• American families loaded up their station wagons and hit the road in the mid-20th century.
• Families explored the US as the country was changing, exposing them to different ways of living.
• But road-tripping in the '60s also came with its own dangers, especially for Black Americans.

With the cross-country interstate materializing, automobiles on the rise, a booming economy, and a growing travel bug, families loaded up their station wagons and hit the road in the mid-20th century.

Road tripping in the '60s and '70s was popular and affordable, and for many people, these cross-country vacations were the first time families experienced life outside their own towns. 

Many Americans grew up road tripping, and the shared experience is something they still bond over today — though high gas prices may make road trips more difficult this year. 

Here's a look back at Americans who hit the road, ready for family bonding, exploration, and plenty of mishaps along the way. 

In the early 1960s, Americans realized the relative ease and low cost of cross-country road trips.

While flying was more luxurious, American families saw road trips as a more affordable way to see different parts of the country. So, when summer came around each year, they would pack up their station wagons and hit the road.

Amid the postwar economic boom, middle-class families had a new sense of disposable income.

With the baby boom underway, American families were growing and ready to explore in their new cars.

"The nation's railroads were in stark decline by the 1960s, [and] taking a trip by car was the most viable option," historian Allen Pietrobon, who has taught a course at Trinity Washington University examining the meaning of the great American road trip, told Business Insider.

With money to spend and the growth of the auto industry, Americans hit the road.

However, it didn't mean all journeys were smooth.

Richard Ratay, author of "Don't Make Me Pull Over! An Informal History of the Family Road Trip," previously told Business Insider that, while automobiles were on the rise, his family wasn't the most confident about their own.

"It wasn't a matter of 'if' you were going to break down, but when," he said.

For Ratay's family, every trip started with his father stopping at Kmart to stock up on equipment for the inevitable breakdown.

Ratay said he has plenty of memories of standing on the side of the road, watching his older brother use a wire coat hanger to try to fix the family car. 

The interstate's debut promised open roads with far less traffic than we see now.

Sparked by President Dwight D. Eisenhower — who wanted the military to be able to move freely across the country in the most efficient way possible, the US Army reported — the interstate system was launched in 1956 after Congress passed the Federal-Aid Highway Act.

With a looming fear of atomic attacks, it was also designed as a way for people to easily escape cities.

The project ultimately took more than 30 years and more than $100 billion. It was largely completed by the 1990s.

If families needed advice on where to start, a strategic partnership between car manufacturers and cities created advertisements to lure families for a visit.

Pietrobon said this was a win-win partnership, in which car manufacturers would convince Americans to hit the road in their new vehicles, encouraging them to visit cities with unique charm. That way, the automobile industry took off, as did tourism. 

In a time when Americans were unfamiliar with the way of life even just a few states over, sometimes seeing an ad for The World's Only Corn Palace in South Dakota was enough to get the whole family on the road to find out more.

Roadside attractions were built to draw families to new places, even if it meant abandoning your route to spend an afternoon climbing into the body of a giant Brontosaurus.

Sometimes, an eye-catching billboard would encourage families to veer off course. Other times, they would get recommendations from someone they met on the road.

In Cabazon, California, gigantic dinosaurs would greet families as they pulled into the parking lot.

Families carefully followed their AAA TripTik maps to find the best roadside attractions and outlooks.

The cross-country road trip honored the saying "it's about the journey, not the destination."

Ratay remembers his father wanting to squeeze every drop of gas out of the car, often leaving the family stranded on the side of the road with an empty tank. 

Some Americans would camp along the way, revealing a new world of hiking trails, water sports, campfire cooking, and lots of Jiffy Pop.

Families would pull into the campground, park the station wagon, pop open the camper, and set up camp. Campgrounds were a great way to meet others and exchange travel tips. 

To haul all the extra gear and have somewhere to sleep, some families attached campers to their cars.

Before we had tiny homes, we had pop-up campers. Campers would latch on to the back of the family Vista Cruiser and carry the camping gear, chairs, guitars, endless snacks, and toys.

Sometimes, families would leave the car and camper behind for the day and hit the road on bikes.

A bike ride along a glistening lake or through a forest was a great way for a family to spend time together outside the car. For some, getting into nature was a completely new experience.

For those still wanting to avoid the great outdoors, motels were an easy, right-off-the-road spot to spend the night.

With people from all regions under one roof, motels were a unique hot spot for learning about other parts of the country.

Ratay said he felt like he was a part of a "fraternity of travelers" all on similar trips with different stories to share.

Parents and their kids would play or lounge in the pool to cool off after hours on the road.

Adults would sit poolside, exchanging stories of getting lost or asking other families about the best roadside attractions. 

Not all motels were on the side of the road.

Others looked more like summer camps, where families could bond over activities before continuing on their way.

For a lot of families, getting the chance to ride in a motorboat or try kayaking was a completely new adventure.

To keep the kids entertained, families could play mini golf or shuffleboard.

Any motel that had mini golf, shuffleboard, or ping pong was a huge find. 

Baseball was America's favorite sport throughout the '60s, and a pick-up game of catch was a way to get the body moving after spending all day in the car.

Fishing, soccer, rollerblading, and card games also kept kids engaged. 

Some motels even had game rooms, where families would team up against others.

Ratay remembers getting to a motel and rushing straight to the game room until it was time to go to sleep. The chance to make a new friend or two was always a plus.

But games weren't confined to motel rooms. After packing up the car and getting back on the road, it was time for the road-trip games to begin.

Road-trip games were essential for keeping everyone entertained for hours in the car.

The alphabet game, license-plate game, car bingo, and the timeless game of Mad Libs carried families through never-ending corn fields and desert plains. 

Lost families would turn into rest stops to ask for help getting back to their routes.

Half of the adventure of road tripping was staying on track. With a sole paper map (that could easily fly out the back of your Lincoln Continental convertible), if you made a few wrong turns, you were faced with stopping the car and asking a stranger for help. 

Ratay remembers his sister perched between his parents in the front seat, flipping through an AAA map book as the family followed a simple road-trip routine: drive from the top of one page to the bottom, then turn to the next and keep going.

In many ways, road trips were golden opportunities for Americans to learn about their own country aside from history books or movies.

Finally, people were tasting new cuisines, hearing different accents, and learning firsthand about different ideologies. 

Ratay recalled stopping in New Orleans, where he tried new dishes, including po'boys and okra, which were completely foreign to a family from Wisconsin.

He also observed different lifestyles as they cruised down the road, noticing active sharecropper shacks and parents working in the fields with their children.

But road-tripping in the '60s, a time of segregation, was not as easy if you were Black.

Pietrobon said that when Black Americans were at home, they knew their go-to "safe" spots where they could eat out or refuel.

But hitting the road meant giving up that security, and often, they would try to reach their destination as quickly as possible, a stark contrast to how white Americans valued the journey over the endpoint. 

If Ratay's father ever ran out of gas, he would stick his thumb out on the side of the road, hitchhike to the nearest service station, and eventually return with enough gas to get the car to the rest stop. 

Running out of gas on the side of the road would not necessarily promise the same outcome for a non-white traveler. 

The "Negro Motorist's Green Book" was published in the 1930s for Black Americans on the road. It noted safe places for them to stop, grab a bite to eat, or spend the night.

Pietrobon said that "even rest-stop picnic areas and vending machines were frequently segregated," and Black people used this book as a method to avoid humiliation or, worse, a dangerous situation. After the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the book was no longer published.

The movie "Green Book" depicts the travels of a Black musician and his chauffeur, who use the book as a guide to find lodging and do business.

Cross-country road trips played a central role in shaping Americans' brave, determined spirit.

Traveling went beyond sightseeing and the feat of crossing the country. The exploration itself began to shape Americans.

"What a road trip provides to American life is the fact that if you've done that sort of exploration once, it makes it easier to do it again," Pietrobon said, "i.e., to risk a change and take that new job; to move to a new city; to be more adventurous in life overall."

Traveling "is what gives Americans their rugged drive and sense of individualism," he added. "It's what makes Americans tough."

Road trips not only gave Americans a deeper understanding of their country, but they also created new adventures that families would bond over for a lifetime.

Returning home from the road welcomed opportunities for change and new narratives that could be passed along to others.

As siblings grew older and passed down stories and lessons to their children, they could reminisce about the adventures and unpredictable situations they had faced together as a family.

More than a year after being laid off as a software engineer, Jesse Jashinsky still couldn't find work. He was supporting his family on a patchwork of unemployment and SNAP benefits, help from their church, and increasing amounts of credit card debt.

Then their car broke down. Replacing the transmission was an emergency expense they couldn't afford.

So Jashinsky made a crowdfunding campaign on GoFundMe and put it on Facebook. A few days later, he shared it on another social network, writing: "I don't know if this is the right thing to do on LinkedIn, but I'm kind of desperate."

Jashinsky said the post helped his fundraiser collect more than $3,800.

"I had no idea if it would get us anything, but I had nothing to lose," said Jashinsky, who is 40 and lives in Utah.

Amid the slowing job market and high inflation of recent years, LinkedIn — once a buttoned-up professional networking site reserved for polished resumes and career updates — has become a place where workers post candidly about layoffs, job searches, and now, direct requests for mutual aid.

Business Insider reviewed 50 LinkedIn posts from the past year containing GoFundMe links and found repeated themes of prolonged unemployment, mounting bills, and financial emergencies. Many users framed the decision to crowdfund on LinkedIn as awkward, uncomfortable, or driven by necessity. About half of the posts were from people raising money after layoffs or extended job searches, while others sought help with medical bills or hardships affecting family and friends.

The posts come as the job market has grown more challenging. In February, the hiring rate fell to a level last seen during the early pandemic and the aftermath of the Great Recession. As of March, more than a quarter of unemployed Americans had been looking for work for 27 weeks or more, up from about 18% three years earlier.

While seeking financial support through LinkedIn can be effective, it also carries risks of stigma, scams, and unwanted scrutiny online.

The new openness on LinkedIn

The first signal of a vibe shift on LinkedIn may have been the "open to work" banners, which the platform introduced in 2020 amid soaring pandemic unemployment. The banners helped users signal availability to recruiters and their network, though some worried they were symbols of desperation that would turn off potential employers.

Norms around "self-presentation" online have changed rapidly, said Brooke Erin Duffy, an associate professor of communication at Cornell University who studies social media platforms. Growing uncertainty about the labor market and highly public conversations about work culture, including the "quiet quitting" trend, have encouraged more open discussions about career struggles, she said.

"People aren't just sharing more of their personal lives — they are more likely to express vulnerability in professional contexts, from layoffs to demoralizing experiences at work," she said.

Andrew Selepak, a social media professor at the University of Florida, said seeing others get traction on LinkedIn may help people to launch their own asks. He added that people may also be taking lessons from social media influencers, many of whom have drawn attention and support by sharing personal experiences online.

"I think many people understand on a very basic level that people will connect to me more the more transparent I am — the more I reveal about myself," he said.

As his unemployment benefits began to run out and he feared losing his apartment, Jeffrey Knutson shared his own GoFundMe on LinkedIn recently, several months after losing his job as a digital asset manager. He's raised over $6,500, which he said came primarily from longtime friends, acquaintances, and even some complete strangers.

"I wanted to be honest about the reality of the current job market and show that asking for help during a difficult period can be both practical and necessary," said Knutson, who's 54 and lives in Chicago.

This transparency can come with downsides, however. Knutson said publicly sharing his GoFundMe led to suspicious messages from people posing as recruiters or offering to help promote his fundraiser. Some interactions initially appeared legitimate before turning into requests for money or paid services.

"I would definitely advise people to be cautious," he said.

On the whole, Knutson and other job seekers said they did not regret promoting their fundraisers online. For those making donations, GoFundMe's website says an "overwhelming majority" of the site's fundraisers are legitimate.

Why certain people turn to LinkedIn for help

There's another reason that LinkedIn specifically may be seeing an influx of GoFundMe campaigns: the networking site is largely a platform for white-collar workers who have been disproportionately affected by the hiring slowdown of recent years, Selepak said.

He added that the gradual onboarding of Gen Zers to LinkedIn — who are more accustomed to sharing personal experiences online — could also be contributing to more candid posts on the platform. At the same time, older workers may simply have larger networks there to turn to for support: LinkedIn launched in 2003, making it older than Facebook, YouTube, Twitter/X, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok.

After struggling to find work following a layoff from Morgan Stanley last year, Valerie Lockhart launched a GoFundMe to try to raise money for plumbing repairs that had left her family without hot water. She was hesitant to share the fundraiser on LinkedIn, but did so in part because she had a larger network there than on other platforms.

After losing his healthcare instructor role last year, Issac Jeremy Caballero started a GoFundMe, a step he said required him to put aside his pride. He eventually decided to share the fundraiser on LinkedIn after reflecting on the strength of the network he'd built there. Caballero has raised more than $2,500, which he said helped him stay afloat while he looked for another job.

"I wanted to be transparent about my situation and trusted that the same community I've supported would understand and potentially support me in return," he said.

• Frontier AI labs are advancing systems at a hard-to-follow speed.
• So much so that Anthropic has called for a coordinated slowdown in AI development.
• "It would be good for the world to have the option to slow," the company said in a blog post.

Anthropic says AI is advancing so fast that leading labs may need to slow down.

In a blog post published Thursday, researchers at The Anthropic Institute, the company's research arm, said that AI is already speeding up the development of new AI models so quickly it could eventually help build its own successors.

"We believe it would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause frontier AI development to enable societal structures and alignment research to keep up with the advance of the technology," the company said.

Anthropic's warning comes as AI is reshaping the tech industry and the broader economy at breakneck speed.

In recent months, executives have touted AI's growing ability to perform work once done by humans, from writing software code to handling recruiting and customer service tasks. Google has said AI now generates 75% of its code, while Mercor CEO Brendan Foody recently said that his startup spends more on AI tokens than employee salaries.

At the same time, a growing list of companies has linked layoffs and restructurings to AI-driven efficiency gains.

Anthropic pointed to its own internal data, showing how much work is already being delegated to AI.

It said that more than 80% of the code merged into its codebase is now written by Claude, and that the typical engineer was merging eight times as much code per day in the second quarter of 2026 as in 2024.

While one employee cited in the blog post said there are days when everything goes so well they "can't help but think nothing I do matters," another said it had been roughly five months since they last wrote any code themselves.

The report also said AI systems are increasingly capable of handling engineering and research work that once required humans.

While current models still struggle with higher-level judgment and deciding which problems are worth solving, the company said AI capabilities are advancing rapidly.

Anthropic stopped short of calling for an immediate pause.

However, it said that any meaningful slowdown would require coordination among multiple frontier AI developers and governments, warning that a unilateral pause by a single company would do little to improve safety.

While similar arrangements have existed for other powerful technologies, the company warned that building the infrastructure and trust required for them takes time.

"We don't have that long," it said.

It's 2026. You open Instagram reels, and instead of the cat videos you went looking for, you're hit in the face with "I built an app in four hours with Claude Code!"

It feels like everyone — from kids to grandmas — is vibe coding now.

Vibe coding, a phrase coined by OpenAI founding member Andrej Karpathy last year, refers to using plain English to get AI to write code and build apps.

From tech CEOs flexing how much of their company's code is written by AI — Anthropic and Google win the crowd with 90% — to people creating tools to keep up with their aging parents' healthcare needs, building with AI is the topic du jour.

We at Business Insider are no different. My colleagues and I have tested AI coding tools like Claude Code, Manus, Lovable, Base44, and Cursor. We've created personal fitness apps, newsroom assistants, and even our own version of Pinterest.

But the first time I tried vibe coding, it was nothing like what I'd hoped it would be. Turns out, prompting AI in plain old English also takes some practice.

If you've yet to dip your toes into vibe coding, fret not. We've put together an easy guide to get you started.

1. What platform should I use?

The first question is, obviously, where to start? Several products offer users a number of free daily credits to play with.

For non-techies looking to build simple tools rather than complex software products, Lovable, Base44, and Replit are your best bet.

If you're more tech-savvy, you probably don't need this guide, but Claude Code, Emergent, and Cursor might work better for you.

They all work similarly. I chose to use Lovable for this guide.

Because one of my goals this year is to be more mindful of how much I'm spending on subscriptions, I chose to build a subscription tracker, a simple and popular use case for vibe coding.

Now we build.

2. How should I prompt AI on what to build?

So you chose which tool to use and what to build. Now comes the first actual step of vibe coding: prompting. AI is only as good as the prompt it receives.

I've learned that the easiest way to get AI to help you build something is to ask an AI tool like ChatGPT or Claude to generate a custom prompt for your app.

For this example, I asked ChatGPT: "Give me a prompt to build a subscription tracker — I want to track how much I'm spending on streaming service subscriptions, news outlets, music apps, workout apps, etc. I want to be able to see at a glance when each subscription starts and ends."

Vibe coding isn't just about vibes. Be detailed with your prompts, and the AI-generated prompt will come packed with way more details than you'd think to provide. This helps you get a better first draft and lets you avoid wasting free credits on too many modifying prompts.

Paste the prompt into the search bar, keep the setting on "build," and press "enter." Hang tight, because this can take a couple of minutes.

3. How do I correct mistakes?

Then you've got your first glimpse of the app. Maybe you love it, maybe you hate it.

I, for one, was deeply unimpressed.

The subscription tracker looked boring, like something I'd stop using within a week. The all-white interface and PowerPoint-esque pie charts made me want to be financially irresponsible out of spite.

But I'm no quitter: I wanted to change the website to meet my needs.

What you need are modifying prompts. Think about it like instructing an intern: "Change the colors. Make it more fun."

Check out my full modifier prompt below, along with the regenerated version of the website. Again, you can use ChatGPT, Gemini, or other tools to nail your prompt.

When the app regenerated, with tacky neon buttons against a dark background and cliché achievement badges like "Budget Guardian" and "Smart Saver," I thought: "That's more like it."

The website lets me add subscriptions, categorize them, choose a billing cycle, and perform many other functions.

Once you're happy with how your website looks, press the "publish" button and enjoy the fruits of your — or AI's — labor.

4. How can I maximize my free credits?

Alas, nothing good in life comes free. Each prompt takes up credits, so by the time I finished building my tracker, I had only 0.5 of my five daily free credits left.

To ration your daily credits, you can toggle between the "plan" and "build" modes. In the "plan" mode, you use only one credit per prompt, allowing you to plan features and understand changes before modifying the app.

Once you run out of free credits, the cheapest option is to be patient and wait for the credits to renew after 24 hours.

Or you can upgrade to Lovable's cheapest plan, which costs $25 per month and includes 100 extra monthly credits. Other platforms like Replit and Base44 also offer plans from around $20.

Another alternative is to refine your initial prompt with everything you now know and feed it to another AI platform like Base44. Take it from the cheapskates — we've tried it all.

And there you have it: Vibe coding 101. Let the free creditmaxxing begin.

Tell me what you built — or tried to — at abharade@businessinsider.com.

• BNP Paribas CIB's AI chief officer says tokenmaxxing can be a "vanity metric."
• Instead, he said his team measures AI ROI against revenue and productivity.
• His comments come as some tech firms like Amazon and Uber question the ROI of AI spending.

For the past year, Silicon Valley has been obsessed with "tokenmaxxing" — the idea that maximizing AI usage (and therefore token consumption) should make workers more productive.

Charles Holive is measuring something else entirely.

The chief AI officer at BNP Paribas CIB, the investment banking arm of one of Europe's largest banks, told Business Insider that while his team tracks token consumption, it's far from the first thing he looks at.

"We try to go away from vanity metrics — billions of tokens per day," Holive told Business Insider at Mistral AI's summit in Paris last week.

"We try to make sure that what we track is an outcome, not a vanity metric," he added.

Instead of asking employees how many AI tokens they've used, Holive starts with a different set of questions.

"What did you do that you didn't do before? How much faster did you do it?" he said.

Outcomes over tokens

His comments come as some US companies are beginning to question whether rising AI costs are producing meaningful returns.

Amazon recently shut down an internal AI-use leaderboard after employees reportedly began performing tasks simply to climb the rankings.

Uber COO Andrew Macdonald has publicly questioned whether rising AI costs are translating into more useful products, while GitHub recently moved Copilot to usage-based pricing as AI bills continue to rise.

For the AI projects he oversees at BNP Paribas CIB, Holive said he begins with explicit assumptions about how much revenue or productivity they could generate.

His team then creates KPIs and monitors progress monthly or quarterly against those goals.

That doesn't mean his team ignores tokens entirely. Holive said the bank still has dedicated teams to monitor token consumption to track costs.

"Then we look at token consumption because I need to control my costs," he said.

Beyond the leaderboard

Holive's approach echoed comments from other executives at the summit.

Amit Kapur, chief AI and transformation officer at Tata Consultancy Services, told Business Insider that companies should focus on "business outcomes" and "business impacts" rather than "only token as one line item."

Antoine Pichot, director of innovation, digital, and data at La Banque Postale, told Business Insider that his bank evaluates AI projects based on factors such as efficiency gains, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, and financial impact.

Still, Holive said token usage can still be useful as a measure of adoption, especially in software engineering.

But he said his approach differs from companies that focus heavily on AI usage metrics.

"We didn't say, 'use the tool, do your best,'" he said. "We did the opposite of that," he said.

• SpaceX mania has reached fever pitch on Wall Street.
• JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon pitched the company to clients at a glitzy event featuring Musk and his mother.
• SpaceX is gearing up to launch the largest public offering in history next week.

Wall Street is going all out to sell SpaceX's record-breaking IPO.

Elon Musk's rocket company kicked off its investor road show on Thursday with a major party at JPMorgan's New York HQ, with CEO Jamie Dimon interviewing Musk in front of 3,500 of the bank's top clients.

The interview — which Musk tuned in for remotely — kicked off with Dimon effusively praising Musk as the "Edison of our time," and a special guest appearance from the billionaire's mother, Maye Musk.

Musk's pitch to the thousands of investors watching leaned heavily on SpaceX's science-fiction ambitions.

The world's richest man said that the monster IPO, which will begin next week and see SpaceX attempt to raise $75 billion at a roughly $1.75 trillion valuation, was necessary to provide the company with the capital to harness the power of the sun and ultimately colonize other planets.

Musk speculated that SpaceX could even eventually branch out into the interplanetary hospitality business with "moon hotels."

"I think it would be pretty cool if you could vacation on the moon," said the SpaceX founder, who also mused about the prospect of eventually terraforming Mars to make it habitable for humans.

"If you warm up Mars, you could one day make Mars like Earth, meaning with liquid oceans and life, and where you could walk outside without a space suit or anything. Mars is a fixer-upper of a planet, but it's got a lot of potential," Musk told investors.

JPMorgan is one of a host of top Wall Street banks running the books for the largest IPO in history, and is not the only one to embrace SpaceX mania as the listing date draws closer.

Goldman Sachs has decorated the lobby of its Manhattan headquarters with rocket ships, while Bank of America lit up its building in the shape of a SpaceX rocket on Thursday night.

Wall Street's push to sell SpaceX's stock comes amid an unconventional IPO process that has seen an unusual focus on retail investors. SpaceX has allocated up to 30% of the total offering for retail investors, far higher than other public offerings.

On Thursday, major brokerage Fidelity said investors would need just $2,000 in their brokerage account to access SpaceX shares, down from $500,000 for previous IPOs.

Trading platform E-Trade also said that Tesla shareholders who had held shares in Elon Musk's EV maker for at least 10 years would be eligible for an extra allocation of SpaceX shares.

SpaceX's IPO process has been unusual in other ways. The company said on Wednesday it planned to go to market at a fixed price of $135 per share, rather than the route typically taken by other companies of offering a price range to test the level of demand from investors.

Some analysts have said that SpaceX's target valuation of $1.75 trillion overvalues the company, which disclosed a $4.9 billion loss in 2025 on revenues of $18.7 billion in a filing last month.

• The 2026 FIFA World Cup is shaping up to be the most expensive one yet.
• Some fans are spending thousands of dollars to see the biggest event in sports.
• Eight people told us how much they're spending and how they plan to make it work.

Worchihan Zingkhai remembers when he first fell in love with soccer.

It was the 1998 FIFA World Cup, and his whole community in Ukhrul, a small village in India near the Myanmar border, was gathered to watch Italy play Chile on a black-and-white TV.

The game was a tense, back-and-forth that finished 2-2 thanks to a late penalty kick for the Italians.

"That was the beginning of my football journey," Zingkhai told Business Insider.

When a plan to visit his in-laws in the US in June coincided with the 2026 World Cup, attending a game was a no-brainer. The challenge was getting the tickets.

