Neda Navab is now president of Compass Real Estate, Chairman and CEO Robert Reffkin announced in a Feb. 9 LinkedIn post.
“In this role, Neda will focus exclusively on leading and supporting our Compass real estate professionals nationwide, and helping them achieve their full entrepreneurial potential,” Reffkin wrote. “Please join me in congratulating Neda as she leads Compass into this next chapter.”
Previously, Navab and Rory Golod were presidents of brokerage operations for the company’s east and west regions, respectively. The change comes as Reffkin takes the role of chairman and CEO of the newly formed Compass International Holdings, created with the finalization of the Anywhere merger. That leaves Navab at the helm of the company’s nationwide residential brokerage.
Reffkin noted in a press release that he and Navab will continue to work together closely, with her presidency focused on “helping Compass agents thrive.”
A graduate of Harvard Business School and former Google staff member, Navab has been with Compass since 2018 when she was hired as Reffkin’s chief of staff.
“Compass real estate professionals are among the most talented and dedicated agents in the industry, and it has been the privilege of my career to build alongside them,” Navab said in a press release. “I have spent years listening to what they want and need from their brokerage, and my commitment to delivering on that has never been stronger.”
Navab recently ranked No. 60 on the Swanepoel Power 200 and was named to HousingWire’s Women of Influence list for 2025.
“As president, I will work tirelessly to protect what makes Compass special while continuing to elevate the experience for our real estate professionals and their clients,” Navab added.
In 2025, The Atlanta Voice reaffirmed its place as a cornerstone of Black-owned media in Atlanta, honoring nearly six decades of legacy while embracing innovation to meet the moment. The year stood as a powerful reflection of where the paper has been, where it stands, and where it is boldly headed.
From launching new storytelling platforms and opening creative community spaces to earning major civic recognition and expanding its newsroom, 2025 marked a pivotal chapter in the publication’s ongoing mission to inform, uplift, and advocate for Atlanta’s Black communities.
Preserving Black History Through New Media
This year brought an expansion of storytelling through the launch of In The Black: Legacy of Legends, a video series dedicated to capturing and preserving the stories of Black leaders, pioneers, and cultural figures whose impact has shaped Atlanta and the nation.
The series reflects a long-standing commitment to honoring elders and documenting lived experiences that too often go unrecorded. By embracing video storytelling, the newsroom bridged generational gaps, ensuring Black history is not only written, but seen and heard. At its core, the initiative reinforces a belief that Black communities must continue to control their own narratives.
Strengthening the Newsroom
The reporting team grew in 2025 with the addition of journalist Tabius McCoy, further strengthening the paper’s commitment to rigorous, community-centered journalism. McCoy brought fresh perspective and a deep respect for the mission, contributing coverage that informs, challenges, and reflects the realities of Atlanta’s Black communities. His arrival underscored continued investment in the next generation of storytellers while upholding the standards that have defined the newspaper for decades.
A Historic Honor for a Lasting Legacy
The Atlanta Voice Publisher, Janis Ware (left) and her sister, Dr. Rhonda Ware (right). Photo by Jazmine Brazier/The Atlanta Voice
One of the most significant milestones of the year came with the induction of Publisher Janis Ware and her late father, J. Lowell Ware, into the Atlanta Press Club Hall of Fame. The honor recognized their enduring contributions to journalism and the preservation of Black-owned media in Atlanta. J. Lowell Ware’s leadership guided the paper through eras of profound social change. Janis Ware has carried that legacy forward—navigating the modern media landscape with vision, resilience, and a deep commitment to community accountability. The dual induction symbolized a bridge between generations and reaffirmed the publication’s lasting influence in Atlanta’s media history.
In another first, a Midday Open House welcomed community members, partners, and supporters into the organization’s space for a celebration rooted in transparency and connection. Guests engaged directly with staff, learned more about the work behind the headlines, and celebrated the paper’s role as a trusted voice in Atlanta. The event reflected a long-held belief by the publication: journalism is strongest when it is accessible, relational, and grounded in the communities it serves.
A New Creative Chapter: WAREhouse Studios
The year also marked the opening of WAREhouse Studios, a creative and production space designed to support multimedia storytelling, collaboration, and community engagement. The studio represents an investment not only in the future of the publication but in the broader ecosystem of Black creatives and storytellers. WAREhouse Studios positions the organization to expand its digital and visual storytelling capabilities while creating new opportunities for innovation, partnerships, and cultural preservation.
Recognized as a Legacy Business
Recognition came in the form of the Invest Atlanta Legacy Business Grant, honoring the newspaper’s longstanding economic and cultural impact on the city. The designation highlighted resilience, adaptability, and the importance of one of Atlanta’s historic Black-owned institutions. The grant serves as both recognition and reinforcement—acknowledging the continued role the paper plays in shaping civic dialogue and sustaining Black entrepreneurship.
Leadership Honored on a Citywide Stage
Photo By Trarell Torrence Credit: Photo by Trarell Torrence
Publisher Janis Ware was also named a2025 Salute to Women of Achievement honoree by the YWCA of Greater Atlanta, recognizing women whose leadership and service have made a lasting difference in the community. The honor reflected decades of dedication not only to journalism but to equity, representation, and the preservation of Black-owned media in an era of consolidation and change.
Investing in Black Entrepreneurship: In The Black-Black Business Directory
Economic empowerment remained a key focus with the expansion of the In The Black- Black Business Directory, a growing digital resource designed to spotlight, support, and sustain Black-owned businesses across metro Atlanta. More than a listing, the directory serves as a tool for visibility, connection, and the circulation of Black dollars—making it easier for readers, residents, and institutions to intentionally support Black entrepreneurship. Integrated into the publication’s digital ecosystem, the directory reinforces a role that extends beyond storytelling to active community investment. The initiative aligns with a long-held belief that storytelling and economic justice are deeply connected. Highlighting Black-owned businesses alongside coverage of civic leadership, culture, and history reflects a holistic approach to community advocacy, one that recognizes ownership, access, and opportunity as essential parts of progress.
Digital Reach and Community Engagement
Digital growth continued throughout 2025, demonstrating expanding reach and influence across platforms.
Facebook led performance with 5.6 million views and 1.6 million visitors, while Instagram generated 2.4 million views and reached 1.1 million users. On X, our content received 532,000 impressions, expanding our visibility in real-time conversations. Emerging and professional platforms also contributed to our digital footprint. , while Threads recorded 23,000 views and LinkedIn achieved 16,000 impressions.
Together, these milestones underscore the publication’s ability to connect with audiences across generations while maintaining the depth and credibility that define its journalism.
Looking Ahead
As 2025 comes to a close, the year stands as a testament to the power of legacy paired with innovation. From honoring the past to building new platforms, opening doors, and creating space for future generations, the work continues to evolve while remaining grounded in its founding mission. Nearly 60 years after its founding, The Atlanta Voice remains a trusted voice for Atlanta’s Black communities, telling stories that matter, preserving history, and helping shape what comes next.
The conversation continues beyond these pages. Readers can stay connected by following The Atlanta Voice on social media, subscribing to our newsletters, and visiting theatlantavoice.com for ongoing coverage of Atlanta’s Black communities.
Still studies have shown that women do face extra barriers to visibility on social media.
A paper published in Nature Communications this year looked at academics self-promoting their work on X, and found that women did it 28 per cent less than men. As the authors note, research from other areas already tells us that women have learned to stay quiet about their achievements, partly because of the “adverse reactions” when they do speak out.
This mix of reticence and culturally imposed silence is potentially a huge barrier to success on LinkedIn, a place chock-full of self-promoters (who are, indeed, mostly men).
Whatever the truth behind the drop in women’s visibility, the campaigners make timely points. LinkedIn is overdue a change or challenge.
Microsoft bought it for US$26.2 billion in 2016, yet not much has improved in the user experience. I like the platform, but even for a technologically challenged Gen Xer, it is retro and clunky.
The torching of civility elsewhere on social media handed LinkedIn a golden ticket. It’s a place where you have to say who you really are – and consequently, people usually have polite conversations.
Yes, it can be a bit dull. But as AI-generated posts take over many social feeds, it’s likely that users who post human stories about our lives, as well as our work, will increasingly get sifted to the top.
My best-performing LinkedIn content in 2025? A video I shot on the phone while hiding in a ladies’ bathroom at the office, feeling very sorry for myself: 150,000 views.
Leading tech companies are in a race to release and improve artificial intelligence products, leaving U.S. users to puzzle out how much of their personal data could be extracted to train AI tools.
Meta (which owns Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp), Google and LinkedIn all have rolled out AI app features that have the capacity to draw on users’ public profiles or emails. Google and LinkedIn offer users ways to opt out of the AI features, while Meta’s AI tool provides no means for its users to say no thanks.
“Gmail just flipped a dangerous switch on October 10, 2025 and 99% of Gmail users have no idea,” a Nov. 8 Instagram post said.
Posts warned the platforms’ AI tool rollouts make most private information available for tech company harvesting. “Every conversation, every photo, every voice message, fed into AI and used for profit,” a Nov. 9 X video about Meta said.
