot of people now who have not gone to college at all and done great."
Altman's views align with those of others in tech, most notably his mentor and PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel, who supports a fellowship that awards $250,000 to young people to skip college entirely or at least take a break from their studies.
Altman's career advice
The OpenAI chief had additional advice for those in the audience, including why it's often a waste for young entrepreneurs to try to be taken seriously.
"I think people put too much effort into trying to get taken seriously, and you can sort of get a long way in life and career just by doing stuff," Altman said. "And I think this is much more true now than ever before. You can make a whole startup kind of by yourself in a room with a lot of AI tokens, but not much else."
Altman said that in some cases, you may just need to add someone to your team.
"If you were trying to do enterprise sales to a big, stodgy, old company, then it kind of does," he said. "And after trying and failing to get taken seriously in that specific way for a while, I was like, 'I'm just going to hire a 50-year-old.'"
Asked about the time when he juggled OpenAI and his other duties, Altman said it's bad advice to tell people starting out to focus on just a single project.
"I think it's fine to work on multiple projects for a little while because you don't really know what's going to work," he said. "You don't really know what you're going to be interested in. You don't really know what's going to be a good fit. But then the mistake that people do make is as soon as you figure out what your highest conviction thing is, that is when you're supposed to do the painful work of getting free from the other stuff and going all in."
Dario Amodei is the co-founder and CEO of Anthropic,
Bloomberg/Getty Images
Since Anthropic is still private, the vast majority of investors buy on secondary markets.
Anthropic's secondary valuation has soared to $1.5 trillion over the past month, a 25% increase.
Anthropic's valuation has continued to climb even as its competitors have been closing the gap.
Investors still can't get enough of Anthropic.
As the AI giant races towards what could be one of the largest IPOs in history, its shares are changing hands on secondary markets at valuations as high as $1.5 trillion, even as competition from OpenAI and Chinese open-source models intensifies.
Anthropic's private market valuation has recently soared to as much as $1.5 trillion, a 25% increase over the past month, according to three secondary traders who spoke with Business Insider. The catch is that shares are incredibly tough to get.
"The few sellers on our books are around $1.5 trillion," said Glen Anderson, CEO of Rainmaker Securities, a merchant bank focused on private securities transactions. "Even at that number, there aren't a lot of sellers out there."
Anthropic was last valued at $965 billion in a funding round announced in May. In June, it filed paperwork to go public, with an expected public market debut in the next few months.
"People are trying to position themselves ahead of the IPO," said Adam Crawley, president of Augment, a marketplace to invest in private shares.
Since Anthropic is still private, the vast majority of investors buy on secondary markets, where existing stock is sold by employees or early investors. Some are legitimate, while others have involved suspect deals with high fees and byzantine ownership structures structured as SPVs, or special-purpose vehicles, which allow investors to pool their funds for a single, one-off deal.
Anthropic declined to comment for this story. On its website, it has become more explicit in cautioning against unauthorized stock sales and scams.
Some buyers have heeded the warnings and are being more choosy about which stock they buy, according to Aman Verjee, a general partner at Practical Venture Capital.
"Many buyers are now asking for direct cap table exposure," he said. "Demand for nested SPVs with indirect exposure, less reporting rights, or exposure to Anthropic's earlier rounds and common shares is softer, and I'm not seeing a lot of demand at $1.5 trillion for that, but there is some."
Soaring valuation even as competition increases
Anthropic's secondary valuation has continued to climb even as its competitors have been closing the gap.
Former interns from Google, Tinder, and AWS suggested making connections with other employees.
nd3000/Getty Images
Former interns from Google, AWS, and Tinder share their tips for securing full-time offers.
They suggested building connections at the company and raising your hand.
They also advised taking agency, showing curiosity, and keeping track of your wins.
It's almost the end of summer, which means interns everywhere are approaching the looming question they've probably been avoiding: Am I getting a return offer?
The job market may feel more chaotic and competitive than usual — and AI certainly adds a layer of uncertainty as it reshapes the workforce and changes what companies are looking for. However, when it comes to proving yourself early in your career, much of the advice hasn't changed.
We rounded up some of the best tips former interns from companies like Google and Tinder have shared with us over the last two years on how they turned their internships into full-time offers. Their paths were different, but the same four lessons kept coming up.
Show eagerness to learn
In addition to taking initiative, interns should prioritize asking questions and show an eagerness to learn. Curiosity remains a key trait that executives look for in employees moving up the ladder.
