Joe Raedle/Getty Images Walmart has made a big bet on ultrafast delivery across its US stores. Now the company is bringing the perk to Sam's Club, with a new one-hour service option for members. Sam's Club says its 10 fastest orders were fulfilled in under 12 minutes — way faster than Costco. Walmart is doubling down on ultrafast delivery with a new option at its warehouse chain Sam's Club. On Wednesday, Sam's Club e-commerce head Greg Pulsifer said a new "enhanced" express delivery option in the US has posted impressive numbers since it was rolled out three weeks ago. "Our 10 fastest deliveries to date were all fulfilled in less than 12 minutes," he said in a statement. Members can now get Sam's Club's jumbo pack sizes with Walmart's blazing-fast fulfillment. The move ramps up pressure on warehouse club rival Costco, and underscores Walmart's focus on growing e-commerce sales through a combination of convenience and value. Last September, Walmart's then-US CEO John Furner said Walmart's fastest delivery time was under five minutes. The company also says more than 5% of store-fulfilled orders arrive in less than 30 minutes. Sam's Club has also had significant success with rapid fulfillment at international locations, most notably in China. Faster fulfillment with a flat fee instead of higher prices per item At Sam's Club, sub-three-hour deliveries cost $17 for standard members and $5 for higher-tier Plus members and arrive within three hours, while the faster delivery option costs an additional $5 to get the order in less than an hour for both membership types. Ralph Asher, founder of Data Driven Supply Chain, told Business Insider that this ultrafast delivery option could give Sam's Club an advantage over its larger rival, Costco, especially since the product prices online match those at the warehouse. Costco's same-day services, which offer delivery in as little as an hour, are fulfilled by Instacart, and items are typically priced higher than those in-store. Costco says the higher prices allow most orders to avoid additional delivery fees, though long-distance orders are subject to a $10 fee. Costco did not immediately respond to a request for comment on its delivery strategy. Sam's Club says it has now fulfilled nearly 65,000 orders under its three-hours-or-less delivery option, with an average delivery time of 55 minutes. Top categories for express orders include water, produce, paper goods, and baby items, with more urgent items like baby formula and rotisserie chickens arriving in as little as 10 minutes. The fastest order Sam's Club says it fulfilled was the delivery of Member's Mark baby formula to a day care in Fargo, North Dakota, in nine minutes. Asher said the logistics of delivering club-sized products aren't all that different from delivering typical retail pack sizes — so long as the order fits in a gig driver's car — but the lower unit cost of the club-sized item could make it a better deal for consumers. And Sam's Club isn't doing this for fun. There's a significant upside for sales growth. Walmart has said that its fast delivery shoppers spend twice as much as the average digital customer. That figure jumps to three times as much when shoppers use fast delivery four or more times. Your move, Costco. Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at dreuter@businessinsider.com or text/call/Signal at 646-768-4750. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely. Read the original article on Business Insider