Technology companies are rarely fully transparent when it comes to the user data they collect and what they use it for, Krystyna Sikora, a research analyst for the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund, told PolitiFact.
“Unsurprisingly, this lack of transparency can create significant confusion that in turn can lead to fear mongering and the spread of false information about what is and is not permissible,” Sikora said.
The best — if tedious — way for people to know and protect their privacy rights is to read the terms and conditions, since it often explicitly outlines how the data will be used and whether it will be shared with third parties, Sikora said. The U.S. doesn’t have any comprehensive federal laws on data privacy for technology companies.
Here’s what we learned about how each platform’s AI is handling your data:
Meta
Social media claim: “Starting December 16th Meta will start reading your DMs, every conversation, every photo, every voice message fed into AI and used for profit.” — Nov. 9 X post with 1.6 million views as of Nov. 19.
The facts: Meta announced a new policy to take effect Dec. 16, but that policy alone does not result in your direct messages, photos and voice messages being fed into its AI tool. The policy involves how Meta will customize users’ content and advertisements based on how they interact with Meta AI.
For example, if a user interacts with Meta’s AI chatbot about hiking, Meta might start showing that person recommendations for hiking groups or hiking boots.
But that doesn’t mean your data isn’t being used for AI purposes. Although Meta doesn’t use people’s private messages in Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger to train its AI, it does collect user content that is set to “public” mode. This can include photos, posts, comments and reels. If the user’s Meta AI conversations involve religious views, sexual orientation and racial or ethnic origin, Meta says the system is designed to avoid parlaying these interactions into ads. If users ask questions of Meta AI using its voice feature, Meta says the AI tool will use the microphone only when users give permission.
There is a caveat: The tech company says its AI might use information about people who don’t have Meta product accounts if their information appears in other users’ public posts. For example, if a Meta user mentions a non-user in a public image caption, that photo and caption could be used to train Meta AI.
Can you opt-out? No. If you are using Meta platforms in these ways — making some of your posts public and using the chatbot — your data could be used by Meta AI. There is no way to deactivate Meta AI in Instagram, Facebook or Threads. WhatsApp users can deactivate the option to talk with Meta AI in their chats, but this option is available only per chat, meaning that you must deactivate the option in each chat’s advanced privacy settings.
The X post inaccurately advised people to submit this form to opt-out. But the form is simply a way for users to report when Meta’s AI supplies an answer that contains someone’s personal information.
David Evan Harris, who teaches AI ethics at University of California, Berkeley, told PolitiFact that because the U.S. has no federal regulations about privacy and AI training, people have no standardized legal right to opt out of AI training in the way that people in countries such as Switzerland, the United Kingdom and South Korea do.
Even when social media platforms provide opt out options for U.S. customers, it’s often difficult to find the settings to do so, Harris said.
Deleting your Meta accounts does not eliminate the possibility of Meta AI using your past public data, Meta’s spokesperson said.
Google
Social media claim: “Did you know Google just gave its AI access to read every email in your Gmail — even your attachments?” — Nov. 8 Instagram post with more than 146,000 likes as of Nov. 19.
The facts: Google has a host of products that interact with private data in different ways. Google announced Nov. 5 that its AI product, Gemini Deep Research, can connect to users’ other Google products, including Gmail, Drive and Chat. But, as Forbes reported, users must first give permission to employ the tool.
Users who want to allow Gemini Deep Research to have access to private information across products can choose what data sources to employ, including Google search, Gmail, Drive and Google Chat.
There are other ways Google collects people’s data:
Through searches and prompts in Gemini apps, including its mobile app, Gemini in Chrome or Gemini in another web browser
Any video or photo uploads the user entered into Gemini
Through interactions with apps such as YouTube and Spotify, if users give permission
Through message and phone calls apps, including call logs and messages logs, if users give permission
A Google spokesperson told PolitiFact the company doesn’t use this information to train AI when registered users are under age 13.
Google can also access people’s data when they have smart features activated in their Gmail and Google Workplace settings (that are automatically on in the U.S.), which give Google consent to draw on email content and user activity data to help users compose emails or suggest Google Calendar events. With optional paid subscriptions, users can access additional AI features, including in-app Gemini summaries.
Turning off Gmail’s smart features can stop Google’s AI from accessing Gmail, but it doesn’t stop Google’s access on the Gemini app, which users can either download or access in a browser.
(Screenshot shows a permission pop-up that appeared in the Gemini app after a PolitiFact reporter asked Gemini to summarize an email. Gemini asked permission to access that email.)
A California lawsuit accuses Gemini of spying on users’ private communications. The lawsuit says an October policy change gives Gemini default access to private content such as emails and attachments in people’s Gmail, Chat and Meet. Before October, users had to manually allow Gemini to access the private content, now users must go into their privacy settings to disable it. The lawsuit claims the Google policy update violates California’s 1967 Invasion of Privacy Act, a law that prohibits unauthorized wiretapping and recording confidential communications without consent.
Can you opt-out? If people don’t want their conversations used to train Google AI, they can use “temporary” chats or chat without signing into their Gemini accounts. Doing that means Gemini can’t save a person’s chat history, a Google spokesperson said. Otherwise, opting out of having Google’s AI in Gmail, Drive and Meet requires turning off smart features in settings.
LinkedIn
Social media claim: Starting Nov. 3, “LinkedIn will begin using your data to train AI.” — Nov. 2 Instagram post with more than 18,000 likes as of Nov. 19.
The facts: LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft, announced on its website that starting Nov. 3, it will use some U.S. members’ data to train content-generating AI models.
The data the AI collects includes details from people’s profiles and public content users post.
The training does not draw on information from people’s private messages, LinkedIn said.
LinkedIn also said, aside from the AI data access, Microsoft started receiving information about LinkedIn members — such as profile information, feed activity and ad engagement — as of Nov. 3 in order to target users with personalized ads.
Can you opt-out? Yes. Autumn Cobb, a LinkedIn spokesperson, confirmed to PolitiFact that members can opt out if they don’t want their content used for AI training purposes. They can also opt out of receiving targeted, personalized ads.
When MPs, members of the House of Lords and their staff were warned about the threat from Chinese spies, in one office in Westminster, a quick check began.
Simon Whelband is a Conservative councillor and also works for the Conservative MP Neil O’Brien, who was sanctioned by China in 2021.
Simon went into his LinkedIn messages and there it was. A message from an account in the name of Shirly Shen sent some weeks earlier.
He hadn’t responded to the unsolicited message and reported it to Parliament’s security services. He was then advised to block the account.
The note comes across as pretty innocuous.
He said: “The message wasn’t written in very good English, it was a message to say there was a job opportunity and was I interested, and to get in touch if I was.
“I’ve worked around Parliament for about 10 years now so I’m kind of used to this.
“But if you were more junior, you don’t know what you’re looking for.
“You might think it’s a genuine offer that’s made to you on LinkedIn, they might accept.”
Whelband added that he thought it was becoming more common for those working in Parliament to be targeted by China.
“They have realised the way to get to Parliamentarians is through their staff… it’s deeply worrying,” he said.
And so, for the second time this autumn, Westminster is collectively wrestling with what to do about China.
The growing influence of this vast superpower is one of the two stand out global changes of the last 30 years, alongside the growth of the internet.
Some of the most acute challenges – or threats – from Beijing come when both of these mega-trends of the early 21st Century combine.
Senior figures in government are worried, but express their worry carefully in public. MPs outside of government are much more willing to be blunt.
Tuesday’s debate in the Commons on this was an eye opener. The security minister Dan Jarvis was both circumspect in his language, but warm and accepting of the wide range of concerns expressed by MPs of multiple parties.
Among them:
Concern that buses manufactured in China but driving on British streets might be equipped with a so-called “kill switch” which allows someone in China to press a button and disable the bus – potentially causing chaos
Worries about vehicles used by the military that are made in China and might be mobile listening devices – to such an extent that military figures have been warned to watch what they are saying when they are on board in case China is listening
Deep concern about China seeking planning permission for a huge new embassy in central London which critics say will be a spying centre and is located very close to sensitive data cables that serve the City of London
Last month, Parliament was digesting the collapse of a court case involving two men accused of spying for China, one of whom had worked in Westminster. Both men always denied any wrongdoing.
It says it has identified two LinkedIn profiles used by Chinese security services to act as “civilian recruitment headhunters”, targeting individuals working in British politics to solicit “insider insights”.
As Jarvis put it, China “has a low threshold for information it regards as valuable”. This is because over time it builds up a wider picture by piecing together the morsels it may extract from a wide range of people.
Labour, since they won the general election, have attempted to warm up the UK’s relationship with China.
The Chancellor Rachel Reeves has been to Beijing, as has the Business Secretary Peter Kyle, who was there in September within days of being appointed to the role. The most senior civil servant in the Foreign Office, Sir Olly Robbins, was there last month in the midst of all those headlines about the collapsed spying trial.