Victoria Rozanska said she was curious about others and their work.
Victoria Rozanska
Victoria Rozanska, a former Google intern, recently told Business Insider that embracing continuous learning was critical to her success. She said being open to feedback is "key to thriving."
Ryan Stewart, who interned at Tinder before eventually becoming a full-time brand manager,said in July that he was initially nervous about approaching senior leaders, but found that leading with curiosity made people receptive.
Ryan Stewart said he led with curiosity when trying to connect with leaders at Tinder.
Tinder
"If you're seen as being curious, there's no wrongdoing there, and I think you can go for it," Stewart said.
Asking questions is also a key part of learning how to do the job.
Kevin Gutierrez, a recent graduate of Columbia University, who interned at AWS and was later offered a full-time position, told Business Insider thatwhen interns are given a project, it's their responsibility to gain a deep understanding of it. He said if you have a solid grasp on what's going on, it makes the work easier.
Build relationships
Former interns from both Google and Tinder had a similar piece of advice: build relationships whenever you get the chance.
Nancy Qi said she had lunch with her colleagues every day.
Nancy Qi
Nancy Qi, a former Google intern who spent three summers at the tech giant before receiving a full-time offer, told Business Insider in 2024 that she ate lunch with her colleagues every day, and that helped create "team chemistry." Those relationships also made her more excited to come to work and motivated her on the job.
Interns should also strive to make connections beyond their immediate teammates.
Tinder's Stewart said that he scheduled one-on-one meetings with senior directors to learn more about the business.
Even if you don't ultimately stay at the company, those connections can make an internship feel less intimidating and leave you with a stronger network when you graduate.
"It's good to build up a good network of successful people, and it's just good to network with people that are farther along the career path than you," Tawfiq Mohammad, a former Google intern,saidlast year.
Take initiative
It can be intimidating to speak up when you're one of the least experienced people in the room, but that's all the more reason to use your voice whenever you have the chance. Taylor Wong, a former Tinder intern, said her Gen Z perspective became an asset because colleagues actively wanted to hear from someone in that demographic.
"When you are the Gen Z person in the room, everyone wants your opinion," Wong said in July, adding that other interns should "lean into that superpower."
Taylor Wong interned at Tinder.
Tinder
Interns should take advantage of opportunities to show agency in projects they're assigned.
"You're going to be given a project that summer and try to own that project," Mohammad said about interning at Google. "Try to own it from A to Z."
Eric Brandon Kam, who received an offer at Tinder after his internship, said that for him, that meant speaking up and sharing his perspective on the projects he was assigned.
Eric Brandon Kam is a backend engineer at Tinder.
Eric Brandon Kam
"Instead of just implementing tickets, I gave my own perspective on how we could better engineer a project to prioritize both user outcome and long-term code health," Kam said in July.
Keep track of your work — and your wins
Eventually, every intern has the inevitable conversation about whether they're getting a return offer, but the prep should start before.
Lydia Lam, who completed three Google internships before joining the company full time, recommended "producing a lot of artifacts." She said in 2025 that designs, projects, or other tangible work can demonstrate your skills and impact.
Lydia Lam interned at Google.
Lydia Lam
Qi took a similar approach to documenting her work. At the end of every week, she wrote down notes about what she was stuck on and what she accomplished. When she filled out the reflection at the end of the summer, she included screenshots and links to those weekly summaries. She said it showed effort and allowed the person reviewing her work to see her problem-solving process and how she approached each issue.
Stewart went a step further. He said he spent his internship identifying gaps in the business and pitched his own full-time role at the end of it. He approached the conversation knowing the worst answer was "no," and since his internship was already ending, he figured he had nothing to lose by asking.
South Korea's stock markets have been on a wild ride this year.
Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images
South Korea's Kospi has surged 22% from its July low, roaring back into a technical bull market.
Chip giants Samsung and SK Hynix are powering the rebound after driving much of July's brutal rout.
Macquarie sees more upside as booming AI demand fuels a memory-chip crunch benefiting the two giants.
South Korean stocks are back in a technical bull market, just two weeks after a brutal selloff.
On Thursday, South Korea's benchmark Kospi closed 4% higher, leaving it 22% above its July 30 closing low and meeting the widely used definition of a technical bull market.
The turnaround has been swift. The Kospi index plunged about 40% from its June 22 peak to its July 30 trough, as a selloff in index heavyweights Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix amplified losses.
On Thursday, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix closed 5% and 6% higher, respectively, as optimism over AI-driven memory demand lifted chip stocks.