Zingkhai, a 40-year-old teacher and content creator, said he had wanted to see England, Portugal, or Argentina play. When he tried to buy tickets in February, prices were hundreds of dollars over his budget.

A few months later, during last-minute ticket sales, and after spending three hours in a line, he got the cheapest ticket he could find in Atlanta, close to where he is staying: $140 to see the Czech Republic against South Africa.

"My village has about 800 people. When I tell the villagers, I'm going to the World Cup, and the stadium that I'm going to has more than 70,000 people, they cannot believe it," he said.

Zingkhai is among 6.5 million fans expected to attend the 2026 World Cup.

Between high ticket prices, travel costs, and accommodation expenses, some supporters are spending thousands of dollars and making significant sacrifices to see the biggest event in sports.

Business Insider spoke to eight people from around the world about how much they're paying to attend the games and how they are making the trip work.

First came the ticket hunt

This is set to be the most expensive World Cup yet for fans: In April's last-minute sales phase, a ticket to the final cost at least $5,785.

FIFA expects to generate nearly $9 billion in revenue in 2026, part of a projected $13 billion haul for the four-year World Cup cycle ending with this summer's tournament. It generated $7.5 billion over the four-year period from 2019 to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

For many fans, securing a ticket has been complicated.

The tournament starts with the group stage, with 12 groups of four teams. The best-placed teams move on to the knockout rounds, starting with the Round of 32. Ticket prices increase as the stakes get higher.

Between September and January, FIFA held three ticket sales phases in which fans applied through a ballot system. Prices increased by April's "last-minute" phase.

From December, fans could get tickets through participating member associations, the governing bodies of the countries that qualified.

FIFA is using dynamic pricing, meaning ticket prices have fluctuated based on demand, a practice criticized by many fans.

Fans still looking for a ticket could also turn to FIFA's resale marketplace. This has pushed prices higher for the most popular games, but as the tournament draws nearer, there have been some big discounts.

The resale marketplace is largely unregulated, with some exceptions in Mexico and parts of Canada.

Shriya Agnihotri, a 29-year-old social worker from Toronto, was excited when she learned the World Cup would be in North America. The tournament was always a big deal in her family growing up. Now, Agnihotri felt attending a game was finally attainable.

She had no success locking down a ticket in the final lottery draw in January. During last-minute ticket sales in April, after spending six hours in line, the games she was interested in turned out to be too expensive.

She ended up buying a Category 1 ticket for Ghana against Panama for 630 Canadian dollars ($454).

Alan Talbot, a 61-year-old civil engineer from the UK, who has been to four World Cups in his lifetime, said it has become progressively harder to buy tickets over the years.

"There's just so much competition," he said.

Talbot said he has noticed that a lot of soccer fans on forums have found this the most frustrating tournament to get tickets for.

Talbot ultimately secured four tickets on resale and via a friend in the second sales phase. The tickets have cost him and his wife just over $3,100.

The fan who opened a dedicated savings account

For some younger fans and those traveling internationally, attending the World Cup has required extensive planning.

Mo Faraj, a 23-year-old from Boston, opened a dedicated savings account in November to save for the World Cup. As an Iraqi, he was determined to watch his team play its first World Cup since 1986.

Iraq was one of the last countries to qualify for the World Cup, thanks to a nail-biting playoff, so its PMA sales phase took place in April rather than December, as with most others.

Faraj bought a Category 1 ticket for Iraq against Senegal at $450 through the FIFA website, and two more tickets via Iraq's PMA: $180 to see Iraq against Norway, and $220 to see it play France — both Category 2 seats.

Iraqi fans have been organizing Facebook and WhatsApp groups to keep costs down, Faraj said.

"Everyone's offering up their places, people are offering free transportation, food," he said. "They're just happy that we're in the World Cup; they'll do anything just to enjoy the moment."

Faraj and his five friends decided to split the cost of Airbnbs. They're renting a full-size SUV to travel between Boston, Philadelphia, and Toronto and splitting the gas costs. Faraj estimates his total accommodation spend will be about $1,000 for four nights.

The fan who postponed a trip to his home country

The World Cup takes place in 16 cities across North America, where accommodation costs can vary widely. Atlanta or Guadalajara, for example, are much cheaper than New York City or Los Angeles.

Seasoned tournament-goers, like Talbot, booked some of their hotels nearly a year in advance to avoid higher costs.

Others are making sacrifices to be there.

Khai Duong, a 28-year-old dental hygienist from Atlanta, told Business Insider he's been putting away $400 a month since the summer to afford the accommodation, rental car, and the tickets he bought for two games. This has meant he has had to postpone a trip to his home country, Vietnam, until next year.

Zingkhai said he earns about 500 Indian rupees a day — roughly $5 to $6. Though his in-laws are largely covering the $2,340 airfare to get from northeast India to the US, the cost of food, merch, and tickets means he's forgoing replacing a broken laptop because he can't afford the extra expense right now.

Paying for bucket-list matches

Those who want to see the opening match or final have to spend a lot more.

Tickets started at $140 for group-stage matches during April's first open ticket sale. In the same phase, it would cost at least $5,785 to see the final, and nearly $11,000 for a Category 1 seat.

Vanessa Jimenez, 32, from Dallas, spent over $2,000 on one ticket on FIFA's resale portal to attend the opening game between Mexico and South Africa in Mexico City.

"That's always kind of been a dream of ours to go to, obviously, either a World Cup final or an opener," said Jimenez. "The final would be amazing, of course, but that's even more expensive to attend."

The fans turning to travel hacks to cut costs

To avoid breaking the bank, fans have been getting creative. Jimenez said she has secured free accommodation in Mexico City through a content partnership.

Faraj is splitting nearly every expense with friends. Others are building community resources to help fellow fans navigate the tournament.

David Nugent, a 31-year-old from Glasgow, has tickets to see Scotland play Brazil in Miami through a work contract. He is currently waiting for prices to drop for Scotland against Haiti in Boston.

"Unless I win the lottery, I'm not buying them," Nugent said. He has created an Instagram page, called @tartanarmyinboston, with a friend to share practical tips on navigating Boston.

The city is expecting a large number of Scots to visit, as the team is playing two of its three group-stage games at the nearby Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts.

Nugent has also planned a boat party for Scotland soccer fans, known as the "Tartan Army." It will be Scotland's first World Cup since 1998.

Mike Teevan, a 46-year-old from Glasgow, took things a step further and organized a bus for a group of Scottish supporters.

"It kind of just snowballed from there," Teevan told Business Insider. Through booking agents, he has organized buses for 1,120 fans to keep public transport costs down. Teevan sold bus tickets for between £31 and £45 each ($42 and $60). It costs $90 for a coach ticket between downtown Boston and Gillette Stadium during the tournament, and $80 for a round-trip rail ticket, compared to $20 on an NFL game day.

In the statement to Business Insider, FIFA said it is "focused on ensuring fair access to our game for existing and prospective fans."

Despite the costs, the fans' excitement is palpable.

"My mom, actually, the other day, told me, 'Oh, so will I see you on television?'" Zingkhai, the fan from India, said.

"I wish I could get a ticket for England, Portugal, Argentina games, but I mean, I could not afford it, but I'm happy. I'm happy with what I got," he added.

• Stocks extended record highs on Thursday, despite a sales-forecast miss from Broadcom.
• It was a far cry from the panic-driven selling that might have gripped the market previously.
• The situation shows investors are getting more comfortable deciding between market winners and losers.

Upon first glance, a 13% plunge in a top chip stock might look problematic for the overall market. Especially if the reason for the drop is weakness in the market's hottest area.

That's why it was surprising on Thursday — after Broadcom reported underwhelming AI demand and saw its stock tumble double digits — that the S&P 500 and Dow still closed at records. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite was basically flat. The Dow? Up nearly 900 points.

But surely the Philadelphia Semiconductor index, chock full of chip names, got nailed? Not really! It held up remarkably well next to Broadcom's double-digit spiral, losing just 2%.

Here are 3 reasons why yesterday's market behavior is positive for the longer-term strength of the market:

1. Breadth looks healthy

363 stocks in the S&P 500 rose yesterday. This more than offset the negative impact of Broadcom earnings, and shows that — in an era of AI-driven earnings growth and productivity — non-tech stocks are capable of keeping indexes afloat. This is at least partially because…

2. AI whiplash is settling down

Mere months ago, a double-digit decline in a $2 trillion chipmaker would've sent investors heading for the hills. Tech would've gotten smoked as the rest of the market sat by helplessly. But the isolated trading activity this time around suggests traders see Broadcom's issues as company-related, not a warning sign about industry demand. This offers an indication that…

3. The market is getting more comfortable deciding between winners and losers

A main criticism of the AI trade to date has been the way large swaths of the market move in seemingly indiscriminate fashion. A meaningful development for a single company or sector can ripple widely. A lot of stocks are just along for the ride, good or bad.

As that was happening, the idea was that eventually investors would start to shake things out. That's the stage we find ourselves in now.

So give your local Broadcom shareholder a hug today. They don't really have anyone to commiserate with. The only hope is that they happen to own one of the market's next company-specific winners.

• On Thursday, Maja Chwalińska made history, becoming the first qualifier to reach a Roland-Garros final.
• The 24-year-old's win over Diana Shnaider also secured her a seven-figure paycheck.
• Earlier in the tournament, she discussed struggling to afford her hotel in Paris.

Polish tennis star Maja Chwalińska just cruised to the final of the French Open, but before her Cinderella run at the iconic tournament, she was worried about how she was going to pay for her Paris hotel.

Chwalińska, a 24-year-old qualifier had to win three matches at the French Open just to get into the main draw of the second Slam of the year. In Thursday's semifinal, she took out Russia's Diana Shnaider to secure her place in Saturday's final.

The win also guaranteed her a seven-figure check.

The Roland-Garros champion will take home €2.8 million, or about $3.25 million, while the runner-up will collect €1.4 million, or about $1.63 million.

Chwalińska is just the second women's qualifier in the Open Era to reach a Grand Slam final (Emma Raducanu was the first, at the 2021 US Open, which she went on to win), and the first qualifier ever to reach the Roland-Garros final.

She wasn't exactly prepared to stay in Paris for this long.

During an on-court interview after one of her early matches, Chwalińska said she was running out of money to pay for her hotel in Paris. She had already earned roughly $150,000 by reaching the second round, but players receive their prize money after the tournament ends.

"I mentioned in the interview after the match against Maria [Sakkari] that I actually struggled to pay for the hotel, because you know that we get the check after the tournament," she said in a separate post-match interview.

She added that the Polish company Oshee, which also sponsors superstar Iga Świątek., stepped in to help cover her lodging.

For lower-ranked players, that kind of financial pressure is not unusual. Tennis can look lavish at the top, but outside the upper tier, it is often a self-funded grind. Players pay for travel, hotels, coaching, meals, and the cost of getting themselves from one tournament to the next. A week at a lower-level event can end with a small prize-money check — and a long list of expenses that eat most of it up.

Chwalińska entered Roland-Garros ranked outside the top 100. After Thursday's win, she is projected to jump to around No. 21, a ranking that should give her direct entry into the main draws of the remaining Grand Slams this year, rather than forcing her to claw through qualifying.

As former world No. 1 Andy Roddick put it on his podcast, "Served," the run is "life-changing — financially life-changing."

Asked after Thursday's win what it felt like to reach the final, Chwalińska was at a loss for words.

"Like a dream," she said on court. "I don't know what's going on. I don't know what to say."

She's not done yet. Chwalińska has a chance to double her prize money if she extends her Cinderella run one more match and wins the title Saturday.

"I feel like in tennis you're always hungry," she said after the fourth round. "You kind of set one goal, but then you reach it, and you want more. So, very grateful for this moment, but I definitely want more."

In Saturday's final, she'll face 19-year-old phenom Mirra Andreeva, who's ranked No. 8 in the world and will have fresher legs, having played six matches to Chwalińska's nine. Andreeva is also making her first Grand Slam final appearance.

Here's the full breakdown of women's singles prize money at the 2026 French Open:

• First round: €87,000, or about $101,000
• Second round: €130,000, or about $151,000
• Third round: €187,000, or about $217,000
• Fourth round: €285,000, or about $331,000
• Quarterfinals: €470,000, or about $546,000
• Semifinals: €750,000, or about $871,000
• Finalist: €1.4 million, or about $1.63 million
• Champion: €2.8 million, or about $3.25 million

• Last month, a Unitarian Universalist was granted a faith-based accommodation by her employer to avoid using AI.
• Some have interpreted Pope Leo XIV's recent letter as grounds for religious objections to the use of AI in the workplace.
• Employers that don't take workers' requests for religious accommodations seriously can land in hot water.

Opposed to using AI for her software-engineering job, Erin Maus secured something of a miracle from her employer: a religious exemption.

Maus, a Unitarian Universalist, said she proposed the special treatment in April, citing environmental and ethical objections to AI that don't align with her religious beliefs. She also said she consulted an employment lawyer and her local chapter's minister to help make her case.

Maus was granted the accommodation in mid-May, according to an email seen by Business Insider.

"I'm writing my code and reviewing my code by hand, which seems crazy to say," said the 34-year-old, who lives in North Carolina and works for a large tech-entertainment company that she described as progressive. "Just two years ago, how else would you do it?"

Maus' AI workaround comes as a growing number of employers mandate and track workers' AI usage. The technology has also recently drawn scrutiny from Pope Leo XIV, who warned last month that AI could undermine human dignity and displace workers if left unchecked in a more than 42,000-word encyclical.

Some people have interpreted the pontiff's letter as grounds for religious objections to using AI in the workplace. It's a stance that carries real legal weight, given that federal law requires employers to consider faith-based requests.

"The funniest possible outcome of the AI mandate era is about to be HR departments discovering that 'sincerely held religious belief' under Title VII has a much lower bar than they assumed, and Pope Leo handed every Catholic employee a written excuse," wrote Corey Quinn, a software-startup founder in San Francisco, on X.

'Playing priest'

Unitarian Universalists recognize that advances in technology must be guided by an ethical understanding of humanity, said Suzanne Morse, a spokeswoman for the Unitarian Universalist Association. The group is currently developing a policy about the use of AI and a theological statement on it, she said.

As more religious groups wrestle with AI's ethical implications, some employment lawyers see a potential workplace conundrum. While discussions about faith-based objections to the technology were underway before Pope Leo released his encyclical on Memorial Day, they say that his intervention could spur a new wave of workers to seek faith-based exemptions from AI requirements.

Employers "might have to promulgate some rules about this very quickly," said John J. Meehan, an attorney who specializes in workplace discrimination and labor law with law firm Joseph & Norinsberg. "If I were one of the bigger defense-side employment firms, I'd be doing that right now."

Workers filed more than 3,600 religion-based discrimination charges with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in fiscal 2024, about 70% more than in 2021, the last full fiscal year before vaccine-mandate disputes drove a sharp increase in filings.

Employers could wind up in court if they outright dismiss workers who request a faith-based exemption from using AI, said Ashley Herd, a former McKinsey counsel and head of North American HR who now advises managers and employers on workplace issues.

"Playing priest, and telling employees their request isn't legitimate, does not tend to bode well for companies," said Herd, also a cohost of the "HR Besties" podcast. "A jury doesn't like it when employees get made fun of by managers or HR."

In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a postal worker who sought an exemption from Sunday shifts for religious reasons. The decision raised the bar for employers seeking to deny religious accommodations, making it harder to reject requests on the grounds that they create workplace burdens.

Even so, Pope Leo's remarks may not be a Hail Mary for workers looking to dodge AI. Dr. Michael Naughton, director of the Center for Catholic Studies at the University of St. Thomas, said the pontiff didn't imply that Catholic workers shouldn't adopt AI, but rather questioned whether it advances or diminishes human agency.

"It's probably going down the wrong alley to say this is a religious right, that 'I don't have to use it' " in the workplace, Naughton said.

A case for opting out

Workplace concerns are only one manifestation of a broader backlash against AI. At some college graduation ceremonies this spring, students heckled commencement speakers who praised the technology, while residents nationwide are fighting the construction of AI data centers.

Nearly a third of workers harbor negative feelings — including anxiety, uncertainty, and resistance — toward AI, according to a May study from HR software company Cornerstone. The findings are based on a survey of 2,000 US and UK workers by research firm Censuswide.

Carina Cortez, chief people officer at Cornerstone, said she's seen workers resist new technology in the past and eventually come to embrace it. Though Cornerstone doesn't require its roughly 3,500 employees to use AI, she warned that people who dismiss it for any reason could dent their careers, as the technology is becoming ubiquitous in the workplace.

"Opting out today can mean falling behind tomorrow," Cortez said.

For now, Maus isn't worried about being left behind. She said she recently completed a coding task at the same speed as a colleague who used AI to handle a nearly identical assignment.

"AI doesn't really seem to be this game changer," she said, adding that her experience with the technology has only reinforced her view. "Your principles matter."

• David Solomon said AI will make "nuanced changes" to hiring over the next three years.
• The CEO said his bank is hiring at least 2,400 interns this year, in line with pre-COVID levels.
• He also had a phone-based suggestion for young job seekers.

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon says the bank may bring in fewer fresh-faced employees over the next few years as AI reshapes their work.

But don't call it a hiring apocalypse.

During an interview with Bloomberg's "Odd Lots" podcast, released on Thursday, Solomon said Goldman's out-of-school hiring could "contract a little" over the next three years. Still, he predicts the firm will continue to hire thousands of interns and recent graduates.

"You're going to see nuanced changes that probably to some degree reduce the number of people that we start with over the next few years, but probably not what you and I would call dramatically," he said. "We're still going to hire a lot of people out of school."

This year, Goldman is bringing on an estimated 2,400 to 2,500 interns, Solomon said. He added that the firm has a similar number of permanent new hires starting in July — roughly in line with pre-COVID levels, but below the more than 3,000 it was bringing in during 2021.

Asked how Goldman's new-hire mix has changed since the pre-ChatGPT era, Solomon said the firm had seen "subtle, subtle changes." He said the firm had shifted more heavily toward engineering talent over the past decade, and that the mix would likely shift again "given the power of these tools and our ability to code."

The comments come as concerns about AI's impact on jobs spark mixed responses across industries.

In Silicon Valley, top AI bosses, like Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, have warned of potential wipe-outs for entry-level workers. Meanwhile, leaders in other industries think there's more nuance to the existential warnings — Apollo's chief economist Torsten Sløk wrote that there's "zero evidence" that AI is driving layoffs, and Uber's COO, Andrew Macdonald, said it's getting harder to justify the amount of spending it takes to automate tasks with AI.

Solomon, who argued in a late-May New York Times op-ed that the AI jobs apocalypse is overblown, falls firmly in the latter camp.

The bigger challenge, Solomon said during the podcast, is figuring out how to train young workers when AI can instantly produce answers that once required hours of grunt work.

He recalled starting his banking career in an age without minute-by-minute digital trackers for stock prices. To compare stock performance, he said, he dug through microfiche, pulled prices from The Wall Street Journal, plotted them on graph paper, and did the math by hand.

It was slow, but it taught him useful critical thinking skills, he said.

"Now, if you ask for it, you get it instantaneously," he said. "Has your brain really absorbed what's actually happening?"

Operating in a world with answers at his entry-level intern's fingertips means Goldman has to rethink skill training, Solomon said.

Still, his advice to young bankers in the AI age was decidedly old-school: pick up the phone and talk to people.

"A telephone call to someone is 10 times more valuable than a text or an email," Solomon said. "My daughter says that's an unverified statistic. I know that's true."

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

• Gabrielle Tao left her Salesforce SVP role in her 50s to launch an AI governance startup.
• She says advances in AI helped convince her to start a company after years of self-doubt.
• Tao shared how she prepared financially before leaving the corporate world.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Gabrielle Tao, a former Salesforce SVP. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I spent more than two decades working in tech, including at companies like Oracle and Salesforce. By many measures, my career was successful — I'd helped build multiple successful products. But it still felt like there was a limit to how far I could go as a woman of color.

I had wanted to start my own company for decades, but I never genuinely thought I could do it. I spent years absorbing subtle and explicit messages that I didn't have what it took, and I think a lot of underrepresented people in tech quietly internalize those messages over time.

But in recent years, AI has changed the equation. The technology has made me believe founders like myself can finally build products and businesses that have a better chance of competing with much larger companies.

Last September, I left my senior vice president role at Salesforce, where I had worked since 2019, to pursue an AI governance startup of my own.

I remember thinking: If not now, when?

Entrepreneurship didn't feel like a real option for most of my career

For most of my career, entrepreneurship felt almost impossible, especially when it meant competing with giants like Oracle, Microsoft, and Salesforce. While breaking in is still an uphill battle, I believe AI has lowered the barriers to entry for tech entrepreneurs. To start a business, you often need websites, operations, marketing materials, analysis, and customer research — and AI can now accelerate all of that.

I also realized AI could help much smaller teams move far faster than they could in the past. Research that once took enormous amounts of time can now happen much more quickly, and building products has become much more accessible.

For the first time, I felt like smaller companies had a real chance to compete in ways they couldn't before. That shift in technology — combined with my years of experience — finally gave me the confidence to take the leap myself.

I spent years preparing financially before resigning

Leaving a stable job was scary.

A big part of what finally pushed me to take the leap was my Buddhist practice. It helped me think more seriously about living life without regret and having the courage to challenge myself.

I also spent a lot of time preparing financially. I support my father and mother-in-law financially, and my husband is retired, so I knew I couldn't make a move like this without careful planning and my family's support.

Before resigning, I spent a lot of time thinking through budgeting, savings, and how my family would live if I stopped receiving a corporate paycheck. Since I left Salesforce, we've cut back on discretionary spending, including travel.

Although I believe I prepared well for the financial side of entrepreneurship, looking back, I wish I had planned the actual business and product more deeply before leaving my job. When I resigned, I still had maybe 10 or 20 business ideas in my head. That uncertainty slowed some of my early progress, but over time, I found my direction.

I keep coming back to one AI tool

Today, I'm focused on building Tovix AI, an AI governance startup focused on AI testing and monitoring tools.

The products have been live for two months, and the business is generating revenue — I now have a small number of paying customers.

As I build the business, multiple AI tools have been helpful, but the one I keep coming back to is Claude, which helps with nearly everything related to research and development. It often feels like having an architect, engineering team, and product manager all in one — and it's become a core part of building products, automating testing, and deploying code.

I underestimated the power of my corporate career in kickstarting my startup

Over decades in tech, I developed a much deeper understanding of how businesses actually work than I realized at the time, and I don't think I could have built a startup without that corporate experience.

I built a deep understanding of how companies operate across sales, marketing, finance, legal, product development, pricing, and customer support.

I also discovered that I had built trusted relationships with former colleagues over many years. Once I started my company, I found that many people were willing to collaborate and share advice.

I think a lot of people — especially people who feel stuck in corporate careers or who have recently been laid off — underestimate the value of the experience and knowledge they've already built.

I spent years believing entrepreneurship wasn't a realistic option for someone like me. For the first time in my life, partly because of advances in AI, it finally feels like a real option.

Do you have a story to share about how you're navigating a career crossroads? If so, please reach out to the reporter via email at jzinkula@businessinsider.com, or via Signal at jzinkula.29.

• UBS highlights eight buy-rated industrials stocks with at least 20% upside potential.
• The industrials sector has thrived on AI investment in recent years.
• UBS says it has a "differentiated view" for all of the stocks on the list below.

Looking for corners of the market set to soar next? UBS has some ideas.

In a May 28 note to clients, the bank's analysts covering various parts of the industrials sector published a list of their buy-rated stocks they think will surge over the next 12 months. UBS says it has a "differentiated view" for all of the stocks on the list, or information about them from "interesting or proprietary data sources."

The industrials sector has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the AI boom. As hyperscalers have invested billions in AI infrastructure projects like data centers, the sector's strong earnings growth has made it the third-best-performing sector over the last year. AI is a common theme for many of the stocks UBS has highlighted.

Below are the eight stocks on UBS' list that have at least 20% upside to the bank's price target, as of May 28. Excerpts of UBS analyst commentary on each stock is also included.

Quanta Services

Ticker: PWR
Sector: Machinery, Engineering & Construction
Analyst: Steven Fisher
UBS Price Target: $900
Upside to Price Target: 24%

Analyst commentary: "We believe PWR can continue to generate double digit revenue growth through 2030 and potentially beyond, driven by favorable exposure to several themes with strong momentum, most notably electric grid and data center investment."

Element Solutions

Ticker: ESI
Sector: Chemicals
Analyst: Joshua Spector
UBS Price Target: $52
Upside to Price Target: 27%

Analyst commentary: "We believe growth in demand and content into AI datacenters and advanced packaging is leading to more growth in and around semi materials, structurally lifting ESI's growth potential."