But there has long been a vociferous collection of China hawks in Parliament, who have long worried about what they see as a collective naivety about Beijing.
The question now is whether a moment like this, following MI5’s intervention, persuades others to share their outlook.
The government insists its approach to China is “pragmatic”: it regards working with Beijing as inevitable but insists it is “clear eyed” about the risks.
Will a growing number of MPs demand a more sceptical outlook?
As one put it, rather colourfully, “you can’t reason with a tiger when your head is in its mouth”.
China is a vast superpower that is at once essential yet awkward, unavoidable yet dangerous.
This the latest case study in those competing interests. There will be more to come.
Reid Hoffman has spent years trying to distance himself from Jeffrey Epstein, having apologized repeatedly for his former ties to the disgraced financier. Now, the LinkedIn cofounder and prominent Democratic donor has been thrown into a widening political storm—one fueled by the release of emails between him and Epstein in the late 2010s and President Donald Trump’s efforts to scrutinize Democrats named in the Epstein files after newly released documents revealed seemingly extensive ties between Epstein and Trump that appear to challenge the president’s account of their relationship.
Trump has emphatically and consistently denied any wrongdoing, knowledge of Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation, or involvement with the allegations mentioned in newly released emails
The controversy has escalated rapidly in recent days, as Trump ordered a Justice Department investigation into Hoffman, several other high-profile figures, and institutions like JPMorgan Chase, and then abruptly reversed his stance and spoke out in favor of releasing the full trove of Epstein files. Attorney General Pam Bondi confirmed on Nov. 13 that she would launch the probe. The move was widely interpreted as a political counteroffensive designed to deflect attention from Trump’s own ties to Epstein—ties that the 20,000 newly released documents described in detail.
Bondi has attempted to further connect Hoffman to Epstein in the past. During her contentious Senate Judiciary Committee testimony on October 7, she repeatedly invoked Hoffman’s name when questioned about Epstein and Trump and called him “one of Epstein’s closest confidants.” Hoffman has repeatedly denied any such allegations.
On November 14, Hoffman hit back, taking to X to demand “Trump should release all of the Epstein files: every person and every document in the files.” The LinkedIn co-founder accused Trump’s probe of being “nothing more than political persecution and slander” and claimed he was never a client of Epstein’s nor did he engage with him in any capacity other than fundraising.
In a Sunday evening Truth Social post, however, the president doubled down. He said calls to release the entire cache of Epstein files were a “Democrat Hoax” and declared, “The Department of Justice has already turned over tens of thousands of pages to the Public on ‘Epstein,’ are looking at various Democrat operatives (Bill Clinton, Reid Hoffman, Larry Summers, etc.) and their relationship to Epstein, and the House Oversight Committee can have whatever they are legally entitled to, I DON’T CARE!”
A White House spokesperson reiterated some of Trump’s claims, telling Fortune, “By releasing tens of thousands of pages of documents, cooperating with the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena request, and President Trump recently calling for further investigations into Epstein’s Democrat friends, the Trump Administration has done more for the victims than Democrats ever have. The Democrat Party did nothing about Epstein for years; they are only pretending to care about these victims now as they attempt to score political points against President Trump.”
Hoffman did not respond to a Fortune request for comment regarding his ties to Epstein. JPMorgan Chase, Clinton, and Summers also did not respond to Fortune’s requests for comment.
Summers apologized for his relationship with Epstein in a statement to the Harvard Crimson, writing, “I have great regrets in my life. As I have said before, my association with Jeffrey Epstein was a major error of judgement.”
A spokesperson for Clinton refuted the Trump administration’s claims in a post on X. “These emails prove Bill Clinton did nothing and knew nothing. The rest is noise meant to distract from election losses, backfiring shutdowns, and who knows what else,” they wrote.
JPMorgan Chase, which previously settled a multi-million-dollar lawsuit with Epstein victims, responded to Trump’s probe in a statement to CNN: “The government had information about his crimes and failed to share it with us or other banks. We regret any association we had with the man, but did not help him commit his heinous acts. We ended our relationship with him years before his arrest on sex trafficking charges.” (The bank did, however, continue to bank Epstein even after his 2008 solicitation of a minor conviction, working with him until 2013.)
When Hoffman met Epstein
The relationship between Hoffman and Epstein began through Joi Ito, who served as director of the MIT Media Lab. According to multiple reports, Hoffman first encountered Epstein when he helped solicit donations for the MIT Media Lab from the convicted sex offender. In July 2013, Epstein met with Hoffman and others at MIT’s campus. At this time, Epstein was already a registered sex offender, following his 2008 guilty plea to soliciting prostitution from a minor in Florida.
Hoffman then visited Epstein’s private island, Little St. James, in 2014, according to the Wall Street Journal. Ito was also present during this trip, which was described as being for the purpose of raising funds for MIT. According to Ito’s statement to the Journal, Hoffman participated in a “fundraising event” on the island “at my request.” Documents also indicated that Hoffman and Ito were planning another visit to Epstein’s island later in 2014, with plans to travel from Palm Beach to the island for a weekend and then onward to Boston.
Documents obtained by the Journal in 2023 also note that Hoffman planned to stay overnight at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse on December 4, 2014, followed by a “breakfast party” the next morning that was expected to include both Epstein and Bill Gates. Whether this visit actually occurred remains unclear.
The last known in-person meeting between Epstein and Hoffman occurred in 2015, when Hoffman hosted a dinner attended by Epstein along with several Silicon Valley luminaries, including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Peter Thiel. Hoffman has stated that he invited Epstein to this gathering based on assurances from Joi Ito that Epstein had been vetted and cleared by MIT’s approval process.
In 2023, Hoffman claimed the 2015 dinner was the last time he interacted with Epstein. Unsealed emails reviewed by Fortune, however, show that Epstein wrote to Hoffman at least once in 2017. This correspondence appears to be related to potential fundraising efforts intended to offset cuts Trump wanted to make to federal spending in his first term in office.
In an email to Hoffman dated March 16, 2017 and reproduced here with the original typos and other errors, Epstein says, “a HUGE donor advised fund is an elegant solution to the cuts trump proposes to what some consider critical programs. you could organzie a huge public charity that would continue the work of many worthwhile orgs. not my thing but structurally beautiful. its the wealthiest now stepping into a quasi govt funding. national endowment for arts. climate science, as extraordinary amounts of wealth have moved into private hands. elons and jeff space goals should be mirrored with many other former govt ones. hope to see you soon.”
The newly released emails do not show whether Hoffman ever replied.
Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail while awaiting trial on further sex trafficking charges in 2019.
MIT’s external investigation report, released in January 2020, also described Hoffman’s timeline. The report revealed that in July 2016, Ito sought advice from Hoffman about whether to allow Epstein to attend a Media Lab conference with “lots of people” who may “see him and maybe know he’s involved.” The report did not disclose whether Hoffman offered any advice or what it was.
While Elon Musk accused Hoffman of being a client of Epstein’s in 2024, no evidence of that genre of relationship has actually emerged. Hoffman has also vehemently denied any such characterization.
Hoffman has issued several public apologies and statements regarding his interactions with Epstein. After scandal over MIT’s Epstein connections erupted publicly in September 2019, Hoffman apologized in a statement to Axios: “By agreeing to participate in any fundraising activity where Epstein was present, I helped to repair his reputation and perpetuate injustice. For this, I am deeply regretful.” He reiterated this position in 2023 to the Journal, stating, “It gnaws at me that, by lending my association, I helped his reputation, and thus delayed justice for his survivors.”
On Tuesday, the House of Representatives is expected to vote on a measure that would compel the DOJ to make all Epstein files publicly available “in a searchable and downloadable format” within 30 days.
Artificial intelligence is already redefining the workplace. That was driven home this week by Amazon and Chegg, which both announced substantial layoffs. Amazon plans to cut 14,000 jobs as it invests more in AI, while Chegg said it was laying off 45 percent of its workforce as it confronts what it calls “the new realities of AI.”
For workers and business owners, that’s a pair of warning shots highlighting the uncertainty and volatility of the years to come. Box CEO Aaron Levie, LinkedIn’s chief economic opportunity officer Aneesh Raman, and Clara Shih, Meta’s head of business AI, were recent guests at the Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco to discuss the rise of AI and the changes it will bring.
Entrepreneurs, said Shih, could be the people who are best suited to maximize AI’s productivity, thanks to their ability to pivot quickly and their near-obsessive tracking of what’s up and coming.
Asked which skill will be most needed in the AI era, Shih said, “I think entrepreneurship, which is defined by pursuit of opportunity without regard to resource constraint, because the underlying substrate of our resources is continually shifting. And so we have to be constantly … on our toes, literally, just to pay attention to these trends and continually reinvent ourselves and our companies.”
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Raman expanded on that thinking, saying he believed curiosity would be the most valuable skill, while still namechecking the rest of the five Cs that represent critical soft skills in business leadership: curiosity, compassion, creativity, courage, and communication.
“We all have to get better at all of those,” he said. “And then you have the sort of habits of resilience, adaptability, learn how to learn quick, learn how to fail fast.”