Analysts at Macquarie Capital said July's steep losses — when Kospi plunged 22% — appeared to be driven more by investor positioning and fund flows than a deterioration in fundamentals.
Foreign and institutional selling has stabilized since late July, while margin financing remains at reasonable levels, the bank's analysts wrote in a note on Friday.
"The volatility is over," they wrote.
Being in a technical bull market doesn't mean the Kospi's rally will continue. But August has been calmer so far, with the benchmark index up 3.3% month to date.
Samsung and SK Hynix drove much of July's rout, accounting for 71% of the Kospi's losses. Together, they fell 48%, compared with 26% for the rest of the market, according to Macquarie's analysis.
Macquarie's analysts expect Samsung and SK Hynix to lead the near-term rebound, supported by surging AI-driven demand for memory chips.
"We are facing the worst memory crunch in history and see no signs of supply constraints easing within the next three years," Macquarie said.
Macquarie said AI inference-driven demand is "off the charts," requiring huge amounts of memory even as supply remains constrained and slow to respond.
Macquarie has an year-end target of 8,000 for the Kospi, implying about 17% upside from its current level of 6,813.34.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics will publish the July consumer price index report at 8:30 a.m. ET. Inflation slipped to 3.5% in June, the lowest rate since March and cooler than the expected 3.8%. The consensus forecast for July is a modest cooling down to 3.4%.
"Forces eroding inflation include rising rental vacancy rates that are restraining rent growth, a less onerous tariff regime than a year ago and moderating wage gains," David Kelly, chief global strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, said in commentary. "However, the pace at which inflation declines depends on how long it takes to return to normal traffic through the Strait of Hormuz."
A key comparison to watch is whether inflation outpaced wage growth for the fourth straight month. Wage growth slowed to 3.2% over the year in July, the lowest increase since 2021.
"Even if you're making more money numbers-wise, with the way prices are rising, you have less money left over at the end of the month," ZipRecruiter economist Nicole Bachaud told Business Insider. "That's really going to impact the large consumer base of America, middle- and low-income households, who are really dependent on wage growth to help them remain economically viable."
Energy is one big category to watch in today's report as the Iran war and its effects on the oil market continue. Growth in the energy price index cooled to a year-over-year rate of 15.7% in June from a 23.5% peak in May.
The new price data comes after Friday's dismal jobs report, which showed the US shed jobs in July. Downward revisions showed around 100,000 fewer jobs were created over the previous two months than was previously reported. Unemployment and overall labor force participation dropped, while prime-age labor force participation ticked up.
Cory Stahle, senior economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab, said several data sources showing anemic wage growth and weak hiring together indicate that employers aren't "necessarily pulling out the stops to try to attract workers" because there isn't pressure to do so. He added that companies may be prioritizing health benefits over wage increases.
There will be another CPI report out before the Federal Open Market Committee meets in mid-September to determine what to do next with interest rates. On Tuesday afternoon, CME FedWatch showed about a 50-50 chance of a hike or unchanged rates, based on interest rate traders' expectations.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Kirk Gafill, an owner and general manager of Nepenthe, said the restaurant is losing thousands in sales while under an evacuation order due to the Timber Fire.
Kirk Gafill
Kirk Gafill runs Nepenthe, an iconic Big Sur restaurant under evacuation due to the Timber Fire.
He said Nepenthe faces up to $70,000 in lost sales each day it's closed during peak season.
Gafill said the impact on Nepenthe and its employees will depend on how long the fire lasts.
This is an as-told-essay based on a conversation with Kirk Gafill, an owner and general manager of Nepenthe, a restaurant on California's Big Sur coast that is under an evacuation order due to the Timber Fire. Gafill is also the president of the Big Sur Chamber of Commerce. This story has been edited for length and clarity.
I live on property at Nepenthe, but when I first became aware of the fire on Saturday, my wife and I were at our home in Monterey Bay, where we often spend weekends. Every fire makes you sit up and pay attention, but I was hoping it wouldn't be very impactful and that it might take care of itself.
By mid-morning Sunday, I went down to Nepenthe. We had very good visibility and could see that the fire was pretty active, and the air attack, or planes fighting the fire. It was very dramatic. When a tree goes up, it's like a Roman candle. We could see it was expanding. When the evacuation orders started coming on Sunday evening, we began to treat it as a full-blown threat.
