"I'm building a life I don't need to escape," says Chikara Kennedy, who launched a coaching business and moved to Mexico after her Meta layoff. Courtesy of Chikara Kennedy Chikara Kennedy worked as an HR manager at Meta before her layoff in 2023. She started a coaching business in 2024 and now earns about half of her old salary. Moving to Mexico helped her reduce expenses and improve her overall quality of life. This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Chikara Kennedy, the 43-year-old CEO of Chikara Power Coaching, who lives in Mexico. Business Insider has verified Kennedy's income and employment with documentation and edited her words for length and clarity. Before launching my own company in 2024, I worked at Meta for nearly five years as a senior HR manager. At the time, my base salary was roughly $250,000, and with bonus and restricted stock options, I was making over $300,000 a year. It was a high-income, very structured corporate role, and my pay was predictable in a way that felt stable. Then in 2023, everything shifted. I got divorced, I got laid off, and I turned 40 — all within the same year. I didn't have any indication that I was going to get laid off, and it was very traumatic. At first, I was shaken by the job loss; I felt anxious about the uncertainty ahead and was having meltdowns about my finances. I didn't know what to do at the time — but by 2024, I'd decided to start my own coaching business. I knew I needed to downsize While starting my business, not knowing if it would be as profitable as the job I had before, I started to look for ways to reduce my expenses and improve my quality of life. Even with savings, I knew that trying to maintain my lifestyle in DC in my expensive apartment, wasn't a good idea as an entrepreneur, where my income felt less stable and I wasn't getting a paycheck every two weeks. My rent in downtown DC alone was over $3,000 a month. Kennedy loves living close to the beach in Mexico. Courtesy of Chikara Kennedy I didn't want to be in a situation where the money would feel tight. Moving somewhere cheaper felt like a fun, viable option for me — lifestyle-wise, but also as a way to reduce my expenses and reset. While looking for ways to make life cheaper, I met a stranger in DC at a nail salon. We started talking about life, entrepreneurship, and how expensive it was to live in DC. She told me she was thinking about moving to the beach in Mexico and told me, "I think you should too." It was the first time I had ever met her, but something about it clicked. After my layoff and starting my business, I moved to Mexico In September 2024, I packed up my belongings, put my 15-year-old car and the rest of my things in storage, took four suitcases with me, and moved to Mexico. I didn't have debt or a car payment. My thinking was that if I didn't like it, I could always move back. I knew the only thing truly secure was my ability to adapt and rebuild. Why wouldn't I take the opportunity to live a different lifestyle, reduce my expenses, and give myself the time and space to focus on creating and reinventing myself? I now make roughly 50% of what I used to make The hardest adjustment was learning to live without the psychological safety of a predictable paycheck after nearly 20 years in corporate environments. It's also challenging as I'm not able to save or invest the way I did before. There have been times when my business has slowed, and I've re-examined my budget, looking for ways to cut back. Right now, my rent is close to $1,700 for a two-bedroom, and I'm considering moving to a one-bedroom to make sure I have a little more wiggle room. Still, unlike in DC, I don't have a car, and I spend very little on shopping. It's a scaled-back lifestyle, but I live across from the beach and I love it. I walk most places, and spend far less on consumerism, status spending, commuting, and convenience-based living than I did during my corporate years. As an entrepreneur, I don't have health insurance. I'd previously had great healthcare through my employer, so when I got laid off, losing that was a big concern for me, especially being over 40. Now it feels more affordable in Mexico and I'm able to pay out of pocket. My healthcare is better than what I had in the US, too, and I go to the doctor more regularly. While I make less money today, many aspects of my life have improved dramatically: my health, stress levels, flexibility, relationships, and overall quality of life. My everyday life now reflects the kind of freedom I used to only experience during short vacations. I used to go to work every day, come home, go to sleep, and wait for the weekend or vacation. Now, even on less income, I can go to the beach on Tuesday if I want to. I'm in the sunshine, walking more, and swimming. This wasn't just a financial reinvention. It was emotional and identity-based too. Though I make less, I feel better all around Being an entrepreneur has been a good growth opportunity for me. It's made me think more about what I truly want and why. It's made me think more about networking and different ways of making income, and it's allowed me to live a more authentic life. One of the biggest realizations for me was that modern stability looks very different than what many of us were taught. I'd spent years building a "successful" life, but when divorce and a layoff happened close together, it forced me to reevaluate what security actually meant. I always expected to always work corporate, and to retire from it with a pension. Being an entrepreneur was never the plan. But even though it's not what I thought my life would look like, I'm much happier even while making less. My mental health is better, and I'm more open to new things, like meeting new people. I'm more adjusted. I'm more adventurous than I was, and I really feel like I'm living life. I now get to work with people I want to work with, I create my schedule and create time for things that are important to me like exercise, yoga, and being on the beach. I used to work to escape my life. Now I'm building a life I don't need to escape. Do you have a story to share about how you adjusted your lifestyle after a paycut? Contact this editor, Debbie Strong, at dstrong@businessinsider.com. Read the original article on Business Insider