While this week’s news of layoffs was discouraging, Levie said he’s optimistic about the long-term employment outlook as AI expands. Ultimately, he believes, AI will result in more hiring, since businesses can get a higher return on investment from each worker.
He points to the evolution of the advertising agency as an analogy. In the 1980s, he said, it could take weeks to draw, print and scale an ad. The rise of Photoshop slashed that turnaround time, though. Had people in the ‘80s known what it could do, they would have feared massive layoffs in their field. The industry, of course, continues to thrive–and companies that previously couldn’t afford to advertise found themselves able to, thanks to lower costs.
Levie says he suspects the impact of AI will be much the same, only on a broader scale. The technology, he says, will broaden the playing field, giving companies that don’t have the budget for many of the experts and tools that larger businesses do a chance to compete at the same level.
“Each organization will look different, but … just imagine, let’s say, the small businesses that always have a structural disadvantage versus large companies because of their lack of access to talent and resources,” he said. “If you imagine them all being weaponized with the same expert lawyer and expert marketing and expert product development and software engineer as any kind of mid or large size company, what’s going to happen next is you’re going to have just a tremendous amount of growth of new organizations emerge with lots more productivity in a number of categories.”
Additionally, he said, AI is still a work in progress. So despite the technology’s evangelists talking about the changes it will bring, it has few functional uses at the moment for many businesses. That gives owners and workers time to prepare for changes to come, learning complimentary skills and becoming familiar with AI’s abilities—and how to maximize its potential.
“The reality is that if you drop AI into today’s business process, it’s going to actually do very little,” Levie said. “It’s not world-changing. … We thought AI would work how we do. It turns out it might be the case that we have to work how AI does, and we have to be actually in service of the agent to make it most productive.”
Netflix is reportedly closing its Boss Fight Entertainment game development studio, . The streaming giant bought the company back in 2022 and it has been responsible for games like and the interactive narrative Netflix Stories.
This is relatively surprising, as Squid Game: Unleashed was something of a hit. It launched alongside season two of the show and has amassed over ten million downloads on the Google Play Store alone, . It recently received a major software update coinciding with season three of the show.
Boss Fight Entertainment has around 80 staffers. It’s unclear if they’ll be laid off or shuffled somewhere else within Netflix’s gaming division. Engadget has reached out to Netflix and will update this post when we hear back.
Several designers at the company have expressed regret that we won’t see what it had planned for the future. “It’s infuriating that the world will never see some of the stuff that was shuffled away behind the scenes,” wrote design director .
This is the second studio that Netflix has chased out the door in the past year. It shut down its , which had attracted developers from Blizzard, Bungie and Sony Santa Monica. We never even got to find out what the team was working on.
The discourse over AI regulation is heating up and spilling out on social media.
White House crypto and AI czar David Sacks and billionaire LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman exchanged barbs after Hoffman expressed his support for Anthropic’s approach to AI innovation and safety in a thread posted to X on Monday.
“The leading funder of lawfare and dirty tricks against President Trump wants you to know that ‘Anthropic is one of the good guys.’ Thanks for clarifying that. All we needed to know,” Sacks posted on social media platform X.
Hoffman, who is also a major Democratic donor and AI optimist, responded minutes later. He accused Sacks of not actually reading the thread in which he advocates for “a light-touch regulatory landscape that prioritizes innovation and enables new players to compete on level playing fields.” He also referenced Microsoft, Google and OpenAI as “trying to deploy AI the right way.”
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“When you are ready to have a professional conversation about AI’s impact on America, I’m here to chat,” Hoffman wrote. “Also: crying ‘lawfare and dirty tricks’ is particularly rich, given the Trump Administration’s recent actions.”
Shows you didn’t read the post (not shocked).
When you are ready to have a professional conversation about AI’s impact on America, I’m here to chat.
Also: crying “lawfare and dirty tricks” is particularly rich, given the Trump Administration’s recent actions. https://t.co/Qg1sVr3QpS
In a wide-ranging conversation prior to the social media spat (and on the heels of an event called Entrepreneurs First Demo Day in San Francisco), Hoffman spoke to Inc. about his approach to AI regulation, describing it as “iterative deployment and development,” rather than preemptive, fear-based rulemaking. He compared it to how motor vehicles preceded the introduction and mandate of seatbelts.
“Let’s limit the regulatory stuff to transparency, monitoring, accountability, to get a good sense of what’s actually going on, and then only impose when we know that there’s something potentially catastrophic,” he says.
Some critics worry, however, that lawmakers are not informed enough to craft meaningful regulations for technology that is changing as rapidly as AI, whereas others blame regulatory inaction on lobbying and campaign contributions. Hoffman says that he believes frontier AI labs can help govern themselves.
“When I was on the board of OpenAI, part of what we were doing was trying to make sure all the top labs were talking to each other about how to do safety the right way, but it grew more and more tense with regulators,” he says.
“It’d be useful to have some kinds of cross-collaboration on what is good alignment, what is good safety,” he adds.
Hoffman’s uneasy relationship with the Trump administration precedes the October X feud. In late September, Trump mentioned Hoffman as a possible target of a probe along with George Soros, after a Reuters reporter asked him who he might investigate in connection with domestic terrorism, Reuters reported. Trump was signing a memorandum meant to crack down on domestic terrorism and political violence several days after he signed an executive order designating anti-fascism or “Antifa” a domestic terrorism organization. Both Soros and Hoffman are substantial donors to the Democratic Party, and Hoffman also helped to fund E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit against the president through a nonprofit, CNBC reported.
Hoffman tells Inc. that these developments have not changed his politics, although he has been “careful about trying to fund stuff very directly.”
Hoffman describes himself as “very pro-American society, very pro-American prosperity and business.”
“As far as I’m aware,” he says, “Antifa is a fictional organization and I certainly would never have deliberately funded anything that would support domestic terrorism.”
Hoffman also says he has not backed pro-AI super PACs, two of which emerged in one week in September to support AI-friendly politicians regardless of political affiliation,The New York Times reported. Tech titans have also been spotted hobnobbing with the president, including at a September dinner at the White House. Executives including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Apple’s Tim Cook and Microsoft’s Bill Gates reportedly discussed various AI-related investments and educational initiatives, while also praising the president. Hoffman says the fawning “could be a little silly,” but says he believes business leaders do have a role to play in U.S. politics.
“Especially in democracies, it’s very important for all business leaders to be in collaboration [and] discussion with the elected leaders,” Hoffman says. “Technology sets the drumbeat about what happens with society, what happens with industries and so forth, and so I think that dialog is extremely important.”
Hoffman has himself co-founded two AI-powered startups in recent years. He co-founded Inflection AI together with Mustafa Suleyman and Karén Simonyan in 2022, to create a more empathetic large language model. The company pivoted in 2024 after Microsoft paid a fee to license its technology and hired away much of its top talent. And earlier this year, he launched a new venture, Manas AI, to leverage AI to cut down on the time and costs inherent to therapeutic drug discovery.
Regulation can be good for technology, so long as it’s done thoughtfully, according to LinkedIn co-founder, investor, and AI-enthusiast Reid Hoffman. Speaking on the heels of a pitch event in San Francisco called Entrepreneurs First Demo Day, he compared AI regulation to seatbelts in vehicles.
“Seatbelts are a good thing, relative to the fact that regulatory stuff can have a positive impact on society, technology evolution. Now doing it smart in the right way is important,” he tells Inc. “You don’t try to solve everything before you get on the road. You get on the road and then solve it as you go,” he adds. His voice joins a chorus of others from big names in tech speaking up about how much—or in the case of legendary investor Marc Andreessen and companies like Meta—how little regulation they support.
Hoffman sits on the board of Entrepreneurs First, an international talent investment firm that hosts incubator-style programs and related annual pitch competitions. Those events are called Demo Days, and the most recent took place in San Francisco on Wednesday. Hoffman joined EF’s board after leading a significant round of investment in the company in 2017 through his capacity at venture capital firm Greylock Partners.
Hoffman was not on the ground at Demo Day this year, but another big name in tech was: Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark was the keynote speaker in conversation with Entrepreneurs First CEO Alice Bentinck.
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Just a few days prior, Clark had made waves for commentary he gave at The Curve conference in Berkeley, California, and later published in essay form in his newsletter. He compared AI to a “mysterious creature” of humanity’s own creation. He said he was optimistic about its potential as well as appropriately afraid of it, especially if AI’s goals are not absolutely aligned with humanity’s. And finally, he ended by emphasizing the need for conversations with a broad swathe of society to help craft a “policy solution.”
“There will surely be some crisis,” Clark notes in his blog. “We must be ready to meet that moment both with policy ideas, and with a pre-existing transparency regime which has been built by listening and responding to people.”
In response to the post, U.S. AI and crypto czar David Sacks accused Anthropic of fearmongering.