C.H. Robinson Worldwide

Ticker: CHRW
Sector: Airfreight & Surface Transportation
Analyst: Thomas Wadewitz
UBS Price Target: $224
Upside to Price Target: 29%

Analyst commentary: "We believe CHRW is on a path to achieve its goal of a 40% operating margin in its truckload brokerage business (NAST), which provides an important lever for EPS growth."

Boeing

Ticker: BA
Sector: Aerospace & Defense Electronics
Analyst: Gavin Parsons
UBS Price Target: $285
Upside to Price Target: 30%

Analyst commentary: "As BA continues to ramp production and laps near-term cash headwinds, we believe there is underappreciated cash generation potential in the business - we see 31%/37% upside to consensus 2028/2030 FCF estimates"

Cintas

Ticker: CTAS
Sector: Business, Education & Professional Services
Analyst: Joshua Chan
UBS Price Target: $228
Upside to Price Target: 32%

Analyst commentary: "We believe the company's sustainable +7-8% organic growth algorithm is supported by strong execution and a successful cross-sell/up-sell initiative supported by a highvelocity (weekly) business model."

GE Vernova

Ticker: GEV
Sector: Electrical Equipment & Multi-Industry
Analyst: Amit Mehrotra
UBS Price Target: $1,400
Upside to Price Target: 35%

Analyst commentary: "We model annual organic sales growth of 14% through 2028 driven by strong order intake and backlog conversion. Demand for AI is fueling an electrification supercycle, increasing demand for GEV's turbines (which produce electricity) and grid equipment (which helps to move it)."

United Airlines

Ticker: UAL
Sector: Airlines
Analyst: Atul Maheswari
UBS Price Target: $148
Upside to Price Target: 48%

Analyst commentary: "BLS data shows Airfare CPI has underperformed overall CPI by 30 points since the start of the pandemic. This shows there is room for ticket prices to go higher."

Advanced Drainage Systems

Ticker: WMS
Sector: Homebuilders & Building Products
Analyst: John Lovallo
UBS Price Target: $205
Upside to Price Target: 54%

Analyst commentary: "We view WMS as one of the more differentiated & well-positioned building product companies in our coverage. Structural growth opportunities should be driven by a material conversion trend away from often pollutive and more expensive products such as reinforced concrete, while near-term growth should be supported by improvement in single-family housing and select non-resi verticals."

• Two major Wall Street banks are broadcasting their involvement in SpaceX's coming IPO.
• Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley decorated their lobbies with SpaceX gear and logos.
• Scoring SpaceX's IPO business brings both prestige and lucrative fees to the banks.

It's like Christmas for two of Wall Street's biggest banks.

The headquarters of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley decked their halls with SpaceX gear on Wednesday ahead of the rocket maker's blockbuster IPO — a show of banker enthusiasm for what could be the largest market debut in history.

Morgan Stanley draped its lobby entrance gates with SpaceX logos and its lobby wall with a giant mural of Mars, a nod to SpaceX's lofty ambitions. Goldman Sachs plastered its lobby walls with renderings of Starship, SpaceX's reusable rocket. It also touted its role as "lead left" bookrunner for the IPO.

SpaceX is seeking to raise $75 billion in the offering, according to its SEC filing, a haul that would dwarf Aramco's 2019 record-setting IPO. The deal would value Elon Musk's space company at over $1.75 trillion, instantly making it one of the most valuable public companies in the world.

Scoring SpaceX's business for its IPO is a mark of prestige for Goldman and Morgan Stanley, as well as a likely windfall. The banks are the lead underwriters on the offering, with Goldman scoring the lead-left spot in the S-1 IPO filing. Both banks have a front-row seat to one of the most coveted mandates on Wall Street — and the opportunity to collect major fees and deepen ties with Musk's business empire.

The lobby displays show just how big a moment this is for the banks. The SpaceX IPO is a major market event, a Musk spectacle, and a test of investor appetite for one of Silicon Valley's most ambitious private companies.

Plus, for the banks leading the IPO charge, it's a good time to bask in the glow of bragging rights.

• SpaceX's IPO will likely be the largest in history.
• The rocket company's road show kicked off on Thursday.
• To some investors, the pitch is simple: It's too big not to buy.

There are plenty of true believers in SpaceX.

ARK Invest chief futurist Brett Winton called it "the most important company in the world in terms of what the future is going to look like" in a recent interview with Business Insider. Billionaire Coatue founder Philippe Laffont believes SpaceX will be among the next iteration of the Magnificent Seven stocks. Fidelity's massive Contrafund values its total SpaceX stake at roughly $8 billion, making it the fund's fifth-largest exposure, ranking above Alphabet, Microsoft, and Apple.

But the story of the coming IPO of Elon Musk's rocket company will not be about convincing nervous asset managers of the growth story or pushing longtime fans to double down.

In fact, there might not be much of a story at all. Despite the eye-popping valuation and record fundraise being eyed, the SpaceX road show and initial offering are expected to be straightforward and reasonably drama-free, said three people who work in different parts of the capital markets landscape and are involved in the deal.

The target of $135 a share—instead of a broader range that would get narrowed over the course of meetings with funds in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, and more—is an example of how this road show will more be about going through the motions than actual valuation work by investors, said one banker working on the deal.

In a way, SpaceX is the first IPO that's too big to fail. Or, put another way, the IPO is so big that it can't fail.

Major index providers, which control where trillions of dollars of passively managed money flow, have tweaked their rules so the company can be brought into the fold faster than ever, providing IPO backers with an institutional backstop.

While S&P Dow Jones Indices declined to amend its rules to allow faster-than-usual entry into the S&P 500, SpaceX will be quickly added to other major indices.

Nasdaq changed its rules so SpaceX would be able to enter the Nasdaq 100 index in 15 trading days instead of three months. Inclusion in FTSE Russell 1000 could be after just five days of trading, thanks to a late May revision.

"The only thing PMs at the classic anchor investors have to figure out is if they want to be underweight or overweight the company," the banker said.

"They'll be invested either way."

The most comparable IPO, several investors said, was Facebook's offering in 2012, thanks to its size—it raised more than $16 billion at a $104 billion valuation—and founder-friendly share class structure.

In the 14 years that have passed, investors have only become more accepting of the share class structure, as seen with Musk's other company, Tesla, and more desperate for tech-related equity offerings. Google's planned $85 billion fundraise—the first slug of which was oversubscribed—is the latest proof point that asset managers are quick to pounce on any AI-related shares they can get their hands on.

Plus, SpaceX has long history in the private markets. It raised its Series A in 2002 and has been a unicorn since 2010. That means there will be fewer questions about its financials and valuation compared to smaller IPOs, two investors evaluating the deal told Business Insider. The firm's February merger with xAI provided bankers and investors with additional data points on the company's valuation, one investor said.

The offering's unprecedented size is a reason to buy into the deal on its own, said Jay Ritter, a University of Florida professor known as "Mr. IPO" for his work on public debuts.

For investors, "the magnitude of this certainly matters," he said.

"If this was a run-of-the-mill, $3 billion tech IPO and you didn't have that in your portfolio, so what?" he said.

But for an offering that will be quickly added to "price-insensitive" indexes and immediately become one of the biggest publicly traded companies in the world, the calculus is different, Ritter added.

"Tech ETFs and mutual funds are going to want that exposure."

• Foyer, which makes an AI browser tool and a new companion app, is all in on coding tools.
• Anthropic and OpenAI's tools are in the spotlight as executives grapple with high bills.
• Foyer dodges those costs by simply picking individual plans — execs are delighted with the results.

Silicon Valley is buzzing with concerns about excessive spending on AI. Executives at the startup Foyer aren't worried — they have a simple budget-saving tactic.

On the surface, Foyer, which makes an AI browser tool and an AI companion app, might seem like a poster child for running up AI costs. The company experiments liberally with AI, its CEO, Pratyush Rai, told Business Insider. Finance and marketing employees vibe code internal tools, while the startup's developers try the newest versions of Anthropic's Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex.

However, instead of shelling out for big enterprise plans, the startup saves thousands of dollars a month by paying for each employee to run their own personal OpenAI and Anthropic accounts, said Rai and Siddhartha Saxena, Foyer's CTO.

Foyer's strategy works, for now, because of a quirk in the way OpenAI and Anthropic sell their popular coding services. Each lab offers individual plans with price points that increase with a customer's number of available tokens, the standard measure of AI inputs and outputs. The plans' high usage limits make them seem like a loss-leader marketing tactic, Saxena said, versus the less-generous plans the labs sell to businesses.

If he had a seat on a pay-as-you-go enterprise OpenAI account, Saxena estimates he would have racked up a $4,000 bill on Codex in April. But his $200 individual plan covered everything. He called it a "blessing."

Rai said the monthly bill for all the individual Anthropic and OpenAI coding accounts across Foyer's 25-odd employees comes to around $3,000. Under enterprise plans based on API usage, the team would be racking up monthly bills of $30,000 to $40,000, he said.

Developers discuss this tactic on social media, and Rai thinks it's widespread at small companies: "You would not see as much token consumption by startups, if the 'pro-sumer' plans were not subsidizing it to the degree which they are doing right now."

Foyer keeps AI spend low

The arrival of OpenAI and Anthropic's coding tools totally changed Foyer, which has raised $8 million in funding. About 20 people at Foyer used to work on the company's browser extension offering, Merlin AI, growing it to 900,000 Chrome users. Now, it's managed by three developers armed with AI coding tools, Rai said.

That overhaul freed up Foyer to develop Thine, which ambiently records a user's surrounding audio through their smartphone. The team hopes that giving an AI system all this "memory" as context will let people offload mundane tasks. That requires voice-to-text transcription and managing troves of user data. There, too, AI tools do the heavy lifting.

"The kind of work which 50 people would have done two or three years back, we are right now doing with around 15 developers," Rai said. "It's a massive save."

Individual plans with Anthropic and OpenAI can be cheaper, but the enterprise tiers come with extra tools and perks. The labs don't train their AI models on enterprise customers' data, and administrators can manage usage across sprawling teams.

An Anthropic spokesperson said that while small teams can work well with individual plans, companies pick the enterprise options for added security, governance, and visibility. OpenAI didn't respond to a request for comment.

Beyond the lower prices of the individual plans, Rai and Saxena said their team likes the flexibility to hop between tiers when a new model comes out.

"What is super clear is that it's not a winner-takes-all market," Rai said. "Like, at all."

Hoping for cheaper tokens

Rai and his team are watching the price of tokens closely as Anthropic and OpenAI push toward their respective IPOs. He's hoping that semiconductor improvements continue — Nvidia has been slashing the cost per token of LLMs — and that large AI providers release more open-source models.

If token prices do keep collapsing, Foyer might not have to worry about OpenAI and Anthropic cutting off subsidies for the individual plans that are helping the startup. A pay-as-you-go bill for $30,000 to $40,000 of AI coding tool usage could fall to $2,000 or $3,000, Rai hopes. This would also pave the way for Foyer's compute-heavy companion app, Thine.

Saxena said that this year, improvements in coding tools, plus Foyer's low costs, have meant his team uses "100x" more tokens than before.

His CEO corrected him. "100,000x," he said.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at scouncil@insider.com, or over text, Signal, Telegram, or WhatsApp at 415-757-8198. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• In a tougher job market, job seekers may overlook warning signs of job scams.
• People should watch out for opportunities with unreasonably high pay and other common red flags.
• Scammers may use public information about someone to make their outreach messages sound more authentic.

Even the people helping others find work aren't immune to suspicious job offers.

Colleen Paulson, the founder of Ageless Careers, typically helps older executives find new jobs. She received an email for a position that matched her past experience with an eye-popping offer: The gig offered at least $900,000 a year.

Even though Paulson thinks the email was well-written and included a photo, the high pay for the job struck her as a red flag. There was another sign: It didn't seem to come from an official company email domain.

"No one's going to come and email me for a $900,000 a year job from a Gmail account," Paulson said. "So you have to take that discretion and say, 'If it's too good to be true, then it probably isn't real.'"

Paulson suspects the sender did their research to gather information about her online; Paulson's location and work history are on her public LinkedIn account. She suggests people who aren't sure about whether a reachout is legit ask a friend for another opinion.

Take this quiz to see if you can spot job offer red flags

You may have received something similar: a text promising a high-paying work-from-home opportunity, a time-sensitive job offer, or a message saying to deposit a check before starting a job. Experts, job seekers, and workers shared some of the most common red flags to watch out for. As the job market gets trickier, people are more likely to fall for scams because they are desperate.

"The scams are getting more and more complex and harder to detect," Paulson said. "I am afraid for people. It's honestly horrible."

It's a tough time to find work in general, but especially rough for young people joining the workforce. A LinkedIn survey conducted by Censuswide of over 8,000 workers in various countries showed that Gen Z is more likely to experience scams.

Oscar Rodriguez, vice president of trust product at LinkedIn, said Gen Z may ignore warning signs because the job market for entry-level roles is competitive, and many newcomers aren't familiar with standard hiring practices since they are newer to the workforce.

Here are some of the things to watch out for if you're worried about getting scammed in your job hunt.

Leveraging public information

It's easy for scammers to get information about job seekers in today's digital world, so they can craft emails that seem familiar to the person's experience. It also makes it easier to imitate real recruiters, so scammers come across as offering an actual opportunity.

"Recent advancements in AI have made it cheaper, faster, and easier to pretend to be someone that you're not," Rodriguez said.

Even though Bill Hague, executive vice president at media consultancy and research company Magid, isn't looking for a new job, he suspects he has received job scams leveraging his public information. He cited one email that mentioned his past experience on his public LinkedIn profile. "At first, it didn't strike me as a scam because they referenced my background," he said.

Several things in the email made him skeptical, however — links to social media pages that didn't work, "United States" as the address rather than a more specific location, and no posts made on the independent recruiter's LinkedIn. The email also noted it was time-sensitive, high-priority, and was for a major company. "In any major corporation, you know they've all got internal HR and search folks. So that obviously set off another alarm," he said.

Hague sees how it's easy for people to fall for something that looks like it could be a real offer.

"There's so much fraud going on across the internet, and obviously, mobile devices all make access pretty easy," Hague said, adding, "people who get taken advantage of, whether it's the elderly or people who are desperate or aggressively looking for a job, they're the easiest targets."

People worried about their LinkedIn profiles can check their settings to see how much they share with connections and search engines. People can also report accounts that seem suspicious.

Be skeptical of high-paying offers

Priya Rathod, workplace trends editor at Indeed, said job scams tend to increase when the job market is more challenging. She said common job scams involve being asked to hand over money, share personal details, or do free work.

"If you get a message and it sounds too good to be true, it probably is," Rathod said. That can include a reachout promising high pay and flexibility, two factors job seekers tend to seek, but doesn't lay out a specific position. "They keep these details vague on purpose because specific details would give you something to verify," Rathod added.

Meanwhile, Rathod warned about messages that include a position that can't be corroborated on an employer's career page, as well as messages that promise a job without an interview.

Deanna Denham-Hughes tends to spend three days a week working on her portfolio and scouring job sites after being laid off in March.

Amid all the grunt work, she also has to be wary of too-good-to-be-true offers. One email said it was a "confidential" opportunity and promised high pay, but when Denham-Hughes reached out to the recruiter on LinkedIn, they said they hadn't sent it.

"I don't know what's harder to receive: 'Thank you, we're not interested in you' email from an actual employer or a fake offer from a con artist," Denham-Hughes said.

Job seekers have to be careful of email addresses and URLs. Recruiter emails from personal accounts rather than an employer domain could be suspect. Other red flags include any extra or missing letters, or even letters used to make it look like another — for instance, an "r" and "n" together made to look like an "m." People can also hover over email links without clicking them to check the address for typos or other red flags.

Asking for money

Job seekers should also not send money to get a position. "No one who's trying to hire you for a legitimate job listing is going to ask you for a payment prior to it," Rathod said.

A blog post from the Federal Trade Commission said payment for equipment or expenses is a red flag. A company check can also be another scam technique. "The 'check' usually comes with instructions to send some of the money to someone else, often in the form of a wire transfer, crypto, or gift cards (or gift card PIN numbers)," the post said.

"The enthusiastic new hire will deposit the check and front the forwarded funds out of their own pocket, assuming the deposited check will cover the costs," the FTC added. "By the time the bank tells the person the check is a phony, the 'employer' is long gone — with untraceable cash or cards in hand. It's a fake check scam dressed up as a job opportunity."

Rathod said if you've been targeted by a scam, stop contact, don't click links, and if you shared personal or financial information, change passwords and reach out to your bank or credit-card company.

Moving the chat elsewhere

Paulson said job seekers should also watch out for messages that try to move the conversation over to a chat app or similar.

Rodriguez said there's a vulnerability window, where early on in the job-search process "bad actors basically try to move professionals or job applicants away from platforms like LinkedIn, and at the same time, job applicants have far less signal about the job or the recruiter or the company."

Posing as an employer

Job seekers can also check against career pages to see if there are any known job scams. Job seeker Marcia Simmons took advantage of those warnings when she was trying to figure out whether emails from supposedly high-profile tech companies were real. They turned out not to be from the actual employers.

"Even though I was still suspicious, it's just a letdown, especially when you think that possibly a company of that caliber saw something that you did or talked to somebody that you worked with and thought that you were worth approaching," Simmons said.

False offerings aren't stopping Simmons from powering through her job search.

"I have received some legitimate interest that I was a little bit skeptical about, and did research and found out it was a real email from a real person," she said. "So while it's made me more cautious, it definitely hasn't made me say no to somebody who ended up being a real person offering a job."

Have you experienced one of these job scams? Reach out to this reporter to share at mhoff@businessinsider.com.

• Walmart is delivering orders from Subway restaurants located in its stores.
• The option allows customers to pair fresh meals with their basket of other Walmart items.
• Walmart is also eyeing restaurant delivery beyond its stores, executives said.

Walmart is pushing into restaurant delivery. Its first goal: Getting you a sub sandwich on demand.

The big box retailer has been delivering meals from Subway restaurants located in Walmart stores for about a month, said Tracy Poulliot, vice president of e-commerce and marketing at Walmart. The retailer aims to have the delivery option live at all 1,400 Subways within Walmart stores by late July.

Business Insider first reported that Walmart was testing restaurant delivery.

Customers can place Subway orders for express delivery on their own using the Walmart app, the company said. In testing, though, many customers combined restaurant orders with groceries and last-minute items that they need into a single order, Poulliot said.

"We're seeing a lot of customers purchase their Subway meals in addition to their groceries," she told reporters Thursday at the company's headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Walmart has spent years building its delivery business. The big box retailer now offers delivery in hours — or minutes — on everything from bananas to garden hoses from its 4,600 stores in the US. It uses a mix of independent contractors who work through Walmart's Spark delivery app and store employees to pick orders and deliver them to customers' homes.

Subway has had locations within Walmart stores for about 20 years, Damien Harmon, president of Subway North America, said in a video shown during Thursday's presentation.

Harmon relayed the experience of one Subway franchisee that operates restaurants within several Walmart locations, who said the delivery option is "a new avenue for growth and gives us another way to meet our customers where they are."

Executives on Thursday left the door open to expanding Walmart's restaurant delivery.

It's considering an integration with Sparky, Walmart's AI shopping assistant, which would allow customers to place restaurant orders with a simple AI prompt, Poulliot said.

Other national restaurants, such as Dunkin' Donuts and McDonald's, as well as regional chains such as California-based Wienerschnitzel, also have locations in some Walmart stores.

Walmart also sees a path to expand the delivery service to restaurants beyond its stores, said Greg Cathey, Walmart's senior vice president of digital fulfillment transformation.

"You can draw a circle around most Walmart stores, and almost all quick-service restaurant brands are located within five miles," he said.

Have a tip about Walmart or food delivery? Contact these reporters at dreuter@businessinsider.com and abitter@businessinsider.com. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is visiting South Korea, highlighting the country's clout in the AI boom.
• Nvidia's reliance on Samsung and SK Hynix has helped lift South Korea's AI champions.
• Huang is making the rounds in Seoul, from boardrooms to a TV talk show.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's travel itinerary is becoming a guide to the biggest winners in AI. His latest stop: South Korea.

The Nvidia chief was expected to arrive in Seoul on Friday for his second visit in seven months, a sign of how central the country has become to the AI boom.

The celebrity-style schedule follows Huang's appearance at Computex in Taiwan, the global hub of advanced chip manufacturing. It also reflects a growing reality for Nvidia.

"Nvidia's dependence on Korea has deepened," Jeff Kim, an analyst at KB Securities, wrote in a note this week.

As one of the world's largest producers of memory chips, South Korea has emerged as a major beneficiary of the AI boom.

In May, the country's semiconductor exports surged nearly 170% to a record high, helping drive South Korea's strongest export growth in more than four decades.

The country's chip champions have also helped fuel a red-hot stock-market rally.

South Korea's benchmark Kospi stock index has nearly doubled this year, while Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix each topped $1 trillion in market value last month on the AI rush.

But Huang's trip to South Korea isn't just about memory chips.

At Computex earlier this week, Huang highlighted robotics as a major area for future cooperation with South Korea.

As Nvidia increasingly looks for manufacturing partners that can help commercialize AI applications, "Korea, which has developed large-scale manufacturing infrastructure, is emerging as an ideal testbed," wrote Kim.

Huang's latest trip will be closely watched by investors. A website tracking his expected itinerary in South Korea has already attracted over 90,000 views as of Friday afternoon, local time.

Earlier this week, shares of LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics jumped on reports that the Nvidia chief was headed to South Korea.

During his last trip to Seoul in October, Huang was photographed eating fried chicken and beer with Samsung Chairman Lee Jae-yong and Hyundai Motor Executive Chair Chung Euisun.

The meeting generated a wave of media coverage and helped send shares of several Korean fried chicken chains soaring by as much as 30%.

• An Anthropic employee spoke about AI leaving them in a state of confusion about their job.
• Anthropic on Thursday called for a coordinated slowdown in AI development among frontier AI labs.
• The new technology is turning workplaces upside down, slashing jobs and employee perks.

An Anthropic employee said AI advancements are leaving them in a state of internal turmoil.

In a blog post on its website on Thursday, Anthropic wrote about the risks of AI progressing to a point where it could improve itself autonomously. The post quoted unnamed Anthropic employees who talked about AI's coding capabilities, and one employee's quote summed up the confusion around AI in the workforce.

"On days where everything works well, I can't help but think nothing I do matters, everything is automated and better and faster than I ever will be," they said.

"But then there are days where everything breaks and I don't understand why and I realize I have no idea what I've been up to anymore," the employee added.

Other employee accounts included one worker who said they had not written any code themselves in about five months, and another who predicted that AI-generated code would outperform human-written code within a year.

The blog post said that Anthropic's frontier LLM, Claude, could handle engineering problems and research tasks, but "large performance gaps persist when it comes to Claude exercising judgment in choosing goals in both engineering and research."

This comes as AI has, in a short span of a few months, changed roles like software engineering beyond recognition. Frontier AI labs like Anthropic and OpenAI released new models at the end of last year that can perform complex tasks significantly better than their older versions.

The effect of this on workplaces has been monumental. Company CEOs have taken to flexing how much of their total code is written by AI, with Google saying that number stands at 75%. And companies are increasingly choosing to spend on AI rather than on hiring or on employee bonuses. Several have already announced AI-linked layoffs.

Thursday's blog post was written by staff from The Anthropic Institute, an arm of the company that publishes research and advisories on the impact and risks of powerful AI systems. In the post, which talked about AI developing to a point where it could improve itself, the institute called for a slowdown in AI development.

"If systems are capable of fully building their own successors, the ways we secure them, monitor them, and shape their behavior all grow much more important," the institute said in the blog post.

It urged a coordinated "meaningful slowdown or pause" of AI labs developing frontier models, which would "enable societal structures and alignment research to keep up" with AI advancements.

• Ukraine's commander in chief said Russia plans to ramp up production of its turbojet Shaheds.
• These jet-powered drones would pose a significant challenge for Kyiv's current air defenses.
• Russia now uses propeller-driven Shaheds, but has been ramping up production of jet-powered versions.

Russia is planning to carry out at least half of its long-range drone attacks against Ukraine with jet-powered uncrewed systems, said the commander in chief of Ukraine's forces.

"The enemy is constantly changing its UAV tactics, increasing their numbers, and improving their quality," Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi wrote in a social media post on Thursday. "The aggressor plans to raise the share of jet-powered attack drones to 50%."