Google's reputation as a dream employer is evolving in the AI era. Stefan Rousseau/PA Images via Getty Images Google has long been regarded as a dream employer in tech. Some current and former employees say that reputation has become more complicated. AI startups, layoffs, and the desire for greater impact are reshaping career decisions. Earning nearly $1 million a year wasn't enough to keep Yousuf Imran at Google. In 2026, Imran earned $986,000 as a Google account executive, largely from sales commissions on top of a roughly $170,000 base salary. Even still, he couldn't help but notice the potential for "life-changing money" the AI boom was creating outside Big Tech. "Google pays very well, but the equity packages at OpenAI and Anthropic are in a different universe," said Imran, 41, who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Meanwhile, seeing talented colleagues get laid off over the previous few years made him less confident about his long-term job security. In April, after building AI side projects in his spare time, Imran left Google to launch an AI sales tools startup. For years, Google's reputation as a workplace was almost as famous as its search engine. Its sprawling campuses, generous perks, and the opportunity to shape products used by billions of people made it one of the world's most coveted employers. That reputation hasn't disappeared, but for some employees, it has become more complicated. Interviews with 12 current and former Google employees — including six who recently left the company — suggest the AI boom has created opportunities that have become too compelling for some Googlers to ignore. In recent weeks, the company has lost several high-profile AI researchers to OpenAI and Anthropic. But the AI boom isn't the only reason. Years of layoffs, shifts in workplace culture, and other changes have also led employees across the company to question whether it remains the best place to build their careers. Google no longer feels like the safe bet Google was the world's most attractive employer for business students for more than a decade, according to employer-branding firm Universum. But in 2022, it fell to second behind Apple. In the US specifically, Google fell from first among business students in 2023 to fifth in the firm's most recent survey, though it remained the most attractive employer among IT students. Few factors matter more to current and prospective employees than job security. Between its founding in 1998 and 2022, large-scale layoffs were rare at Google. In 2023, the company cut about 12,000 jobs, or roughly 6% of its workforce. Smaller rounds of layoffs and voluntary buyouts followed as Google shifted resources toward AI, reduced layers of management, and recalibrated after pandemic-era hiring. Yousuf Imran said the AI boom and recent layoffs helped shape his decision to leave Google. Yousuf Imran For some employees, the repeated cuts fundamentally changed how they thought about the stability of a career at Google. About six months after Joslyn Orgill started as a data engineer at Google, the company announced its 2023 layoffs. Though Orgill kept her job, she said the layoffs were among the reasons she left last year to pursue a Ph.D. in computer science. Taylor M. LaSane was among the employees who accepted a buyout last year. She had already considered focusing on the career coaching business she'd started three years earlier, but said the repeated layoffs made leaving Google feel less risky than it might have in the past. Business Insider is speaking with workers who've found themselves at a corporate crossroads — whether due to a layoff, resignation, job search, or shifting workplace expectations. Share your story by filling out this form. Looking for a bigger impact Google still offers many of the generous perks that helped make it famous as an employer. But some employees say the experience of working there has changed on the margins in recent years. The company has scaled back some office amenities and budgets, including reducing the hours of certain office cafés in 2023 as part of cost-cutting efforts. Some employees also said budgets for certain travel, team events, and holiday celebrations have tightened, while work-from-home policies have become more restrictive. For some employees, one of the very qualities that made Google such an attractive employer — its scale and reach — also made it harder to see the direct impact of their own work. "At a Big Tech company, you're one piece of a very large machine," said Aashna Doshi, who left Google in May to launch an AI startup. "I craved the ability to make decisions, move fast, and see the direct results of my work." Aashna Doshi left Google in May to build an AI startup. Aashna Doshi For Doshi, the chance to build something of her own ultimately outweighed the security of staying at Google. "The scarier version of this decision wasn't leaving Google," she said. "It was staying and always wondering what could have been." The AI boom changed the equation Many of the changes reshaping Google aren't unique to the company. Tech workers across the industry have navigated layoffs, shifting workplace policies, and the rapid rise of AI. For many employees, Google remains one of the most desirable places to build a career in tech. But as OpenAI and Anthropic race toward potential IPOs, the prospect of pre-IPO equity has become a powerful lure for some workers. Career coach Sundeep Teki previously told Business Insider that nearly every AI job seeker he speaks with wants to work at one of the two companies. Though some Google employees have voiced frustration over smaller compensation increases, the company's six-figure salaries and generous stock grants remain the envy of much of the corporate world. A Google spokesperson previously told Business Insider that the company remains confident in its ability to attract and retain talent. For some former Googlers, however, even Google's generous compensation isn't enough to outweigh the opportunities created by the AI boom — whether that's joining a fast-growing AI company or building one of their own. "If the only way to get real upside in this AI moment is equity, at some point, you ask yourself whether the equity should be in your own company," Imran said. Have a story to share about working in tech? Reach reporter Jacob Zinkula via email at jzinkula@businessinsider.com, or via Signal at jzinkula.29. Read the original article on Business Insider

