• Netflix shares sank up to 6% after a Q3 earnings beat and weak guidance for the rest of the year.
• Shares had fallen about 44% in the last year as investors worry about slowing growth.
• The streaming leader laid off about 1,000 employees last week and changed its content leadership.

Netflix's third-quarter earnings failed to excite investors, a week after a major content executive shuffle and its biggest round of layoffs since 2022.

The streamer turned in results above expectations for the third quarter, but provided weak guidance for the rest of the year. Netflix said its earnings beat was primarily due to the timing of expenses.

Netflix's revenue growth slowed for a third straight quarter, and the company projected it would continue to decelerate in the fourth quarter.

Shares fell up to 6% in after-hours trading on Tuesday.

"While Netflix is growing, the pace of that growth is slowing," Forrester's Mike Proulx said. "That's a wake-up call for the company that once defined the streaming market and is now in need of growth reacceleration."

Here's how the streaming giant's Q3 financial results compared to the company's forecast:

• Revenue: $12.87 billion vs $12.86 billion estimated ($11.5 billion in Q3 2025)
• Earnings: $0.87 per share vs $0.82 per share estimated ($0.59 per share in Q3 2025)

Netflix told investors to expect earnings of $0.67 per share in the fourth quarter, below Wall Street's $0.73 per share estimate. The company's $13.44 billion revenue projection for Q4 was also lower than analysts' estimate of $13.51 billion.

The streaming leader cut its annual advertising forecast from $3 billion to $2.7 billion, citing a slower-than-expected rollout of its ad products.

"With Netflix under pressure to find alternative lines of revenue beyond subscriptions, it's concerning that the company lowered its estimate for its ad business," said analyst Ross Benes of Emarketer, Business Insider's sister company.

Heading into Q3 earnings, Netflix's stock was down over 44% in the last year as investors worried about engagement growth and stiff competition from YouTube and other free streamers.

Netflix said in its third-quarter shareholder letter that it knows "there's some investor concern about our view hours growth" but added that engagement "remains healthy."

"We do seek to accelerate growth in view hours as well, and we're confident we'll do that by relentlessly focusing and executing" its strategy, the shareholder letter said.

The company has invested in video games and podcasts but didn't mention either in its letter, outside a disclosure section on "forward-looking statements."

Netflix's results came less than a week after it shook up its content leadership team and cut about 1,000 workers.

Content chief Bela Bajaria is leaving her role after more than three years, Netflix announced last week. The company said Monday that film chief Dan Lin is also out.

Bajaria will be replaced by Peter Rice, a former Fox and Disney exec who ran Disney's TV division, including ABC and FX. Netflix hasn't yet said who will replace Lin; Rice will oversee film in the meantime.

"It's our goal to go from very good to great," co-CEO Greg Peters said of Netflix's content slate on the company's earnings call.

The leadership changes come as Netflix battles slowing viewership growth. The streaming powerhouse generated 97 billion viewing hours in the first half of the year, which was up 2% year-over-year.

Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said at an industry event hosted by Bloomberg last month that Netflix was "not growing as fast as I want us to, and we're working on making that move faster."

"Revamping content strategy is not enough to fix this challenge, but it is a worthwhile start," Benes said.

Netflix layoffs were across its product, tech, HR, and legal teams. Co-CEOs Sarandos and Peters said in a memo to staffers that the company was downsizing so it can be "disciplined about where we prioritize our people and resources."

Other media companies have laid off employees in the last month. NBCUniversal cut a few hundred global streaming tech employees in early October, and Disney trimmed its tech and HR teams in late September.

In the second quarter, Netflix's results were roughly in line with analysts' expectations. The stock sank 8% after the report as Netflix said it would cut back on how frequently it shared viewership data.

• AWS expected to get $5 billion of Nvidia GB300 racks, followed by $3 billion more each month.
• Some of these GPU systems are being stored elsewhere due to lack of data center power.
• Amazon CEO Andy Jassy sees AI as a major opportunity, but getting capacity online is a challenge.

Amazon is racing to secure AI hardware earlier than before, even as data center power shortages leave some GPU systems waiting in warehouses.

Under a new Early Rack Receipt process, AWS expected to receive roughly $5 billion in Nvidia's GB300 server racks at US facilities before final deployment, according to August internal emails reviewed by Business Insider. The company projected roughly $3 billion more in GB300 racks each month "for the foreseeable future," one of the emails said.

Some AWS sites had room for more racks but not enough available power to turn them on, people familiar with the effort said, leaving finished equipment to be staged at intermediary warehouses until the facilities were ready.

At least one AWS team did not have "a clear forecasted path" for getting the incoming racks into data centers at the time, according to one of the emails.

Dark GPUs

A lack of new electricity capacity is one of several bottlenecks slowing the buildout of some AI data centers. This has led to a phenomenon known as dark GPUs, where AI chips and servers are purchased but can sit idle due to power supply issues or other challenges. (Dark GPUs can also refer to system design flaws that mean this gear isn't fully used after being plugged in).

This is partly why financial pressure is mounting on big data center projects. Money must be spent upfront to secure supplies of Nvidia GPUs and other valuable AI components. But if some data centers aren't ready to run, those early investments can tie up huge amounts of cash. Debt financing can fill in the gaps, but the market has become less willing to lend against some of these projects lately.

Trade-off

Amazon's early-rack program is one piece of the cloud leader's broader AI buildout, which is putting new pressure on its cash flow, as Business Insider exclusively reported this week. Amazon expects roughly $220 billion in capital expenditures this year — more than any Big Tech peer. Its free-cash-flow turned negative last quarter for the first time since 2023, and could stay negative for a while.

For AWS, the trade-off is securing scarce GPU racks before competitors do, even if some data centers are not yet ready to turn them on. But taking ownership earlier can tie up billions in equipment before it starts generating cloud revenue.

Previously, AWS took ownership of a finished rack only upon delivery to a data center, according to internal documents. Under the new approach, it can pay for and record certain racks earlier in the supply chain.

An Amazon spokesperson said the company routinely stages finished hardware near deployment sites so it can install it once capacity becomes available, calling the practice "best business practice." The spokesperson added that Amazon has long-established systems for tracking infrastructure assets and disputed that the broader company lacked a path for getting racks into data centers.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy previously said the company has a "clear line of sight" to strong returns from its AI investments, calling the technology a "once in a lifetime opportunity."

"We've been through this cycle with the first big AWS growth wave, and liked the results," Jassy wrote in Amazon's annual shareholder letter. "We expect to feel similarly about this next wave."

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• The Wall Street Journal has been planning a big streaming TV push with an ambitious slate of shows.
• It's explored shows around editor in chief Emma Tucker and creators like Feed Me's Emily Sundberg.
• Sundberg dropped out of talks a few weeks ago, Business Insider has learned.

The Wall Street Journal has been ramping up its push into video and had plans for an ambitious slate of streaming TV shows.

Internal documents viewed by Business Insider described an initial six-series offering that would include a flagship live morning program and an interview show hosted by the Journal's editor in chief, Emma Tucker. The docs are from the summer, and a person familiar with the Journal's strategy said that its plans, including dates and partners, are in flux.

The docs said the Journal had been "in negotiations" with creators such as Feed Me Substacker Emily Sundberg, as well as with the restaurant discovery platform The Infatuation. Sundberg dropped out of the talks a few weeks ago, Business Insider has learned.

The plans called for the shows to launch on the Journal's own channels, YouTube, and social media.

Journal parent company Dow Jones is also hiring a head of programming and content, who would be tasked with building "something ambitious in video." The live job description says the role will pay up to $330,000 in base salary, and involve developing talent that includes employees and external creators, translating the company's journalism into streaming formats, and creating live and on-demand shows.

The Journal and Dow Jones's effort shows how news outlets traditionally known for the written word — including The New York Times — are racing to beef up their video offerings in a media landscape that's seeing both the rise of social video and the decline of cable TV news. It also demonstrates that Tucker is taking a flexible approach to the market by looking to both build shows around in-house talent, including herself, and partner with creators and other media companies.

"Expanding our video presence across Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal is a major strategic priority, as we have widely communicated," a Dow Jones spokesperson said. "We are actively hiring leadership to shape and execute our go-to-market strategy for video across Dow Jones, and we look forward to sharing our updated plans when ready."

The Journal name-checked familiar figures

The internal docs viewed by Business Insider described the live morning show as a 60-minute-long anchor of the initial slate. The docs said the Journal enlisted some familiar names in morning news and video to help execute the show. They said the Journal has been working with the production company EverWonder, which was cofounded by the former Time Studios executive Ian Orefice with backing from Jeff Zucker's RedBird IMI.