These turbojet drones are much faster and harder to intercept than the propeller-driven delta-wing drones Russia uses by the thousands.

Syrskyi didn't provide any evidence for his assessment of Russia's plans, but wrote that the shift "presents new challenges that require a timely response."

The Geran-2, Russia's analog of the Iranian Shahed-136 loitering munition, remains the Kremlin's most commonly used long-range strike drone.

But Kyiv has anticipated for months that Russia would significantly expand its production and use of jet-powered drones, which current Ukrainian air defenses could struggle to counter at scale.

The Geran-3, for example, is closely related to the Shahed-238, a drone reported to fly at over 205 mph. A later version with a more powerful engine and a shorter nose, the Geran-4, has been said by Ukrainian intelligence to fly at speeds of over 300 mph.

Kyiv's forces now use a combination of electronic warfare, mobile machine-gun fire groups, interceptor missiles, and interceptor drones — small drones designed to intercept and crash into Gerans.

These quadcopters have become a rising force in Ukraine's air defense. Syrskyi said on Monday that Ukrainian forces had used interceptor drones to take down 3,500 Russian long-range strike and decoy drones in the month of May.

The top speed of turbojet Gerans may prove difficult for Ukraine's interceptor drones, which are often quadcopters that cost about $2,500 to $6,000 each.

The fastest speed ever recorded for these types of drones is 408 mph, though it was achieved by a quadcopter flying in a straight line without a payload.

In March, Ukrainian drone advisor Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov warned local manufacturers to begin developing solutions to battle turbojet Gerans.

"There is no need to become the 'one hundred and first' manufacturer of drones against the current Shaheds," he wrote. "We need to work for the future."

• Jennifer Garner says she's happy to focus on acting again, even though the job is "very selfish."
• "When I work, I don't apologize to my kids for it. I do thank them for being so sweet about it," she said.
• Garner co-parents three kids with her ex-husband, Ben Affleck.

Jennifer Garner, 54, says she's grateful her kids understood the demands of her acting career.

In an interview with InStyle published on Wednesday, the "13 Going on 30" actor spoke about dedicating more time to her career now after spending years focused on being a mom.

"When my kids were little, I worked so little, and then we had such an upheaval in our family, that I really hardly worked for a long time," Garner told InStyle.

Garner shares three children with her ex-husband Ben Affleck. They split in 2015 after 10 years of marriage, and divorced three years later. They continue to co-parent their kids.

Garner said she cherished the opportunity to devote herself to acting again in the last year and a half, even though the job is "very selfish."

"It's all about your schedule. It's not about what the kids have going on at school. It's not about pickups and drop-offs and making it home for dinner," Garner said.

That said, Garner only takes acting jobs that are primarily filmed in Los Angeles, so she wouldn't have to uproot her family.

Speaking about her latest role in Peacock's coming series "The Five-Star Weekend," Garner said she connected with her character, a widowed food blogger navigating a new chapter in life.

"I relate to that feeling of like, Okay, I gave everything to mothering. I'm still their mom, I'm not going anywhere, I'm still all-in. I'm also really grateful to have this part of my life back," Garner said.

She added that she's embraced this stage of life, where she can devote time to both her children and herself.

"When I work, I don't apologize to my kids for it. I do thank them for being so sweet about it. But that's part of life. Working hard is part of life, and messing up is part of life. Tripping and falling — there's room for all of it," Garner said.

Garner isn't the only Hollywood star who has spoken about balancing work and motherhood.

In August, Ayesha Curry said she doesn't want her whole identity to be tied to being a mother.

"Like, for me, being married and with my husband, if you lose all of those things that were interesting about you, even for yourself, even the things that made me feel confident and cool, then like, what are you doing?" Curry said.

In October, Keira Knightley said her mother gave her no-nonsense advice about being a working parent.

"There is a reality to it. You do just make it work," Knightley said. "It does look different for absolutely everybody, and it's always a mess."

• Silicon Valley elites like Sam Altman and Palmer Luckey faced off in a new online game show.
• The show had the tech leaders play a Mafia, a murder-mystery game of deception.
• Founders Fund, which launched the show, said the game has been popular in Silicon Valley for years.

Twelve "tech legends" walk into a bar and start getting picked off one by one — who would you trust to suss out the killer?

You can get a glimpse into that scenario thanks to a new show that gathered a group of Silicon Valley elite — including OpenAI founder Sam Altman, Anduril founder Palmer Luckey, and biohacker Bryan Johnson — to play Mafia, a murder-mystery game of deception.

The show, which launched Thursday on YouTube and X, is from Founders Fund, the San Francisco-based venture capital firm co-founded by Peter Thiel.

For viewers unfamiliar with Mafia, the purpose of the game is "to deceive and to detect deception," the show explains, adding, "For years, everyone in Silicon Valley has played."

The game involves each player being randomly assigned a role, one of which is mafia. The mafia's goal is to kill off the rest of the players, while everyone else is trying to identify and kill off the mafia.

The first episode was filmed at Tosca Cafe, an iconic San Francisco bar and restaurant that served as the location of the famous PayPal Mafia photo published in Fortune in 2007.

The group of 12 players included: Altman; Luckey; Johnson; biohacker Josie Zayner; Wait But Why writer Tim Urban; professional poker player Liv Boeree; AI policy expert Ryan Beiermeister; Figma founder Dylan Field; Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike; angel investor Cyan Banister; Flexport founder Ryan Petersen; and Founders Fund partner Trae Stephens.

We won't give any spoilers, but the game played out over a 33-minute episode in which accusations were thrown left and right.

Luckey was quick to make jokes during the game, which made him a target to some. Some players joked about how others' real-world jobs could influence their role in the game.

"Whatever Bryan says we should go with because he can't die," Stephens said of Johnson, who founded the app Don't Die and is famous for his quest to conquer aging.

There were also some accusations thrown around between Altman and Beiermeister, who, according to The Wall Street Journal, was fired from OpenAI in January.

Mike Solana, the CMO of Founders Fund and host of the game, said in an X post that the next two episodes of the show will be released on Thursdays over the next couple of weeks.

The show is the latest example of Silicon Valley embracing new media ventures, with one of the most prominent being OpenAI's acquisition of the tech talk show TBPN.

• Google is laying off some employees across its vast Cloud division.
• One elite cybersecurity unit, the Threat Intelligence Group, was hit with cuts yesterday.
• Tech companies across Silicon Valley are trimming their workforces as they pour billions into AI.

Google is the latest Big Tech company to do layoffs this year.

Employees working at Google Cloud have been hit by cuts over the last two weeks, two people familiar with the matter told Business Insider.

One team, Google's Threat Intelligence Group, which is one of Google's top security units and regularly publishes research about hackers, was impacted yesterday, the people said. Some employees have been posting about the layoffs on LinkedIn.

The cuts were not limited to that unit, affecting others at Mandiant — a cybersecurity company bought by Google in 2022 — and within Google Cloud, the people added.

It's unclear exactly how many people were impacted and why the cuts are happening now. In one instance, Google cited the need to reinvest in growth areas, such as AI, to justify the move, one of the people said.

"We regularly evaluate our internal structures to ensure we are best positioned to meet the evolving demands of our customers and the industry," a Google spokesperson told Business Insider.

The cuts are just the latest to hit Big Tech as companies pour billions into AI. Meta laid off 10% of its staff last month, while others like Coinbase and Block used AI to justify big cuts earlier this year. Cybersecurity has also been affected: Cloudflare laid off more than 1,100 employees earlier last month as it prepares for the "agentic AI era."

Last year, Google Cloud quietly let go of some staff, mostly in user experience roles, Business Insider reported.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at crollet@businessinsider.com or on Signal and WhatsApp at 628-282-2811. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

A tight Game 1 saw the Vegas Golden Knights squeak out a win against the Carolina Hurricanes, and the teams are set to duke it out again tonight in Game 2 of the Finals. If you're hoping to tune in, you can scroll our full guide below on how to watch Stanley Cup Finals live streams from all corners of the Earth.

It's ABC's turn to host the seven-game series in the US, meaning a subscription to ESPN Unlimited or an OTT cable alternative will let you stream all the action online. CBC and Sportsnet are sharing the coverage in Canada, while NHL.TV on DAZN has the rights to show the 2026 Stanley Cup Finals in more than 200 other countries around the world.

This is all familiar territory for the likes of Mark Stone, Jack Eichel, Shea Theodore, and Adin Hill, with the core of the Golden Knights' title-winning side from 2023 still producing the goods this postseason. Add the creativity of playoff MVP candidate Mitch Marner and the nous of John Tortorella, who stewarded the Tampa Bay Lightning to glory in 2004, and you can see why the Las Vegas franchise has made it this far. But the Hurricanes have their own fairytale to contend with — the 20th anniversary of their first (and only) Stanley Cup win and Rod Brind'Amour's narrative arc taking him from captain to coach.

With the form of Frederik Andersen and Taylor Hall, is destiny on Carolina's side? Or will the Golden Knights set another stone on their path to franchise dynasty less than a decade since it was formed? You can find out by watching Stanley Cup Finals action — no matter where you are in the world, thanks to a VPN — with the help of our dedicated guide.

How to watch Stanley Cup Finals in the US

This year, ABC will exclusively carry the main TV feed of the Stanley Cup Finals on TV, while hockey fans will also be able to watch online via the ESPN app. You'll need its comprehensive ESPN Unlimited plan, which includes everything that ABC and the various ESPN channels have to offer (e.g. NFL, NBA, college sports, WWE, La Liga soccer) and costs $30 a month.

Anybody without an antenna or who has cut the cord can get access to ABC through a month-to-month streaming service like DirecTV. Its MySports plan offers local ABC channels, access to ESPN Unlimited, and an array of premium sports channels including FS1/FS2, NBA TV, NFL Network, Golf Channel, USA, and TNT. It costs $65 a month, with a $15 discount off each of your first two months, all after a five-day free trial for first-time customers.

Fubo is another comprehensive cord-cutting service. Its Sports + News package is the most reasonable way to get access to Stanley Cup Finals streams, costing $56 a month (with a $10 discount for your first month). Its 25+ channel line-up includes ESPN, CBS, and FOX's sports channels. There's the option to try before you buy with its five-day free trial.

How to watch Stanley Cup Finals in Canada

Sportsnet and CBC will simulcast every game of the 2026 Stanley Cup Finals series on TV in Canada. Although the Stanley Cup Finals will be shown on CBC, the network has confirmed that it will not be broadcasting it for free online through the CBC Gem platform. So to watch on your laptop, smartphone, tablet, or streaming device, you'll need a Sportsnet+ subscription, costing from $30 a month or $250 a year. Right now, there's a discount on its four-month plan, currently down to $90.

How to watch Stanley Cup Finals in the UK

NHL fans in the UK have two choices for where to watch Golden Knights vs. Hurricanes. The first is NHL.TV on DAZN, which is available to stream on a wide variety of streaming devices and currently costs a one-off fee from £15 for the 2026 Stanley Cup Finals. The second option is the more wide-ranging Premier Sports, which includes live NHL streams among its offerings and costs from £13 a month.

How to watch Stanley Cup Finals in other countries

NHL.TV on DAZN will show 2026 Stanley Cup Finals live streams in more than 200 countries around the world, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. It includes the likes of the UK, Ireland, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, India, and Japan — but not, notably, the USA or Canada. You can see the complete list of countries covered here, with prices varying from region to region.

How to watch Stanley Cup Finals from anywhere

If you're overseas when the Stanley Cup Finals are on and try to watch the games through your usual NHL streaming service, you'll find that your stream is blocked. Rights restrictions mean that you can't generally watch the platforms you're used to when out of the country — or, at least, not without a VPN. This clever software fools your streaming devices (e.g. laptops, phones, Fire Stick, etc) into thinking it's back at home, allowing you to stream like normal.

NordVPN is our recommendation for the best VPN you can download right now. It's brilliant at unlocking streaming services that would otherwise be geo-blocked, combining that with rapid speeds, enhanced cybersecurity, and user-friendly apps. Plus, you can give it a try without risk thanks to its no-quibble 30-day money-back guarantee.

Stanley Cup Finals schedule

• Game 1: at Carolina on Tuesday, June 2 — 8 p.m. ET
• Game 2: at Carolina on Thursday, June 4 — 8 p.m. ET
• Game 3: at Vegas on Saturday, June 6 — 8 p.m. ET
• Game 4: at Vegas on Tuesday, June 9 — 8 p.m. ET
• *Game 5: at Carolina on Thursday, June 11 — 8 p.m. ET
• *Game 6: at Vegas on Sunday, June 14 — 8 p.m. ET
• *Game 7: at Carolina on Wednesday, June 17 — 8 p.m. ET

*Denotes 'if required'

Who is favored to win the Golden Knights vs. Hurricanes?

At the time of writing ahead of Game 2, DraftKings lists Carolina as the favorite to win. The sportsbook has the Hurricanes listed as 1.5-point favorites and -162 on the moneyline, while Vegas is at +136.

Who won Game 1 of the Golden Knights vs. Hurricanes?

The Golden Knights won Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals 5-4. The two teams were tied up at the start of the third and final period, but the Golden Knights managed to score two goals, while the Hurricanes only got one in.

Where is the Golden Knights vs. Hurricanes Game 2 being held?

Game 2 of the Golden Knights vs. Hurricanes match-up will once again take place at the Lenovo Center in Raleigh, North Carolina. After tonight's match-up, the series will head to the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas for the next two games.

Note: The use of VPNs is illegal in certain countries and using VPNs to access region-locked streaming content might constitute a breach of the terms of use for certain services. Business Insider does not endorse or condone the illegal use of VPNs.

• New "60 Minutes" executive producer Nick Bilton had a drama-filled start to his tenure.
• Former correspondent Scott Pelley questioned Bilton's qualifications in front of "60 Minutes" staff.
• Read Bilton's latest memo to "60 Minutes" employees that tries to reassure them about the future.

The new top producer at "60 Minutes" is thanking staffers for their work after what he said was "a hell of a first week."

"It has been a trying and difficult few days," said Nick Bilton, who recently became the executive producer at "60 Minutes," in a memo viewed by Business Insider.

Bilton was grilled by longtime correspondent Scott Pelley about his qualifications and those of his boss, CBS News top editor Bari Weiss. While both Bilton and Weiss worked at news organizations like The New York Times, neither had a background in TV news.

Pelley confronted Bilton on Monday during his inaugural all-hands meeting after CBS let go of "60 Minutes" correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega. Pelley also said Weiss was "murdering" the "60 Minutes" program, according to audio obtained by Status and The New York Times.

CBS then fired Pelley on Tuesday, with Bilton telling the network veteran his "antipathy to the future of the show has come through loud and clear."

Weiss told CBS News staffers in an editorial meeting Wednesday morning that the broadcast network "had to part ways" with Pelley, saying that she was "only interested in working in a newsroom that is built on trust and mutual respect."

Bilton said in his Thursday memo that "the foundation of 60 Minutes is its journalistic independence" and said the new program "will always pursue stories without fear or favor."

"It should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway: We will never be instructed by the ownership of the company on those stories," Bilton wrote.

In statements following their exits, Pelley, Alfonsi, and Vega all described clashes with CBS News leadership over issues of editorial integrity and the network's direction.

Critics of Weiss have said she is trying to make the network more politically palatable to President Donald Trump, whose administration will need to grant regulatory approval for CBS News' parent company, Paramount, to merge with Warner Bros. Discovery. Weiss and Paramount have broadly denied that the changes to CBS News were intended to curry favor with Trump. Weiss has framed the changes as necessary to overhaul the century-old news organization for the digital era.

Bilton also broke some news in his memo, naming Maria Gavrilovic as senior producer for "60 Minutes."

Following the departures of Pelley, Alfonsi, and Vega — plus Anderson Cooper's recent exit — only three full-time "60 Minutes" correspondents remain: Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker, and Jon Wertheim.

In the memo, Bilton said that "Lesley, Bill and Jon are core to this show's success."

There has been widespread speculation in the media industry about whether the remaining correspondents will stick around.

Read Bilton's full memo here:

SUBJECT LINE: Looking forward

Team,

It has been a trying and difficult few days. I know that. I've spent a lot of time in conversation with many of you, and especially in consultation with Lesley, Bill and Jon.

We talked about what makes 60 Minutes exceptional, about the traditions and legacy of the past, about how you do the work that produces such momentous pieces. We also talked about change: About new audiences, new platforms, and new ways of storytelling that these new audiences need. We'll speak more about that in the weeks to come.

There are a few things I want to emphasize now.

60 Minutes is an extraordinary show. It's beloved by audiences and is part of the American fabric. That's because of your ambition for the most daring and revelatory stories. Your commitment to accuracy and care. Your standards of excellence in presentation, reporting and production.

The foundation of 60 Minutes is its journalistic independence. We will always pursue stories without fear or favor. We will always make the story the North Star—not relationships nor politics nor anything else. We will be guided solely and always by what makes the best piece for our viewers. And it should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway: We will never be instructed by the ownership of the company on those stories.

Sunday night works. It's the best hour of television journalism anywhere. We're going to continue to do the things we do that make it so great-the scheduled screenings, the detailed script work, the editing, the long format of the pieces. I am a curious person and I love stories, and as executive producer I will shape the show writ large. I'll bat around ideas with you, I'll dive into scripts and edits with you, and I will sign off on pieces. The fearless correspondents and the intrepid producers will continue to be the core of each piece we broadcast.

Discussion, debate and disagreement are essential to the making of good journalism. All will be done in good faith, and always with respect and trust-and with fidelity to the practices that have served us well for 58 years.

Right now, I want to turn to the hard work of Season 59. I want to learn from you, and people who know this show intimately will be by my side. Indeed, I'm thrilled to announce that Maria Gavrilovic has just been named Senior Producer. She will be one of those people.

Lesley, Bill and Jon are core to this show's success. They have sat across from the most powerful people in the world and refused to blink. Audiences trust them because they have proved it, story by story, for decades. Working with them is a privilege and every journalist's dream.

Over the past few days, I have thanked each of you for your work, and I will say it again here: thank you. It's been a hell of a first week. Let's get to work.

Until then,

Nick

• Sam Altman talked about the new importance of budgets — and it brought out the AI skeptics on X.
• Altman said that people had been "totally happy" with their AI spending, but that it recently became a "huge issue."
• Some online commentators warned of a bubble. Others said it was a sign of token misuse.

Sam Altman said AI budgeting had recently become a "huge issue" for some companies — and it sent AI bubble watchers and doomers into a frenzy.

During a Tuesday enterprise event, Altman referenced memes like, "My company spent my entire 2026 budget in Q1."

"That went from, at the beginning of this year, an issue that never came up — people were totally happy with the amount they were spending — to all of a sudden, a huge issue," Altman said.

The reader response was loud. Some said that it was a warning of dark times or a failure in AI business model. The word "bubble" came up often. Others said it was par for the course, a normal stage as people learn what to actually spend their tokens on after a period of experimentation.

Commentators from Gary Marcus to Michael Burry got involved. Here are some of the most interesting reactions.

Some say it's a dark warning

Ed Zitron, one of the internet's foremost AI bubble warners, wrote on X that OpenAI was "absolutely cooked."

"This is loser language," Zitron wrote. "You can't be four years into the bubble saying 'yeah our customers have a huge issue with how expensive our business is.' You just raised $122 billion!"

Programmer Eric S. Raymond (often referred to as ESR) agreed that the "bubble is popping."

"Make no mistake, it's a hugely useful technology and uptake will continue, even accelerate," Raymond wrote. "But the overinvestment in datacenters that we've been seeing is not sustainable; the business model of the big providers doesn't work, and is floating on VC money."

Academic and author Vivek Wadhwa wrote that it seemed like AI researcher Gary Marcus was right: "the AI revenue models are imploding."

Marcus himself commented that the death of tokenmaxxing was "potentially a very serious issue for all three big IPOs."

Michael Burry, the "Big Short" investor who's taken an AI-skeptical turn, also referenced the story on X.

Others say it's token misuse

As the tokenmaxxing frenzy dies down, some engineers are wondering: are we spending in the right ways? Altman's comments may be less of a dark warning and more of a rational cost-benefit analysis.

Google software engineer Patrick Toulme commented that "getting value out of agents is still too difficult for most engineers, so they end up just burning tokens."

"80% of the economic value of LLMs come from 20% of the tokens," BCA Research's chief strategist Peter Berezin wrote. "There is a long tail of dubious token usage that can be greatly curtailed without much negative impact on productivity."

Kun Chen worked at Meta, Microsoft, and Atlassian. He wrote that AI spending was "driven by FOMO," so some cutback was "inevitable."

Still, he remained optimistic.

"I'm bullish that real demand will slowly build up again," Chen wrote.

Duckbill chief cloud economist Corey Quinn took a more ironic approach. He wrote that Altman was starting to realize that OpenAI's tokens — the tokens he sells — can be expensive.

"Truly the Copernicus of his generation," Quinn wrote.

I review TVs professionally, and Samsung consistently stands out as one of the most reliable brands I test. Its lineup covers everything from basic LED models to premium OLED sets, though not every option is worth your money. The best Samsung TVs strike the right balance between picture performance, smart features, and overall value.

To help narrow things down, I've selected the best Samsung TVs available right now. My top recommendation is the Samsung S90F, an OLED model with excellent contrast and vivid, high-impact colors. For shoppers on a tight budget, the Samsung U8000F is a solid entry point. While its picture quality has clear trade-offs, it's an affordable smart TV that handles everyday streaming and casual watching well.

Below, you'll also find picks with anti-reflective screens, which are ideal for rooms with lots of light. Several options also come in extra-large screen sizes, making them great for sports events like World Cup watch parties. Just be sure to choose your preferred size when browsing listings on each retailer.

Our top picks for the best Samsung TVs

Best overall: Samsung S90F OLED TV - See at Amazon

Best on a budget: Samsung U8000F LED TV - See at Amazon

Best high-end set: Samsung S95H OLED TV - See at Samsung

Best RGB LED: Samsung R95H Micro RGB TV - See at Samsung

Best for your wall: Samsung LS03F Frame QLED TV - See at Amazon

Best overall: Samsung S90F

What we love: It offers the best balance of performance and cost among Samsung TVs.

Drawbacks: Its color capabilities vary depending on the size you buy, and its screen isn't the best at reducing reflections.

When it comes to overall value for your money, the S90F is the best Samsung TV available. In fact, it's my pick for the best TV you can buy from any brand.

Utilizing a QD-OLED panel, the S90F delivers an infinite contrast ratio and outstanding color performance that outshines similarly priced OLEDs from the competition. When watching HDR (high dynamic range) content, highlights leap off the screen, while deep, precise black levels fade into the dark. Wide viewing angles make the TV equally impressive for movie nights and group watch parties, since the picture looks great from any seat.

Brightness is also great for a TV of this type. Our reviewer measured a peak of around 1,460 nits, which is 200 nits higher than the previous-generation S90D. That gives the S90F a solid punch for both dark home theaters and well-lit living rooms.

However, it's worth noting that Samsung does sell brighter TVs, including the premium S95H OLED, which offers a bit more pop in certain HDR videos. The S90F also uses a glossy screen rather than the anti-glare matte coating used on some of Samsung's other models. While matte screens handle reflections much better, glossy panels like this one maintain richer contrast and a more cinematic look.

All things considered, the S90F offers the best balance of price and performance in Samsung's TV lineup. Its picture quality is close to that of pricier models from other brands, and it frequently goes on sale.

Note: Samsung's 42-, 48-, and 83-inch S90F models do not feature quantum dots, so their screens can't match the color performance of other sizes.

Read our full Samsung S90F 4K TV review.

Best on a budget: Samsung U8000F

What we love: It's one of Samsung's most affordable TVs, and it's available in many screen sizes.

Drawbacks: The TV's picture quality is notably worse than my other picks, with much lower contrast and brightness.

Generally speaking, Samsung's budget TVs tend to fall short compared to what rivals like TCL and Hisense offer for the same price. However, the company's U8000F is its most competitive entry-level offering, and it's worth considering if you want a Samsung TV on the cheap.

The U8000F uses a standard LCD panel with a regular LED backlight. This is fine for casual viewing, but the TV lacks the step-up picture-quality features you'd find on Samsung's pricier models.

Most notably, the U8000F doesn't use quantum dots and lacks local dimming. As a result, the TV offers a limited color range, and its black levels aren't very deep or uniform across the screen. This is also one of the dimmest TVs in Samsung's lineup. It can technically process HDR10 and HDR10+ signals, but its brightness and contrast aren't high enough to really showcase HDR's benefits.