Maskot/Getty Images/Maskot AI adoption among small businesses is rising, driven by cost-saving and efficiency benefits. One small business used AI to weather tariff impacts, but also ran up an accidental big bill. Another firm uses AI for different assistant functions, which sometimes results in silly encounters. Sparkles Homes, which makes a bevy of bedazzled products for discount stores like HomeGoods, was under pressure when tariffs hit their supply chain. AI ended up being a lifesaver for the business, automating various processes and reducing marketing costs. "I know there's a lot of people worried about AI taking jobs, but, for us specifically, that'd be the only reason why the company is still in business," said founder and CEO Brandon Lind. "And why the five people that still work for me do still have a job." A growing cohort of small business owners is using AI to cut costs and keep things running. A US Chamber of Commerce survey found that 58% of small businesses used AI in 2025, up from 23% in 2023. But AI adoption also carries unexpected consequences. For Amy Wood, the founder and CEO of Flint Avenue Marketing, a small boutique agency in Lubbock, Texas, AI has been useful for website work and even staffing. She uses an AI assistant named "Rachel" to man the phones at their remote-first office, and a sales assistant named "Sonny" to help her track down leads. It's also led to some snafus. Sonny sent an obviously AI-generated email to a new lead recently, who wrote back with a "long diatribe" making fun of the AI. Rachel had a tendency to console callers, even if they're not upset; Wood had to tell her to stop apologizing. "If you just set it up and set it and forget it, it will create chaos," Wood said. "It will amplify whatever chaos you have happening in your company." Small businesses are learning that AI is not a simple plug-and-play productivity booster. It can speed up processes and make life easier, but it can also create surprise costs, awkward errors, and an uneasy reliance on software that business owners don't fully control. How small businesses are adapting to AI Ara Kharazian, the lead economist at Ramp, said that small firms are still less likely to use AI than their larger colleagues, "but when they do, they do use it more, and they use it more intensely." Small businesses adopting AI are paying a median of about $21 per employee, compared with $11 across businesses of all sizes. Firms with 0 to 49 workers spent, on average, $607 per worker in 2025, according to an analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. In 2026, they expect to spend $1,034. Small businesses are also increasingly paying for more than one AI service, said Chi Mac, one of the authors of a report from the JPMorganChase Institute. That's why some owners are starting to think about AI the way they think about other operating expenses. Bill Belknap, the president of AEONRG, a construction contracting firm, said he includes AI costs in his overhead for projects. Wood now sets aside $500 a month as a buffer in case AI prices raise. "I'm worried more that I would get something deployed and then get all dependent on it as part of my workflow, and then the prices jack up," Wood said. "We've spent so much time getting our processes and everything in order, we would hate to lose that investment if all of a sudden the platform doubles in price." CPA Mark Gallegos said he sees smaller businesses inheriting AI costs through the software they already use, which have incorporated new AI functions. A browser might offer to summarize or turbocharge a spreadsheet, and workers click in without thinking about it. "That's where they don't understand that there is an additional cost, just like anything else," Gallegos said. There's also a pre- and post-ChatGPT divide in how quickly small businesses adopt AI. A JPMorgan Chase report found that for firms started in 2023, it took nearly two years for 10% of them to begin paying for at least one AI service. Firms started in 2025 took just six months. Millennial small business owners are adopting AI at the highest rate, followed by Gen Z and Gen X. And the small businesses on the AI train are plowing ahead. "The folks who are active adopters are generally enthusiastic and actually tell us they want more," said Tammy Halevy, the executive director of small business organization Reimagine Main Street. "They want more use cases, they want more automation, they want more and more and more." Striking the right AI balance Taking a gamble on AI is still riskier for smaller businesses that get by on razor-thin margins. That's leading some to enact their own guardrails on the fly, whether it's telling AI receptionists to chill out or creating careful guides to tokens. Lind learned that the hard way: He once accidentally spent $1,000 on AI while trying to generate stock images. His LLM began creating thousands and thousands of pictures, burning through tokens along the way. He responded by putting a daily spending limit on the company's AI usage and giving workers an AI guide with adages such as treating tokens like money and starting with the least expensive model that can do the job. "We really need to be careful on what we're spending, and we need to make sure we're using AI as a tool to benefit us, and not something that's going to put us in a worse position," said Lind. Wood said that, for instance, when her business received an influx of calls, she had to top up tokens to power her receptionist — a situation that wouldn't happen (hopefully) with a human manning the phones. But even if costs rise, she'll stay all in. "People don't want to hear that necessarily, but it's still less than hiring someone," she said. "If I hired a receptionist and a salesperson and an SEO person and an executive assistant, all of those positions are pretty much handled by AI right now." Read the original article on Business Insider