Hoffman’s take, which he wrote about in his recent book, is by no means anti-regulation, but does differ somewhat from Clark’s. “In the book that I published in January, Superagency, part of what I was arguing for within AI is iterative deployment and development,” he tells Inc. “We do the regulatory thing, but we do it in response to what we can actually see versus imagination of what [could] happen,” he adds.
AI has never been more topical, especially among aspiring entrepreneurs. This week at Demo Day in San Francisco, founders from 20 different startups pitched more than 200 tech investors, among them big name firms like a16z, Khosla Ventures, Paladin Capital, Insight Partners and Engine Ventures, in hopes of landing as much as $7 million in seed funding. It represented the culmination of some six months of work the founders had put in during Entrepreneurs First’s incubator-style program. On the lips of most of those entrepreneurs was AI.
“The majority of the companies that were pitching yesterday—85 to 90 percent—are all using AI in some way. Some of them are building novel AI models, others are creating wrappers or scaffolding around existing AI models,” says Bentinck. “If you look at what early stage investors want to put capital behind, they see this enormous opportunity in the new AI economy.”
Originally founded in London, Entrepreneurs First started off as a nonprofit in 2011 before becoming the investment vehicle it is today, starting in 2015. The company expanded overseas to offer programming in San Francisco at the start of 2024, and continues to run cohorts across Europe, India and the U.S.
Entrepreneurs First functions something like an incubator, although Bentinck says EF thinks of itself more as a “talent investing studio.” It searches out individuals, usually with technical backgrounds, who also possess certain qualities related to pacing, productivity, determination, and even aggression, Bentinck says—qualities that alert EF that these individuals may outperform their peers. EF then guides them through the process of building a startup including helping them ideate if they don’t already have an idea and introducing them to potential co-founders.
“We find exceptional individuals, pre-team, pre-idea, pre-company. Really all that we’re looking for is their entrepreneurial potential and then we run them through a process that helps them build a startup from scratch,” Bentinck says.
The group that pitched this week included the top tier companies from EF’s European and U.S. programs. Each of these teams had been selected by EF and received $250,000 in pre-seed investment in exchange for 8 percent equity.
“That’s the culmination of EF and we then send them off into the wild to build enormous companies,” Bentinck says.
They say business is cutthroat, and I guess it is in many ways. However, most businesspeople I know share the philosophy that a rising tide lifts all boats. As such, people want to help their friends, and sometimes even their competitors.
One way to increase your visibility is to increase your presence on LinkedIn. No, the work and job focused social media platform isn’t sponsoring this post, and there are a number of issues with LinkedIn’s algorithm and what the platform promotes. You can decide what you want to do, depending on your goals.
But if you want to help out a friend, these tactics always work, and they are super easy for you to do. It won’t take you much time at all, and it can really boost your friends’ visibility.
Expand their posts – LinkedIn only shows the opening couple of lines of a post. All except the shortest posts require you to expand it to read the whole thing. You may want to just hit like without expanding, but expanding tells LinkedIn that you’re interested. So make sure you expand that post!
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Comment and then like the post – LinkedIn is weird, and yes, the order matters. A comment on LinkedIn tells you that you’re invested in the content. Liking is also a good thing to do, but because LinkedIn gives more credence to comments, it helps boost the post if you do it in the right order.
Make sure your comment is meaningful – Typing “thanks!” or “good idea” is helpful, but if you really want to help your friends, make a meaningful comment. And don’t use AI to do it. AI comments are obvious and bad. Add your actual thoughts on the topic.
Keep up with the comments – If you comment on your friend’s post and someone replies to you, go back and reply to them, or at least hit a response button.
Tag your friend (but only if they’ll comment) – Lots of people tag strangers on posts because they want that person’s audience to come over. Do not do that. First of all, if you tag someone and they don’t interact with your comment, it doesn’t help your reach. But if you tag someone and they untag themselves, it tanks your post. It tells the algorithm that you are spamming the timeline.
So, yes, you can boost your friend’s visibility by tagging them, but make sure they will comment on your post if you do. Otherwise, you’re risking damaging your own credibility and not really helping them.
Open their newsletter – If your friend has a newsletter, of course, you already subscribed. But LinkedIn, in all their wisdom, doesn’t send the newsletter to every subscriber. So if you get it in your inbox or in your notifications, or find it scrolling through your feed, open it. Make a comment or hit like to give it an extra boost.
Choose something besides “like” – While I haven’t tested the impact of this myself, it stands to reason that since hitting ‘like’ is much faster than choosing ‘support’ or ‘celebrate’, LinkedIn would perceive you as more invested in the content, and therefore boost the post. It’s absolutely worth trying to help your friend out.
Share your friend’s posts the right way -Shares are always appreciated, but they do better if you add your own commentary before hitting share. Additionally, another way to share your friend’s post is to write your own commentary about the post without sharing, tag your friend, add a picture (the algorithm loves pictures), and hit post.
Then, once it’s live, hit edit, and go back in and add the link to their post. I know this is a bit more time-consuming, but it does seem to help.
These aren’t entirely selfless actions, though. While I believe in doing things to help people just because I want them to succeed, all of these tips also boost your own visibility. It’s a win-win situation.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
Peter Thiel, PayPal’s first CEO, turned his fintech fortune into a far-reaching empire of influence spanning venture capital, politics and power. Marco Bello/Getty Images
In 2007, Fortune magazine reimagined a classic mafia scene with a Silicon Valley twist: 13 male founders and early employees of PayPal, all long gone from the company, posed at a San Francisco café with slicked-back hair, poker chips and dozens of whiskey glasses. The crowd included some of the most recognizable names in today’s tech scene, like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman. The magazine dubbed them the “PayPal mafia,” not for their time at the fintech company, but for their outsized impact on Silicon Valley through the companies they launched afterward.
PayPal went public in early 2002 and was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion the same year. Most of its early employees left the company after the acquisition. They went on to found YouTube, SpaceX and LinkedIn, among other legendary names in Silicon Valley. However, like their cinematic namesake, the group hasn’t avoided controversy. These former colleagues have built billion-dollar businesses while also finding themselves in the crosshairs of public criticism.
For instance, Thiel has faced controversy over his political affiliations and, most notably, for funding Hulk Hogan’s 2012 lawsuit against Gawker Media with $10 million — a case that ultimately drove the online media company into bankruptcy. Musk has also faced criticism for his takeover of Twitter and his prior role in the Trump administration, where he led widespread federal employee firings.
Here’s what they are up to these days:
Peter Thiel: venture capitalist
Peter Thiel. Marco Bello/Getty Images
Peter Thiel, Max Levchin and Luke Nosek founded PayPal in 1998, originally as a software security company. After merging with Elon Musk’s X.com (unrelated to the social media platform he owns today), PayPal shifted its focus to digital payments.
Thiel served as CEO from 1998 until 2002, leaving after the company was sold to eBay. He then co-founded Palantir Technologies, a major U.S. government contractor providing data analytics services. The company now has a market capitalization of $439 billion.
Thiel is also known as a prolific angel investor. He co-founded Clarium Capital, Founders Fund, Valar Ventures and Mithril Capital. In 2004, Thiel became Facebook’s first outside investor after acquiring a 10.2 percent stake in the company for $500,000.
Thiel is among the many former PayPal employees who have entered political and high-profile public arenas. An active donor to the Republican Party, Thiel supported Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign but withheld donations during the 2024 election. He is also credited with helping JD Vance reach the Vice Presidential ticket.
Elon Musk: entrepreneur, the world’s richest person
Elon Musk. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Elon Musk briefly served as PayPal’s CEO before being ousted by the board in 2000. He went on to build one of the most influential portfolios in technology, spanning electric vehicles, space exploration, social media and A.I.
Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 and has led Tesla since 2008. He also founded Neuralink and The Boring Company, expanding his reach into brain-computer interfaces and infrastructure. In 2022, Musk gained global attention for acquiring Twitter for $44 billion, later rebranding it as X.
His ties to A.I. run deep: Musk co-founded OpenAI with Sam Altman in 2015 but left in 2018 over strategic disagreements. In 2023, he returned to the field by launching xAI, a research venture focused on building A.I. that is more understandable for humans.
Today, Musk is the richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $400 billion. He is also perhaps the only PayPal alumnus to ascend into direct political influence. During the Trump administration, he led the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—a name shared with his cryptocurrency venture—before stepping down in May after clashing publicly with the President.
Max Levchin: computer scientist
Max Levchin. John Lamparski/Getty Images
Position at PayPal: co-founder, chief technology officer from 1998 to 2002
As PayPal’s chief technology officer, Max Levchin helped lead the company’s anti-fraud efforts by co-creating the Gausebeck-Levchin test—the foundation for the widely used CAPTCHA security tool. After leaving PayPal, he launched the media-sharing platform Slide in 2004, which was acquired by Google in 2010. Levchin briefly served as Google’s vice president of engineering until Slide was shut down the following year.
In 2012, he co-founded Affirm, a leading “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) company, where he continues to serve as CEO. Today, Affirm has a market capitalization of $27.5 billion, with 21.9 million consumers and more than 350,000 merchant partners on its platform.