Still, the U8000F is capable of full 4K-resolution playback, which results in a crisp, sharp image. It plays standard dynamic range (SDR) content in both 4K and high definition just fine, so HD cable channels and all the best live TV streaming services look solid. 

This is a decent entry-level model for casual viewers who just want a basic smart TV and don't care about paying extra for better picture quality. However, keep in mind that if you're willing to look outside Samsung's lineup, you can find TVs with better contrast and color performance, such as the TCL QM6K, for a bit more money.

For more cheap display recommendations from other brands, check out our guides to the best budget TVs and best TVs under $500.

Best high-end set: Samsung S95H

What we love: It offers the most impressive image quality of any Samsung TV, its screen is great at reducing reflections, and it has a premium design with a unique metal bezel.

Drawbacks: The anti-glare screen lifts black levels in bright rooms, the metal frame might not fit all decors, and the TV is pricey.

The S95H OLED is the most impressive Samsung TV I've tested so far. It's expensive, but it delivers some of the best image quality you can get on any consumer display.

This model replaces my previous pick, the S95F, which remains an excellent TV, especially since it's now heavily discounted. However, if you're truly seeking Samsung's top high-end set, the S95H is unmatched.

Like the S95F, this new model uses an OLED panel to produce an infinite contrast ratio and wide viewing angles. But the S95H takes OLED brightness to another level. Using a 10% test pattern, I measured an incredible peak of 2,780 nits. That's around 30% brighter than the S95F and the highest number I've ever recorded on an OLED TV, beating even the LG G5.

The TV's color performance is also stellar thanks to the panel's use of quantum dots in the 55-, 65-, and 77-inch models. (The 83-inch size likely uses four-stack OLED technology to achieve similar results.) When watching actual content, this high brightness, wide color gamut, and perfect contrast deliver gorgeous HDR images, with a level of intensity that's a clear step above Samsung's midrange S90 series.

Samsung also takes a more premium approach to the S95H's design, which it calls its "FloatLayer." The TV has a metal frame-like bezel, and the screen appears to almost float in front of it. Some might prefer the older S95F's more subtle design and thinner bezel, but I think this unique style looks fantastic when mounted on a wall. To complement its frame-like design, the S95H is also the first OLED to support Samsung's Art Store. You need to pay a subscription fee to access the store's full selection, but users get 30 free pieces that rotate monthly.

The S95H features Samsung's latest anti-glare screen technology, which uses a matte-like finish. This could be a pro or con depending on your viewing needs. This feature significantly reduces reflections in rooms with ambient light, making it a perfect fit for people who struggle with glare. Sports fans, in particular, should consider the S95H, as it's great for watching games during the day.

However, this glare-free coating has one downside: it can make black levels appear a bit elevated in a bright room. This was evident during testing with the lights on, but I found the effect less bothersome than on previous S95 TVs. I still prefer glossy OLEDs, but if reflections are a constant headache in your room, the S95H's anti-glare screen is a big perk.

Read our first-look Samsung S95H 4K TV review.

Check out our guide to the best TVs for picture quality.

Best RGB LED: Samsung R95H

What we love: Samsung's Micro RGB tech delivers some of the best color performance of any consumer TV, and the screen features the brand's impressive anti-glare coating.

Drawbacks: Brightness, contrast, and viewing angles can't match those of Samsung's S95H OLED, and it's not available in smaller sizes.

The Samsung R95H is the brand's first mainstream RGB LED TV, or Micro RGB TV, as Samsung calls it, and it's an impressive showcase of what this new display technology can do. While standard LED, QLED, and Mini LED TVs use either a white or blue backlight, Micro RGB TVs use red, green, and blue LEDs. This allows the backlight to produce a purer, wider range of colors than other TVs. And in my initial testing, the R95H did just that.

I measured around 91% coverage of the BT.2020 color range, which is the most I've recorded from any TV so far. Now it's important to note that it's rare for content to actually use such an expanded color gamut, but that could change in the future. As it stands, the R95H gives bright, highly saturated movies a punchy look, but it doesn't make reds, blues, and greens appear cartoonish or unnatural. Color gradients also looked clean rather than blocking in my testing, which helps the picture maintain a smooth quality during demanding scenes.

The R95H's backlight control is also good for a non-OLED TV. Dark sequences have nice depth, and the set avoids many of the distracting halo effects that can pop up on lesser LED models. It's not perfect, though. I could still spot some light bleed on very difficult shots, and the black levels didn't have the same pixel-level precision as you get from a Samsung OLED.

Likewise, the TV wasn't as bright as I expected. I measured a peak of 1,600 nits on a 10% HDR window, which is respectable but not quite flagship-level. I'm going to test more settings to see if I can optimize the screen's brightness when I get more hands-on time with it in the near future.

Thankfully, the R95H's design feels appropriately upscale. The TV has a slim profile, narrow screen borders, and a stylish stand with a mirror-like finish. Like the S95H, this model also has an anti-reflective screen, which is especially useful in rooms with lamps or windows that cause a lot of glare. You also get four HDMI 2.1 ports on the TV itself, plus compatibility with Samsung's wireless One Connect Box for more input flexibility.

But as impressive as the R95H is, it isn't the best Samsung TV for everyone. Its biggest selling point is color, not contrast or brightness. Samsung's S95H OLED still delivers a more impactful HDR image overall, especially in a dark room. The R95H is the Samsung TV to buy if you want the brand's most advanced color tech, but OLED remains the better choice for shoppers who want the strongest all-around picture quality.

Read our first-look Samsung R95H TV review.

Best for your wall: Samsung LS03F Frame

What we love: Its frame-style design looks fantastic hanging on a wall, with a matte canvas-like screen, flush mount, and swappable bezels.

Drawbacks: The TV's picture quality is secondary to its design, with low contrast and limited brightness.

Samsung's Frame TV is an excellent choice for anyone planning to mount their display on a wall. This unique TV is designed to resemble a piece of art hanging in your living room.

The Frame has a black border by default, but you can pay extra to get different bezel colors for the exact picture-frame look you want. Options include white, brown, teak, red, beige, and more. The add-on bezels magnetically snap onto the display for simple installation.

This version of the Frame TV utilizes an external One Connect Box to house its video ports, allowing the panel to maintain a one-inch profile from top to bottom. When paired with the included slim-fit wall mount, the TV can be hung flush on your wall, just like a framed work of art.

The display uses a matte finish similar to the anti-glare filter featured on several other Samsung TVs. This finish helps prevent reflections, but it's also been designed to give the screen a more canvas-like appearance. When you're not watching TV, you can turn on "Art Mode," which cycles through various paintings and photographs from Samsung's Art Store (subscription required) or a connected USB drive. A built-in motion sensor can even toggle the Art Mode to activate only when people are in the room.

While the Frame's unique design is its main selling point, the TV also benefits from a QLED panel, albeit without all the bells and whistles of Samsung's top QLED models. The Frame can't hit the same peak brightness levels as my high-end picks, and it lacks local dimming for precise contrast control.

I don't recommend this TV to anyone focused on picture quality, but it still delivers a decent image for casual viewing. The Frame is specifically geared toward individuals who want the best Samsung TV that can also serve as an attractive design piece to hang in a living room, and in that sense, it excels.

Samsung also offers a slightly revised 2026 version of the Frame. The most notable difference is that the 2026 model has its ports built into the panel rather than housed in a separate connection box. This could be a pro or con depending on your setup needs, but since the older model is often on sale for less, I still recommend it for most people.

Check out our guide to the best frame TVs.

What we're testing now

Samsung S90H TV - See at Amazon
The S90H is the 2026 successor to our favorite Samsung TV of last year, the S90F. The new model is similar overall but offers a few changes that could make it more or less attractive, depending on your priorities. Most notably, it now uses Samsung's anti-glare screen, which is great at reducing reflections but causes black levels to look a bit hazy in bright rooms. We're testing the S90H now for a full review and consideration in this guide.

You can learn more about the S90H in our 2026 Samsung OLED TV roundup.

How we test Samsung TVs

Our picks for the best Samsung TVs are based on a combination of hands-on testing and research informed by over a decade of experience covering the home entertainment market. Our testing encompasses several key evaluation points that we use to assess a TV's overall performance and value, including HDR quality, brightness, color gamut coverage, contrast, local dimming performance (if applicable), viewing angles, gaming capabilities, navigation speed, design, and price. 

When measuring a TV's brightness and evaluating other technical picture-quality attributes, we use a colorimeter with test patterns made by a pattern generator or the Spears & Munsil UHD HDR Benchmark 4K Blu-ray disc. 

However, test patterns only show one part of the equation, so we rely on real-world content and day-to-day viewing to see how Samsung's TVs look when watching typical programs in bright and dark rooms. Our material is carefully selected to showcase scenes that demonstrate test black levels, highlights, color fidelity, and fine details across 4K Ultra HD, high-definition (HD), and standard-definition (SD) material. We also use various sources, including streaming services, cable channels, a 4K Blu-ray player, and game consoles. 

General usability and design are also taken into consideration. We get a feel for living with a TV for a few weeks while using its basic functions and smart TV features. If a TV has slow navigation or is missing key functions, that affects our assessment, but we set expectations for each model within its price range. 

For more details on our testing methodology, check out our breakdown of how we review tech products.

Meet the expert behind this guide:

Steven Cohen, senior tech editor: I've been reviewing home entertainment gear for over a decade, and my team and I spend all year getting hands-on with the latest TVs. I also attend annual reviewer workshops for an early look at Samsung's newest video and audio tech, so I'm always up to speed on what it's rolling out next. I studied film production, which makes me especially picky about picture accuracy, so I want a TV to display movies and shows the way their creators intended. In addition to using calibration tools and benchmark discs to measure brightness and color performance, I live with every Samsung TV I review. That means streaming, movie nights, gaming sessions, and everyday channel surfing to see how it actually holds up at home. My aim is to cut through all the tech buzzwords and help you find a Samsung TV that delivers great picture quality at a good price.

Learn more about the Reviews team at Business Insider.

Samsung TV FAQs

What kind of TVs does Samsung make?

Samsung's TV lineup is divided into four main categories: OLED, QLED, Micro RGB, and Crystal UHD.

OLED models use self-illuminating pixels, so they don't need a backlight and can deliver perfect black levels with infinite contrast. Some Samsung OLEDs also use quantum dots for a wider color range. The trade-offs? OLEDs can be vulnerable to burn-in in extreme cases, and midrange models can't reach the same peak brightness as top QLED TVs.

QLED models use LCD panels with LED backlights and quantum dots. They can't match an OLED's pixel-level contrast, but high-end models can get brighter and don't carry the risk of burn-in. Samsung's best QLEDs — its Neo QLED lineup — add Mini LEDs with full-array local dimming, bringing them closer to OLED-level contrast performance.

For a deeper breakdown of how these two technologies compare, check out our full QLED vs. OLED guide.

Micro RGB models are the latest advancement in Samsung's TV lineup. These TVs are similar to QLEDs in that they also use LCD panels with Mini LEDs and full-array local dimming. But rather than use quantum dots in conjunction with white or blue LEDs, Micro RGB TVs use red, blue, and green LEDs to produce some of the richest, brightest, and most accurate colors available on a consumer display. However, contrast still can't equal the pixel-level precision of an OLED.

Crystal UHD and Mini LED models are Samsung's entry-level LCD TVs. They use basic LED backlights and offer limited color, brightness, and contrast compared to other display types. They're best suited for casual viewers who simply want an affordable smart TV without advanced picture features.

All of Samsung's displays are available in multiple sizes. The smallest options start at 32 inches, while the largest models can reach 130 inches. For TV recommendations at various screen sizes, check out our size-specific guides:

• Best 100-inch TVs
• Best 85-inch TVs
• Best 75-inch TVs
• Best 65-inch TVs
• Best 55-inch TVs
• Best 50-inch TVs
• Best 43-inch TVs

Does Samsung sell 8K TVs?

Yes, Samsung makes 8K TVs, and we've featured them in this guide before. But given the current price and performance gap between Samsung's 4K and 8K models, we recommend most shoppers stick with 4K.

Samsung's 8K TVs are impressive, but the real-world benefits of 8K are minimal. There's virtually no native 8K content beyond a few YouTube clips, so everything you watch will be upscaled 4K or HD. On very large screens, an 8K set can look slightly sharper if you sit close, but the difference isn't big enough to justify the price premium. You'll get better overall value by choosing one of Samsung's higher-end 4K TVs.

If you're determined to go 8K, the Samsung QN990F is our top pick. We've tested that model, and it delivers excellent picture quality. Still, most people will be happier with Samsung's more affordable 4K OLEDs, which offer superior contrast — a factor that makes a far bigger impact on image performance than 8K resolution.

Does Samsung make soundbars?

Yes, Samsung offers a range of soundbar models across various budgets, including the highly rated Q990 series of Dolby Atmos soundbars. You can learn more in our full Samsung Q990F soundbar review.

Some Samsung soundbars support a feature called Q-Symphony when paired with certain Samsung TVs. Q-Symphony enables the soundbar and TV speakers to work in tandem, enhancing sound quality.

For more soundbar recommendations from Samsung and other brands, check out our home audio buying guides:

• Best soundbars
• Best Dolby Atmos soundbars
• Best surround sound systems
• Best budget soundbars
• Best soundbars with a subwoofer
• Best Bose soundbars
• Best Sonos soundbars

Are Samsung TVs better than LG TVs?

Samsung and LG both make excellent TVs, and it's hard to crown one brand as universally better than the other. Each has strengths and weaknesses depending on what you need and which specific models you're comparing.

For LCD-based sets, Samsung has traditionally branded its top models as QLED, while LG's are branded QNED. The underlying panel tech differs slightly, but performance is broadly similar. That said, Samsung's high-end QLEDs have held an edge over LG's top QNEDs thanks to higher brightness and more effective local dimming.

In 2026, both companies also launched advanced LCD-based TVs branded as Micro RGB, which promise even better color performance. However, it remains to be seen how Samsung and LG Micro RGB TVs compare.

Both brands also produce some of the best OLED TVs on the market, and the competition is even closer here. Samsung's top OLEDs use quantum dots, boosting brightness and color compared to LG's midrange OLEDs. However, LG's flagship G5 OLED and G6 OLED use a four-stack design that enables them to rival Samsung's brightest OLEDs. Likewise, LG's OLEDs maintain deeper black levels in bright rooms. LG also offers OLEDs in more sizes, making the lineup more flexible for different budgets.

One important difference between all of LG and Samsung's TVs is their support for HDR (High Dynamic Range) formats. LG's mid- and high-end TVs work with Dolby Vision, while Samsung supports HDR10+. Both formats use dynamic metadata to optimize contrast and color scene by scene, but Dolby Vision is more widely adopted across streaming apps and 4K Blu-rays.

You can find LG recommendations in our guide to the best LG TVs.

What smart TV interface does Samsung use?

Samsung uses a proprietary smart TV interface built using the Tizen operating system (OS). Unlike other interfaces, such as Roku OS, Android TV, Fire TV, or Google TV, Samsung's Tizen platform is not available on smart TV models or streaming devices from other brands.

For many years, Samsung's Tizen OS featured a pop-up screen that displayed apps across a horizontal bar at the bottom of the screen, but Samsung updated its interface in 2022. Now, Samsung smart TVs use a full-screen homepage that organizes your favorite services and displays content recommendations. Most Tizen TVs feature support for Alexa or Bixby voice control, and newer models also support Microsoft Copilot AI. There's also a Gaming Hub section that allows you to access cloud services, including Xbox Game Pass, Nvidia GeForce Now, and Amazon Luna.

Samsung's smart TV interface works well across its TV lineup and offers access to all the best streaming services, but it's not the smoothest OS we've used. Even high-end models have been prone to hiccups and slight lag in the past. However, the brand's latest TVs have made notable improvements in this regard.

Most buyers should be satisfied with Samsung's smart TV performance, and no major services or features are missing. But if you prefer a different interface with slightly snappier navigation, we recommend checking out our guide to the best streaming devices for other options.

For display recommendations that use other systems, check out our full guide to the best smart TVs.

Do Samsung TVs support Dolby Vision?

No, not even the best Samsung TVs support Dolby Vision. However, they do support a similar format called HDR10+. Dolby Vision and HDR10+ are both dynamic metadata high-dynamic-range formats. This means that compatible content can be encoded with specific instructions that tell your TV how to handle HDR contrast and color on a scene-by-scene basis.

This is in contrast to the standard HDR10 format, a static metadata format that can include only a single set of instructions for the entire video, rather than providing scene-by-scene details. In practice, Dolby Vision and HDR10+ can deliver a more refined HDR experience with video quality that better matches the specific capabilities of your TV. However, these benefits over standard HDR10 are often very subtle.

Although Dolby Vision and HDR10+ offer similar capabilities, Dolby Vision is supported by more streaming services and 4K Blu-ray discs, making it the more desirable format.

Check out our HDR TV guide for more information about how these formats stack up.

Are matte screens better than glossy ones?

Some Samsung TVs use a glossy or semi-glossy screen, but the company has started to release more models that use a matte-like finish instead. They both have pros and cons that make them better suited for specific types of viewers.

Glossy screens are great at preserving high contrast and deep black levels, but they're prone to mirror-like reflections. This can be a problem if your room has lots of lights or windows. On the other hand, Samsung's anti-glare matte screens significantly reduce reflections. On the downside, the matte filter causes black levels to appear slightly elevated and washed out in a bright room.

The right style for you depends on your personal preferences and viewing needs. We tend to favor glossy screens for most uses, as high contrast plays a big part in overall picture quality. However, matte screens are better suited for spaces where ambient light cannot be controlled.

Notable Samsung TVs that use matte screens include the S95F, S95H, S90H, QN90F, R95H, and Frame models.

• Michael McCready has attended World Cups in the US, South Africa, Russia, and Qatar.
• He says this year's tournament is the most expensive he's encountered.
• He recommends fan zones, public transportation, and arriving early on match days.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Michael McCready, 57, who has attended four World Cups around the world. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I remember being as young as 5 and loving soccer. I'd go on to become a longtime fan of international football.

In 1994, I had just moved to Chicago, and the city was one of the host cities for the World Cup. As it was essentially in my backyard, I got the chance to go — my first experience seeing what happens when people from all around the world who loved football as I did gather in one place.

Everyone supported their team with so much passion. The atmosphere was full of patriotism and excitement.

I went to 3 more World Cups

I remember watching Germany play in a friendly game, one of the early-stage games, but it was Germany, one of the best teams in the world.

Once I got married and had children, my World Cup adventures came to a pause. The next one I attended was in South Africa in 2010. I flew from Chicago to Atlanta and then took a 17-hour flight from Atlanta to Johannesburg.

On this trip, I did everything I could to learn about the culture I was immersed in. I visited townships, a savanna, and a forest reserve, went to Port Elizabeth, and walked where Nelson Mandela had walked. I met people from so many countries, who spoke so many languages.

Then I saw a semi-final match and was gifted a ticket to the final between Spain and the Netherlands.

In the stadiums, everyone was blowing into vuvuzelas, which filled the stadiums with a loud, bee-like hum I had never heard before and haven't heard since.

The next World Cup I went to was in 2018, in Russia. I flew to Helsinki and then took the train to St. Petersburg. This is the same train that Vladimir Lenin took when he came and took over St. Petersburg. I walked down the same streets where the Russian Revolution took place. I went into the Winter Palace. As a history buff, these experiences were incredible.

I explored the deepest subway system in the world, ate out in restaurants where hardly any English was spoken, and walked around St. Petersburg before seeing two semi-final matches.

And then there was Qatar in 2022. Stadiums were built specifically for the World Cup, positioning the country as a sports destination. There wasn't any alcohol available, air conditioning was blowing up from sidewalks, and there were markets with spices, rugs, hunting falcons, and even a camel for sale.

I'm worried about the high prices for the World Cup in the US

This year, the World Cup is back in the United States, and prices are absurd.

From what I've seen, the starting price for the final this year is $4,500, and tickets for the final are currently on sale in the secondary market for up to $73,000.

That's just the price of a ticket. You add in a domestic flight for $500 (triple that if international), $400 a night in a hotel (for however many nights you stay), and then any food — it's a trip that costs thousands.

I think the World Cup this year will have a disappointing turnout. But if you do manage to get a ticket and can afford the experience, here are my top tips.

Give yourself plenty of time to get where you need to go

You cannot be in a hurry on game days, so make sure you build in lots of time to get wherever you need to go.

If you're not rushed, you can soak in the atmosphere, not missing anything or anyone around you.

Visit a fan zone

Every World Cup has fan zones. You can show up here without tickets and watch the game on a big screen. Say you only have a ticket to one game — you can watch all the other games in these zones.

It's a fun way to experience all the World Cup excitement, and it's arguably more convenient to watch because you've got the big screen and can see everything happening in the game, without having to navigate a stadium.

If you can afford it, bring your kids

Children know and love the teams and players. They get really excited about the matches. By bringing them along, we're getting the next generation of soccer fans excited about the sport and keeping the love of the game alive.

Use public transportation

Absolutely take public transportation. Not being a local, you won't know where to park if you rent a car. And you're looking at tens of thousands of people parking near the stadium at the same time. And Uber and taxi prices will be through the roof and hard to coordinate.

When using public transportation, plan your route just as you would if you were driving somewhere new.

Buy the World Cup mementos

World Cups only come around every four years, so I would encourage you, if you go, to get one of the T-shirts they are selling. In the future, if you see someone wearing the same, it's a conversation starter about how you were both there.

It's no secret that there's a lot to choose from when it comes to the best streaming services, and with new platforms launching every year, it can start to feel overwhelming. But the best Disney Plus bundles are designed to get subscribers as much content as possible under one discounted price. All Disney Plus bundle combinations include at least Disney Plus and Hulu, and from there, you can add either HBO Max or one of the ESPN streaming service tiers into the mix.

By signing up for any of the Disney Plus bundles, you'll automatically save at least 30% (but often over 40%) compared to what you'd pay every month if you subscribed to each service individually. There's even a new six-month plan option that can help you save up to 52%. It's enough of a deal that even if you're only mainly interested in Disney Plus or Hulu, we still recommend considering signing up for both, since bundle prices start at just $1 a month more than only subscribing to one service.

Disney Plus tends to skew family-friendly, so there are some content gaps when it comes to more mature programming. Hulu can help supplement this with a mix of network TV shows, blockbuster movies, and original, award-winning series geared toward adults. ESPN (either Select or Unlimited) adds live sports into the mix, including tennis, golf, football, and basketball. HBO Max rounds out the coverage with critically acclaimed prestige films and TV shows like "The Sopranos," "The Last of Us," and the "Dune" franchise.

We know it can sound a bit confusing, but the Disney Plus bundles are some of the best streaming deals on the market, so we're here to help clear up any questions you might have. Keep reading to explore a breakdown of costs, available bundling combinations, instructions on how to sign up, and info on what to do if you already have an existing subscription.

How much does the Disney Plus Bundle cost?

There are several versions of the Disney Plus bundle, ranging in price based on ad-tier and the number of bundled services. The cheapest option is the ad-supported Disney Plus and Hulu bundle, which costs $13 a month. The most expensive bundle is the ad-free Disney Plus and Hulu with ESPN Unlimited and NFL Plus Premium combination, which costs $55 a month.

There's also a brand-new pricing and plan option for the Disney Plus and Hulu bundles, if you don't mind committing to six months of service (billed monthly). The offer, first introduced in April 2026, gives you ad-supported Disney Plus and Hulu for $12 a month for six months ($71.94 in total) or ad-free Disney Plus and Hulu for $18 a month for six months ($107.94). Once the six-month term is up, plans will renew at the then-standard introductory rates.

Our Disney Plus price guide has full details on all Disney Plus plans and associated costs, but you can find a breakdown of the current Disney Plus bundle prices below.

How to sign up for the Disney Plus Bundle

For those living in the US, signing up for the Disney Plus bundle with Hulu and/or ESPN is easy. You just need to visit the Disney Plus website and select your desired plan. If you don't see the exact option you want on the landing page, you might need to start the signup process and log in to see all available plan configurations.

If you want to sign up for the HBO Max version but don't see it on the website homepage, just visit this website to get started instead. While Disney Plus is available globally, the bundles are confined to the US since Hulu and ESPN Select/Unlimited are only supported in the US.

After entering your email address and payment information, you can activate your account on each service. You can use the same account information across each platform and watch Hulu from the Disney Plus app and website. If you already have (or have ever had) a Disney Plus, Hulu, or ESPN account, this will serve as your MyDisney login for all Disney-owned services (unless you wish to sign up under a different email). You can reset your password through your email if you don't remember your login information.

Can I get the Disney Plus bundles for free?