Oscar Wong/Getty Images New reports from BCG, Ramp, and Revelio Labs look at AI deployment at companies. The reports found that AI returns don't come from deployment — they come from strategy. The right way to deploy AI is through enacting organizational change, they found. Companies have spent the past two years racing to deploy chatbots, coding assistants, and AI agents to their workers. Two new reports, however, suggest that deploying AI tools is the easy part. The hard part is using them well. Ramp, a financial technology company, and Revelio Labs, a workforce intelligence platform, studied company behavior across nearly 22,000 US firms. They found that companies making sustained, high-intensity AI investments saw greater workforce gains than firms using AI more lightly. The report defined "high-intensity adopters" as those who spent an average of about $34 a month on AI, compared to those who spent an average of less than $3. High-intensity adopters grew faster. They saw their head count grow more than 10% over the first 24 months after adopting AI. Entry-level head count rose 12%. The high-intensity adopters have some advantages. "They are larger, more technical, and faster growing before adoption," the authors wrote. The key to their success, however, is not just adopting AI but knowing how to leverage it effectively. The authors wrote that the benefits of AI adoption require "complementary investments, organizational change, and learning inside the firm." In other words, a few enterprise chatbot subscriptions may not be enough to move the needle. That divide — between having access to AI and knowing how to turn it into value — shows up in a separate Boston Consulting Group survey of workers. The consulting firm surveyed nearly 12,000 people for its "AI at Work" report and found that AI use has spread widely: 74% of frontline white-collar employees now use AI daily or several times a week, up 23% from 2025. Among frontline employees who regularly use AI, however, 66% of respondents said they've received limited or no guidance on how to use the time they save, and 58% said they are not reinvesting their time in more strategic work. BCG concluded that strategy matters more than tools. Workers with strong strategic clarity but limited access to AI tools reported greater measurable impact than those with strong tool access but little direction. About 80% of respondents said they saw a measurable impact when they had a "strong strategic clarity" on how to use tools, even with limited access to them. Whereas only 60% reported seeing a measurable impact when they had limited strategic clarity but strong access to tools. It's not enough to bring AI into the workplace, the reports found. It has to be done strategically. Read the original article on Business Insider