Another show in the proposed slate in the docs was "The Exchange with Emma Tucker," which was billed as a "prestige interview franchise" that would put viewers "in the room with the people running the global economy." The documents name-checked top CEOs, including Microsoft's Satya Nadella, JPMorgan Chase's Jamie Dimon, and BlackRock's Larry Fink, as potential guests.

The person familiar with the Journal's strategy said the documents represented one of a number of different avenues the outlet was exploring and didn't reflect the current status and form of its efforts. The person said the company is in active conversations with a number of external people for potential partnerships.

The documents said the Journal had been "in negotiations" with Sundberg — which have since ended — for a show called "Feed Me, On Camera" that would introduce her "highly engaged, younger creator audience to WSJ while bringing WSJ's scale, authority, and affluent professional audience to her world." The docs envisioned each episode beginning with a "tip, obsession, or question from the Feed Me universe," and following Sundberg to its conclusion while integrating business context and reporting from the Journal.

Other shows the docs said the Journal had explored included one called "Market Price with The Infatuation" that would tackle the "business behind taste, literally." It would combine the cultural authority and young audience of The Infatuation, now owned by JPMorgan Chase, with the Journal's business reporting chops.

Another was "Inside Sports" ("title to change"), a "next generation reboot of 'Real Sports' for the sports-as-an-asset class era," potentially helmed by Emmy-winning TV journalist Armen Keteyian.

The documents said the Journal had been "in negotiations" with The Infatuation and "in discussions" with Keteyian. Business Insider could not confirm the status of those discussions.

The last series listed in the docs was an AI show that aimed to get a big-name host.

The Journal compared its plans to 'The Daily'

In the docs, the Journal expressed big ambitions for a live morning news show, and said there had been "nothing new" in the category for a professional audience "in a decade." The last entry on a timeline included in the planning docs was The New York Times' "The Daily" in 2017, which has become a reliable top show on the podcast charts and one of the paper's most successful launches.

"We see an opportunity to reinvent the category," the documents said. The Journal also has its own daily news podcast, called "The Journal."

Like the Times, the Journal is in a rare position in a challenged media environment to make a transformative investment. The Journal, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., is profitable, helped by an early move to paywall its journalism.

The documents said that in its video push, the Journal aimed to produce 20 hours of video a week, expand to a free, ad-supported streaming (FAST) channel, and add subscription options and other formats as demand warranted. Between WSJ TV, existing video shows, licensed shows, and co-productions with creators, the Journal aspired to be an "always-on streaming channel." The person familiar with the Journal's strategy said those goals didn't represent its current plans.

Tucker took the helm at the Journal in 2023, moving from the Murdoch-owned UK Sunday Times with a plan to increase engagement with the Journal's digital products. Digital subscriptions rose 8% to 4.5 million in the three months ended June 30 versus the year-ago period. She has called for more lively writing and enterprise reporting. The Journal had already begun to reorient its video strategy under its former head of video Maral Usefi. Under Usefi, the video team had grown by a third, to 65 people, as of April. She was succeeded by Samantha Henig, who was hired in July to lead a new multimedia team.

The docs said that with the Journal's new effort, it aimed to combine its authority and scale with the personality of creator-led media and modern distribution. In terms of audience, it intended to reach a younger viewership than the traditional business TV audience and more decision-makers than creator-led media.

It projected reaching about 75 million viewers through Dow Jones' social reach, upward of 5.6 million monthly watch hours by its 2028 fiscal year, and ad rates that were three to five times what business content on YouTube commands. The person familiar with the Journal's strategy didn't say if those figures represented its current ambitions.

The Journal made a big push into original video more than a decade ago, including the launch of video app WSJ Live in 2011 and expanding to episodic video doc series. Publishers overall have newly reprioritized video amid the rise of short-form content, YouTube's increasing popularity on TV screens, and the success of new live shows like TBPN.

While embracing creator talent — and getting its own staff involved in video content — could help the Journal reach a younger audience, it comes with risks. Journalists who become on-camera talent can often command higher paydays, or defect to start their own ventures, like The New York Times' "Hard Fork" hosts Kevin Roose and Casey Newton did recently. Creators often have their own audiences, which give them leverage over a news organization that staff reporters might not have.

Flagship video shows are also expensive to produce, which makes high ad rates crucial to the Journal's success with this slate. The internal docs explored pitching a variety of ways for advertisers to get involved, including as launch partners, with category-exclusive partnerships, and as "moment partners" tied to major news events like elections, earnings, and WSJ specials.

• Joel Kaplan, Meta's chief global affairs officer, is leaving, Meta confirmed to Business Insider.
• Kaplan, a Republican who once worked for the Bush administration, spent 15 years at Meta.
• Kaplan helped bridge ties between Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and President Donald Trump.

A longtime political operative at Meta who played a key role in bridging ties between the company and President Donald Trump's administration is leaving.

Joel Kaplan, Meta's chief global affairs officer, will leave after the midterm elections and a transition period, Axios first reported. Meta confirmed the report to Business Insider.

A veteran Marine Corps artillery officer, Kaplan is a Republican who served as an advisor and deputy chief of staff to former president George W. Bush.

Kaplan joined Meta in 2011. At Meta, he oversaw the company's response to policy issues ranging from the Cambridge Analytica scandal to the end of its fact-checking program.

Kaplan helped repair a once-fraught relationship between Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Trump after Meta temporarily suspended Trump's account following the January 6 riot.

Kaplan posted on X on Tuesday that he plans to spend time with his family and figure out what to do next.

Kaplan didn't respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Kaplan has served as Meta's chief global affairs officer since 2025, succeeding former UK politician Nick Clegg. Other Meta executives will share his responsibilities, Axios reported.

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• Google is injecting more AI into the interview process.
• The company has been testing a new format that tests candidates on their AI fluency.
• The pilot has recently rolled out more broadly across Google, internal docs show.

AI is changing how Google employees work — and how Google hires them.

The company has been testing several AI-related changes to its hiring process for software engineers, according to documents reviewed by Business Insider. These changes, which Google has been rolling out in phases throughout this year, include allowing the use of AI in coding interviews and permitting interviewers to use Gemini to give candidates feedback.

Many engineers are also now expected to show some degree of AI fluency as a bare minimum, the documents show.

In May, Business Insider reported that Google was piloting ways to integrate AI into the interview process with a small handful of orgs. This included a new "code comprehension" interview in which candidates are assessed on AI fluency and prompt engineering. Candidates can also use Google's Gemini AI as an assistant during the interview.

The new formats have since been rolled out more broadly across the company, according to the internal documents. However, a spokesperson said they were still considered to be in the pilot phase for now.

"We're piloting updates to our interview process for software engineers, including evaluating for AI fluency, to be more reflective of how our teams are operating," Brian Ong, vice president of recruiting at Google, told Business Insider in a statement.

Like other companies, Google is adapting its hiring process to keep pace with the huge transformation AI is having on software engineering. As developers increasingly rely on AI coding assistants, hiring companies want to know how competent they are with these tools.

In April, Google said that three-quarters of new code created at the company is generated by AI and reviewed by humans, a trend that has since continued across the tech industry. Google has said that its employees are increasingly using the company's own Gemini models to both improve other Google products and to build the next generation of Gemini.

The documents say that for some roles, including software engineering, AI fluency and AI product integration are now used as measures of a candidate's abilities. A Google spokesperson said that AI fluency is a requirement for all software engineering jobs, while AI product integration is required for most roles outside entry-level positions.

Google is also piloting the use of Gemini for interview transcription and note-taking in some job interviews conducted via the company's videoconferencing platform, Google Meet, one document shows.

Google wants to speed up the feedback process using AI, too. The same document states that Google is working to enable interviewers to use Gemini to draft role-tailored feedback.

As Google builds out this new interview system, employees were told they may be asked to participate in some of the pilots — but were warned against using AI tools to generate their own interviewing "solutions."

"Do not use GenAI or LLMs to create your own standalone solutions or agents for hiring or interviewing use cases," the document states, referring to large language models.

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• Apple roiled the ad industry with an unexpected new crackdown on web trackers.
• The tech giant has now issued a rationale for why it's stamping out "identity resolution."
• The ad industry has concerns Apple's latest privacy move may hamper targeting and measurement.

Apple's latest privacy crackdown left the online ad industry scrambling for answers. Now, the tech giant has finally offered some.

Late on Monday, Apple published a blog post laying out its rationale for new restrictions that block technology used to identify and track consumers across websites. The changes are implemented through WebKit, the browser engine that powers Safari and other browsers on iPhones and iPads.

Apple said the change was designed to target "identity resolution," a method adtech companies use to connect separate data points about users — such as email addresses, phone numbers, IP addresses, browsing history, or information about the device they're using — to identify and track them across devices.

The method grew in popularity as many web browsers, including Apple's Safari, began phasing out third-party tracking cookies, the small files dropped on a user's device that were traditionally used for web tracking. The ad industry deploys tracking to precisely target specific audiences and measure whether their campaigns are working.