Levchin has also held board positions at Yahoo and Yelp. In 2015, he became the first Silicon Valley executive appointed to the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s advisory board, emphasizing the importance of collaboration between companies and regulators.
Reid Hoffman: entrepreneur, investor
Reid Hoffman. Kimberly White/Getty Images for WIRED
Before joining PayPal, Hoffman worked as a senior user experience architect at Apple, contributing to the company’s online social network eWorld. He later became director of product management at Fujitsu. After his online dating startup, SocialNet, folded, Hoffman joined PayPal in 2000 as chief operating officer.
In 2003, he co-founded the career networking site LinkedIn. Following Microsoft’s $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn in 2017, Hoffman joined Microsoft’s board, a move that greatly increased his wealth.
Over the years, Hoffman has served on the boards of Airbnb and OpenAI, where he was also an early investor. Through the venture capital firm Greylock Partners, he has backed dozens of A.I. startups. In 2022, he co-founded Inflection AI with Mustafa Suleyman, who now serves as CEO. Earlier this year, he teamed up with cancer researcher Siddhartha Mukherjee to launch Manas AI, a startup focused on drug discovery.
David Sacks: investor, White House A.I. and Crypto Czar
David Sacks currently serves as the White House A.I. and Crypto Czar. JC Olivera/Variety via Getty Images
Position at PayPal: chief operating officer from 1999 to 2002
Since leaving PayPal, David Sacks has built a career spanning film, tech, investing and politics. In 2005, he produced and financed a political satire that earned two Golden Globe nominations. The following year, he founded Geni.com, a genealogy-focused social network that later spun off Yammer, one of the earliest enterprise social networking platforms. He went on to co-found Craft Ventures, the startup Glue, and the podcast platform Callin.
Jeremy Stoppelman joined Musk’s X.com in 1999 and became vice president of engineering after its transition to PayPal. In 2004, he co-founded Yelp, where he has served as CEO ever since. Under his leadership, the company turned down a 2010 acquisition offer from Google and went public two years later. Stoppelman’s net worth is estimated at more than $100 million.
Ken Howery: investor, U.S. ambassador
Position at PayPal: chief financial officer from 1998 to 2002
Ken Howery served as PayPal’s chief financial officer from 1998 to 2002. After PayPal’s sale to eBay, he became eBay’s director of corporate development until 2003. He later joined Peter Thiel at Clarium Capital as vice president of private equity and went on to co-found Founders Fund as a partner. Beyond investing, he is a member of the Explorers Club, a nonprofit dedicated to scientific exploration, and an advisor to Kiva, the micro-lending nonprofit founded by former PayPal colleague Premal Shah.
Howery is also among the former PayPal executives who have moved into politics. He has donated at least $1 million to Donald Trump’s campaign through Elon Musk’s political action committee. During Trump’s first term, Howery was appointed U.S. ambassador to Sweden and today serves as the U.S. ambassador to Denmark.
Roeloth Botha: venture capitalist
Roelof Botha joined PayPal as director of corporate development shortly before graduating from Stanford University. He later became vice president of finance and went on to serve as chief financial officer until the company’s acquisition by eBay.
Position at PayPal: software architect from 1998 to 2003
Companies later founded: Yelp, Learnirvana
Russel Simmons helped design PayPal’s payment system as a software architect. After leaving the company, he and fellow PayPal alum Jeremy Stoppelman set out to build a platform for restaurant reviews. With a $1 million investment from Max Levchin, they launched Yelp in July 2004. Simmons served as chief technology officer until his departure in 2010. At the time, Yelp said he would remain a “significant” shareholder, though the size of his stake—and whether he still holds it—remains unclear.
In 2014, Simmons co-founded Learnirvana, an online learning platform.
Andrew McCormack: entrepreneur
Position at PayPal: assistant to Thiel from July 2001 to November 2002
Companies later founded: Valar Ventures
Andrew McCormack began his career as an assistant to Peter Thiel at PayPal and followed him into subsequent ventures. From November 2002 to April 2003, he oversaw operations at Thiel’s hedge fund, Clarium Capital.
In 2010, McCormack co-founded Valar Ventures with Thiel and James Fitzgerald, focusing on fintech investments. He remains a general partner at the firm.
Luke Nosek: investor
Position at PayPal: co-founder and vice president of marketing and strategy from 1998 to 2002
Companies later founded: Founders Fund, Gigafund
In 2005, Luke Nosek joined Peter Thiel and Ken Howery to launch Founders Fund, a San Francisco–based venture capital firm that has backed companies such as Airbnb, Lyft and SpaceX. While his exact net worth is unclear, Nosek has made substantial investments through his venture firms. At Founders Fund, he led one of the firm’s earliest major deals with a $20 million investment in SpaceX, later serving on its board.
In 2017, Nosek left to co-found Gigafund, which went on to invest $1 billion in SpaceX, according to the company. He also sits on the board of ResearchGate.
Premal Shah: entrepreneur
Position at Paypal: product manager
Companies later founded: Kiva
Three years after leaving PayPal, Premal Shah co-founded Kiva, a nonprofit that provides loans to entrepreneurs in underserved communities worldwide. He also serves on the boards of other nonprofits, including the Center for Humane Technology, the Change.org Foundation, Watsi and VolunteerMatch.
Keith Rabois: investor
Position at PayPal: executive vice president of business development
After leaving his executive role at PayPal, Keith Rabois became an active investor, backing companies including Slide, YouTube and Palantir. He also invested in LinkedIn, where he served as vice president of business and corporate development, and Square, where he was chief operating officer.
Rabois joined venture capital firm Khosla Ventures from 2013 to 2019 and was a partner at Founders Fund from 2019 to 2024.
OpenAI is creating a jobs platform with an AI focus to take on LinkedIn, and expanding the ways AI users can verify their skills for employers.
Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s CEO of applications and former Instacart CEO, announced in a blog post on Thursday that the ChatGPT-maker was working with employers like Walmart and Boston Consulting Group to develop AI solutions for companies. (Walmart is the largest private employer in the U.S. with 1.6 million employees across the nation.)
The first initiative is an OpenAI Jobs Platform, which will connect businesses to candidates and tap into AI to filter through recommendations.
“We’ll use AI to help find the perfect matches between what companies need and what workers can offer,” Simo wrote in the blog post.
She gave the example of the Texas Association of Business, which wants to use the jobs platform to link Texas employers with potential employees who can assist with their IT modernization efforts.
An OpenAI spokesperson told TechCrunch that the company is aiming to debut the jobs platform by mid-2026.
OpenAI CEO of Applications, Fidji Simo, during an interview in September 2024. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
OpenAI also announced new certifications for OpenAI Academy, a free platform focused on helping individuals develop AI skills. The ChatGPT-maker is expanding the Academy, which has reached more than two million people, by allowing learners to obtain certifications in AI, from mastering the basics of applying AI at work to learning how to engineer prompts.
OpenAI is aiming to hand out 10 million certifications within the next five years, per the blog post. The company told Bloomberg that it is collaborating with Walmart to create certifications, which will initially be available for free to Walmart’s 1.6 million U.S. employees.
With certifications and a jobs platform, OpenAI takes on the likes of LinkedIn and Indeed. LinkedIn, which has more than one billion members, is the most expansive professional network in the world. Indeed is also a dominant player in the job hunting space, with 615 million job seekers and 27 hires per minute.
OpenAI is creating a jobs platform with an AI focus to take on LinkedIn, and expanding the ways AI users can verify their skills for employers.
Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s CEO of applications and former Instacart CEO, announced in a blog post on Thursday that the ChatGPT-maker was working with employers like Walmart and Boston Consulting Group to develop AI solutions for companies. (Walmart is the largest private employer in the U.S. with 1.6 million employees across the nation.)
The first initiative is an OpenAI Jobs Platform, which will connect businesses to candidates and tap into AI to filter through recommendations.
Over half of professionals report that AI trainings feel like a second job, according to a recent LinkedIn survey, highlighting widespread frustration among workers with the proliferation of workplace automation programs.
A majority of respondents (51%) expressed irritation with the intensity and frequency of AI training requirements, stating that it’s interfering with their core job responsibilities and contributing to burnout. Employees cited dense training modules, unrealistic deadlines, and a lack of clarity about practical benefits as key sources of dissatisfaction.
LinkedIn found an 82% increase in people posting on the platform about feeling overwhelmed and navigating change this year. “The mounting pressure to upskill in AI is fueling insecurity among professionals at work — with a third (33%) admitting they feel embarrassed by how little they understand it, and 35% saying they feel nervous talking about AI at work for fear of sounding uninformed,” LinkedIn wrote.
Workplace impact
These findings come as employers increase investment in upskilling efforts designed to help staff adapt to new AI-based processes. Instead of feeling empowered, many professionals say these trainings add stress and extend their working hours, often without extra compensation or real improvements to workflow.