Ken Griffin, CEO of Citadel. WEF Citadel has reshaped its investor recruitment unit in recent months, following a string of exits. The $67 billion firm has focused on internal promotions and younger hires rather than poaching from rivals. Sjoerd Gehring and Eleanor Sharkey are notable recent departures from Citadel's talent team. One of the world's largest and most influential hedge funds has been overhauling a crucial unit within its recruitment army. Citadel, the $67 billion firm run by Ken Griffin, has developed into a magnet for some of the industry's premier talent during its three decades in business. But, amid a war for elite investment pros at top hedge funds, the recruitment machine behind Griffin's multistrategy giant has undergone a makeover, with a slew of significant departures over the past two years. The latest move came last week, when chief people officer Sjoerd Gehring, a former Apple and Accenture executive, departed after less than two years on the job. Eleanor Sharkey, head of business development for the International Equities business, also left earlier this year. Their departures were preceded by a string of exits last year in business development — the professionals who recruit and vet investment talent, freeing up time for Citadel's business unit leaders to focus on strategy and making money. Citadel has taken a different approach to some peers in retooling its BD ranks. Whereas competitors have been poaching BD execs from rivals, driving up compensation packages into the millions, Citadel has been promoting from within and hiring younger sales professionals — often bankers who interact with hedge funds on a daily basis — with less direct business development experience. "Our People Team remains focused on their important work attracting top talent and developing colleagues to build unparalleled careers at Citadel faster than they could anywhere else," reads a statement the Miami-based firm provided to Business Insider. The manager, according to a person close to the firm, has more than 100 people across human resources roles, including the BD teams. Citadel's recent hires and promotions include: NameTeam/rolePrevious firm Sapna VirIncoming head of business development, credit and convertiblesVerition Emma NealisSurveyorDeutsche Bank Rocky AdonnaSurveyorJPMorgan Sophia EsquenaziAshlerUBS Gabrielle CobenAshlerBarclays Patricia JosephCitadel Associate ProgramJM Search Justas PovilenasSenior business developer, Fixed Income and MacroBlackRock Freya MaynardHead of business development, International EquitiesInternal promotion Mackenzie SnyderHead of business development, SurveyorInternal promotion Olivia CascioHead of business development, Fixed Income and MacroInternal promotion As Business Insider previously reported, Sharkey's deputy, Freya Maynard, has taken the helm of International Equities BD. The firm promoted Mackenzie Snyder to recruit for Surveyor, another stockpicking group, and Olivia Cascio to head recruiting for its Fixed Income and Macro group. Sapna Vir, a managing director in BD at $14 billion Verition for the last three years, is joining Citadel in December as head of BD for credit and convertibles. One unit that remains shorthanded is Global Equities, which is run by Justin Lubell. Sarah Wexler, who joined in 2019, recently left, according to people familiar with the matter. Laura Sterner, a long-time Point72 investor relations leader, joined the group as head of BD last September but left after only two months on the job. Global Equities has gone through at least four BD heads in the last three years. Tom DeAngelis, now president at Walleye Capital, left in 2023. Jennifer Corwin left the team in early 2024 but stayed on at Citadel in a new role, and Alex Topkins left last year and recently resurfaced at Soros Fund Management. An individual close to Citadel notes that business leaders such as Lubell are a critical part of the recruiting process, and GE has been able to attract strong talent in recent years. Noteworthy departures in Citadel's recruiting team over the last two years include: NameTeam/roleTimingNext stop Sjoerd GehringChief people officerApril 2026— Eleanor SharkeyHead of business development, International Equities2026— Sarah WexlerGlobal Equities business developmentRecently— Christa ShortJunior talent business development / Citadel Associate ProgramRecently— Laura SternerHead of business development, Global EquitiesNovember 2025— Ansh KalraHead of business development, Global Quantitative StrategiesLate 2025Balyasny Mark HansenHead of business development, Surveyor CapitalOctober 2025— Derek MaltzSurveyor business development2025— Alex TopkinsHead of business development, Global EquitiesApril 2025Soros Fund Management Katelynn NutterCentral equities business developmentApril 2025Sterling Strand Evan AngerDeputy head of equities business developmentJanuary 2025Two Sigma Matt GianniniFormer top equities business development executiveOctober 2024Walleye Matt JahansouzChief people officerOctober 2024Quince Jennifer CorwinLeft Global Equities business development, remained at Citadel in another roleEarly 2024Internal move Read the original article on Business Insider