In its blog post, Apple said that while users might readily offer their email address to log in to a website or sign up for a newsletter, most wouldn't expect it to also be shared with other companies for invisible tracking purposes.

"It's not enough to block cross-site cookies to prevent cross-site tracking today because the tracking industry has not stopped trying to track users on the web," Apple said. "They have ushered into what they call the post cookie era and in our latest releases we have put strong protection in place."

The blog post explains that Apple is implementing "domain-level" blocking, a broad intervention designed to ensure that identity providers can't circumvent the restriction by changing how they send data.

Apple took the adtech industry by surprise earlier this month when it came to light that it had begun blocking the domains operated by several companies that offer alternative identifiers, without warning. The blocked domains included those operated by The Trade Desk, LiveRamp, ID5, Permutive, and Audigent.

The stakes are high for adtech companies that have invested heavily in building identity graphs and alternative tracking identifiers to mitigate the impact of the loss of third-party cookies. Apple's latest move threatens to undermine those efforts and put a dent in their businesses if targeting its users across the web becomes more difficult.

The initial rollout had also blocked The Trade Desk's ability to serve ads at all on Apple-operated browsers. Apple rolled out a fix a few days later that restored The Trade Desk's ad-serving domain from being blocked alongside its advertising identifier, Unified ID 2.0.

The ad industry braces for fallout

The ad industry is now bracing for impact as more users begin updating their devices to iOS 27. Ad pros previously told CMO Insider that the change will make it harder for advertisers to identify and reach people across the open web.

Industry insiders said that by effectively shrinking the pool of users they can target, advertisers are expecting less reach, higher prices to reach the audiences they can still identify, and more difficulty in controlling how often people see an ad and measuring whether their campaigns worked.

Identity resolution has become widespread across the open web. An academic paper published in September that analyzed 600,000 websites over 41 months found that 83.76% of those sites were using alternative identifiers by May 2025.

If advertising becomes less effective on the open web, marketers could funnel more of their budgets into so-called "walled garden" platforms like Meta and Google, which aren't as heavily reliant on alternative identifiers because they have reams of their own logged-in user data. Apple, too, has a growing advertising business within its App Store and apps, including News and Maps.

Apple isn't backing down

There are still unanswered questions about Apple's exact definition of an identity resolution provider, and the company has already demonstrated it can add domains to its block list without warning.

There's also an indication Apple is only getting started. First reported by AdExchanger, Apple has created a broader list that can dynamically block potentially hundreds of adtech, martech, and data companies. Affected companies may not realize they've been added to the list until they begin experiencing disruptions.

In Monday's blog post, Apple linked to its long-standing tracking-prevention policy, which acknowledges that its blocking rules may have unintended impacts. Those include disrupting the funding of websites that use targeted or personalized advertising, advertising measurement, and fraud prevention.

The policy states that while Apple will try to limit unintended impact, "when faced with a tradeoff, we will typically prioritize user benefits over preserving current website practices."

Ever since Apple launched its Intelligent Tracking Prevention feature in 2017, the tech giant has been locked in a cat-and-mouse game with the adtech industry, which has persistently developed workarounds to its privacy updates. Adtech companies have argued that these techniques were necessary to help publishers effectively monetize their websites with ads while still maintaining user privacy.

Apple, which has long held that "privacy is a fundamental human right," makes it clear in its policy that it won't allow workarounds to proceed on its watch.

"We treat circumvention of shipping anti-tracking measures with the same seriousness as exploitation of security vulnerabilities," the Apple policy states. "If a party attempts to circumvent our tracking prevention methods, we may add additional restrictions without prior notice."

• Abdulrahman Alfozan will stay jailed pre-trial, a San Francisco judge decided Monday.
• The engineer is accused of bugging a conference room at OpenAI, and he has been fired.
• Alfozan posed a risk of non-appearance, the judge said, after discussing his ties to Saudi Arabia.

A former OpenAI engineer accused of bugging the AI startup's office was denied release by a San Francisco judge on Monday, meaning he'll have to mount his defense from jail.

The Justice Department arrested Abdulrahman Alfozan on October 9 and charged him with using or attempting to use a device to intercept oral communications. He's accused of placing a recording device behind a television in an OpenAI conference room — an FBI affidavit includes photos of the device wrapped in toilet paper, and a man they say is Alfozan peering behind the TV.

On Monday, the engineer wore a yellow surgical mask and a jail-issued orange sweatshirt to the San Francisco courthouse. Magistrate Judge Alex G. Tse prodded Alfozan's legal team about the risk that he might not appear for a future court hearing.

Tse said that Alfozan's wife and son had traveled to Saudi Arabia with no plans to return, and went back and forth with Yasin about a one-way ticket that Alfozan had previously booked to the country. Tse said that Saudi Arabia and the US do not have an extradition agreement, and expressed skepticism that he had sufficient ties to the Bay Area to prevent his departure.

William Pernik, Alfozan's attorney, argued that, rather than being detained, Alfozan should be fitted with an ankle monitor, ordered to stay home, and have limits placed on his use of technology. The lawyer also said Alfozan is willing to put up "essentially all the money his family has" as bond, including a roughly $1 million investment account.

"Everything this man has, he's willing to surrender, and say, 'I'm not going anywhere,'" Pernik said.

Pernik and Nas Yasin, another of Alfozan's attorneys, cited his coming naturalization interview as evidence of his local ties.

"He was weeks away from achieving every immigrant's dream in this country," Pernik said.

Yasin told Tse that she learned Alfozan's wife had obtained a short-term visitor visa to return to the US, to help improve her husband's case for ties to the Bay Area.

Tse also asked Alfozan's legal team a slew of questions about his relationship with Saudi Arabia, including a commitment by the Saudi consulate to pay his bond and support his legal effort.

Nick Parker, an assistant US attorney, appeared for the prosecution. He argued that the threat of forfeiting a $1 million bond wouldn't be enough to convince Alfozan to return if he made it out of the US, because he might be able to earn more money in Saudi Arabia.

"There is a real threat here that once he leaves, the case is over," Tse responded.

The judge scheduled the case's next hearing for early November.

OpenAI called the recording device "sophisticated" when the arrest went public, though it said it hadn't found signs that he'd taken AI model weights, source code, or customer information. OpenAI fired Alfozan.

Alfozan's charge carries a maximum penalty of 5 years. Pernik said in a statement last week that the allegations "appear wholly out of character for him."

Alfozan, 35, has a green card that makes him a lawful permanent resident of the United States. He attended MIT, then worked at Facebook (now Meta) from 2017 to 2023. After a stint at the engineering startup Nash Technologies, Alfozan joined OpenAI in 2025.

FBI agents have already taken Alfozan's Saudi passport.

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• Netflix's film chief Dan Lin is out after two years.
• He's the latest top exec to exit following a 6% cut at the streamer, its biggest since 2022.
• New content chief Peter Rice will oversee film until a successor to Lin is announced.

Film head Dan Lin is out at Netflix, the latest exec to be ousted in the wake of the streamer's biggest layoff since 2022.

Lin was hired as film chair in 2024 with a mandate to bring greater cost discipline and variety to Netflix's films, which had focused on big-budget output under his predecessor, Scott Stuber. Lin cut big upfront paychecks to actors, reduced staff, and reorganized his department. He oversaw a slate that included Oscar-winning "KPop Demon Hunters," "Happy Gilmore 2," and "Frankenstein."

Lin's exit is the latest big shocker at Netflix. Also out in recent days was chief content officer Bela Bajaria, who was replaced by Hollywood veteran Peter Rice, a former exec at Disney and Fox.

Rice will oversee film until a new head is announced, Netflix said in a statement confirming Lin's departure.

Last week, Netflix laid off 1,000 employees, or about 6% of global head count. That was the streamer's largest cull since 2022, when the company lost subscribers for the first time in more than a decade.

The streaming giant has been hampered by slowing engagement growth and a stock price that has declined more than 40% over the past year. The streamer is contending with the rise of free, ad-supported streaming led by YouTube and the popularity of social video. In recent months, Netflix has turned to podcasters and creators to bulk up its library.

Netflix is set to report third-quarter earnings after the bell on Tuesday.

• Screenshots of Vinted listings circulating on social media show products being offered for a fraction of their retail prices.
• The suspected stolen merchandise was listed after looting in France.
• Vinted told The Telegraph it had taken immediate action to identify and remove listings connected to the violence.

Resale websites including Vinted have removed suspicious listings after they were flooded with apparently stolen goods in the wake of riots that swept across France.

Perfumes, designer handbags, cosmetics and even Pokémon cards have appeared on second-hand marketplaces following a weekend of violence that saw shops ransacked, The Telegraph — which, like Business Insider, is part of the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network — reported.