Even Realities, an ex-Apple team building camera-free smart glasses, raised $150 million from Meituan and Tencent at a $1 billion valuation.

Baek, a 35-year-old manager at the South Korean semiconductor titan SK Hynix, was enrolled in Sunoo, a matchmaking company based in Seoul, a year ago. In a move typical of anxious South Korean parents, his mother signed him up, hoping to find a good wife for her son. Lately, says Baek (who asked to be…

PLUS: Go from screenshot to bug fix with Cursor Mobile

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Brecht Corbeel/Unsplash Earlier today, the ABC flagged a shift in their position on generative artificial intelligence (AI) use in their news production. Despite previous caution, a recent deal with US tech company Anthropic has opened the door for ABC staff to bring Claude AI into their broadcasting news work. For now, the scope of this inclusion is limited to about 100 employees. However, the ABC has signalled a willingness to expand this scope to include other tasks. The broadcaster will also hire specialists to help with AI adoption. The broadcaster is also piloting conversion of regional radio bulletins into articles with its own AI tool developed by the ABC. The goal is to free up time for staff to engage in other core journalistic work, such as investigations, while also expanding the ABC’s production capabilities. Australians have a distinctive distrust of AI tools, so it remains to be seen how the public will react to this change. On the other hand, the decision tracks with a long history of editors and journalists being early adopters of tech innovations. Journalists already use various data tools. And it’s possible to use generative AI to augment journalistic work in valuable and unprecedented ways. However, this comes at a time when journalism faces crises of sustainability for journalists and news – problems AI can as easily exacerbate as remedy. The original tech-heads? Journalists and news producers have long had not only a vested interest in innovations that might improve their busy workflows, but also a broad curiosity about the cutting edge of tools and technologies. Generative AI in chatbot form has only made headlines in the past three years. But journalists have saved time by using automated systems and “robo-writing” to convert data into simple news stories for over a decade. In one 2016 study, readers even rated computer-written articles as “more credible and higher in journalistic expertise”. Nevertheless, with rampant tech adoption also come concerns that some innovations are more disruptive than beneficial. For example, social media and analytics introduced the almighty algorithm as an unwelcome additional editor to journalists’ work, undermining their autonomy. Generative AI introduces a new threat that raises existential concerns for the sustainability of news. Disrupting and displacing journalism Journalists are more worried about generative AI than they were with other automated tools in the past – because chatbots can seemingly write just like a human can. In response, they’ve been emphasising their indispensable role as gatekeepers who convey news to the public. So if organisations choose to use AI to help produce journalism, a key question is how to handle ethics and concerns over quality. Time-poor professionals in fields from law to medicine have found themselves burned when their generative AI went off-script and crafted plausible fictions. This potentially raises a bigger threat for journalists. The profession is already facing a crisis of public mistrust, including in Australia. Relying on AI for content generation opens the door to missteps that news producers like the ABC can ill afford. But these risks can be mitigated if newsrooms dedicate additional effort to verifying and curating the AI content. This makes journalists’ roles as gatekeepers more important than ever. Yet it also relies on audiences having a relationship with journalists and appreciating their judgement and analysis in the first place. These efforts represent a new kind of work, one that shifts the lens away from the forms of production that have long been central to journalism. A space of opportunities Conversely, the latest AI tools do offer journalists new ways to augment their work. The large language models and other AI tools the public uses to generate office emails or funny cat pictures have been used by journalists globally to engage in unprecedented investigations and