Tesla entered a new master purchasing agreement that gives the automaker access to sell to more than 50,000 agencies. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Tesla signed a contract with Sourcewell for an "indefinite quantity" of vehicle sales. The deal gives Tesla easier access to sell to municipalities — a sector that has accounted for less than 1% of its sales. Detroit giants Ford and GM have dominated the government fleet market for years. A Tesla police car? A Tesla Parks and Recreation fleet vehicle? Those are now more likely to whiz through North American streets. The EV maker signed a master purchasing agreement with Sourcewell, a cooperative that lets public agencies buy products without running their own bidding processes. The deal gives Tesla faster access to sell to more than 50,000 potential buyers in the US and Canada, including cities, school districts, and state agencies. It also adds another automaker to the pipeline of potential municipal vehicles — a market historically dominated by Detroit's two biggest automakers, General Motors and Ford. Both companies have contracts with Sourcewell that run to November 2028. Tesla and Sourcewell inked the contract in December, according to public documents. The contract, which could run up to seven years, allows for an "indefinite quantity" of sales, meaning there's no cap on how many cars agencies can purchase during the agreement. Tesla can sell small cars, SUVs, vans, and light trucks — and allows third parties to modify them with wheelchair-accessible ramps, utility truck beds, and police lights. Until now, Tesla has had a limited presence in government fleets. In its application to Sourcewell, which was released with the contract, the company said just over 800 vehicles — less than 1% of its annual sales — currently go to public-sector customers. It reported that the state of California has been its biggest municipal customer, buying around 500 EVs each year. Maine has been its smallest, buying one Tesla annually. That's created a sizable, untapped market, the carmaker said in its application. Tesla estimates there are roughly 1.5 million to 2 million light-duty vehicles operated by state and local agencies in the US, many of which it expects to transition to electric over time. "Tesla's mission is to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy," the company wrote in the contract application. "This is an opportunity to do good for a great country." The push into government fleets comes as Tesla seeks new sources of vehicle demand. Tesla's consumer deliveries missed Wall Street's expectations in the first three months of 2026. The company produced 50,000 more units than it delivered during the quarter, the largest inventory glut the company has ever reported. And, there are limitations with Tesla's new contract. Tesla doesn't offer direct fleet financing or leasing, which are common in government procurement. And its direct-sales model continues to face restrictions in some states due to dealership laws. Tesla said it can immediately sell in 30 US states. It's also offering incentives to win the government's business, including waiving delivery fees for government customers. Read the original article on Business Insider

The acquisition would give Musk a viable rival to Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex systems.

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<p><strong><a href="https://qwen.ai/blog?id=qwen3.6-27b">Qwen3.6-27B: Flagship-Level Coding in a 27B Dense Model</a></strong></p> Big claims from Qwen about their latest open weight model:</p> <blockquote> <p>Qwen3.6-27B delivers flagship-level agentic coding performance, surpassing the previous-generation open-source flagship Qwen3.5-397B-A17B (397B total / 17B active MoE) across all major coding benchmarks.</p> </blockquote> <p>On Hugging Face <a href="https://huggingface.co/Qwen/Qwen3.5-397B-A17B/tree/main">Qwen3.5-397B-A17B</a> is 807GB, this new <a href="https://huggingface.co/Qwen/Qwen3.6-27B/tree/main">Qwen3.6-27B</a> is 55.6GB.</p> <p>I tried it out with the 16.8GB Unsloth <a href="https://huggingface.co/unsloth/Qwen3.6-27B-GGUF">Qwen3.6-27B-GGUF:Q4_K_M</a> quantized version and <code>llama-server</code> using this recipe by <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47863217#47865140">benob on Hacker News</a>, after first installing <code>llama-server</code> using <code>brew install llama.cpp</code>:</p> <pre><code>llama-server \ -hf unsloth/Qwen3.6-27B-GGUF:Q4_K_M \ --no-mmproj \ --fit on \ -np 1 \ -c 65536 \ --cache-ram 4096 -ctxcp 2 \ --jinja \ --temp 0.6 \ --top-p 0.95 \ --top-k 20 \ --min-p 0.0 \ --presence-penalty 0.0 \ --repeat-penalty 1.0 \ --reasoning on \ --chat-template-kwargs '{"preserve_thinking": true}' </code></pre> <p>On first run that saved the ~17GB model to <code>~/.cache/huggingface/hub/models--unsloth--Qwen3.6-27B-GGUF</code>.</p> <p>Here's <a href="https://gist.github.com/simonw/4d99d730c840df594096366db1d27281">the transcript</a> for "Generate an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle". This is an <em>outstanding</em> result for a 16.8GB local model:</p> <p><img alt="Bicycle has spokes, a chain and a correctly shaped frame. Handlebars are a bit detached. Pelican has wing on the handlebars, weirdly bent legs that touch the pedals and a good bill. Background details are pleasant - semi-transparent clouds, birds, grass, sun." src="https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/Qwen3.6-27B-GGUF-Q4_K_M.png" /></p> <p>Performance numbers reported by <code>llama-server</code>:</p> <ul> <li>Reading: 20 tokens, 0.4s, 54.32 tokens/s</li> <li>Generation: 4,444 tokens, 2min 53s, 25.57 tokens/s</li> </ul> <p>For good measure, here's <a href="https://gist.github.com/simonw/95735fe5e76e6fdf1753e6dcce360699">Generate an SVG of a NORTH VIRGINIA OPOSSUM ON AN E-SCOOTER</a> (run previously <a href="https://simonwillison.net/2026/Apr/7/glm-51/">with GLM-5.1</a>):</p> <p><img alt="Digital illustration in a neon Tron-inspired style of a grey cat-like creature wearing cyan visor goggles riding a glowing cyan futuristic motorcycle through a dark cityscape at night, with its long tail trailing behind, silhouetted buildings with yellow-lit windows in the background, and a glowing magenta moon on the right." src="https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/qwen3.6-27b-possum.jpg" /></p> <p>That one took 6,575 tokens, 4min 25s, 24.74 t/s. <p><small></small>Via <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47863217">Hacker News</a></small></p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai">ai</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/generative-ai">generative-ai</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/local-llms">local-llms</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/llms">llms</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/qwen">qwen</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/pelican-riding-a-bicycle">pelican-riding-a-bicycle</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/llama-cpp">llama-cpp</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/llm-release">llm-release</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai-in-china">ai-in-china</a></p>