Disney Plus no longer has a free trial, and none of the bundles come with a trial period, but there are still a few ways that you might be able to try out the services for free.

The DirecTV MyEntertainment genre pack includes ad-supported Disney Plus, Hulu, and HBO Max. This month-to-month live TV streaming package, which costs $35/month and carries 50+ live entertainment and lifestyle channels, comes with a five-day free trial for new customers. Ad-supported Disney Plus is available through DirecTV's MyKids pack, which costs $20/month, offers 10+ family-friendly channels, and also includes a five-day free trial.

The Hulu, Disney Plus, and ESPN bundle is included in both Hulu + Live TV subscription tiers (which we dig into below). This live TV package sometimes offers a free trial for its ad-supported tier, which means you can access all services for free for the duration of the trial. However, this free trial typically only lasts for three days (when available) before the subscription renews at the then-current monthly rate, unless you cancel before then.

Though Verizon previously offered free access to the Disney Bundle with its 5G Play More Unlimited and 5G Get More Unlimited phone plans, this promotion is no longer active for new members. However, you can get a reduced rate on the ad-supported Disney Plus, Hulu, and ESPN Plus (Select) bundle with Verizon Unlimited plans. This will cost $10/month instead of the standard $20/month.

Can current subscribers upgrade to the Disney Bundle?

Yes, current Disney Plus, Hulu, or ESPN Select/Unlimited subscribers can upgrade any of their existing subscriptions to the bundle. You just need to sign up for the Disney Plus Bundle using the same email address on file for your current membership. You can also log into your existing account and explore other plan options, and make the switch from there. Disney will then adjust the bundle cost to account for your existing subscription fees.

Though current HBO Max subscribers can upgrade to the bundle to get Disney Plus and Hulu included, remember that the HBO Max Ultimate Ad-Free plan is not included. That means current Ultimate members will see a downgrade in streaming quality if they choose to bundle, as only HD 1080p is available. To stream HBO Max in 4K UHD, you'll need to stick with the Ultimate Ad-Free plan, which isn't available as a bundle with another streaming service.

Remember, however, that members who have existing subscriptions through special promotions — like Spotify's Student Plan with Hulu — are not eligible for an upgrade to the bundle. They'll need to cancel their subscription or sign up for the bundles separately with another account.

Can you subscribe to Disney Plus bundles annually?

One of our favorite ways to save on streaming services is by subscribing annually, which usually saves subscribers money each year compared to paying for 12 months on a month-to-month plan. However, none of the Disney Plus bundles offer annual options right now.

You can subscribe to the Disney Plus ad-free tier annually for $190/year (a little over $37 in savings compared to paying month-to-month for a year), the Hulu ad-supported tier annually for $100/year (a little less than $20 in savings compared to month-to-month), ESPN Select annually for $130/year (a little over $25 in savings compared to month-to-month), or ESPN Unlimited annually for $300/year (a little less than $60 in savings compared to month-to-month). HBO Max also offers annual plans on all tiers of service, ranging from $110 to $230 a year.

Can I watch Disney Plus, Hulu, ESPN, or HBO Max content in the same app?

Disney Plus allows you to watch most programming from Hulu and/or select content from ESPN on Disney Plus if you're subscribed to either of the streaming services. The Hulu option became available in December 2023 (and officially rolled out in 2024), and the ESPN option became available in December 2024.

You must subscribe through the bundle or trio plans or link your stand-alone accounts. Select Hulu and ESPN programming is also available to watch on Disney Plus without a Hulu subscription. Once you log in, you can navigate to the ESPN and Hulu content by clicking on the applicable tiles on the Disney Plus homepage. The tiles are right next to the Marvel, Star Wars, and Pixar options, so it's easy to navigate.

Disney Plus/Hulu/HBO Max Bundle subscribers can watch select HBO content from the Hulu app, but not all. With the HBO Max add-on, select titles like "Euphoria," "House of the Dragon," and "The Last of Us" can be found within the Hulu app. Non-HBO or HBO Max exclusive content, like the Studio Ghibli and Harry Potter libraries, cannot be found in the Hulu app.

All four apps remain separate services for now.

Will Disney Plus and Hulu become one app?

In August 2025, a little less than two months after the Walt Disney Company purchased Comcast's stake in Hulu, Disney announced plans to fully integrate Hulu into Disney Plus for a one-app experience with the two oft-bundled services in 2026. Hulu has slowly become integrated into Disney Plus (to the point where US viewers subscribed to the bundle are able to watch most Hulu content on Disney Plus if they want), but there's no exact timeline for when the Hulu app might officially be phased out.

What's the difference between the Disney Plus bundles with ESPN Select and ESPN Unlimited?

ESPN Select and ESPN Unlimited are two tiers of the same streaming service available via the ESPN app. You can check out our ESPN streaming service guide for a comprehensive breakdown of the two plans. Choosing between one of the Disney Plus/Hulu/ESPN Select bundles and one of the Disney Plus/Hulu/ESPN Unlimited bundles ultimately comes down to personal taste and your household's needs. If you have access to a live TV streaming service or cable package, ESPN Select will probably do the trick with its supplementary coverage, but ESPN Unlimited might be a better fit if you're looking for a cable replacement for ESPN sports networks.

Does Hulu + Live TV include the Disney bundle?

Hulu + Live TV plans come with Disney Plus, the Hulu streaming library, and ESPN Select/Unlimited through the ESPN app. Hulu + Live TV subscribers don't have to pay extra or adjust any options in order to get the bundle. The service also lets you stream more than 95 live TV channels, including most of what you'd find in standard cable plans. There are also a number of add-ons you can get for maximum TV coverage. Check out our Hulu Live TV channels roundup to see the full lineup.

Hulu + Live TV plans cost $90 a month for ad-supported on-demand streaming or $100 a month for ad-free on-demand streaming. The ad-free options extend to Hulu and Disney Plus, but Hulu + Live TV and ESPN will always have ads due to the nature of live TV.

This is the only bundle automatically included with Hulu + Live TV, and there's no option to swap ESPN for HBO Max. Instead, you'd need to get an additional subscription to HBO Max, which will cost extra, although you're able to add it on through your Hulu + Live TV subscription.

Are there any current deals on the Disney Plus bundles?

While we consider Disney Plus bundles a deal in their own right, a limited-time offer can help sweeten the savings. However, as of June 2026, there are currently no special, additional limited-time offers available. The most recent Disney Plus deal discounted the first three months of ad-supported Disney Plus and Hulu service from $13 a month down to $5 a month. The deal concluded on March 24, 2026.

When was the last price hike on the Disney Plus bundles?

On October 21, 2025, the majority of Disney Plus bundles faced a price hike. Most bundles increased by $2-3, excluding those with Hulu + Live TV, which faced a steeper price hike. Some bundle options, like the ad-free Disney Plus and Hulu bundle and bundles that include ESPN Unlimited, didn't see a price increase.

• SpaceX wants to build a massive $55 billion semiconductor facility in Grimes County, Texas.
• Concerned Grimes County residents crowded a public hearing on Tuesday to discuss the factory.
• The opposition resembled the backlash against AI data centers across the country.

It's not just data centers.

Residents in a small Texas county are also now protesting SpaceX's proposed Terafab semiconductor facility in another sign of growing backlash against AI across the country.

Elon Musk's rocket company has submitted proposals to build the first phase of its chipmaking moonshot, which will cost at least $55 billion, in Grimes County. It could reach $119 billion if additional phases are built. About 30,000 people live in Grimes, which is about an hour outside Houston.

SpaceX's Terafab project is a joint venture with Tesla and Intel. Musk has said that, once online, it could vastly increase the global supply of semiconductor chips, which are crucial for both SpaceX's plans for AI data centers and Tesla's rollout of autonomous robotaxis and humanoid robots. Musk said in March that the factory could be as large as 100 million square feet, which would make it one of the largest factories in the world.

On Tuesday, Terafab took a step toward breaking ground when the Grimes County Commissioner Court voted to award SpaceX a critical tax abatement and a reinvestment zone designation during a public meeting.

The decision disappointed a notable swath of Grimes County residents who publicly criticized the project during the meeting. They opposed the project's size, potential impact on the rural community, and environmental fallout, echoing a nationwide backlash against AI data center developments.

"Your people don't want this. The turnout today is highly indicative that if this were put to a vote, the vast majority of people would vote it down," one man said during the meeting. "I think it's incompatible with the region."

Some residents took issue with what they described as a lack of transparency about the project's parameters and the delayed public notice of the meeting and relevant materials.

Marie Egyed, a member of Grimes County Citizens for Responsible Development, was among them. "This is disrespectful to the people living in that zone and in this entire county," Egyed said during the meeting.

Egyed told Business Insider that Grimes County residents had to gather information from open records requests, media reports, public meeting agendas, limited maps, and "very limited public statements."

"Many important questions remain unanswered, including the exact project scope, water needs, wastewater plans, chemical use, power requirements, traffic impacts, emergency response planning, environmental protections, and long-term expansion plans," Egyed said. "When a project this large is being discussed with public tax incentives, citizens should not have to fight to understand what is being proposed in their own county."

Egyed said that families moved to Grimes County for "peace, land, agriculture, wildlife, and open space."

"A large industrial complex near homes, farms, and rural roads could affect daily life for nearby residents, not just during construction, but for decades," she said.

Commissioner David Tullos, the only one to vote against the tax exemption and reinvestment zone designation, said he didn't receive adequate information about the project to approve it.

"As a commissioner for precinct 2, at a minimum, I should have been afforded the dialogue with SpaceX, so that I could make an informed and educated decision that best represents the interests of the folks who put me into office," Tullos said. "I do not feel I've been afforded that opportunity."

Big AI infrastructure projects, particularly the large data centers that power products from companies like SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic, are meeting resistance across the country. Some cities and towns have passed or proposed moratoriums on data center construction, fearing they will drain resources, impact the environment, raise electricity rates, and have complained about a lack of transparency.

John Federspiel, the senior director of Starlink Product Engineering who was representing SpaceX at the meeting, tried to alleviate concerns. He said SpaceX is committed to sustainability measures and highlighted its potential to stimulate economic growth. He said SpaceX intends to hire 1,800 local residents.

"This project presents significant opportunities in skilled trades, construction employment, suppliers and contractors, long-term technical workforce development, and, really, impacts that will affect every current and future business in Grimes County," he said.

Despite the negative reactions, some Grimes County residents sided with SpaceX, saying they supported industrial growth.

"This shouldn't be a political conversation or a referendum on one person or one company. This is about American exceptionalism. We're living through the industrial revolution of our time, and this is a literal race," one man said. "If America doesn't win, it won't just change Grimes County. It will change the country."

Kelly Rowland spoke about how she balances work and parenting in an interview with Business Insider.

• Investors will only need $2,000 in their Fidelity accounts to be eligible to buy into the SpaceX IPO.
• The reduced account minimum will allow more retail traders access to the historic IPO.
• Analysts have said heightened retail participation could make the IPO more volatile.

You might be able to buy into SpaceX's public debut more easily thanks to changes around one major brokerage's account minimums.

Retail investors have to have $2,000 in their brokerage account for the opportunity to access SpaceX shares at its IPO through Fidelity. That marks a major shift from previous rules around IPO participation where investors needed to have as much as $500,000 or in assets depending on the IPO.

"The SpaceX IPO may be available to Fidelity customers with as little as $2,000 in a retail brokerage account, lower than typical IPO requirements due to increased share availability," the brokerage outlined.

The firm does have guidelines around flipping—or selling the shares in the first 15 days from the the start of trading— which could negatively impacting investors' ability to participate in future IPOs.

Behind the change is SpaceX's decision to allocate a larger amount of shares in its public trading debut to retail investors than other IPOs.

Generally, companies allocate 5% to 10% of shares offered to retail investors. Space X is offering up to 30% at the IPO price. Fidelity explained the increased availability of shares for retail clients drove their decision to significantly reduce their account minimum for the IPO.

Fidelity customers that meet the eligibility requirements can fill out an indication of interest (IOI) form and request anywhere between one and one million shares.

The brokerage, like others, will use a lottery system to determine which customers get access to the shares as retail demand for SpaceX stock is expected to outpace supply.

SpaceX has shouted out retail investors ahead of the IPO, aiming to make it easier for them to get in at the initial offering price, which is usually something reserved for institutional buyers.

"Retail investor participation is important to SpaceX," the FAQ section of the company's IPO webpage reads. Heightened retail participation could fuel more volatile trading in SpaceX stock, analysts say.

Concern has grown that retail investors could be overexposed to the stock, as it is likely to be added to major indexes faster than usual, forcing funds and ETFs to become buyers. Some critics have also blasted moves by major index providers to speed up SpaceX's inclusion into the index.

"The rules are being rewritten to benefit IPO issuers and early-stage insiders," Wall Street veteran and longtime Fidelity fund manager George Noble said.

Update: Our team has searched the internet for Paramount Plus coupons and promo codes, but we've been unable to find any active discounts at this time. We'll keep hunting for deals and discount codes and add them to this page as we find them, so make sure to check back for updates. If you're still interested in subscribing to Paramount Plus today, you can keep reading to explore savings on annual plans, or head back to checkout.

While Paramount Plus might have simply started as a means to stream buzzy CBS shows on demand, the app has become one of the best streaming services on the market, thanks to its impressive selection of originals, sports programming, and (in the Premium tier) Showtime series. The streaming service is already one of the more budget-friendly apps on the market, but using one of the best Paramount Plus coupon and promo codes can help you save even more on a subscription.

Paramount Plus carries the full slate of popular CBS shows, from franchise favorites like "NCIS" and "Criminal Minds" to newer series such as "Boston Blue" and "Ghosts." Most notably, the service gets the new episodes of "Survivor" and "Marshals" the day after they air on linear TV (or live, depending on which tier you're subscribed to). But the service carries much more than CBS faves, including popular original series like "Dutton Ranch" and award-winning films such as "No Country for Old Men." The streamer also offers an ever-growing line-up of live sports, including UFC events and NFL on CBS games.

By upgrading to a Paramount Plus Premium plan, you gain access to a live stream of your local CBS station. This tier also unlocks Showtime titles, including popular ongoing series such as "Yellowjackets" and "Dexter: Resurrection," among others. For a deeper look into everything that Paramount Plus has to offer, you can check out our Paramount Plus guide and in-depth Paramount Plus review.

Even with the most recent price hike, Paramount Plus remains one of the most affordable streaming services available. The ad-supported plan is one of the most competitively priced apps, given the sheer volume of quality content for just $9 a month compared to competitors. That said, a promo code is a great way to help make a Paramount Plus subscription even cheaper at checkout. These codes are pretty rare, but we're always on the lookout for new ones. To help make saving easy, we've rounded up the best active discounts below.

Today's best Paramount Plus coupon codes

Previous Paramount Plus promo codes

Are there any other Paramount Plus sales running at the moment?

There are no active sales running at Paramount Plus right now. The most recent limited-time deal discounted the first two months of service on both Essential and Premium plans down to $2.99 a month. This deal concluded on March 31, 2026, and prices have since returned to their standard rates. We occasionally see other deals on monthly or annual plans throughout the year, especially around Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Opting for an annual plan remains a great, evergreen way to save on the streaming service. You can save money each year compared to what you'd pay after 12 months of a month-to-month subscription. An annual subscription is also a great way to temporarily avoid any upcoming price hikes. Check out the savings breakdown below:

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How to use Paramount Plus coupons and promo codes

Using a Paramount Plus coupon code is a simple process. Like other streaming services, Paramount Plus requires you to create an account to enroll in a plan. If you're on the sign-up page, choose a plan and create an account using your name, email, ZIP code, and a new password. From there, you'll be taken to a checkout page where you can apply a coupon code by clicking "Have a coupon code?" to paste in a promo code.

Can you stack Paramount Plus coupon codes?

Paramount Plus coupon codes cannot be stacked to work together. The system only allows for one promo to be applied at a time. However, we don't often see more than one active coupon code available at a time, so this shouldn't be a frequent problem

Paramount Plus coupons: frequently asked questions

Does Paramount Plus offer discounts for teachers, students, or the military?

Paramount Plus offers verified service members 50% off any plan for life. Students currently enrolled in an accredited institution can get 50% off any plan. Verified teachers, faculty, and staff members can get 50% off any plan.

If you fall into the education category, be sure to check our roundups for the best student discounts and the best teacher discounts you can score year-round.

Which Paramount Plus plans can I choose from?

Paramount Plus has two main tiers of service, which are available as either monthly or annual plans. The base tier, Paramount Plus Essential, costs $8.99 a month or $89.99 a year. Essential includes ad-supported access to most of the streamer's catalog (except for Showtime) and select live events.

Paramount Plus Premium, previously known as Paramount Plus with Showtime, offers a little extra. Premium costs $13.99 a month or $139.99 a year and includes ad-free access to the streamer's entire catalog (including Showtime programming). Users can also live stream their local CBS station, so you can watch CBS shows and sports live as they air.

Both plans are solid options, and deciding which one is right for you ultimately comes down to personal taste and budget. If you're only interested in UFC or catching a CBS show on demand with ads, Essential will do the trick. However, if you're tired of ads, want to watch CBS live, or are interested in a broader catalog of prestige programming, you'll probably want to upgrade to Premium.

Does Paramount Plus offer a free trial?

Paramount Plus doesn't have a free trial for new users. Previously, the streaming platform had a week-long trial period for first-time customers, but the offer was discontinued in early 2026.

Is Paramount Plus available outside the United States?

Yes, Paramount Plus is available in select countries outside the United States, including the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Austria, and more. You can explore a full list of countries with access to Paramount Plus on the streamer's global landing page. Libraries sometimes vary by location. For example, "Yellowstone" is available on several international versions of Paramount Plus, but it's not included in US subscriptions.

Where can I watch Paramount Plus?

The Paramount Plus app is available across a massive selection of devices, including iOS and Android mobile devices, Roku, Apple TV, Fire TVs and tablets, Samsung TV, Google TV, LG TV, and Chromecast, among others. Notably, it's also available on Apple Vision Pro, PlayStation 4 and 5, and Xbox. You can find a full list of supported devices (along with supported models and operating systems) on the Paramount Plus website.

What's coming soon to Paramount Plus?

Like most streaming services, Paramount Plus constantly updates its library to bring you more content. This month, Paramount Plus users will get access to hit originals and specials, shows, popular movies, new live sporting events, and more. See their website for a full list of what's coming to Paramount Plus this month.

New episodes of "Dutton Ranch," "Criminal Minds: Evolution," and "RuPaul's Drag Race: All Stars" are coming to Paramount Plus in June 2026. UFC Freedom 250 (UFC at the White House), "Tyler Perry's Ruthless," and "All The Queen's Men" are among other new programming that will appear on the platform this month.

Which live sports events are available on Paramount Plus?

While the best way to watch the most live sports on Paramount Plus is through a Premium subscription, the Essential tier also includes select sports live streaming. Essential plans come with NFL on CBS games and UEFA Champions League matches. Paramount Plus also acquired UFC broadcast rights beginning in 2026, and fans can watch all events with either tier of service.

If you opt for a Premium plan, you'll unlock CBS live streaming. This will allow you to catch major sporting events broadcast on the network, including the Masters Tournament and certain March Madness games. CBS also carries select NWSL, WNBA, and college football games, among other events.

Check out more great streaming sales in our guide to the best streaming deals and our roundup of the best Peacock promo codes.

• Kevin O'Leary agreed to scale back his proposed Utah data center project.
• The concession follows pressure from Utah Senate President J. Stuart Adams, who wanted a 75% cut.
• The project has drawn concerns over water, energy use, and its rural footprint.

Kevin O'Leary has agreed to scale back his proposed Utah data center project after pressure from a top state lawmaker.

On Thursday, O'Leary pledged to cut the proposed 40,000-acre Stratos development in Box Elder County nearly in half. Most of the remaining project area would be left as open space, O'Leary wrote in a letter to Utah Senate President J. Stuart Adams.

"We will agree to remove 19,430 acres in and around the Locomotive Springs area in recognition of the Locomotive Springs Waterfowl Management Area immediately to the south," the letter says.

It's a major concession in the fight over one of the country's most closely watched AI infrastructure projects. The proposed data center — dubbed the Stratos Project — has sparked a wave of backlash from community members who are concerned about rising energy prices, water use, and environmental damage.

The initial project was expected to require 7.5 to 9 gigawatts, making it one of the largest data center projects in the US.

Paul Palandjian, the CEO of O'Leary Digital, told Business Insider that the company had "effectively agreed to everything we were asked to do" on the project area and land use.

He also said the company's job estimates for the power-generation and data-center portion of the project remain unchanged despite the revised footprint.

He said the company is expecting an average of 4,500 construction jobs over the life of the project and 2,500 permanent operations jobs. It still needs to study additional jobs tied to advanced manufacturing and other uses.

In a press release responding to the project's reduced scale, Adams wrote that O'Leary had agreed to all of the conditions outlined in a demand letter he sent to the famed "Shark Tank" investor on Monday, including scaling back the project area and dedicating new water to the Great Salt Lake.

"O'Leary's concessions in response to the demand letter I sent are a positive step forward," Adams wrote.

The proposal still faces a lengthy review process. Adams said "no approvals or permits have been applied for, let alone issued," and that written commitments, permitting, and environmental review would be required before the project could move forward.

A representative for the Utah Senate didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi sees more trouble ahead for the US economy.
• He recently wrote that while GDP has increased, it's still below what it should be.
• In his view, the economy is growing below its full potential and the Fed isn't likely to help.

The US economy may be growing, but Moody's chief economist Mark Zandi says that doesn't mean it's in a healthy state.

The economist hasn't been shy lately about his bearishness on what's ahead of the US. In his most recent newsletter, Zandi noted that while GDP has risen this year and the economy appears resilient, he sees warning signals flashing.

"The economy is growing, but at a rate below its potential, so the situation is tenuous," he said. "Unless growth picks up, unemployment will rise and participation will fall, and at some point, undermine growth altogether."

Zandi has repeatedly warned of the negative impact on the US economy caused by Donald Trump's tariff and immigration policies. In 2025, he described it as being on the edge of recession, a forecast that grew increasingly more bearish in the months that followed.

He acknowledged in the newsletter that the economy held up despite the headwinds he's been seeing, but he sees more cause for concern as consumer prices, specifically fuel costs pushed higher by the Iran war, surge. He's among the forecasters who have said the impacts of the war will offset the benefits of the Trump administration's tax cuts.

But Zandi sees issues cropping up elsewhere, too.

"The soft job market is depressing wage growth, and with inflation accelerating, real wage growth has all but stalled," Zandi said. "Real disposable income has not grown over the past year."

Then there's monetary policy. Zandi highlighted potential problems he sees as a new era begins under Federal Reserve chair Kevin Warsh. Despite initially describing him as a "reasonable choice" to lead the central bank, Zandi said he has concerns.

Specifically, he's worried about the fact that the central bank isn't in a position to pursue policy that would boost the economy and prop up job growth, namely, cut interest rates.

"The below-potential growth and developing slack in the economy would argue for interest rate cuts, particularly since the federal funds rate target remains above estimates of the neutral rate," Zandi noted. "But the tariffs and the Iran war have pushed inflation to well over 3% and close to 4%, double the Fed's inflation target."

Inflation expectations have surged during the Iran war. Zandi said that if expectations continue rising, it will likely prompt the Fed to raise rates, even if it leads to a full on recession, as policymakers will see bringing inflation down as a top priority.

Zandi made it clear he doesn't see this as a good strategy, adding that economic pain in the short term should be preferable to worse economic conditions in the months ahead.

"For the economy to avoid being derailed, first and foremost, the Iran war must end soon, normalizing global oil production and prices," he said. "The buildout of artificial intelligence and its contribution to overall growth must also continue apace."

The best swim dresses solve the most annoying swimsuit dilemma: finding something that's cute, comfortable, and actually offers a little extra coverage. For as long as I can remember, I've been stuck in swimsuit limbo: The stylish swimsuits never have enough coverage, and the modest swimsuits tend to look like they were designed to make you disappear. But swim dresses have officially entered their comeback era — and the new versions are anything but frumpy.

In fact, I'd go so far as to call swim dresses one of the up-and-coming swim trends for summer 2026. Lately, we've spotted an influx of swim dresses and swim skirts on the NYC fashion crowd at media events and out in the Hamptons, and it makes sense: They're feminine, flattering, and secretly practical. They're also the ultimate boat day outfit, since they give you the ease of a swimsuit with the polish of something you'd actually want to be photographed in.