Screenshots circulating on social media show products being offered for a fraction of their retail prices, including bags overflowing with Sephora cosmetics advertised for as little as €10 (£8.40).

The listings have triggered suspicions that looters are trying to sell stolen goods online. eBay and Vinted have removed some items and stepped up their monitoring of suspicious activity.

One advert on Vinted showed six Sephora lip glosses being sold for €15, while another offered six tubes of cleansing cream for just €12.

Sephora France sells comparable own-brand lip glosses for around €13 each, meaning six would ordinarily cost around €78.

Other listings included Christian Dior perfumes advertised for €250 and large quantities of make-up still in their original packaging.

In one case, Pokémon trading cards allegedly stolen from a shop in Lille were advertised on Vinted, with some still bearing their original price stickers.

Hundreds of cards were reportedly found scattered across streets in the northern French city after a fire at Le Coin des Barons, a shop specialising in collectable cards.

A trophy said to have been stolen from French e-sport club Team Vitality was advertised on eBay for €1,250.

The silver StarLadder Counter-Strike trophy was photographed against a graffiti-covered wall and listed under the title: "STOLEN RARE VITALITY CS2 TROPHÉE."

Team Vitality confirmed that its Paris premises had been looted during Saturday's unrest, with trophies and computer equipment stolen and display windows smashed.

The listings emerged as France struggled to contain some of its worst civil unrest in years, caused by anger over the cost of living and deteriorating public services.

More than half a million people joined demonstrations on Saturday, with violent clashes breaking out in Paris, Marseille, Lyon and other cities.

French authorities said more than 2,400 people had been arrested by Sunday, while nearly 1,000 police officers were injured.

Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has stepped up powers to ban protests as he acknowledged intelligence "failures" over the riots.

The unrest has spread beyond France, with demonstrations about living costs and public spending also taking place in Belgium, Portugal and Italy.

French retailers have been left counting the cost, with supermarket giant Carrefour reporting damage to 50 stores, including 20 that were looted.

'We have zero tolerance for it'

Sephora closed its French stores on Saturday evening and kept them shut on Sunday after several branches were ransacked.

Vinted said it had taken immediate action to identify and remove listings connected to the violence.

A spokesman said: "The sale of stolen goods, or soliciting them, is strictly prohibited on Vinted, and we have zero tolerance for it."

The company said it had stepped up monitoring and would take action against offenders, including permanently banning accounts. It added that it was working with law enforcement and French authorities to identify suspicious sellers.

An eBay spokesman said: "The sale of stolen property is strictly prohibited on eBay."

The company said it used technology to identify suspicious activity and worked closely with police to investigate criminal behaviour.

The spokesman added: "If we receive confirmation from law enforcement that an item has been stolen, we remove it immediately and take action against the seller."

This story originally appeared on The Telegraph and is courtesy of the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, which harnesses the resources of the company's newsrooms to publish ambitious scoops, investigations, interviews, opinion pieces, and analysis. It allows journalists — including those from Business Insider, POLITICO, The Telegraph, WELT, BILD, Onet, and Fakt — to collaborate on major stories for an international audience of hundreds of millions across platforms.

• Anthropic is looking to shape AI regulation by pitching an AI safety bill of its own.
• POLITICO obtained a confidential draft of the proposed legislation.
• The bill would let the government block an AI model only if it poses a foreseeable, imminent risk of more than $1 billion in damages, or of killing or seriously injuring more than 50 people.

Representatives for the artificial intelligence giant Anthropic have quietly pitched Capitol Hill lawmakers on a draft bill to regulate frontier AI safety and security, according to three people with knowledge of the efforts who were granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

The confidential draft, obtained by POLITICO and not previously reported, marks a notable effort by the frontier AI lab to shape the rules governing its own technology as Congress weighs how to respond to the fast-moving industry.

"This bill represents the proposals outlined in Anthropic's Advanced AI Framework, which we have been advocating for with federal and state lawmakers since June," an Anthropic spokesperson said. "These are sensible policies we believe Congress should act on."

The bill would let the government block a model's release or use only if it poses a foreseeable, imminent risk of more than $1 billion in damages, or of killing or seriously injuring more than 50 people. The risk must stem from the creation or release of a biological weapon, the model evading its developer's controls or a cyberattack. The language mirrors that found in California's AI laws including SB 53, which was signed into law last year.

Leading AI labs disclosed a series of incidents this summer, in which AI agents hacked or probed websites and platforms. None reported so far appear to have caused widespread deaths or over $1 billion in damages.

Anthropic has yet to publicly back particular legislative efforts in Congress, but they have backed some state AI safety laws, including two in California. Their head of U.S. state and local government relations previously told POLITICO that they hope states will continue to pass ever-stronger AI safety laws that raise the standard nationwide.

Under the bill, independent evaluators, which would register with the Commerce Department, would be tasked with periodically evaluating the lab and its frontier models. The evaluators may be paid for their work by the lab itself so long as the payment is not contingent on the evaluations' results.

If the evaluators determine there is "imminent enumerated risk" for a company's frontier models, they must report it to Commerce within 72 hours of completing their assessment.

While the Commerce Department could bring a request to the judge to halt the release of a model after determining that it poses a risk, the language explicitly prohibits any other U.S. "department, agency, or officer" from suspending the model's development, deployment or internal use. A federal judge for the District Court for the District of Columbia could order the suspension of a model.

Over the summer, Anthropic was subject to sweeping export controls that shut down two of its most advanced models. The decision was made in a whirlwind series of phone calls between administration officials and the company's executives, worrying some in the tech industry that access to their technology may be restricted on the whims of government officials.

Anthropic's bill would also preempt some state AI laws related to public disclosure of risk, third-party evaluation and reporting of critical incidents. Preemption has been a political flashpoint on Capitol Hill, with Democrats rejecting some proposals they feared would neuter regulations passed by the likes of California, Illinois and New York.

Many tech industry groups have argued that a state-by-state patchwork of laws is difficult to comply with compared to a unified national standard.

The legislation would also require frontier labs to create safety frameworks, publish transparency reports for new frontier models, implement protections for whistleblowers and report critical safety incidents to Commerce.

Capitol Hill has seen a flurry of activity on AI safety legislation this summer. In the House, Reps. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) and Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) spearheaded the FRONTIER Act, which would give the government the ability to stop the deployment of risky models and preempt some state AI laws.

In the Senate, Majority Leader John Thune and Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) have been negotiating an AI safety bill intended to mitigate catastrophic risks. But it has faced headwinds from some safety-minded groups and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on Cruz's Commerce Committee, who want the government to have a larger role in reviewing AI models.

Other progressives, including Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), have gone well beyond their colleagues in calling for a pause in advanced AI development and a ban on superintelligence, a type of theoretical AI that far surpasses humans' cognitive capabilities.

This story originally appeared on POLITICO and is courtesy of the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, which harnesses the resources of the company's newsrooms to publish ambitious scoops, investigations, interviews, opinion pieces, and analysis. It allows journalists — including those from POLITICO, Business Insider, WELT, BILD, Onet, and Fakt — to collaborate on major stories for an international audience of hundreds of millions across platforms.

Cooley has made billions doing what law firms do: hire great lawyers, bill for their time, and keep clients happy. Artificial intelligence is scrambling that formula. If machines can do in minutes what once took an associate hours, what exactly should clients be paying for?

Rachel Proffitt thinks she has the answer.

On a toasty October afternoon in San Francisco, I met Proffitt for lunch to talk about the future of the global law firm she now leads. When the check arrived, neither of us knew how much the restaurant paid the dishwasher or how many minutes the chef spent preparing our meal. We were paying for the experience, not the labor behind it.

Why, she wondered, should legal services be so different?

"Clients have never been excited about the fact that it took us 82 hours to do something. They don't care," she says. "They just want the outcome. They want the results."

The billable hour is only the beginning. AI is forcing law firms to rethink how many associates they really need and how those young lawyers learn their craft. Client relationships are changing as companies use software to get a head start on the work they send to outside counsel. Some of that work may never reach a lawyer at all.

If tech is about to reinvent law firms, Cooley should be one of the firms with the clearest view of what's coming. From its early days on San Francisco's Market Street, it worked with semiconductor manufacturers and venture capitalists when the valley was still covered in fruit trees and canneries. Cooley grew up alongside the tech industry, and today it is as comfortable defending Meta in court as it is helping Andreessen Horowitz round up billion-dollar funds.

That evolution has been lucrative. Cooley says its gross revenue jumped from $912 million in 2015 to $2.4 billion last fiscal year. Its crosstown rival, Wilson Sonsini, brought in $1.7 billion in 2025, according to The American Lawyer. Still, the gulf between Cooley and Big Law's largest firms remains enormous. Kirkland & Ellis, the industry's revenue leader, cracked $10 billion last year. Latham & Watkins, another go-to firm for Silicon Valley, hit $8.3 billion.