There are real consequences for this and anecdotal evidence that workers are rational to feel insecure. IgniteTech CEO Eric Vaughan told Fortune earlier this month that he laid off nearly 80% of his staff after they failed to respond to AI training, while Joshua Wöhle of Mindstone relayed a similar story of a client/CEO who ordered his staff to dedicate all Fridays to AI retraining, and invited them to leave the company if they didn’t have a constructive report back on their findings.
The survey also found that, amid the flood of AI-related content and programs, professionals are increasingly turning to their networks—rather than official corporate resources or search engines—for trusted advice and support in navigating workplace changes. Some 43% of professionals say “their network, the people they know, is still their #1 source for advice at work,” ahead of search engines and AI tools. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of professionals say colleagues are helping them make decisions faster and more confidently.
Mounting frustration with mandatory AI trainings may be just the tip of the iceberg. A recent MIT study found that 95% of generative AI pilots at enterprises have failed to deliver any measurable return on investment—fueling growing concerns over an AI stock bubble as corporate spending and investor hype far outweigh results. It seems to be tied with this frustration over ineffective or stumbling AI training efforts.
MIT’s sobering findings
The MIT NANDA report analyzed hundreds of AI deployments and found only 5% produced rapid revenue acceleration or noticeable operational improvements. The majority of pilots stall in the testing phase or get abandoned, with large companies taking nearly a year to scale projects that rarely succeed. Flawed enterprise integration and a gap in AI literacy—not just model quality—were cited as the main barriers.
Wall Street and institutional investors are sounding the alarm, worried that record AI investments aren’t translating to profits and could trigger a painful reckoning for overvalued tech stocks. Some have started trimming exposure, fearing that the gap between reality and hype may be unsustainable, reminiscent of prior tech bubbles. The all-important Nvidia earnings on Wednesday illustrate the jitters, as record revenue still failed to prevent investors taking a few percentage points off the stock.
Connections to workforce concerns
As companies pour money into AI pilots and tech stocks, employees are increasingly skeptical of both the business value and the constant upskilling requirements. With over half of professionals saying AI trainings feel like a second job, the MIT report adds new context: companies’ aggressive push for digital transformation is straining workers, not yet augmenting them, as widely billed.
The results underscore mounting tension between the pace of technological implementation and the lived experience of professionals, suggesting that companies may need to rethink their approach to AI upskilling to avoid further alienating employees.
For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.
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MADBURY — Ryan and Emily Long and two children, Parker, 8, and Ryan, 6, have been identified as the family members found dead of apparent gunshot wounds Aug. 18 in their 14 Moharimet Drive home as the result of a suspected murder-suicide, according to authorities.
A third child, who is a toddler, was not physically injured, according to the New Hampshire attorney general’s office. New Hampshire State Police and the attorney general did not immediately identify a suspected shooter. Autopsies are scheduled Aug. 20 with the state medical examiner.
The elder Ryan, 48, and his wife, Emily, 34, both had visible jobs in the community.
A home at 14 Mohamiret Drive in Madbury is seen Aug. 19, 2025, one day after two adults and two children were found dead there from apparent gun shot wounds.
Ryan Long was a school psychologist at Oyster River Middle School in Durham.
He had worked for the district since 2016, according to his LinkedIn page and an article published about him by the Oyster River High School student magazine in 2017. His time in the district started with one year at Madbury’s Moharimet Elementary School.
He worked as a mental health counselor with multiple organizations and schools before becoming a school psychologist, earning his doctorate in psychology at the University of Southern Maine. He previously earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of New Hampshire, according to his LinkedIn page and the article.
Police block off the area surrounding a home on Mohamiret Drive in Madbury Aug. 19, 2025, one day after two adults and two children were found dead at a home.
Emily Long was director of operations for the local Wing-itz restaurants chain, according to her LinkedIn page. Her background includes leadership jobs in the hospitality industry and a bachelor’s degree from UNH.
“Members of the Durham community are deeply saddened by the tragic loss of life at a home in Madbury involving members of one family. Our hearts go out to all those impacted by this terrible event, especially the families, friends, and neighbors within our broader Oyster River Cooperative School District community,” Todd Selig, Durham town administrator, said in a prepared statement.
Neighbor takes family’s dogs after tragedy
Bill Hall, a neighbor on Mohamiret Drive in Madbury, speaks to a New Hampshire State Police trooper Aug. 19, 2025. He says he’s caring for dogs that belonged to the four people found dead in their home a day earlier.
Bill Hall, a nearby neighbor on Moharimet Drive, was seen walking the neighborhood Aug. 19 with a dog he said belonged to the family. Hall said he “approached the state police” and said he could take the dogs in an interview with Foster’s Daily Democrat.
Hall said he spoke with the mother last week and she was “as nice as can be” and there was a young child selling lemonade outside.
While the investigation is still ongoing, there is no known threat to the general public at this time. No additional releases of information are anticipated until after all autopsies have been conducted, officials said.
If you need help
Seacoast Media Group provides the following information in stories where domestic violence is suspected:
Haven, a violence prevention and support services center in southeastern New Hampshire, provides 24/7 confidential hotline support at 603-994-SAFE (7233).
GLOUCESTER – Police arrested a 48-year-old Lynn man and charged him with defacing property and wanton destruction of property at the train platform on Railroad Avenue on Tuesday at 5:41 p.m., according to a police report.
Jensen Huang prepares to throw out the ceremonial first pitch before the game between the San Francisco Giants and the Arizona Diamondbacks at Oracle Park on Sept. 03, 2024 in San Francisco. Lachlan Cunningham/Getty Images
There’s no question that Nvidia (NVDA) is one of the biggest winners of the A.I. boom so far. Funneled by an insatiable demand for its graphics processing units (GPUs), the chipmaker’s stock has skyrocketed by more than 450 percent since early 2023. As Nvidia’s market cap and revenue soar, so does the pace of its investing in A.I. startups. More than half of the company’s startup investments since 2005 took place in the past two years.
The value of the company’s startup investments reportedly totaled more than $1.5 billion at the beginning of 2024, a significant jump from the $300 million a year prior. The chipmaker has participated in more than ten $100 million-plus funding rounds for A.I. startups in 2024 alone, according to data from Crunchbase, and has backed more than 50 startups since 2023. That’s not to mention a flurry of activity from the company’s venture capital arm NVentures, which separately made 26 investments in 2023 and 2024.
Nvidia’s seemingly unflappable upward trajectory took a hit yesterday (Sept. 3) after reports surfaced that it had received a subpoena from the U.S. Department of Justice as part of an antitrust probe. The company’s stock dropped nearly 10 percent, shaving $279 billion off its market cap, which currently stands at $2.6 trillion.
But its falling stock price doesn’t mean the company is slowing down in its startup department. In addition to eyeing an investment in an upcoming funding round in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, Nvidia yesterday unveiled its participation in a more than $100 million funding round for the Tokyo-based Sakana AI, a company that specializes in accessible A.I. models trained on small datasets.
“We invest in these companies because they’re incredible at what they do,” Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang told Wired earlier this year. “These are some of the best minds in the world.”
From companies specializing in humanoid robots to autonomous vehicles, here’s a look at some of Nvidia’s most significant startup investments:
Perplexity AI
Huang hasn’t been shy about his love for Perplexity AI, the A.I.-powered search engine positioned as a competitor to the likes of Google. The Nvidia CEO uses the startup’s tool nearly every day for research, according to Huang’s interview with Wired.
He has also put his money where his mouth is, with Nvidia partaking in a $62.7 million funding round for Perplexity AI in April that valued the startup at $1 billion. Led by investor Daniel Gross, the round included participants like Amazon (AMZN)’s Jeff Bezos. It wasn’t the first time Nvidia has backed the company—the chipmaker also invested in Perplexity AI during another funding round in January that valued the startup at $73.6 million.
Hugging Face
Hugging Face, a startup providing open-source A.I. developer platforms, has long had close ties to Nvidia. The chipmaker participated in a $235 million funding round in Hugging Face in August 2023 that valued the company at $4.5 billion. Other corporate investors participating in the round included Google, Amazon, Intel, AMD and Salesforce.
Hugging Face has previously included Nvidia hardware among its shared resources. In May, it launched a new program that donated $10 million worth of free, shared Nvidia GPUs to be used by A.I. developers.
Adept AI
Unlike more well-known A.I. assistants from companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic, Adept AI’s primary product doesn’t center around text or image generation. Instead, the startup is focused on building an assistant that can complete tasks on a computer, such as generating a report or navigating the web, and is able to use software tools. Nvidia is on board, having participated in a $350 million funding round in March 2023.
Databricks
After receiving a giant valuation of $43 billion last fall, Databricks became one of the world’s most valuable A.I. companies. The data analytics software provider unsurprisingly uses Nvidia’s GPUs and has been backed by the chipmaker alongside other investors like Andreessen Horowitz and Capital One Ventures, all of whom participated in a $500 million funding round in September 2023. “Databricks is doing incredible work with Nvidia technology to accelerate data processing and generative A.I. models,” said Huang in a statement at the time.