We have workforce housing with about 30 units, so when the mandatory evacuation came in, we communicated with our staff, and most of them relocated temporarily. Myself, my son, and a small handful of employees have stayed on the property or have been driving in, providing facility security and maintenance, and continuing preparation in the event the fire takes a turn for the worse and comes closer to us.
This is our peak period. Every day we're not open this time of year is a $65,000 to $70,000 loss in sales. We are in a wait-and-see mode and evaluating when conditions will improve to the point we can reopen for guest service.
Nepenthe, located on a cliffside on the Big Sur coast, has been under an evacuation order due to the Timber Fire.
Nepenthe
In this situation, information is the gold standard. The first thing you want to know is how threatened you are. Official information, particularly in the first 72 to 96 hours, is often extremely delayed, incomplete, or inconsistent. It's like the fog of war. It just takes time.
We prepare year-round for fires, but there's always more to do
We're in a heavily forested area and have been through a lot of fires. We can go a decade or more without a significant fire, and then you can have two or three years of them in a row. We know it's a when, not an if. We just don't know when the "when" will be.
We do year-round fire prevention and mitigation work. But you always find something that you haven't done as well as you could have. We've been reevaluating where grasses may have grown up in our defensible space, checking to make sure we don't have leaf litter building up in any of our eaves or gutters, and examining all of our structures to ensure there aren't flammables stacked up against the walls or nearby.
We have fire hydrants around the property, so we're also making sure they have wrenches so if someone needs to attach a fire hose and use it, the wrench is there to open and close the hydrant.
Nepenthe has been closed while the evacuation order has been in place.
Nepenthe
If the fire becomes too intense or puts any of our staff at risk, we'll have to walk away. To the extent we can safely do so, we're trying to be here to complement and support the efforts of fire services.
As a restaurant, we're also running up against a significant amount of perishable food that we want to find a home for before it spoils. Even though we're not open to the public, our chef is triaging our food stock to provide to food banks or to create meals on the fly for first responders.
You try to make the best use of the time, not be caught up in the anxiety of it all, and also manage your own mental and physical health and get enough rest. That's always tough in the first 48 hours. You also have to continue to reevaluate your risk management. How long is it safe to be in an area that's deemed to be so dangerous that you're under mandatory evacuation?
The longer this lasts, the worse it is for the business and our employees
Every day we are unable to open is a huge loss of income for employees and the business itself.
We are doing what we can to ensure we can reopen effectively and resume guest service at the earliest opportunity.
We're in this constant balancing act of how do we deal with our perishables? How do we handle our staffing commitments and be ready to open tomorrow if the evacuation order is lifted?
Gafill said he and a few other employees are still on site at the restaurant and waiting to see how the fire spreads.
Nepenthe
The bigger impact will depend on whether our business insurance, which should kick in after the first 48 hours and last up to 28 days, covers the losses. This event would seem to meet the necessary stipulations, but with insurance, you never really know. If that insurance is not applicable, it will have a severe economic impact, the severity of which depends on how long this lasts.
We've got Highway 1 as something of a firebreak, so right now we're not nearly as at risk as a number of other locations, but even if a fire doesn't impact us directly, there are indirect impacts. On Tuesday, part of the highway closed. That effectively shuts down our guest operations. We're keeping our fingers crossed that this will be measured in days, not anything longer.
One thing we feel confident about is that once highway access is restored and we're no longer dealing with evacuation considerations, business levels will rebound very quickly.
Big Sur is still stunningly beautiful, even with the fire slopes. In the early days, you can't help but see the black, charred slope contrasted against the unburned, green vegetation. But this is a very suitable landscape for quick recovery from fire. The slopes will regrow to the point where two months from now we'll have visitors saying, "I heard there was a fire. Where was it?"
Gafill said the impact on the restaurant will depend on how long the fire or highway closure lasts.
Nepenthe
As you get closer and closer to the point where you're making really hard decisions, your anxiety gets pretty high. You just try to keep calm, make the best decision you can, and make sure whatever decision you make doesn't imperil somebody else.
Do you get scared? Hell yes. Are you questioning yourself? Absolutely.
And if you have to make the hard decision one way or the other, try to err on the side of safety. You can always come back and rebuild if you have to. You don't want to endanger yourself or someone else.