The next wave of tech public listings promises a fortune in legal fees for the chosen few. Gibson Dunn landed SpaceX's IPO. Anthropic tapped Wilson Sonsini for its coming listing. And Cooley is reportedly sharing OpenAI's IPO work with Wachtell Lipton, one of Wall Street's most formidable law firms.

The irony is hard to miss. Big Law is fighting for a piece of the biggest technology companies in the world, even as those companies build the tools that could upend the business of law itself.

Proffitt came up as a lawyer under the old rules. Her next task is to figure out what it will take to build a great law firm under the new ones.

'The winner's circle'

Profitt didn't grow up wanting to be a lawyer but liked how law school taught her to think. Litigation was out of the question: Public speaking during mock trials made her stomach turn. "It was transactional law or bust," she says.

She started her career as a summer associate at Wilson Sonsini and worked her way up to partner. She fell in love with the intensity of the work, pulling all-nighters at the financial printers where she marked up securities filings by hand. She recalls the Christmas Eve when her father marveled that she had made it through the day without taking a work call. After 15 years at the firm, she left for Cooley in 2017.

Three years ago, Proffitt got a call at home that she didn't see coming. Joe Conroy, then Cooley's chief executive, wanted to know whether she would consider succeeding him.

She was flattered, but also "a bit terrified," she says. She spent two decades helping startups, including Unity Software, Procore, and Instacart, raise money and go public. Running a firm with 3,000 employees was another matter. She talked to her family, then put herself forward for the job. She started in 2024.

Proffitt couldn't have guessed how quickly AI would jolt her industry from its steady state. It wasn't too long ago that clients insisted that the technology go nowhere near their work, fearing what would happen if their data disappeared into someone else's model.

"It was clear to me then that we don't get to just exist as we are and continue to be at the top of our game," she says.

Cooley had remade itself once before. The firm's Silicon Valley roots were both a strength and a liability, said Conroy in an interview. Cooley was known for helping startups get off the ground. The conventional wisdom was that as those companies grew, they would graduate to one of the elite New York law firms for their biggest deals and courtroom battles.

To keep clients from the garage to the boardroom, as Conroy put it, Cooley needed to expand. It opened new offices and built out its litigation and capital markets practices. The firm also spent years courting Wall Street banks, says Proffitt, so that when a company asked which law firm to hire for its IPO, Cooley would make its shortlist.

Today, its client roster reads like a Kiplinger roundup of hot tech stocks: Nvidia, Uber, Snowflake, and Zoom, to name a few listings it worked on. Since 2016, Cooley has advised issuers on 183 IPOs that raised nearly $59 billion, making it the second-most active firm by deal count after Latham, according to Deal Point Data. Proffitt wouldn't discuss reports that Cooley has landed OpenAI's IPO work.

For 16 years, Conroy pushed Cooley toward what he calls Big Law's "winner's circle." Proffitt's job is to get it there.

Startup speed

Her strategy starts with making Cooley move more like the tech companies it represents.

Proffitt recruited David Wang, a former lawyer turned legal technology executive, with an ambitious mandate. She didn't just want to make Cooley's lawyers more productive, Wang said in an interview. She wanted to change how clients interact with them altogether.

Earlier this year, Cooley launched a tool with the startup Legora that lets Y Combinator founders review common contracts without calling a lawyer. OpenAI helped it build a tool for Cooley's lawyers to prepare paperwork for companies going public. Next, Cooley is working with Google on an AI agent that scans documents for confidential information before they're filed in court, then suggests redactions for lawyers to review.

There's something almost cannibalistic about a law firm building software that could eat into its own billable hours. But Cooley sees a bigger risk in letting someone else do it. In-house legal teams are increasingly using chatbots to take the first crack at work they would otherwise send to outside counsel. A new breed of "AI-native" law firms is promising cheaper, faster services.

Big Law does not want to be caught flatfooted. Firms are throwing money at startups like Harvey and Legora, and increasingly, they're building their own technology. Kirkland has committed $500 million to proprietary software, starting with a platform for private equity fundraising built with Palantir. Latham bought its own Nvidia servers so it can customize models in-house. Like Cooley, Wilson Sonsini has self-service tools that let companies handle basic legal work.

For Proffitt, the danger isn't lost billable hours. It's the missed connections. The scrappy startup that needs a contract reviewed today might need help closing an acquisition later. But if the bots take care of the small stuff, Cooley could miss its chance to build the relationship.

Proffitt says Cooley must find new ways to connect with clients. Putting technology in their hands is one option, even if it means giving away a little of the work.

"When you need the next thing that matters, the thing that you don't trust to put into the machine," she says, "how do I ensure that you want to talk to our team?"

The firm is also rethinking its own structure for the new era. Wang now leads Cooley AI, a wholly owned subsidiary designed to operate at something closer to startup speed. The separate company gives his team more freedom to hire engineers and put new technology through its paces, he says, without getting bogged down in the parent firm's bureaucracy.

The irony, Proffitt says, is that all this technology could leave lawyers with more time for the human stuff. Lawyers may visit their clients more. Talk through thorny decisions. Drop in on the strategy session to learn how their advice fits into a client's business.

Keeping those relationships alive might require a little more old-fashioned schmoozing. When I asked Proffitt whether the answer was throwing great parties, she didn't entirely disagree. "Everyone loves a party," she says.

The future of legal work

Proffitt doesn't pretend to have a crystal ball. She has ideas, though.

The billable hour? Not dead yet. She expects law firms to offer clients a menu of pricing options, from hourly rates to flat fees and outcome-based pricing.

Hiring slowdowns at the junior level? "Too early to tell," she says.

The apprenticeship model? That gets trickier. If software can write first drafts and spot issues, how will young lawyers get the practice they need? Proffitt says Cooley is exploring ways for associates to sharpen their skills on simulated legal matters, starting with AI-powered mock depositions.

Proffitt came up in an era when canceled dinners and all-nighters were a badge of honor. She's betting that the next generation won't need quite so many of them to become great lawyers. Her test will come a decade from now, when today's junior associates are ready to make partner.

If Cooley has found a better way to teach them, perhaps the old model won't be missed. If it hasn't, no amount of AI can make up the difference.

Melia Robinson is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, where she writes about how artificial intelligence is changing the legal industry.

• Amazon is on an unprecedented spending spree to build more AI data center capacity than anyone else.
• The company has extensive experience, yet even it's struggling to bring capacity online fast enough.
• Internal documents show Amazon getting bilions of dollars of Nvidia GPUs before they can be deployed.

At an internal staff meeting in September, AWS CFO John Felton had a joke for Prasad Kalyanaraman, the executive overseeing much of Amazon's AI infrastructure expansion.

"You've taken us free cash flow negative as a company, so congratulations," Felton said, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by Business Insider.

The remark was lighthearted. But it captured a stunning reversal.

Just two years ago, Wall Street was debating what Amazon would do with its growing cash hoard. Now, cash flow has evaporated as Amazon embarks on its biggest bet ever, spending $220 billion this year alone to build the physical backbone for AI.

At the meeting, Kalyanaraman did not dispute Felton's premise. Amazon's machine-learning and AI business is "hugely free cash flow negative," he said, adding that he expects the company's free cash flow to remain negative for "the next couple of years or so."

Amazon has made big bets before. It spent heavily on cloud computing, fulfillment centers, and its delivery network long before they became some of the company's most valuable assets. Investors questioned those investments at the time, but Amazon ultimately built enormous, profitable businesses from them.

AI is testing this playbook at a far larger scale. Amazon is committing hundreds of billions of dollars to data centers, servers, and power before investors know how quickly those investments will generate revenue.

The company is the best, or among the best, at building data centers, with decades of experience. But the size and complexity of these projects, and the bottlenecks holding progress back, are challenging — even for such a respected cloud pioneer.

Internal documents reviewed by Business Insider and people familiar with the matter show the company trying to coordinate a sprawling industrial system whose parts move on different schedules. A delay in power, equipment, or construction can leave billions of dollars in hardware waiting — and Amazon's cash tied up — while forecasts and costs keep shifting.

Why Amazon thinks it will work

Amazon says it has strong evidence that the capacity will be needed. AWS revenue grew 37% in the second quarter, its fastest pace in 18 quarters, while its backlog reached $496 billion.

CEO Andy Jassy thinks the company has a "clear line of sight" to strong financial returns from this record investment cycle. In his latest annual shareholder letter, he called AI a "once in a lifetime opportunity" and said Amazon would not be conservative in its investments.

"We've been through this cycle with the first big AWS growth wave, and liked the results," Jassy wrote. "We expect to feel similarly about this next wave."

Investors are concerned by the scale of the industry's expansion, especially as AI data centers are costing more to build and taking longer to complete.