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Learn how Propensity Score Matching uncovers true causality in observational data. By finding "statistical twins," we eliminate selection bias to reveal the real impact of your interventions and business decisions. The post Correlation vs. Causation: Measuring True Impact with Propensity Score Matching appeared first on Towards Data Science.

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Datadog’s latest State of AI Engineering report points to a measurable failure problem in enterprise AI systems. Around 1 in 20 requests already fail in production, yet systems continue to […] The post Datadog Report: The Silent Failure Problem in AI Is About to Hit Enterprise System appeared first on BigDATAwire.

One group of hackers used AI for everything from vibe coding their malware to creating fake company websites—and stole as much as $12 million in three months.

A new executive order seen by WIRED prohibits New York state employees from using insider knowledge to enrich themselves with prediction market bets.

Mason Boycott-Owen / Politico: The UK's GCHQ believes ~100 countries have procured cyber intrusion software, such as Pegasus, suggesting the barrier to get access to the tech is dropping  —  GLASGOW — More than half of the world's nation states are believed to have purchased technology that could be capable of hacking …

The new proposed budget slashes money for environmental cleanup and calls to double the production of cores for nuclear weapons.

Automated AI vulnerability discovery is reversing the enterprise security costs that traditionally favour attackers. Bringing exploits to zero was once viewed as an unrealistic goal. The prevailing operational doctrine aimed to make attacks so expensive that only adversaries with functionally unlimited budgets could afford them, thereby disincentivising casual use. However, the recent evaluation by the […] The post Reversing enterprise security costs with AI vulnerability discovery appeared first on AI News.

Will Dunham / Reuters: Sony AI says its autonomous ping pong robot is the first robot to attain expert-level performance in a physical sport after beating some top-level human players  —  An autonomous robot ping-pong player dubbed Ace has achieved a milestone for AI and robotics in Tokyo by competing …

On Substack: Substack adds translation tools, and says ~100K publishers earn on the platform, including ~30K outside the US; European creators earn $90M+/year collectively  —  Introducing translations and our vision for expanding Substack internationally  —  Who changed your life today?

Rebecca Torrence / Bloomberg: Sooth Labs, founded by ex-Meta employees to build AI models that let businesses forecast geopolitical events, is raising ~$50M at a ~$335M valuation  —  Sooth Labs, a new artificial intelligence lab founded by former Meta Platforms Inc. employees, is raising about $50 million in funding …

Kai Nicol-Schwarz / CNBC: Vast Data, which makes software infrastructure for managing large amounts of data with a focus on AI applications, raised a $1B Series F at a $30B valuation  —  Vast Data announced a $1 billion funding round at a $30 billion valuation on Wednesday, with Nvidia among those backing the AI company.