Damian Mansell was stunned to see what Google was saying about his nascent business. When he searched for reviews of The Plastics Shed — the online building-plastics supplier he incorporated at the start of 2025 — the platform's AI overview said customer feedback was "overwhelmingly negative." It listed complaints about delayed deliveries, lying staff, and damaged products. While the company had some positive feedback, the summary said, its poor customer service was a "significant recurring issue." The good news: The reviews weren't actually about Mansell's company. They appeared to be for competitors and companies that sold actual plastic sheds. The bad news: He had no idea what to do about it.
Mansell, who lives in the UK, says. "I can see how that happens, but why should it happen with Google?" Mansell, who lives in the UK. "I mean, obviously, the forefront of AI technology."
To make matters worse, Mansell was paying Google about £700 a month to advertise, while the summaries warned people away. Following advice he found on online forums, he repeatedly submitted feedback to Google that the abstract was wrong. After a couple of weeks, it started to improve. AI has been an invaluable tool for him to build out his business, so he doesn't want to malign the tech in general, but he wishes there were more accountability when things go awry.
"AI gives the common man the knowledge, but it can also ruin the common man," he says.
Google's AI Overviews are rapidly becoming consumers' first impression of businesses. Instead of scanning reviews and websites, many users see a single synopsis that purports to blend information from across the internet into a comprehensive digest. When those summaries are inaccurate, misleading, or jumbled, business owners say they can cause serious reputational damage and financial losses, and there's often little recourse.
Mansell still wonders how much business the issue cost him. He's tried to get Google to refund some of his ad dollars, but he hasn't had any luck, despite his best efforts.
"I'm like a dog with a bone," he says. "But I met my match with Google."
Internet search has changed drastically in the last few years: Instead of a list of links, Google often provides a single response that's supposed to summarize the constellation of online information. These overviews look right and sound confident, but they draw on a litany of sources with varying levels of reliability. They can even spit out information that is flat-out wrong. (Like recommending people make glue pizza.) Misinformation on the internet isn't new, but the clean, concise, AI-concocted package is.
"With the traditional search engine, the user sees multiple things. So if one of them has something wrong, chances are something else would counterbalance it," says Chirag Shah, a professor at the University of Washington's Information School. That's now gone, and with AI overviews, you're getting "The Answer," which may or may not be correct.
I look at the AI overview, I wouldn't call me.
For business owners, the consequences can be more than a mild annoyance or temporary confusion. These AI summaries are becoming their digital storefronts. Across the internet, you can find entrepreneurs and managers grumbling that AI summaries mix them up with other companies, surface complaints that are directed at someone else, or dole out false facts.
Earlier this year, Betty Whitney started noticing that Google's overviews were conflating her company — NW Select Property Management in Idaho — with similarly named businesses. The top panel seemed to be merging her firm with one in the region that closed years ago and mixing her reviews up with property managers in other states.
"If I'm a customer, and I'm looking for a property management company, and I look at the AI overview, I wouldn't call me," she says.
Whitney has spent months trying to amend the situation. Like Mansell, she's used Google's feedback mechanism to give overviews a "thumbs down" when they're wrong, and she's made some adjustments to her website to try to feed the AI crawlers more accurate data. After bringing her problem to a Google support forum, she got in touch with a third-party SEO expert who was able to help her out — sort of. The overview has gotten better, but it still periodically reverts to the mistake-filled version.
Three years after relocating, Philippa Main, a real estate agent in Northern Virginia, still can't completely convince Google that she's no longer in Florida. When she searches her name, most of the information that comes up about her is correct, but then there's a line that confidently states that she's been "servicing the Tampa Bay area since 2014," even though it sits right above her Virginia address. Main's tried everything she could think of to get it adjusted, combing the internet to try to find where the AI is drawing from, emailing Google, and asking friends to report the issue.
"There's so much competition in my industry that if any single thing seems off, someone's just going to call the next person on the list," she says. It's especially frustrating for small businesses, because "we're just trying to do everything that we can to compete with these massive companies who actually do have direct lines to Google or their representatives," she says. "Google just doesn't seem to care."
In a statement, a Google spokesperson told me that its search-related AI experiences are "rooted in our quality ranking systems and are designed to present a range of perspectives" from all over the internet. "AI Overviews are responsive to people's specific queries; for example, if someone specifically searches for complaints about a business, the generated response will likely show relevant information from sources across the web," they said.
It's no secret that AI is not always a bastion of truth — almost everyone who's used the technology has experienced a response from it that's highly off-base at some point. As the New York Times wrote in April, Google processes over five trillion searches a year, and even if its overviews are right nine times out of 10, that still means half a trillion wrongs. Google acknowledges that while the overwhelming majority of its overviews are accurate, there can be cases where they miss context or misinterpret content. A Google spokesperson said the study the Times cited has "serious holes."