The market is "repricing anything that funds multi-year builds against revenue that arrives later," Dan Ives, an analyst at Yorkville Ives, wrote in a recent report. Growing uncertainty around data center permitting and the political fight over electricity prices have given investors another reason to question how quickly these investments will pay off, he added.

Racks, but not enough power

One major industry challenge is securing enough power to run the equipment that goes inside data centers. This includes expensive racks of servers that contain GPUs and other chips that train and run AI models and services such as ChatGPT.

Internal emails from August show Amazon preparing a new "Early Rack Receipt" process for an expected wave of server racks carrying Nvidia's GB300 chips at US facilities before final deployment.

One Amazon email projected the company would take delivery of about $5 billion of Nvidia GB300 racks in August, followed by another roughly $3 billion each month "for the foreseeable future."

Some AWS data center sites had room for more racks but not enough available power to turn them on, people familiar with the effort said, leaving the equipment to be staged at intermediary warehouses until the facilities were ready. These people asked not to be identified discussing sensitive matters.

Timing and coordination

Usually, Amazon doesn't pay for racks until the gear is put into a data center, leaving suppliers to carry the cost of the equipment in transit, according to the internal documents obtained by Business Insider. This helps the company conserve cash.

However, the intensity of the AI data center building boom has made this type of coordination harder. Amazon has to compete more for scarce resources as it jockeys with rivals for access to Nvidia GPUs and other AI components.

Under the new "Early Rack Receipt" process, Amazon now takes ownership of these racks earlier in the supply chain, rather than waiting until the equipment reaches a data center.

The means spending cash sooner. And any delays getting the racks installed and plugged into a reliable power source potentially pushes back the moment when revenue starts flowing from these assets.

At least one AWS supply chain team did not have "a clear forecasted path" for getting racks into data centers, according to one of the emails reviewed by Business Insider.

An Amazon spokesperson said the company routinely stages finished hardware near deployment sites so it can be installed once power capacity is available, calling that approach "best business practice."

The spokesperson added that AWS has "long-established systems" to track infrastructure assets and disputed that the broader company lacks a forecasted path for getting racks into data centers.

This problem is not unique to Amazon.

Bernstein analysts wrote in a recent note that power permits, cooling systems, electrical equipment, construction, and hardware all move on separate schedules.

"Timing is imperfect," the analysts said.

"Inherently uncertain"

During the internal staff meeting in September, Felton, the AWS CFO, described the broader problem eloquently: "How do you work in the future when the future is inherently uncertain?"

Kalyanaraman, the AI infrastructure leader, said Amazon's internal outlook for the return on its AI investments had improved. But the assumptions behind those returns keep shifting.

"The forecast is changing on a daily basis," Kalyanaraman said. "The world that we live in is extremely dynamic."

Those shifting assumptions include when data centers will be ready and how much equipment AWS needs to keep on hand, he explained.

An eight-week supply buffer might be routine for a smaller company. But at Amazon's scale, Kalyanaraman said, this could mean holding "billions and billions of dollars" worth of additional equipment inventory — tying up precious cash.

Frugality meets the AI boom

Such tensions are especially striking for Kalyanaraman, a 21-year Amazon veteran who earlier this year was promoted to the elite S-team that reports directly to Jassy.

Amazon's founding story is defined by frugality. It famously used cheap doors as desks when founder Jeff Bezos started in Seattle in the mid-90s.

Kalyanaraman has absorbed this lore into bones. In late 2023, as AWS faced slower growth and layoffs, he urged employees to do more with less. "Frugality breeds innovation," he said back then.

That instinct still shapes his approach. In the September meeting this year, Kalyanaraman told Felton that AWS tries to make major investments at the "last responsible moment," when it has the clearest possible view of demand.

"If we can wait to spend the capital as late as possible, it's better for us," he said.

But the frenetic pace of the AI boom makes this principle difficult to follow. By the time demand is fully visible, the servers, power, and construction capabilities that AWS needs may no longer be available. That puts pressure on the company to commit more money sooner to secure supply and meet its data center capacity goals.

Kalyanaraman recalled telling Jassy in 2023 that AWS would "surely" be out of its capacity crunch by 2027. Instead, Amazon still expects demand to exceed its available capacity in 2027, the AI infrastructure chief said during the meeting this September.

Secured Power at Risk

Getting enough electricity may be the biggest challenge for an industry leader like Amazon.

The company has 44 gigawatts of data center capacity under development across 16 states, more than double Google, Meta, and Microsoft, according to Cleanview Research estimates.

An internal AWS dashboard called "Secured Power at Risk" tracks utility and regulatory constraints affecting electricity capacity AWS has lined up for its data centers.

The risks include transmission bottlenecks, requirements to reduce use during grid stress, and "use it or lose it" provisions that can jeopardize capacity if a data center project misses usage or construction milestones.

In other words, AWS is not simply waiting for electricity to arrive. It is managing a portfolio of commitments that can become more costly if a data center project is delayed.

Maryland proposals

A submission to Maryland's utility regulator last year, obtained through a public records request, illustrates the kind of exposure that can accompany massive data center buildouts.

Amazon told the Maryland Public Service Commission that large data center customers could help pay for grid upgrades or bring new power capacity to market without burdening other electricity ratepayers.

The company also proposed setting aside collateral to help utilities get more comfortable with the large investments needed to generate more electricity for data centers. Amazon proposed three years of collateral so that if a large electricity customer abandoned unused capacity, the utility would have time to re-sell the power.

The proposal is not evidence that AWS has made such a payment or posted collateral. It does, however, show that large data centers can face extra financial obligations, beyond their own electricity bills, if projects are delayed or cancelled.

The Amazon spokesperson said such utility rules are not unique to AWS. The company has not disclosed how much cash it has paid upfront to secure power.

New constraints 'keep popping up'

The AI buildout also incurs expenses that are harder to model than a conventional capex plan.

In the September meeting this year, Kalyanaraman said that while reviewing plans for gigawatts of capacity in West Texas, AWS confronted a labor problem: There weren't enough nearby pipefitters, electricians, and other skilled workers to build the facilities.

The company's response, he said, was to pay to construct housing complexes near its data centers so workers could live there for the two or three years needed to complete the projects.

Even the crates used to ship servers have become a planning issue. It may seem absurd to worry about the price of a container when servers cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, Kalyanaraman said. But at AWS's scale, where the company needs so many crates, even trivial items can become a material expense.

"We have new constraints that keep popping up," Kalyanaraman said.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at ekim@businessinsider.com or Signal, Telegram, or WhatsApp at 650-942-3061. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• A version of this story originally appeared in the AI Insider newsletter.
• Sign up for Business Insider's weekly AI Insider newsletter here.

AI companies have already scraped much of the web. Now they're chasing something even more valuable: data that shows how humans actually work.

That's the focus of Business Insider's new series, The AI Data Grab. This week, we published three stories showing how the race for workplace data is accelerating.

One piece, from Charles Rollet, Tom Carter, and Stephen Council, examines the booming market for company records. AI firms are offering businesses six- and even seven-figure sums for anonymized Slack messages, emails, presentations, and internal documents.

The goal is to teach AI systems how people solve problems, collaborate, make decisions, and complete long, multi-step tasks. Those real-world workflows are becoming the fuel for the next generation of AI agents.

Another story, from Melia Robinson, explores how law firms are building AI systems around decades of legal knowledge, turning their own experience into a competitive advantage rather than relying solely on off-the-shelf AI models and tools.

A third piece, by Rya Jetha, reveals how AI companies pay people to record real-world work, such as cooking dinners and packing warehouses, to teach robots how humans perform everyday physical tasks.

Together, these stories point to a major shift in AI development. The first wave of generative AI was mostly about bigger models and faster chips. The next chapter is about machines understanding how work gets done, so AI can help us do it better and quicker.

Sign up for the AI Insider newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com

• A witness who testified against Andrew Left has himself become involved in an insider trading probe.
• Left's lawyers asked a judge to toss the jury verdict that found him guilty of securities fraud.
• Prosecutors said they didn't learn about the investigation until after the trial was over.

A witness who testified against Andrew Left has himself become involved in an insider trading probe, bringing a new twist to the bombastic short-seller's fraud conviction.

Left's lawyers this month asked the judge who oversaw his trial to toss the jury's verdict convicting him of 13 counts of securities fraud. The trial was irredeemably unfair, they said, because they never had the chance to ask the witness about the investigation and attack his credibility.

"A new trial would probably produce an acquittal," Left's lawyers wrote.

In June, a federal jury in Los Angeles found Left guilty of 13 counts of securities fraud. Prosecutors said he deceived investors by using social media and research reports to set target prices for stocks — including Tesla, Nvidia, and Palantir — while quietly trading them at different prices with his own money.