news production. BBC’s in-depth coverage of Russia’s presence in Ukraine leveraged AI to dig through troves of text and video. This provided insights that would have been impractical or impossible to achieve through manual methods. Global South news producers have used AI to overcome endemic resourcing challenges. They’ve been able to repurpose and translate content, extending the capacities of already stretched news reporters. Generative AI can save time. Using AI tools for routine news production can make room for journalists to improve their relationships with audiences, focus on quality, and make a stronger case for journalism’s distinctive value. Displacing journalists or displacing journalism? These changes at the ABC are coming at a time when funding and resources for journalism are becoming increasingly scarce. The business models that have long underpinned our media system were rendered unsustainable by big tech, while Australian news organisations are having to compete with overabundant online media from across the world. AI tools bring potential for further displacement. AI summaries served by search engines summarise news content instead of directing online traffic to the original news source. Additionally, AI-generated news obscures Australian media outlets or redirects users to larger international news organisations – particularly those in the US. Newsrooms are weighing their options on how to best use AI even as they strategise how to compete with it as a source for news. The ABC’s goals for using AI in their news work fits a long-established historical trend toward keeping journalism on the cutting edge of what technological innovations can offer. The efficiency gains and expanded capabilities for journalism are real, and audiences can appreciate its outputs even as they distrust the technology itself. The question remains whether the ABC can channel AI into benefits for the public in a way that does not sacrifice their commitment to news quality or the public’s esteem for the public broadcaster. Correction: this article was updated to clarify that Claude AI is not being used for converting radio bulletins to text, but instead the ABC uses its own AI tool for this pilot. Timothy Koskie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Anthropic shipped two updates in one week, and neither story stops at the model itself. One … Fable 5 Returns, Sonnet 5 Gets Cheaper, But European Banks Still Can’t Deploy Either on AzureRead more The post Fable 5 Returns, Sonnet 5 Gets Cheaper, But European Banks Still Can’t Deploy Either on Azure appeared first on .

While other humanoid startups chase sky-high valuations, Agility Robotics is betting its future on execution — and a SPAC.

Swiss photonics startup Aylight has raised€4.5 million in a pre-seed funding round to support the development of itschip-scale multiwavelength laser technology. The round was co-led by Elaia andSwissc...

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<p><strong>Release:</strong> <a href="https://github.com/simonw/sqlite-utils/releases/tag/4.0rc3">sqlite-utils 4.0rc3</a></p> <p>I hoped to release <code>sqlite-utils 4.0</code> stable this weekend, but as I worked through the backlog of issues and PRs with a combination of Claude Fable 5 and GPT-5.5 the changelog since rc2 <a href="https://sqlite-utils.datasette.io/en/latest/changelog.html#rc3-2026-07-05">kept getting bigger</a>.</p> <p>The biggest new feature is support for introspecting and creating compound foreign keys - a feature that involves a subtle breaking change to <a href="https://sqlite-utils.datasette.io/en/latest/python-api.html#foreign-keys">table.foreign_keys</a> and hence needed to land for the 4.0 stable release.</p> <p><code>sqlite-utils</code> also now follows SQLite's convention for case insensitive column names, which turned out to touch <a href="https://sqlite-utils.datasette.io/en/latest/changelog.html#case-insensitive-column-matching">a bunch of different places at once</a>.</p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/projects">projects</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/sqlite">sqlite</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/sqlite-utils">sqlite-utils</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/annotated-release-notes">annotated-release-notes</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/gpt">gpt</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/claude-mythos-fable">claude-mythos-fable</a></p>