Google's summaries synthesize information from many places — a big source is, obviously, the company website, but it also gobbles up Reddit posts, 10-year-old blogs, and Yelp reviews. The platform provides links that are supposed to back up its claims, but those links don't always support the output. AI has also been known to hallucinate, meaning it invents plausible-sounding things from thin air.
"There's so much room for error," says Lily Ray, an SEO and AI search consultant and the founder of Algorythmic, a consultancy.
The overviews are delivered with such assurance that people don't realize they're looking at an extracted or generated answer that may be incomplete or incorrect. Instead of clicking on five links to compare information or just spending a few minutes confirming, they skim the automated summary and call it a day. The AI says this roofing company's reviews are terrible? Onto the next one! Rarely do people dig in to check if it's pulling complaints for a business in another state.
There's so much room for error.
Search industry professionals say this is a new frontier for businesses. They no longer have to focus so heavily on search rankings but must instead manage the AI's interpretation of their reputations. It's not about chasing clicks —it's about making sure AI knows you exist and is nice and correct about you. Ray says it's the "biggest change to search" she's seen in her 16-year career.
This brave new world presents all sorts of nuances and complications. Google likes to cite Reddit a lot, which "can go awry very fast," Ray says. Reddit has a lot of good information, but it can also be a little wild. The same goes for YouTube comments, which the AI also seems to like. Some brands suffer from an information void: there's not a lot of content out there about them, so AI tries to fill in the gaps or comes up with bad answers. Or, they've got a name problem where they're too close to another entity, and the model can't tell who's who. There may be bad actors who intentionally leave false or negative information about businesses online for AI summaries to pick up. Even simple facts, such as store hours or phone numbers, require a concerted effort across the entire internet to keep straight. "There's so much maintenance work that has to go into keeping a brand's content and information accurate and up to date," Ray says.
Michael King, the founder and CEO of iPullRank, a digital marketing agency, tells me he focuses on citation accuracy and on gaining some influence over AI outputs. "The way these systems work is they're basically doing a bunch of searches in the background, and then they're feeding content to the large language model," King says. Businesses need to create more "surface area" — meaning publishing more content and targeting more keywords — to help AI find the right answer. He encourages clients to position themselves as the experts on their own brands.
"You've got to think of it as more like a reputation management campaign than your classic SEO campaign," King says. "It's just far more multidimensional."
Ben Fisher does this for a living and still runs into problems. He noticed that Google's AI summary was warning that his company — Steady Demand, a SEO and social media consultancy for small businesses — was a scam. After doing some digging, he realized it was referring to an old Reddit thread about a similarly named app and had to take some time out to "train" Google to know the difference.
"The big problem is there's nobody to contact. The other big problem is you search once, and you're done," Fisher says. Large language models don't produce the same results every time, even for the same questions, so people don't realize one result might not match the next month, week, or minute. "It's still a situation where you should be monitoring things on a regular basis," he says. "Otherwise, you're just not going to know why you're not getting calls."
This is a difficult issue to tackle from a technological, entrepreneurial, and regulatory point of view. LLMs are improving, but they're never going to be perfect. Business owners can do their best to keep an eye on how they're showing up in search results, but they've also got 9,000 other things to do.
Reasonable minds — and different countries and legal systems — can disagree about how responsible Google should be when the robot screws up. In Canada, a musician has filed a $1.5 million lawsuit against Google claiming that its AI summary falsely identified him as a sex offender. A court in Germany recently made a preliminary ruling that Google is liable for false statements made in its AI overviews. A Google spokesperson said that the German case focuses on "specific and narrow errors," not the way overviews display content, and that the company disagrees with the ruling and plans to appeal. Shah says that in the US, we have "very little consumer protection" for these types of issues.
"I don't think lawmakers even fully understand the technology enough and the implications to be able to do anything," he says.
In the meantime, business owners are left white-knuckling it, hoping that the mysterious technology at the heart of those AI summaries looks kindly upon them. That's the case with Mansell, who's proud to say that Google's overview of the Plastics Shed is now "fantastic", just like many of his actual reviews.
"It does worry me with regard to what can be said about you without any recourse," he says.
Despite his frustrations with the summary and failed attempts to get a refund, Mansell still pays to advertise with Google — otherwise, people don't click through to his website. "I just gave up," he says. "It was just an absolute pointless exercise."
Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.