After researching dozens of options and testing several myself, I found a few swim dresses that strike the right balance between function and fashion. Whether you're looking for a fun patterned pick for a resort vacation, a supportive plus-size style, or a budget-friendly option, these are the best swim dresses for every need.

Also, check out our other extensively tested swim guides, including the best swimsuits for large busts, the best one-piece swimsuits, the best long-torso swimsuits, and more.

Best overall swim dress: Garnet Hill Shoreline Side-Slit Swim Dress

I've only owned a few items from Garnet Hill, but the quality has impressed me every time — these are pieces that hold up well in the wash, and tend to last me for years. The Shoreline Side-Split Swim Dress is no exception, but that's not all there is to love about it. With a surplice-style V neckline, wrap-like skirt, and side slit, it's the kind of silhouette that flatters every body type. Plus, it's designed with a smoothing power-mesh for extra shaping and support. As someone with a large bust (as in DD cup), I also felt super secure in the built-in shelf bra with sewn-in soft cups.

The fabric is soft, lightweight, and most importantly, offers UPF 50+ sun protection. As an added bonus, this swim dress is also machine washable.

Best patterned swim dress: Old Navy Matte Side-Tie Swim Dress

This swim dress is a perfect example of fashion-meets-function. It's machine washable and offers sun protection, but it also comes in a number of on-trend prints — like brown zebra and blue ditzy microfloral.

As far as swimwear goes, this Old Navy swim dress has quickly become one of my go-tos for casual pool days and beach outings. It may not provide as much support and compression as some of the other options, but it's lightweight, comfortable, and stylish enough for everyday use — and the square neck, wide shoulder straps, and wrap skirt give it timeless appeal.

Best swim dress that doubles as a real outfit: Lands' End

The Land's End Square Neck Smocked Mini Swim Dress is one of those rare swimsuits that genuinely looks like something you could wear beyond the pool. At first glance, it reads more like a cute summer mini dress — or even a romper — than traditional swimwear, thanks to the square neckline, smocked bodice, and flouncy skirt. It is definitely on the shorter side, so don't expect tons of leg coverage, but that also keeps it feeling playful, youthful, and not at all frumpy.

The smocked top is more than just a cute design detail, too: it has enough stretch and structure to comfortably support larger busts without feeling stiff or overly sporty. Overall, it's sweet, feminine, and super cute — the kind of swim dress you'll want to throw on for pool days, beach vacations, and any moment when you'd rather look like you're wearing an actual outfit than a swimsuit.

Best stylish swim dress: Venus St. Tropez Swim Dress

If you're on the hunt for a resort-ready swim dress that'll stand out, look no further than this style — which features a playful paisley pattern and sweetheart neckline.

Reviewers rave about the shaping support, which comes from a control lining. And if you're large-busted, you're bound to appreciate how the St. Tropez Swim Dress has molded cups and wide adjustable straps. Criss-cross gathering across the bust and ruching in the bodice add some nice texture, while the flared mini skirt offers movement and moderate coverage.

Best convertible swim dress: Land's End Sculpting Bandeau Lace Back Mini Swim Dress

I'm all about versatility when it comes to style, so it should come as no surprise that I live for anything convertible — because I get multiple looks in one garment. This Lands' End swim dress has removable straps, which is great when I'm in the mood for an off-the-shoulder moment. Bandeau-style tops are typically a disaster for my fuller bust, but that's not the case here. I found that the sewn-in soft cup bra provided pretty impressive lift and support.

I know I'll get a lot of use out of this swim dress, too, because it's made with a special type of spandex, which is resistant to damage from chlorine, sunscreen, and sweat. It's also UPF 50 fabric, which has the Skin Cancer Foundation's seal of approval for sun protection (only for areas covered by the material).

Above all, though, this swimsuit is exceptionally flattering. The adjustable lace-up back cinches my waist while also adding some visual corset-inspired intrigue, and the sculpting panels provide targeted areas of compression to enhance curves.

Best plus-size swim dress: Land's End Smoothing Square Neck Ruched Swim Dress Swimsuit

With regular, petite, plus-size, and long-torso options, this swim dress is definitely one of the most size-inclusive I've come across. Reviewers claim it's well-made with durable fabric that stands the test of time. The chlorine in swimming pools is notorious for breaking down elastic swimsuit fibers, making them more vulnerable to tearing, stretching out, and losing their shape. This swim dress was thoughtfully constructed with a specific type of spandex that's resistant to breaking down due to not only chlorine, but also sunscreen and sweat.

According to the dozens of happy customers who've bought the Smoothing Square Neck Ruched Swim Dress, it also highlights all their best assets — while camouflaging the areas they're less confident about. Cap sleeves offer subtle coverage, while the modest square neckline visually balances out wider hips, accentuates the bust, and elongates the neck.

Best supportive swim dress: Swimsuits For All High Neck Wrap Swim Dress

Finding a swimsuit with enough support for my DD-cup bust is no easy feat. This High Neck Wrap Swim Dress holds me up exceptionally well, thanks to the adjustable straps and the encircled shelf bra with wire-free, molded cups. And the criss-cross neckline doesn't just offer visual interest but also much-appreciated additional lift. Meanwhile, the power mesh lining provides ample compression, making this feel like swimwear and shapewear in one.

A fit-and-flare silhouette and ruched wrap-front detailing give this swimsuit the timeless, chic appeal of a little black dress. I felt like a million bucks wearing this for a family pool day, and even found myself wondering: Is there a world where this could pass for a regular dress?

Best budget swim dress: Blooming Jelly Women's One Piece Swimsuit

Thousands of customers have left five-star reviews for this swim dress, saying it makes them feel both comfortable and confident. That's no surprise, given the flattering ruching in the bodice, the cute side-tie detail, and the eye-catching gold metal accents. The slit lends a flirty twist, while the adjustable straps ensure you get adequate support in the bust.

This swim dress not only comes in a wide range of colors and patterns, but it's available up to size 4XL. And despite the affordable price tag, it's surprisingly well-made: Because laser technology was used to make the hem, you won't have to worry about any fraying.

Best shaping swim dress: Shapellx Smart Sculpt All-In-One Mesh Wrap Shaping Swimsuit

Shapellx is known for its size-inclusive, revolutionary shapewear — but don't sleep on their swimwear. The brand's corset swimsuit was a huge hit with Business Insider's Colleen Sullivan, who raved about the "made-for-you" fit and gentle compression that offers a "held-in feeling" without restricting breathing or movement.

But what sets the All-In-One Mesh Wrap Shaping Swimsuit apart is the attached mesh sarong — turning it into a travel-friendly two-in-one look. The skirt provides extra coverage when you want to grab some beachfront drinks at the resort bar, but you can also lift it to reveal a ruched panel and a more traditional one-piece.

This swim dress also doubles as shapewear, with inner mesh that smooths out your torso — but customers claim it's surprisingly comfortable thanks to the breathable fabric and four-way stretch. Removable padding and wide adjustable straps allow you to achieve customized support, while the keyhole bust cutout and hip side-ties add some feminine flair.

Best modest swim dress: Aleumdr One Piece Swimdress Swimsuit

If you find that the skirt is just a tad too short for your liking on most swim dresses, this one provides the perfect solution — plus, it features a higher neckline. Regardless of the simple and modest design, though, it’s super chic and flattering: The split hem adds a slightly playful touch while ensuring ease of movement. From classic neutrals to rich jewel tones and bright florals, this swim dress also comes in a wide range of shades and prints.

Another practical detail: This swim dress is made with quick-drying fabric. This is actually a noteworthy perk — after testing a number of swim dresses, I’d say my main pet peeve is that most of them take forever to dry.

Did I mention there are pockets? Those definitely come in handy for stashing sunscreen, chapstick, and other summer must-haves.

• Daniela Amodei waded into the discourse around companies overspending on AI.
• The Anthropic president is optimistic that much more capable AI models are on the way.
• Anthropic's AI use is tracked without a leaderboard, she said.

Daniela Amodei has entered the tokenmaxxing discourse in Silicon Valley — and no, Anthropic does not have an AI leaderboard.

At Thursday's Bloomberg Tech conference in San Francisco, the Anthropic president and co-founder took a question about tokenmaxxing, where developers use as much AI as possible and rack up huge bills with unclear business payoffs.

Amodei was diplomatic, but offered a bullish vision.

She said that though AI models have dramatically improved over the last two years, this isn't the end state of their progress.

"I actually think there's a lot more distance to go still for what the models will be able to do two to four, six to eight years in the future," Amodei said.

The executive also said businesses will find new ways to use the tools, and learn together as a larger community.

She acknowledged that workers are reckoning with a new paradigm, where they're directed to use AI and sometimes even tracked by their employers.

"Today there's this feeling that's like, 'Oh, like AI, you know, the leaderboards, and it's like I have to use it, and what am I going to use it for?'" Amodei said. "My hope is that over time it'll be more incorporated into the day-to-day of how humans do our work, how we communicate together, and that there will actually be a lot more value realized in a way that feels really good to people."

Anthropic does not have a token-usage leaderboard, she noted, though the company does track general use of the company's Claude products as teams work.

"But there's not like, 'You must use AI and you must use Claude'," she added.

Claude Code, Anthropic's juggernaut AI-coding product, is one of the main drivers of the tokenmaxxing discourse.

The tool uses significantly more tokens — the units of AI input and output — than a classic chatbot interface. That gap grew more substantial with the advent of agents, which a user can direct to autonomously churn through tasks. Anthropic and OpenAI partly charge on a per-token basis, so the boom in AI coding has fueled a surge in revenue.

Companies are navigating how to spend on AI, after some executives at top companies encouraged a freewheeling attitude. Amazon recently shut down an informal, employee-made leaderboard that tracked the use of AI tokens.

"Please don't use AI just for the sake of using AI," Dave Treadwell, an Amazon senior vice president, told staff.

A similar leaderboard at Meta was taken down by the employee who made it, The Information reported. It had been titled "Claudeonomics."

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at scouncil@insider.com, or over text, Signal, Telegram, or WhatsApp at 415-757-8198. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

Tickets for popular events and artists continue to see higher demand than supply, making resale platforms a must-shop for securing seats. That said, it pays to be selective about where you buy, especially when a big game or once-in-a-lifetime show is on the line. StubHub is one of the biggest names in the resale market, so I broke down why we trust it and what to know before you buy.

StubHub is a peer-to-peer ticket resale platform, meaning it connects buyers directly with individual sellers rather than setting prices itself. Sellers set their own prices, which can rise or fall depending on demand, seat location, and proximity to the event. That kind of dynamic pricing can help you find tickets for high-demand events, but it can also mean paying more than face value.

A major reason StubHub is widely trusted is its FanProtect Guarantee, which ensures buyers receive valid tickets in time for the event. If there's an issue, such as invalid tickets or delivery problems, StubHub will attempt to provide replacement tickets or issue a refund. When an event is canceled and not rescheduled, buyers may receive either a full refund or a 120% credit toward a future purchase.

That said, StubHub isn't without drawbacks. Service fees can be higher than those of some competing platforms, and because prices are set by sellers, availability and cost can vary significantly. It's also important to note that FanProtect does not guarantee refunds for postponed or rescheduled events unless the event is officially canceled.

Below, we break down how StubHub works in 2025, including its buyer protections, refund policies, fees, and tips for avoiding scams—so you can decide whether it's the right place to buy tickets for your next event.

Is StubHub legit?

In short, StubHub is a trustworthy platform for buying and selling tickets to major events. Although the company itself is not the seller, it still offers safeguards for both parties in a sale to prevent potential scams. It does, however, mean that StubHub does not control the pricing of event tickets — these are set by the users selling them. The site will instead recommend price points for sellers during the listing process.

StubHub offers a 100% guarantee on every order through its exclusive FanProtect Guarantee, which I've broken down below.

How StubHub protects ticket buyers

Buying tickets from a reseller is sometimes the only option for sold-out, high-demand shows. StubHub is a great place to find tickets, especially with its FanProtect Guarantee to cover orders. Here's what it promises for buyers:

• Tickets will be delivered in time for the event.
• The ticket will be valid for the event.
• Issues will be resolved with comparable or better tickets or a refund.
• Event cancellations that aren't rescheduled are eligible for a 120% StubHub credit or a full refund.

For even more information, you can check out StubHub's buyer terms and conditions.

How StubHub protects ticket sellers

Whether you've changed your mind or need to cancel a scheduled event, StubHub is a simple platform for ticket sellers. Listing is quick and easy, and pricing research isn't necessary with the site's recommendations. It also protects its sellers just as well as its buyers under the same FanProtect Guarantee.

StubHub's main promise is on-time payment for tickets sold. The full seller terms and conditions explain this more thoroughly.

What about StubHub fees?

Of course, such protections don't come without a price. StubHub, like every other third-party, charges fees for both fans and sellers. For the latter, you don't pay anything until your tickets sell. Percentages aren't set in stone; they can differ based on ticket prices, event dates, supply, and demand.

Only two costs are added to purchases: a service fee and a fulfillment fee. These can be viewed before, during, and after checkout — here's how:

• Before checkout: Click on the event page filters and change "Price Display Options" to "Include estimated fees."
• During checkout: The entire cost is broken down on the "Review and buy" page, underneath "Your order summary."
• After checkout: Check your order receipt to see the fee breakdown at the bottom.

Head on over to StubHub to browse the latest ticket prices for concerts, live sports, comedy shows, and more.

StubHub FAQs

Does StubHub have promo codes or coupons?

Because its platform is reseller-based, StubHub typically does not offer discount codes, coupons, or promotional price cuts. Since each listing is offered by a third party, typically another fan, it's difficult for StubHub to give shoppers promo codes for general use without taking money from the seller.

Are StubHub tickets guaranteed?

StubHub tickets are as guaranteed as your concert or sporting event is. Your reservation is locked in upon purchase, but if the ticketed event itself gets canceled or rescheduled, your tickets will change as well. It often varies, but rescheduled acts often result in the valid ticket's date changing, while cancellations get you a refund or 120% of its value in StubHub credit.

Does StubHub sell gift cards?

If you have a friend or family member who loves going to concerts and sporting events, StubHub offers gift cards in $25, $50, $100, and $200 increments. These can be redeemed anytime on the StubHub website to buy tickets for their next big show, complete with the StubHub FanProtect Guarantee.

How do I contact StubHub customer support?

StubHub's support page includes a library of resources, including frequently asked questions, seller information, and more. If you'd like to contact the company for customized assistance, check out their online chat.

Does StubHub give refunds?

If you change your mind or encounter a scheduling conflict, StubHub sales are final. That means no refunds in the traditional sense; however, you can become a ticket seller on the platform instead.

This doesn't work for last-minute cancellations, but with enough lead time, you can list your tickets on StubHub and hope for another attendee to purchase them. This can help make your money back, or even help you profit a little in the process.

Who is touring or performing on StubHub now?

Who you should see depends on your taste in music, sports, and entertainment — but there are some pretty big names hitting the stage in 2026. Here are some highlights:

• Linkin Park - ongoing through June
• BTS - April through September
• Yungblud - May through June
• Alan Jackson - final performance on June 27
• Ariana Grande - June through August
• Ed Sheeran - June through November
• AC/DC - July through September
• Bon Jovi - July residency
• Zac Brown Band - July through November
• Harry Styles - August through December

Browse more live music, sporting, and comedy events near you on StubHub.

Browse all of our ticket coverage here. Follow our Instagram and WhatsApp channels for more deals and buying guides.

• Challenger said AI was the cited reason for 40% of job cuts in May.
• In 2026, AI is the leading reason companies cite for layoffs.
• The outplacement firm also said this isn't "yet the jobpocalypse some predicted."

AI may not be a complete disaster for jobs yet, but companies are citing it more than any other reason when announcing layoffs, according to a new report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

The global outplacement firm's latest report said AI accounted for 40% of 97,006 job cuts by US-based employers in May, the highest monthly total since Challenger began tracking AI as a reason for layoffs in 2023. So far in 2026, Challenger says 87,714 cuts have been attributed to AI, far surpassing the total of 54,836 in 2025.

"AI isn't yet the jobpocalypse some predicted," Andy Challenger, labor and workplace expert and chief revenue officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said in a statement accompanying the report. "Like spreadsheets and email before it, the technology will ultimately make workers more productive, but our data shows companies are already acting on it, citing AI for more cuts than any other reason."

Overall, Challenger found that May 2026 saw the highest number of layoffs since 2020, when 397,016 job cuts were announced during the height of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Technology remains the leading sector for layoffs by "a wide margin," the report said.

The extent to which AI is to blame for layoffs is highly contested, including, not surprisingly, by those whose companies are directly involved in the AI boom. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently said companies were "AI washing" their layoffs, blaming the nascent technology for their decisions when other business factors were at play.

Elsewhere, Apollo Global Management's chief economist Torsten Sløk wrote last week that he sees "zero evidence of job losses because of AI," citing the ADP National Employment Report.

Outside of AI, Challenger's report found that so far this year, the next biggest reasons attributed to layoffs are "market and economic conditions," which have been cited for 69,645 cuts; "closings," which have been cited for 66,733 cuts; and "restructuring," which has been attributed to 52,249.

• The US Army's new command and control system is more mobile and spread out across posts.
• Soldiers said it doesn't take long to break down the post and they're still connected while moving.
• The mobile, dispersed posts also help troops blend in on the electromagnetic spectrum.

Future warfare will be fast-paced and chaotic. That's forcing the US Army to rethink the field posts that are increasingly in their enemy's crosshairs.

The problem for the US is straightforward: Command posts send and receive a high volume of transmissions on battlefield information that an advanced adversary, like Russia or China, could detect and target.

Ukraine has shown this vulnerability by strikes on Russian command posts and killing more than a dozen generals.

These threats have shifted the US Army's thinking on its new warfighting system, Next Generation Command and Control. The technology, also called NGC2, is a total revamp of how the Army communicates and fights. Most of the capabilities have only been built over the last few months.

Last month at Fort Carson, Colorado, the Army ran a division-level drill with NGC2. The scenario involved a blue and red team fighting alongside many of the capabilities, like electronic warfare, cyber systems, and space-based effects, that the Army anticipates it could face in a potential conflict. It was the most complex testing of NGC2 thus far, with troops wargaming the system in a realistic combat scenario.

"We learned a lot about how to employ that technology and what it feels like when that technology is employed against you," Maj. Gen. Patrick Ellis, commander of the Army's 4th Infantry Division, told reporters.

On the ground at Fort Carson, various camouflage tents were spread far out across miles, each concealing vehicles with computers running NGC2. These vehicles make up the command posts for NGC2, designed to be further away from one another and, most importantly, mobile and potentially more survivable.

Anduril Industries was the prime contractor that built the 4th ID's command system under a $100 million contract awarded in 2025.

With the computers in the vehicles themselves, the post can rapidly move to another location. All that needs to be done is breaking down the tent and some other logistics equipment.

"I'd say at the most, like about 30 minutes for us to set up, tear down," Maj. Dan Hickox told Business Insider outside the command post where soldiers identified enemy targets. The netting that covers the post takes the most time. At other posts, the timeframe was similar. Soldiers could pack up, load the vehicle, and get on the move in half an hour or less.

The posts themselves being dispersed across areas, sometimes miles, and not within visual contact, was initially jarring. "If you were to tell me about eight months ago that I would be by myself" not near complimentary teams, Hickox said, "I probably would have a heart attack. I need to get in there in person, sit down next to people, be able to talk. But now there is chat architecture and everything else, it doesn't make any difference."

Command posts are relay points for information and communication regarding every aspect of warfighting, from targeting to medical support, tracking enemy movements, and monitoring how the fight is going. Inside these posts, Army leaders and specialists act as the hubs of intelligence and situational awareness that inform battlefield decisions.

Since these posts are vital to a force's ability to fight, they are prime targets. The war in Ukraine has demonstrated that command posts with large and static footprints can be found, targeted, and destroyed quickly. Ukraine's success in attacking Russian commanders has shown the US that its command posts are too big and noticeable, and the Army has been rethinking how to shrink and disperse posts to become smaller nodes that are more survivable.

While the vehicle is on the move to another location, soldiers can still communicate, run through data, and keep connected to other posts. There may be a drop in loading or sending time, but it's not too much to notice. And each command post has built-in redundancy, meaning its functions — like finding targets — can be done by another post if the post is offline or is damaged.

"The fact that we have the ability to maintain communications with folks and it's not just exclusive to chat" but also voice call, Hickox said, "is really impressive." It reduces the downtime between an order and reports as it's executed, small delays that can add up.

Having the posts be mobile and easy to set up gives soldiers more options for keeping their signatures obscured on the electromagnetic spectrum. Soldiers said the vehicle could be driven to a number of locations that would help it hide or reduce its chances of being electronically detected, such as a ditch or within trees. In an urban environment, the post could be moved to a built-up area.

And while on the move, the vehicle can more blend into the noise, whether by operating on the same frequencies or connections as other systems or vehicles, or by looking similar on the spectrum to other Army assets so it's difficult for the enemy to tell who's who.

Soldiers follow guidelines from command on how to hide in the spectrum, crank up the noise to overwhelm frequencies, or which networks to use. If they lose connection or get jammed, there are backup ways to send data on NGC2.

"I think a lot of it comes down to what we think the enemy is going to be able to monitor and then adjusting from there," Lt. Col. Tim Chess told Business Insider.

The exercise more broadly ramped up the use of electronic warfare effects on soldiers, including interference and jamming. Some electronic warfare objectives were what Ellis described as learning opportunities, like soldiers identifying the source of jamming and then destroying it in order to resume connection.

"So they also feel the effects of what happens when you destroy it or why you should focus on it because then your radio communications and your digital communications all get better," he said. "We're balancing some learning objectives with also reinforcing some good behaviors."

• Retail participation in the SpaceX IPO is expected to be high, which could fuel outsize volatility.
• The company and Wall Street pros warn retail participation and hype could fuel volatility.
• The historic IPO's scale and index opportunities could amplify retail investor SPCX exposure.

SpaceX's highly anticipated IPO is likely to be a huge event for retail traders, but that means investors should expect more volatility than usual for a trading debut.

The company is expected to allocate an atypically large amount of stock for retail investors at the IPO price, up to 30% of the shares sold, compared to 5% to 10% for other offerings. Truist, JPMorgan, and SpaceX itself have signaled the stock's retail exposure is a reason to expect heightened volatility when trading begins.

"Retail involvement and index inclusion: these will be key factors in the stock's early trading," Truist analysts said.

It comes as no surprise retail investor enthusiasm around Elon Musk's space company going public is high.

The company is leaning into it, saying retail traders will be able to buy into the public offering at the same IPO prices as institutional investors. The company is targeting an initial offering price of $135 a share.

SpaceX has flagged retail allocation and high retail interest as reasons why the stock "may be volatile and subject to wide fluctuations" in its IPO filing.

IPOs are generally met with volatility in the early days of trading, but SpaceX's scale and heightened retail participation create the potential for "significant" volatility, Truist said.

Retail investors tend to trade on IPOs for the short term, which furthers stock volatility. JPMorgan analysis found that around 86% of retail investors chase intraday momentum and sell intraday dips in newly public stocks.

The IPO reflects a potential valuation of $1.75 trillion, which would make the company one of the largest in the world right off the bat. The price tag has drawn scrutiny and skepticism from some on Wall Street. Morningstar said this week that the valuation should be about half of what markets are estimating.

The valuation has also sparked concentration concerns, particularly with regard to SpaceX index inclusion. Critics have raised concerns about expedited index inclusion leaving retail investors over-exposed to the stock.

The Nasdaq 100 recently enacted a fast entry rule for IPOs ranking among the top 40 companies by market cap already in the index. This makes SpaceX, and likely Anthropic and OpenAI, eligible much sooner after going public than usual.

The S&P 500 index is considering similar rule changes that would cut the required trading time, waive the minimum float requirement, and eliminate the profitability requirement for large enough companies. These changes would make SpaceX eligible for index inclusion in as little as six months.

Freedom Capital Markets' chief strategist Jay Woods is among the critics of SpaceX's index inclusion.

"Every retail investor holding an S&P 500 ETF in their 401(k) would become an involuntary SpaceX shareholder, regardless of whether they believe in the story, understand the business, or are comfortable with the risk of a $1.75 trillion unprofitable company with a 5% float and one man controlling 79% of the votes," he said ahead of the IPO.

Wall Street veteran and longtime Fidelity fund manager George Noble also raised concerns.

"The rules are being rewritten to benefit IPO issuers and early-stage insiders, and your capital is the tool being USED to enrich them."

"45 years in this business and I've watched Wall Street find creative new ways to separate retail investors from their money in every cycle. But usually they at least try to be subtle about it," he said.

The surge in interest for retro tech is about more than nostalgia.