The founder of Citron Research, Left is something of a short-seller celebrity. He placed bets against GameStop at the same time it became a meme stock, which pitted him against some retail traders on social media. For years, he was a fixture on CNBC and Bloomberg, where he shared his views on stock prices.

Left hasn't been sentenced. In addition to the criminal case, he faces a parallel civil lawsuit from the Securities and Exchange Commission that remains unresolved.

Left's criminal conviction shook certain corners of Wall Street, which viewed the trial as a referendum on free speech and the legality of activist short-seller tactics. Left, testifying in his own defense at the trial, said that the views he shared about public companies were sincere.

One of the trial's prosecution witnesses was Daniel Bachus, the CFO of Grand Canyon Education, a publicly traded technology company that provides services to universities. Left's lawyers say that Bachus was the only witness who testified that Left used his Citron Research reports to lie about a company, not merely omit information.

On August 21 — weeks after the trial ended — Grand Canyon Education placed Bachus on paid administrative leave "in connection with an ongoing governmental investigation" involving a non-employee's trades of the company's stock, the company said in an SEC disclosure. The prosecutors in Left's case referred to it in their own filings as an "insider trading investigation."

No government agency has publicly accused Bachus or Grand Canyon Education of any misconduct in connection with the investigation. In the SEC disclosure, the company said it wasn't the focus of the investigation. Representatives for the SEC and for Grand Canyon Education declined to comment. Bachus didn't respond to Business Insider's requests for comment.

Left's lawyers say they should have been informed about the investigation at the time of the trial so that they could cross-examine Bachus and try to convince the jury that he wasn't a credible witness.

"This evidence would have destroyed the credibility of the government's only false-statements witness," they wrote in a filing.

The prosecution team told Left's lawyers it didn't learn about the investigation until after the trial was over. It's not clear which government agency opened the investigation, nor when Bachus or Grand Canyon Education became aware of it. Many of the filings about the issue remained sealed or redacted on the court docket for Left's case.

In court filings, Justice Department prosecutors said Left's lawyers overstated Bachus' role in the short-selling case, which alleged securities fraud involving more than a dozen different public companies. They said Left wanted to conduct "his own shadow investigation into Bachus" to try to discredit him as a witness.

"The law does not permit fishing expeditions in search of a claim," prosecutors said.

Left declined to comment. Left's attorney Eric S. Rosen said he could not comment because many relevant documents remained under seal.

A spokesperson for the US Attorney's office in Los Angeles declined to comment.

• Anthropic examined what might happen when AI and robots are combined.
• That could put more hands-on jobs, including gardening, in the path of automation, Anthropic warned.
• I'm skeptical that robots can handle the messy reality of pulling weeds.

Remember when Anthropic's AI jobs report suggested gardeners were among the safest workers because AI couldn't pull weeds or tell a rose from a dandelion? I joked about that in AI Insider earlier this year.

Well, Anthropic updated the research to freak us all out a bit more.

This time it asks a bigger question: What happens when you combine AI with robots? That change pushes many hands-on jobs much higher on the disruption scale. On paper, it makes sense. In practice, I'm skeptical.

For instance, anyone who's spent time working in a garden knows how hard it is to identify the right plant, kneel in awkward spots, and pull a weed out properly by the roots without damaging everything around it.

Robots are improving. But if you've ever watched one tackle a messy real-world task, you'll know there's a long road between a research chart and reality.

The chart below illustrates how adding robots could change job-task exposure across selected job categories. Cleaning & maintenance includes gardeners along with janitors and similar roles.

• Anthropic published new surveys comparing its staffers' sentiments to those of US workers.
• The AI startup's employees expect the tech to change work and the economy far more dramatically.
• Most Anthropic employees guessed that unemployment would top 12% in 2030.

Anthropic employees believe that AI will make their labor obsolete. Most US workers don't see their jobs that way at all.

The AI company published research on Friday that compares surveys with US adults against an internal poll of 1,334 Anthropic employees. Most of the Anthropic staffers said AI will handle at least 80% of their jobs by 2030, while only about 5% of the US workers felt the same.

The research, titled "The AI expectations gap," shows the chasm between how the employees at the AI startup feel and how other American adults feel. Anthropic workers are far more optimistic about the progress of AI capabilities, how much it's already saving time, and how fast the economy will grow.

The median Anthropic employee said that by the end of 2030, they expect AI to handle 95% of the work of building a new AI model.

Peter McCrory, Anthropic's chief economist, wrote on X that the views might help outsiders prepare for more capable AI systems.

"We're publishing this research because Anthropic runs roughly a year and a half ahead of the economy on AI adoption, so what happens at Anthropic could be a leading indicator for the broader world," he said.

Anthropic workers expect higher unemployment and extreme GDP growth

Anthropic's surveys examined how workers already use AI and how they think it will change.

"US adults and Anthropic staff largely agree about what AI can do today," the researchers wrote. "However, they disagree about how quickly it will improve, how widely it will be used, and how large the productivity gains measured by time saved will be."

There are a few possible explanations for the discrepancies. Anthropic employees have larger budgets for the tools and often get access to unreleased models. US workers, on average, are more likely to work with their hands or in a service industry.

The researchers found that workers in manual trades, production, and transport thought AI would handle the least of their work by 2030, compared with Anthropic staffers, tech workers, and respondents in business and finance.

Most Anthropic employees surveyed said that they expect the unemployment rate to top 12% in 2030. The majority of the US workers thought it would hover around or under 8%. It's currently 4.2%.

So far, researchers have found mixed evidence on AI disrupting the job market — a Yale team recently found it had mainly changed jobs, and had "no connection" to changes in unemployment.

The Anthropic researchers also compiled survey responses to estimate predictions on economic growth. Based on their answers, the median US adult's guess for GDP growth in 2030 was 5.4%, compared with 17.1% among Anthropic employees. The country's GDP grew by 2.2% last year.

Anthropic's staffers are following their leader

Anthropic's CEO, Dario Amodei, has become one of the industry's most closely watched voices on labor upheaval. In March of 2025, he said he expected AI to write 90% of code within 6 months, and "essentially all of the code" within the year. He made more headlines that May, telling Axios that AI could wipe out half of entry-level white-collar jobs within five years and lift unemployment to 10% or 20%.

Amodei expanded on that claim in a later essay, writing that he expects AI to be different from prior technological changes. He wrote that he expects an "unprecedented" short-term shock to labor, and that the economy will grow dramatically.

"AI isn't a substitute for specific human jobs but rather a general labor substitute for humans," he wrote.

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• Nvidia's communications operation has been reshaped as the company became the face of the AI boom.
• Roughly 15 staffers have left the lean team since 2025 as Nvidia reorganized its communications org.
• Former employees described growing workloads as responsibilities expanded.

Nvidia's communications organization has been reshaped as the company became the face of the AI boom, with multiple teams brought under new leadership and a string of departures.

Business Insider identified roughly 15 communications employees who have left Nvidia since 2025, based on LinkedIn profiles and interviews with former employees.

The organization now numbers roughly 70 to 80 people globally, and has more than doubled in size since Mylene Mangalindan joined as vice president of corporate communications in 2023, according to a person close to the company.

The departures have also included newer hires. Anna Soellner, who was recruited to lead corporate communications, left after roughly four months, Business Insider previously reported.

Nvidia is known for high retention. It reported companywide turnover of 3.7% in fiscal 2026, up from 2.5% the prior year, and well below the tech industry average of 21.9% cited in its latest sustainability report.

Mangalindan succeeded longtime communications chief Bob Sherbin, who retired in 2024. She previously worked at the advisory firm Brunswick Group.

She was brought in to "bring fresh blood" and "upgrade the team" to meet Nvidia's growing profile, one former employee said.

At the end of 2024, Nvidia restructured its communications organization. It brought enterprise public relations under Mangalindan's leadership alongside the corporate communications team she already led, according to two former employees.

Corporate communications focuses on Nvidia's reputation and major media outlets, while enterprise handles product and industry messaging, including for its data center business.

One former employee said the consolidation reflected the growing importance of Nvidia's data center business, which sells chips and systems that power AI and had become its biggest revenue driver.

Analyst relations, social media, and influencer marketing also moved under Mangalindan's remit this year, another former employee said.

Three former employees said Nvidia's communications team had long operated with relatively lean staffing, even as workloads grew alongside the company's public profile, leaving staff juggling multiple responsibilities.

These employees said they experienced long hours, difficulty taking time off, and pressure to respond quickly to emails and Slack messages.

A person close to Nvidia said the company's lean staffing allows employees to move quickly and also requires long hours. The person said Mangalindan encourages staff to take vacation, though the team's small size can make scheduling time off difficult, particularly in the summer.

Nvidia is widely known for its demanding work environment. CEO Jensen Huang has emphasized operating at the "speed of light" and is known for fostering a culture of constant accountability.