Anniek Bao / CNBC: SemiAnalysis: Nvidia delays its next-gen AI rack system Kyber NVL144 by 12+ months to 2028 due to PCB manufacturing issues, and cancels its NVL72x2 architecture  —  NVIDIA's next marquee product — the Kyber rack-scale architecture designed to house its 2027 Rubin Ultra chips …

Ann Cao / South China Morning Post: Shanghai-based AI chipmaker Biren raises ~$892.5M in a new share sale to boost GPU production; Biren's stock is up 150%+ since its January Hong Kong IPO  —  Chinese artificial intelligence chipmaking champion Shanghai Biren Technology is raising HK$7 billion (US$892.5 million) …

Groq's founder said that he set his company back three to four years because of leadership mistakes. Bloomberg/Getty Images Jonathan Ross said his leadership mistake cost Groq several years. The founder said his leadership mistakes included hiring issues and excessive delegation. The turning point for Ross was shifting from talent growth to talent selection. Jonathan Ross, Groq's former CEO, says his steep learning curve as a founder came at a hefty cost. "I was a terrible leader. I was one of the world's worst leaders when I started," Ross said on an episode of the "Founders" podcast released on Sunday. He recounted his management mistakes early in the chipmaker's journey. "The first thing that you have to do as a founder is you have to go from the technical thing that you know how to do and that you can add value with, to learning how to manage people," Ross said. "For me, that probably cost Groq three to four years." Ross, a former Google engineer, cofounded Groq in 2016 to build chips it calls language processing units. The custom AI inference chips are an alternative to Nvidia's graphics processing units. In December, Nvidia struck a roughly $20 billion licensing and talent deal with Groq, bringing Ross, Groq president Sunny Madra, and other key engineers to Nvidia while allowing Groq to remain an independent company. At Nvidia, Ross serves as chief software architect, while Groq is helmed by Adam Winter, a former vice president at the company. As a founder, Ross said he erred in not hiring people who could operate autonomously, and then delegating them too much responsibility. "What ended up happening was things would just grind to a halt because they wouldn't know what to do, and I wasn't telling them what to do, and they were used to being told what to do," the founder said. Ross said the turning point was when he became more selective about hiring. "I went from looking for positives, which is what you do when you're trying to grow talent, to looking for negatives, which is what you do when you're trying to select talent," he said. Other tech founders have detailed similar early-days management mistakes. On a December podcast, Figma CEO Dylan Field said that he confused leadership with management. He said he had to learn basics like holding one-on-one meetings, building relationships, and creating accountability. "Management and leadership are different," Field said. "You can be a good leader and a bad manager or vice versa." Last May, Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn said that all founders should be micromanagers until they had 30 employees — but that he took it too far, micromanaging until he had 50. "At this point, I also have learned that most of my job is culture carrier, mascot, and just making some of the kind of tough philosophical decisions," von Ahn said. Read the original article on Business Insider

Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer: Researchers document JadePuffer, the first known “agentic ransomware”, which adapts in real time and retries steps to execute an end-to-end extortion operation  —  Researchers identified what they believe is the first documented case of a ransomware operation, JadePuffer …

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Kate O'Keeffe / Bloomberg: A US federal judge ordered the DOD to shield Alibaba from a law that led lobbyists to drop it as a client while she weighs the measure's constitutionality  —  A federal judge ordered the Pentagon to give Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. a reprieve from a law that caused all of its lobbyists to drop …