VHS tapes, CD players, and Game Boys are making a comeback as younger consumers seek technology that feels simpler and more intentional.

• OpenAI's "Time to Fly" advertisement for its AI coding tool included an Easter egg for an online minigame.
• Players posted on X that they won free tokens from the game. "Thank you for the credits!" one wrote.
• The free token awards appear to have run out, but the game t is still playable online.

OpenAI's new ad that ran during Game 1 of the Knicks vs Spurs NBA Finals included a hidden game of its own.

The company debuted an advertisement for Codex, its AI coding tool, titled "Time to Fly." The ad shows a variety of users vibe coding a product idea. One asks for a companion app; another puts their request on "Extra High" mode. A third seems to be developing a video game.

The name of that game echoes the title of the ad: "Time to Fly." Eagle-eyed viewers found and played the game online — and won some free AI tokens.

The "Time to Fly" game is a "cosmic logic puzzle game about orbital rotation," per OpenAI's website. One employee wrote on X that the team built a "mini game that's waiting for anyone curious enough to follow the clues."

One user posted their "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" screen on X. The screenshot showed that they won $1,000 in tokens. "Thank you for the credits!" another user wrote.

For those mining for some free AI money: apologies, it seems like you missed your shot.

One user posted that they were proud to have placed third, even though OpenAI had run out of tokens. Another posted a screenshot showing the game screen saying, "We're all out of promo codes, but you can still compete on the leaderboard!"

AI tokens, often referred to as credits, are a unit of measurement used to help determine the computing costs associated with using AI products. The rise in popularity of Anthropic's Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex in the last year have given rise to trends like tokenmaxxing — as well as concerns over AI costs and budgeting.

• I traveled from Denver to Salt Lake City on an overnight Amtrak train in January 2025.
• I booked a $400 roomette accommodation for the 15-hour train journey.
• I made a few mistakes along the way, such as not knowing dining etiquette and skipping a rest stop.

Instead of flying from Denver to Salt Lake City in January 2025, I took an overnight Amtrak train. I spent the 15-hour journey in a private 23-square-foot space with two seats and two beds — otherwise known as a roomette accommodation.

I was no stranger to the sleeper car environment. I had previously taken two other overnight Amtrak rides as well as a handful in Europe. And some of those journeys were twice as long as this one. So I thought I'd get through the experience well prepared and with no regrets.

However, I'm still learning from my travel mistakes. Here are four slipups from this long-haul train trip that I won't forget on future rides.

I should have called to request a room on the top floor of the train.

I traveled from Denver to Salt Lake City on Amtrak's California Zephyr — a double-decker train known as a Superliner. My previous Amtrak rides were on single-story train fleets, so I hoped my room would be on the top floor for a new experience.

It wasn't.

Although the views of Rocky Mountain National Park from my room were spectacular, I could see farther from the dining car's second-story windows, and I longed for a room with a higher vantage point.

Though Amtrak's booking platform didn't have an option to select a specific room, Amtrak spokesperson Marc Magliari told Business Insider that you can call the contact center, speak to a live agent, and request a particular room if it's still available.

He added that family and accessible bedrooms are on the lower level, regular bedrooms are on the top level, and roomettes are on both levels.

I should have brought snacks for in-between meals.

My Amtrak ticket included three meals. An attendant came by my room to reserve a seat in the dining car for each one. I had breakfast after we departed at about 9 a.m. I chose the noon lunch slot and the 5 p.m. dinner slot.

While I didn't get hungry between breakfast and lunch, my stomach started growling at about 3 p.m. In hindsight, I should have packed snacks for the ride.

The train had a café car selling sweet and savory snacks, candy, beverages, and microwavable meals, but I decided to save my money and fuel up at dinner.

I didn't realize I was supposed to wait for meal call before entering the dining car.

I entered the dining car hungry and eager a minute before 5 p.m. The empty tables were set with mini flower arrangements that looked charming against the rolling canyon backdrop out the windows.

At the other end of the car, I spotted a handful of employees looking at me and talking among themselves.

"I'm here for my dinner reservation," I said.

One replied that I was supposed to wait for an attendant to announce dinner over the intercom. Embarrassed, I apologized and started to turn back. They told me to stay and sit at the first table while another employee went to the intercom.

I'd had nearly a dozen meals in Amtrak dining cars before, but this was the first time I'd made this mistake.

I should have taken advantage of every rest stop.

Some stops on overnight Amtrak trains are long enough for passengers to get out and walk around the platform for a few minutes.

I typically take this opportunity to get fresh air and stretch my legs, whether it's sunny or snowing outside. But when this train made its final long stop roughly 15 minutes before dinner, I was engrossed in a book and decided to stay in.

After dinner, I regretted not getting off at that final extended stop when I craved space to stretch out and move my body.

When I arrived in Salt Lake City at about midnight, I was grateful for fresh air and open space.

• Jill Biden published a new White House memoir, "View from the East Wing," this week.
• In the book, Biden recalled an awkward car ride with Melania Trump on Inauguration Day.
• She wrote that she's had "few interactions" with Melania Trump through the years.

The peaceful transfer of power on Inauguration Day is not without the occasional awkwardness.

In her new memoir, "View from the East Wing," Jill Biden recalled a car ride with Melania Trump from the White House to the Capitol for Donald Trump's 2025 inauguration.

It's customary for the outgoing and incoming presidents to travel together in one car while their spouses ride in a separate vehicle. Jill Biden wrote that inauguration committee member John Bessler, who is married to Sen. Amy Klobuchar, "must have drawn the shortest of all possible straws" to be assigned to accompany the car carrying her and Melania Trump.

"The presidents' car was likely frosty too, but at least they'd spent considerable time in each other's company," Jill Biden wrote in the memoir, released on June 2. "This would be one of few interactions Melania and I had ever had."

'Polite and controlled'

The two first ladies have met only a handful of times over the years.

When Joe Biden won the 2020 election, Donald Trump refused to concede and did not invite his successor for the traditional postelection meeting at the White House. Melania Trump followed suit and did not invite Jill Biden for the customary tea.

When Donald Trump won a second, non-consecutive term in 2024, the Bidens revived the White House tradition of extending an invitation to the incoming president and first lady. Donald Trump accepted, but Melania Trump declined, citing a prior commitment.

Jill Biden wrote that they had "met briefly" at the funerals of Rosalynn Carter in 2023 and Jimmy Carter in 2024, and that she'd called Melania Trump after Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

"She was polite and controlled as ever," Jill Biden wrote of her call with Melania Trump. "She said they were 'good,' and thanked me for calling."

So when it came time to share a car on Inauguration Day, Jill Biden said she anticipated an awkward ride.

A tense trip to the Capitol

"Poor John had to figure out how to break the tension and find some path to relative peace in the course of that drive," Jill Biden wrote of Bessler serving as their escort. "He'd always struck me as a quiet, reserved Midwestern guy, but as soon as we got in, he began chatting away, pelting us both with questions."

Bessler asked about Barron Trump's experience at New York University, where he's matriculating. Jill Biden asked how Melania Trump's father was doing since her mother's passing.

Melania Trump, she wrote, "kept trying to switch the topic to the weather."

"I tried to get with Melania's weather-only program," Jill Biden wrote. "I said I felt bad for the military dogs we passed along the route because of the cold."

Shortly after Melania Trump answered that no, Barron Trump had never wanted a dog, the car finally arrived at the Capitol.

When reached by Business Insider, the Office of First Lady Melania Trump declined to comment.

• The Jane Goodall Institute has more than 500,000 pages of handwritten chimpanzee research.
• To digitize the data, the institute worked with AWS to create the Gombe AI Research Platform.
• The tool increases data access and provides multimedia analysis to support global research efforts.

Primatologist Jane Goodall and a team of researchers have spent more than six decades quietly observing chimpanzees in East Africa with binoculars.

The field researchers take handwritten notes every 15 minutes when observing a single chimpanzee, and every minute when observing mothers and infants. Then, they must digitize their notes, which come in multiple languages, including English and Swahili. It typically takes up to two days to manually enter all field data into web-based systems, said Lilian Pintea, the vice president of conservation science at the Jane Goodall Institute. He added that the organization has operated with a multi-year backlog of data awaiting upload since it created its first digital database in 1997.

In 2025, Pintea said he began using large language models to accelerate the digitization of more than 500,000 pages of handwritten notes, which makes scientific data more searchable for researchers at the nonprofit Goodall founded in 1977. Following the famed conservationist's passing in October 2025, preserving her legacy by digitizing her handwritten notes has also become a priority, Pintea told Business Insider.

"AI is just a continuation of our long history of different technology cycles," Pintea told Business Insider.

The tech

One of the biggest challenges the Jane Goodall Institute faces is storing an abundance of disparate data spanning five generations of chimpanzees, said Pintea. University researchers who visit Gombe store their findings — in the form of physical notes, photographs, and audio and visual files — in their own institutions' databases.

A new data tool that the Jane Goodall Institute continues to build with Amazon Web Services — called the Gombe AI Research Platform — aims to store this data in a single, more accessible place, which Pintea said will make it easier for researchers to collaborate. A team of nine principal investigators, each supported by two to three Ph.D students, and roughly half a dozen undergraduate students, has helped the Jane Goodall Institute digitize these assets.

It all began in March 2025, when Goodall delivered a keynote at the AWS Imagine Conference in Washington. It was there that Pintea was first asked to explore a potential collaboration between the nonprofit and AWS's cloud computing platform, he said. During a kickoff meeting for the collaboration in April 2025, Pintea said the Jane Goodall Institute wanted to use AI to identify medicinal plant use in video footage and classify which plants the apes were eating. The use case was deemed too rare to pursue further.

By June 2025, AWS and the Jane Goodall Institute had pivoted to a different, more widely helpful idea for AWS's AI: photo and video record analysis. Taimur Rashid, the managing director of the Generative AI Innovation Center at AWS, said the two organizations opted to build on an existing video search tool called WISE, developed by the University of Oxford in January 2023. He said that AWS used WISE's conceptual framework to develop a cloud-based tool for visual search and computer vision models to analyze chimpanzee footage, so researchers wouldn't have to spend hours manually screening the videos.

"We can take all of these years of analog data, digitize it, make it searchable, and add elements of gen AI to look at these data points and really comprehend all these years of data," Rashid told Business Insider.

In August 2025, a team from AWS followed Pintea and field researchers in Gombe National Park to better understand how they work in the field. It was at this moment that the team said it had a breakthrough: the tool could also be used for the digitization of handwritten records. The Jane Goodall Institute and AWS said the AI platform could be used for five tasks: multimedia search, video scene detection, chimpanzee facial recognition, AI-powered behavioral analysis, and automated data processing and translation.

By December 2025, AWS, the Jane Goodall Institute, and AI tool and data platform builder Ode PB held a kickoff meeting to transition the new system, called the Gombe AI Research Platform. Throughout early 2026, the teams worked to map out platform requirements and researcher workflows where AI could be helpful.

Some of the institute's researchers are already experimenting with the Gombe AI Research Platform, and the tool is expected to be fully live by the fourth quarter of 2026, said Rashid. The teams are still developing a few elements, like a specialized dictionary derived from 65 years of field notes and the ability to understand a Gombe-specific dialect of Swahili.

The outcome

Pintea said that he expects the AI to help the organization finally catch up with its six-year backlog of data that has yet to be digitized. He added that he hopes the Gombe AI Research Platform will be used by field researchers, principal investigators, Ph.D. students, and undergraduates beyond the Jane Goodall Institute.

In Uganda's Kibale National Park, two groups of chimpanzees have been fighting in the second-ever recorded civil war among the species. Pintea said the institute's AI efforts are making real-time field data more readily accessible to researchers studying the phenomenon, which was first recorded in Gombe.

"It's about understanding our closest living relative, as a way to understand human evolution and define ourselves," said Pintea.

The second Grand Slam of the year is underway, and it's been a shocking, upset-filled tournament on the clay courts of Roland-Garros. We've gathered everything you need to know about the final matches, including where to watch the French Open, free options, and other details.

Yes, the 2026 French Open has been one for the books. With all of the favorites and most top-ranked players out early, it's an open field. Reigning men's champion Carlos Alcaraz sat out the tournament with a wrist injury, and world No. 1 (and heavy favorite) Jannik Sinner was eliminated in a shocking second-round match. Novak Djokovic and other top prospects also saw early exits, and the highest-ranked ATP player left in the tournament is world No. 3 Alexander Zverev. He'll face Jakub Menšík in the semifinals, followed by an all-Italian semi between Matteo Arnaldi and Flavio Cobolli.

The women's side has been just as shocking, with defending champion Coco Gauff eliminated in the third round. World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka, a four-time Grand Slam champion seeking her first French Open title, was bounced by Diana Shnaider in the quarterfinals. Shnaider faces Maja Chwalińska in the semifinals, and the winner of that match will square off with Mirra Andreeva in the final.

Coverage is available across TNT and truTV and live streamable in full via HBO Max in the US. TNT Sports coverage via HBO Max is also the go-to option in the UK, although most other European nations will need Eurosport to access live streams. One exception is the host nation, France, which will offer select content for free via France.TV (with some matches on Prime Video). Australia will carry the full tournament on Stan Sport, with select free coverage on 9Now. You can access streaming options from anywhere by using a VPN. Keep reading to learn additional info about global viewing options and remaining matches.

Where to watch the French Open for free

Certain countries will offer select free coverage of the French Open. In France, free streaming is available through France.TV. In Australia, free streaming options can be found on 9Now. Both services just require account creation if you don't already have one.

How to watch the French Open from anywhere

If you're away from the location where your streaming service works and still want to access your free streaming options, you can do so with a VPN. VPNs, or virtual private networks, are handy tools that let people temporarily change the digital location of their devices. They're especially popular among those looking to upgrade their cybersecurity or access their usual websites and apps while traveling abroad.

NordVPN is one of the best VPNs on the market. It's fast, easy to use, and offers an impressive selection of global servers. Plus, it comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee, so it's no sweat if you find that it's not helping you.

Where to watch the French Open in the US

The French Open is available across TNT and truTV in the US. The best way to live stream every moment of the Roland Garros action is through HBO Max. You'll need one of the ad-free tiers of service to access sports streaming. These plans start at $18.49 a month. You can also get HBO Max in some of the Disney Plus bundles.

If you'd prefer to watch on a service that carries other channels (in addition to TNT and truTV), then one of the best live TV streaming services will be able to help you out. After testing, DirecTV is our best overall pick right now, and you can catch TNT and truTV through one of the budget-friendly genre packs (in addition to all of the signature plans). DirecTV's MySports plan carries around 20 popular sports channels and unlocks access to ESPN Unlimited. MySports costs $65 a month, but new users can get $15 a month off their first two months after a five-day free trial.

Where to watch the French Open in the UK

TNT Sports will carry French Open coverage in the UK. Fans can live stream all coverage on HBO Max, the new home of TNT Sports. Subscriptions for TNT Sports access cost £31 a month, but you can usually find some monthly savings if you commit to a longer contract. If you were previously using Discovery Plus to live stream TNT Sports and haven't yet made the switch, you can log into HBO Max by using your Discovery credentials, and you should be all set to start watching.

Where to watch the French Open in France

France will offer extensive free French Open coverage for the host nation. Live streams will be available on France.TV, a free streaming option that just requires account creation to use. Select French Open coverage will be shown on Prime Video in France. While Prime Video is a paid option, the service usually offers a generous free trial for those who haven't had an account in quite some time or haven't had one at all.

Where to watch the French Open in Australia

Australians will be able to catch French Open action on 9Now and Stan Sport. 9Now is a free streaming option (you'll just need to create a login if you haven't already) with select coverage. If you want to watch every single match, you'll need a paid Stan Sport subscription. Stan costs $12 a month for the base plan, and then an extra $20 a month for the sports add-on. In total, this will run you $32 a month.

Where does the French Open take place?

The second Grand Slam of the year, the French Open, takes place at Stade Roland Garros in Paris. The bulk of the major matches are held on the Court Philippe-Chatrier.

When is the next Grand Slam?

The third Grand Slam of the year, Wimbledon, kicks off not long after the French Open concludes. Wimbledon, held in London, begins at the end of this month and runs through the first half of July. The US Open, the fourth and final Grand Slam of the year, begins in late August and lasts until mid-September. The Australian Open, the first Grand Slam of each year, took place in January (until February 1).

Note: VPN use is illegal in certain countries, and using VPNs to access region-locked streaming content may constitute a breach of the terms of use for some services. Business Insider does not endorse or condone the illegal use of VPNs.

• Red Lobster's Times Square flagship is closing this month after 23 years.
• When I visited recently, the food was better than I remembered from the chain's bankruptcy era.
• The chain is improving, but its turnaround is far from complete.

When I visited Red Lobster's Times Square location in March for the first time since the chain's bankruptcy filing, I came away with an unexpected conclusion: Red Lobster is getting better.

Inside, servers bustled between a few packed tables carrying steaming Cheddar Bay biscuits, shrimp platters, and seafood pasta dishes. The food was tastier, the portions were big, and the chain finally seemed to understand what customers wanted: quality food and exciting new menu offerings that felt worth coming back for.

Still, despite these promising updates under new CEO Damola Adamolekun, the sprawling restaurant felt noticeably quiet for Times Square during the lunch rush. As I stood inside the multi-level dining room, I was struck by the challenge restaurants this large must face.

This week, Red Lobster announced the Times Square flagship, which has occupied one of Manhattan's most famous corners for 23 years since its opening in 2003, will permanently close on June 14.

In some ways, the closure highlights a strange reality: Red Lobster itself appears to be in better shape than the Times Square restaurant that once symbolized the brand's success.

Since filing for bankruptcy in 2024, Red Lobster has appointed Adamolekun, revamped its menu, exited Chapter 11 protection, and has begun seeing encouraging sales gains. Adamolekun told The Wall Street Journal in February that sales were up 10% year over year.

Yet, even as the chain gains momentum in a challenging casual-dining market, one of its most iconic locations has become harder to justify.

After visiting, I understand why Red Lobster decided to close its Times Square location

During multiple visits to Red Lobster's Times Square location over the past year, I found the restaurant surprisingly easy to miss, even though I knew exactly where I was headed. Construction scaffolding obscured much of the exterior, including its illuminated sign, making it difficult to spot in one of the world's busiest tourist areas.

According to Red Lobster, those visibility issues ultimately contributed to the restaurant's closure.

"Extensive and prolonged construction at 5 Times Square has significantly impacted access, visibility, and foot traffic, making continued operations at this location economically unsustainable," a spokesperson told Business Insider.

"The building's publicly reported transition into a residential tower also means the location does not have a viable long-term runway for a high-volume restaurant," the statement continued.

The size of the flagship, which spans multiple floors and can accommodate up to 400 diners, also feels increasingly challenging in an era when many restaurant chains are focusing on efficiency, smaller restaurants, and expanding into takeout and delivery.

A Times Square flagship location can serve as a billboard for a brand, but when many seats sit empty, the scale can work against the brand's reputation, making it look unpopular. Hospitality experts also note that oversize dining rooms can create a less intimate, buzzy atmosphere.

For a company clawing its way back from bankruptcy, maintaining such a massive location likely became harder to rationalize, no matter how iconic the address.

Despite indications of a comeback, Red Lobster faces rough seas

Americans are dining out less frequently as inflation continues to strain household budgets, while food and labor costs remain elevated across the restaurant industry. For Red Lobster, that means its comeback is unfolding amid a challenging market.

The chain is also still shrinking its restaurant footprint.

Fortune reported that Red Lobster operates roughly 550 restaurants, down from roughly 700 locations a few years ago. It likely won't stop there: Adamolekun told The Wall Street Journal in February that Red Lobster is continuing to examine leases, close underperforming locations, and update the chain's remaining ones to represent a more modern brand identity.

The Times Square closure doesn't necessarily signal that Red Lobster's turnaround is failing. Instead, it may reflect a company making tough decisions about which parts of its business still make sense in 2026, and not being afraid to trim the fat.

In fact, Adamolekun told WSJ that the chain is still open to expanding in underrepresented regions of the country, including upstate New York and New England.

Still, the chain's turnaround is far from complete. Bloomberg reported in March that Red Lobster posted a net loss in 2025, with sales falling at least 20% below pre-bankruptcy levels.

"Unless the chain can reduce its rent or exit those unprofitable restaurants, many of the people say, the turnaround seems doomed to fail," Bloomberg's Eliza Ronalds-Hannon and Anders Melin wrote.

"Even in the best of times, turning around a chain like Red Lobster isn't easy," David Henkes, a senior principal at restaurant industry researcher Technomic, told Bloomberg. "They could be doing everything right, but it's still a tough time for casual dining."

A spokesperson for Red Lobster told Business Insider that the chain "remains focused on strengthening the business, investing in the guest experience, and building momentum across the system."

Red Lobster said it will continue operating restaurants throughout the New York metro area and plans to maintain its marketing investments in the region through the end of the year.

"Times Square has been an important chapter in Red Lobster's history, and we are grateful to the team members and guests who have made this restaurant special over the years," the chain said.

The lights may be going out on Red Lobster's most famous location, but whether that signals the start of a new chapter or another setback remains to be seen.

• Google cofounder Larry Page has been battling over two Caribbean islands for almost 12 years.
• Another party laying claim to the islands may now drag Page's camp back into court.
• The case has offered a rare glimpse into Page's highly secretive family office.

After nearly 12 years of courtroom warfare, mounting legal bills, and family office intrigue, the world's second-richest person has hit another snag in his quest to own paradise.

Google cofounder Larry Page and his wife, Lucinda Southworth, purchased two islands in the US Virgin Islands — Hans Lollik and the smaller neighboring Little Hans Lollik — for $23 million in 2014, Business Insider previously reported. A developer named James Eckel claimed he already had a contract to purchase the Caribbean islands, kicking off a fierce legal battle between Eckel, the seller, and Page's holding company.

The case was dragged through the Texas courts, which ultimately ruled on appeal in 2019 that Eckel was only entitled to financial damages, not the islands. However, the battle has also raged on in the US Virgin Island courts, where Page has sued for Great Hans, the entity owned by Eckel, to remove a document asserting a legal claim to the islands — and to rule that Page's entity, USVI Properties, owns the islands "free and clear of any claim by Great Hans."

Last week, attempts to resolve that case via mediation resulted in an impasse, according to a filing with the US Virgin Islands Superior Court. The issue will require court action, the filing said.

Representatives for Eckel and Page did not respond to a request for comment.

Shooting goats

The long-running legal battle has given a rare glimpse into the inner workings of Page's family office, which is notoriously secretive even within an industry that prides itself on discretion.

Representatives for Page's family office, named Koop, tried to keep Page's involvement hidden from the other parties in the transaction, according to case transcripts previously reviewed by Business Insider. Page's lawyers also fought to prevent the Google cofounder from being deposed, arguing he held no "unique or superior" knowledge of the transaction.

Great Hans has claimed that Page's agents had awareness of the prior negotiations. It has argued that a legal ruling should not be made before Page provides a recorded, sworn testimony.

Page's connection to the transaction was previously confirmed by Business Insider after reviewing legal filings, including a 2016 deposition from the CEO of Page's family office, Wayne Osborne. Gil Simon, a consultant hired to negotiate the transaction on behalf of Page, testified that he did not reveal the Google cofounder's involvement to the sellers to keep his identity concealed.

Page's specific intentions for the islands, located off St. Thomas, could not be learned. His lawyers said in a 2018 filing that he "plans to maintain the Islands in their undeveloped green and natural state."

Osborne said in his 2016 testimony that the plan was to purchase the islands but not develop on them. In 2020, several people were seen dressed in camouflage and shooting "invasive" goats on Hans Lollik, Business Insider previously reported.

Page's island collection

Page, who recently moved from California to Miami ahead of a potential billionaire's tax, has a handful of other islands he can find some respite on.

He purchased Cayo Norte, an island east of Puerto Rico, for $32m in 2018 using the same Virgin Island Properties holding company, Business Insider previously reported.

In 2020, he purchased a majority stake in Fiji's Tavarua Island, famed for its proximity to one of the world's top surfing spots, using a different LLC that Business Insider identified as his. Page and his family spent some of the pandemic in Fiji.

During the Hans Lollik litigation, Osborne confirmed a long-running rumor that Page also owned Eustatia Island, an island in the British Virgin Islands, according to transcripts reviewed by Business Insider. Business Insider previously reported that Page had used that private island to test his flying cars.

Osborne also hinted that Page proposed to Southworth on Hans Lollik. Page and Southworth married on Richard Branson's Necker Island, which neighbors Eustatia, in 2007.