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• Disney plans to pay $60 million to hire 66 employees from Character.AI, which filed for bankruptcy.
• Former Character.AI Karandeep Anand is Disney's new chief technology officer.
• CEO Josh D'Amaro's company laid off tech staffers in September in its third round of cuts this year.

Disney is paying up for employees from an AI chatbot startup that filed for bankruptcy, shortly after trimming its own tech workforce.

The Mouse House plans to pay $60 million per year to 66 workers from Character.AI, according to a Chapter 11 filing on Tuesday from its parent company. In mid-September, Disney hired Character.AI CEO Karandeep Anand to be its first-ever company-wide tech chief. (The company hasn't yet disclosed how much it's paying Anand.)

These additions are part of Disney's AI strategy under CEO Josh D'Amaro, who's been investing in the media giant's tech platforms to help jumpstart a stagnant stock that's up less than 2% in the last 12 months and is down over 36% in the last five years.

Disney's decision to bring in these Character.AI staffers came two weeks after it laid off several hundred workers — including some tech employees. The late-September cuts were Disney's third major round of layoffs since D'Amaro took over in mid-March.

In addition to the $60 million in compensation, Disney is setting aside an additional $30 million for an "aggregate retention pool" to incentivize Character.AI employees to stay. The company expects to spend $180 million on "total compensation and retention" for these staffers in the next three years, the filing said.

Of the 66 Character.AI staffers who were offered jobs by Disney, 56 have already resigned from the AI startup, while the other 10 are waiting for the US government to update their work visas.

Entertainment lawyer Corey Martin of Granderson Des Rochers, who advises companies on media transactions, said he's not surprised by those pay figures since Character.AI's employees are its biggest asset.

"They're highly compensated employees. The numbers can be eye-popping, but it's not that unusual in this space," said Martin, who didn't work on the deal or with Disney.

Disney also agreed to pay $20 million for Character.AI's key assets, including some of its IP and tech. Other companies can submit competing bids for the assets by November 20. The entire process will be overseen by a bankruptcy court judge. Disney didn't respond to requests for comment for this story.

Character.AI filed for bankruptcy after facing lawsuits from families who alleged that their teenagers harmed themselves or committed suicide after using the company's custom AI chatbots. The AI startup and Google, one of its backers, settled several child safety lawsuits earlier this year.

Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter to Character.AI last fall, telling it not to create AI chatbots featuring its copyrighted characters without permission. Character.AI complied, removing chatbots with characters from Disney franchises like Star Wars and Marvel.

In its bankruptcy announcement, Character.AI said that it had been facing "significant legal, regulatory, and operational headwinds."

Anand told Disney employees in a memo last Friday that the Mouse House was "uniquely positioned to win" in a competitive media business that he said was "at an inflection point." The tech chief also said he enjoyed meeting his new colleagues and looked forward to working with them.

"What stands out most is the talent and care this team puts into its work, the craft Disney has perfected, and the strong foundation you've built," Anand said.

• Khaby Lame's splashy $975 million deal is still on ice nine months after it was announced.
• Lame's plan to merge his business with a publicly traded firm was celebrated by creator economy insiders.
• The public company's stock price has fallen 99% since its January high.

A new financial filing provides fresh details — and more questions — about a mysterious $975 million deal struck by TikTok's top star, Khaby Lame.

On January 9, Lame — who has over 160 million followers — entered into an agreement that would theoretically net him a major payday and take his company public. The mechanism: a merger with the publicly traded Rich Sparkle Holdings, a financial printing firm based in Hong Kong.

Then, in late January, Lame went silent on the merger. Now, we have an update: the deal is still on ice. A Rich Sparkle financial filing on September 30, its first since March, described the deal as conditional on a due diligence process, a minimum valuation of Lame's company, and stock exchange approval. That's the same language that has appeared in previous filings.

While the deal has been in limbo, Rich Sparkle's stock has plummeted 99% from its peak. In the wake of the announcement of the deal with Lame's company in January, the stock shot up to a high of about $180. On Thursday, it closed at $1.93. Several prominent brokerages had restricted or blocked trading in the stock, Business Insider exclusively reported in April.

The original deal announcement was celebrated throughout the creator economy, since such rich valuations are rare among influencer-founded companies, and it would give everyday investors an unusual opportunity to directly bet on a creator. The high profile of Lame, a Senegalese-Italian creator who rose to fame from dialogue-free comedy videos, means the outcome of the deal could impact how investors assess the viability of backing businesses centered on individual creators.

The January deal terms promised Lame's company 75 million shares, which would be worth about $145 million at Thursday's closing share price. The initial agreement had valued that stake at $975 million.

Rich Sparkle and Lame did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

At the time of the original announcement, Rich Sparkle said that it planned to create an AI avatar of Lame to do brand deals and sell products on social media. It projected this business could drive more than $4 billion in annual product sales.

An unusual stock detail

The new filing contains another intriguing detail: Rich Sparkle issued nearly $39 million in stock to its staff as part of their compensation during the six months ended March 31, resulting in an operating loss of almost $40 million. In the year-earlier period, it issued no share-based compensation.

This new share issuance means some employees could have benefited from the stock's massive spike following the Lame deal announcement. The filing doesn't indicate which staffers received shares or exactly when they got them within that six-month period.

Paul Nary, a management professor at Wharton, said the size of the share issuance was unusual relative to the company's valuation and revenue.

If the deal is in motion, we haven't heard a peep from Lame, who removed Rich Sparkle's stock ticker, ANPA, from his social-media bios in late January. The content creator continues to post for brands, recently making a cameo in the James Bond-inspired video game "007 First Light," signing on as a brand ambassador for travel eSIM company Holafly, and promoting the Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games.

• The battle for voters in the 2026 midterm elections is playing out on the TikTok For You Page.
• One in four Americans say creator content has influenced who they voted for.
• Political candidates are scrambling to connect with more creators in order to reach voters.

Content creators are influencing much more than our coffee orders and skincare routines.

About one in four Americans (26%) say influencer content has affected who they've voted for, according to a survey of around 2,000 US adults conducted by Morning Consult in September, commissioned by Business Insider.

Creator content is an "underestimated avenue" for political campaigns, said Nicole Dunger, a founding partner at the marketing firm People First, which works with candidates and advocacy groups on their creator strategies. "It is a real player and a big player in this space now."

If 2024 was the podcast election, 2026 is shaping up to be the influencer one. Instagram and TikTok creators have joined Fox News hosts and personalities like Joe Rogan as go-to sources of information for voters.

Influencers like Jake Paul and Hasan Piker have emerged as main characters in politics this year.

Paul recently joined President Donald Trump in Ohio for a midterm rally, posting TikTok clips of his Air Force One flight. Piker, meanwhile, has become a campaign ally for progressives like Michigan's Abdul El-Sayed and a negative talking point for Fox News commentators.

As online attention has become a key asset in politics, influencers are helping candidates break through the noise.

A little over half of US adults (56%) told Morning Consult that creator content had affected their views on political or social issues to some degree. That figure jumped among Gen Z respondents, where close to three in four respondents said their views had been swayed by influencer posts.

For campaigns, the challenge is identifying the right creators to work with, particularly when many influencers don't regularly talk about politics.

"You have to have your base of people, your core supporters, and then you have to have a broader cultural space of people who don't always talk about politics," said Parker Butler, a managing partner at the digital strategy firm Luminary Strategies, which works on social strategy with Democratic candidates like James Talarico. "It's worth having different pockets of creators for different purposes."

Reaching creators with smaller followings than Piker (about 3 million Twitch followers), or Paul (around 21 million YouTube subscribers) is a focus in 2026, Butler said.

He said the goal is to shift the creator outreach strategy from "this person has a million followers" to identifying influencers who work in a particular niche a campaign is trying to reach.

Political chatter is moving from TV to YouTube

More and more, political discussions are playing out on digital platforms, whether that's podcasts, YouTube videos, or Twitch streams.

YouTube was the top source for political and election news among US adults in September, narrowly beating out TV, print, and X (formerly Twitter), according to a survey from Syracuse University.

About one in five Democrats and Republicans said podcast appearances could make them "more likely to support a candidate," according to a July through August survey of likely midterm voters from the podcast industry group Sounds Profitable. A smaller share of Independents (11%) said podcasts could make them more likely to back a candidate.

While campaigns see attention moving online, they're still spending the bulk of their ad budgets on TV.

Part of that may be because they're accustomed to buying TV spots. They're also reckoning with the fact that influencer marketing is harder to predict and measure, particularly as social-media feeds become more personalized and algorithmically driven.

"It can be very challenging, but you see the results in the end," Dunger said. "It's the same with door knocking. We know door knocking somehow works and has worked for so long, but it's not like we have those direct measurements."