Cohere
A formidable opponent to OpenAI and Anthropic, the Canadian startup Cohere specializes in A.I. models for enterprises. The company’s growth over the past five years has attracted backers such as Nvidia, Salesforce and Cisco, which funded Cohere during a round held in July. Nvidia also took part in a May 2023 funding round that brought in some $270 million for the startup.
Mistral AI
Mistral AI is a French startup focusing on developing open-source A.I. models. It was founded by former Google DeepMind and Meta employees in April 2023. Nvidia has participated in two of the startup’s fundraising rounds, a $518 million round in June and a $426 million round in December 2023. The collaboration between the two companies doesn’t end there—in July, Nvidia and Mistral AI jointly released a small and accessible language model for developers.
Figure
Huang has long reiterated his belief that A.I.-powered robots able to work among humans will constitute the next wave of technology. It is, therefore, no surprise that Nvidia is a backer of Figure, a startup developing humanoid robots for use in warehouses, transportation and retail. Nvidia reportedly funneled $50 million towards the company during a February funding round that raised a total of $675 million and included participants like Bezos and Microsoft.
Scale AI
To properly train A.I. tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, tech companies need vast amounts of data. This is where A.I. startups like Scale AI, which provides troves of accurately labeled data and is headed by billionaire Alexandr Wang, come in. Nvidia participated in a $1 billion funding round for the company in May alongside Big Tech players like Amazon and Meta.
Wayve
Autonomous driving is another area of interest for A.I. leaders across the tech world. Huang himself said that “every single car, someday, will have to have autonomous capability” in a recent interview with Yahoo Finance. One of the startups at the forefront of this wave is the U.K.-based Wayve. Nvidia participated in a $1 billion funding round in the startup in May.
Inflection AI
Out of the 92 startups Nvidia has backed throughout the decades, Huang’s company has only been a lead investor in 20 rounds. One of these occurred in June 2023, when Nvidia led a staggering $1.3 billion round for Inflection AI. The chipmaker co-led the round alongside Microsoft, Bill Gates and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
The A.I. startup, which was co-founded by LinkedIn (LNKD) co-founder Reid Hoffman and Google DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman and most recently valued at $4 billion, produces a chatbot known as Pi. Much of the round’s funding went towards bolstering Inflection A.I.’s computing cluster of 22,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
With more than 1 billion users in 200 countries worldwide, LinkedIn is currently the largest professional networking platform. So, whether for professional networking or job search purposes, it’s more important than ever to customize and optimize your LinkedIn profile. Similar to advertising, visitors to your profile page will likely spend just a few precious seconds to form an opinion, so it’s imperative that everything is clear, concise and on-message. Fortunately, LinkedIn has a robust feature set that enables a lot of customization. Unfortunately, many on the platform overlook key parts of their profile, in some cases not including them at all and often not optimizing what’s there.
As you craft your LinkedIn profile, the fundamental objective to keep in mind is that you want to clearly articulate four things in a concise and quick-to-digest manner: who you are, what you are doing professionally, what you have done and what you are looking for — especially for those who are job hunting. You should remove anything that does not contribute to any of these points.
Below are six key considerations and configurations in terms of optimizing your LinkedIn profile:
1. Your profile image
When you see a person’s profile on LinkedIn, at the very top is a background cover image. It’s shocking how often that critical piece of real estate is left blank. It’s easy to customize, so be sure to upload a cover. Anything is better than nothing, but I strongly encourage you to make the most of that space; don’t simply put a solid image or pattern there. Take advantage of that key spot by selecting an image that provides some sense of understanding and, ideally, even validation for you (check out mine, for example, showing an interview taking place) or, at the very least, conveys some kind of feeling about something important to you.
2. Get a verified checkmark
Below the cover photo, you want a verification check next to your name. This is a free service from LinkedIn and ensures potential employers and partners (as well as recruiters for those job hunting) that you are who you say you are. Fraudulent profiles are frequently created, so this verification gives your visitors additional confidence that your profile is legitimate. If you don’t currently have your profile verified, find a way to verify if possible (or the next time you can, do it; it’s important for the future, even if you cannot have it now). Understandably, you may have privacy concerns, and those same privacy concerns are, in reality, relevant to everything you do online via your desktop and mobile phone. Just keep in mind this is a vital verification for your career.
3. Craft your headline
Almost everyone on the platform has a headline entered. Many of them badly need improvement. This is a small amount of space to communicate some highly critical information. Avoid any extra words that don’t contribute to your definition. Avoid using lots of symbols. Avoid using broad, general language. Be concise, be specific and use this spot to clearly convey what you are, do, and/or want.
4. Showcase your work on your “personal billboard”
LinkedIn has a featured section you can add, yet many people don’t use it at all. Featured items can include posts, newsletters, articles, links, media or spotlighted content from your profile. You also can sort the list, which is essential as visitors will typically only see the first two to four of your featured items (depending on the viewing platform) without scrolling.
5. List your skills — and endorse your colleagues’ skills
LinkedIn allows you to list your top skills, and others can endorse you for those individual skills. Often, people have 50-plus skills associated with their profile and endorsements on some number of them. Are you aware that visitors to your profile page only see the top two in the list (unless they click to see more, which most don’t)? And, did you know that you have the ability to sort the list? Be sure to sort your skills so that the top two reflect the most important things a business partner or potential employer would want to see.
Of vital importance is your experiences section, where you list out each of the companies you have worked for. The first mistake people make is using the description to describe the company. Think of this page as your CV; this space is where you should describe your role at the company. A line or two about the company is fine, of course, but consider also using bullets to highlight critical functions and accomplishments you’ve made while working there. This is especially important for your most recent experience or last couple if the most recent is a short duration. Often overlooked is that you can associate skills with each experience definition. You can also add media, such as press releases, white papers, interviews or other media related to your involvement with that company.
Incidentally, if you happen to subscribe to LinkedIn Sales Navigator, there is a tool available on the platform called the “Social Selling Index,” which measures your social selling efforts. This tool assesses your overall brand, relationships, people and insights. The brand portion of your index relates to your profile.
Some say LinkedIn is the CV replacement. I wouldn’t necessarily go that far, but it is unquestionably a vital professional tool for networking and worthwhile your time to configure and optimize. In some cases, it literally is used in place of a resume. In some cases, you’ll never make it to even being asked for your resume unless your LinkedIn page tells the right story up front. I encourage you to explore every section, try every configuration, arrange each arrangeable list to highlight what’s most important and be thoughtful with the images you use.
FAIRHOPE, AL—Exploiting the popular online game platform for his own perverse ends, local Roblox user Rodney McKinney, 68, was accused of grooming 56-year-old Roblox user Walter Rhodes, sources confirmed Wednesday. “For the past several months, Mr. McKinney, a 68-year-old Roblox user, used the game as a means to foster an inappropriate relationship with an impressionable young 56-year-old that was sexual in nature,” said officer Mike Cavazos, noting several obscene messages in which the baby boomer offered the much younger Gen X user Robux in exchange for lewd images of Rhodes’ flabby, mature body. “It was clear from their correspondence that Mr. McKinney knew the victim was 56, as he stated in chats that he was ‘old enough to be [Rhodes’] supervising manager.’ And though he claimed that messages inviting the victim to move off Roblox to a more private LinkedIn chat were innocent, we believe otherwise.” At press time, authorities claimed McKinney attempted to conceal his indiscretions by warning Rhodes not to “tell your mom, if she’s still alive.”
Update, 7:50 p.m. ET: AT&T says the issue has now been fixed, telling Gizmodo over email, “We collaborated with the other carrier to find a solution and appreciate our customers patience during this period.” The original article remains below.
Google’s Antitrust Case Is the Best Thing That Ever Happened to AI
AT&T customers across the U.S. are reporting major network issues on Tuesday that’s stopping them from making calls to people with other network carriers. DownDetector appears to show reports from customers at T-Mobile and Verizon as well, though both carriers tell Gizmodo they’re not experiencing outages and those reports are from people simply trying to reach AT&T users.
“There is a nationwide issue that is affecting the ability of customers to complete calls between carriers,” an AT&T spokesperson told Gizmodo. “The carriers are working as quickly as possible to diagnose and resolve the issue.”
The company told ABC News that calls to 911 are not impacted and should be working normally.
AT&T suffered a widespread outage across the country back in February that hampered not only voice calls but any connectivity on the network nationwide. Initial suspicions online saw users speculate it may have been the result of a cyberattack, a rumor that AT&T denied.
AT&T eventually apologized for the outage and offered customers a $5 credit. Some customers complained, but AT&T defended the rebate by saying it was roughly the “average cost of a full day of service.”
Other tech companies have experienced major outages recently, with ChatGPT down for thousands of users Tuesday morning. The first ChatGPT outage appears to have started around 3:00 a.m. ET and a second outage hitting around 10:30 am ET. Things appear to be back up and normal with the AI chatbot service as of Tuesday evening.
Hundreds of thousands of Facebook and Instagram users experienced a serious outage earlier this year and LinkedIn saw the same thing back in March. It seems a number of companies are just struggling to keep their sites up for a host of different reasons.
