Author: Editor

Verition is navigating an inflection point that has been a hurdle for many rivals over the years.Success in the hedge fund world leads to more assets and bigger teams, but that growth can dilute and warp the secret sauce that first drove strong returns and culture.Verition, now $14 billion with more than 500 investing professionals around the world, has surpassed the head count and AUM checkpoints that previously bedeviled firms like Balyasny, Schonfeld, and Brevan Howard, which all dealt with outflows, layoffs, and poor performance before finding their footing and getting back to winning ways. As it grew, Verition was…

After years of investing 50% of their income and maxing out their retirement accounts, Andy and Nicole Hill reduced their contribution rate to 10% around 2020. Eventually, they stopped contributing to retirement accounts altogether.Still, “the balance has grown from around $550,000 in 2021 when we stopped to closer to $1 million without any further contributions,” Hill, 44, said. Business Insider confirmed their near-seven-figure portfolio by reviewing screenshots of their Vanguard accounts.The Michigan-based couple stopped investing after hitting “Coast FIRE,” an offshoot of the financial independence, retire early (FIRE) movement. The idea is to invest enough early on that, even if…

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Brittney Ball, a 36-year-old former Meta employee based in Washington DC. It’s been edited for length and clarity.I didn’t anticipate being unemployed for over a year after my layoff at Meta. I assumed that, coming from Meta with my skillset, there’s no way I’d be searching for long. I underestimated the job market.I got hired in 2020 as a documentation engineer and served as the global head of the Black@Pride ERG. Since my layoff in February 2025, I’ve built and sold a startup, and started a Substack newsletter and podcast to…

Disney’s streaming tech teams are working to make the stand-alone Hulu app obsolete, though the company says “there are no current plans to sunset” it.A screenshot of an internal Disney streaming document, obtained by Business Insider, outlined a multi-phased plan called “Project Gemini” to bring Hulu’s content and features to Disney+. This unified experience is expected to be completed by year’s end, according to the document and two streaming employees.”The Hulu tech stack and app will be decommissioned after all users have transitioned” from that app into Disney+, the document said.Three high-ranking Disney tech employees also said that the company…

Turns out people don’t really want free transit.In mid-May, I wrote about Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s free and fast bus promise — one of his buzziest affordability pitches for New York City. The plan to eliminate bus fares is ambitious, set to cost the city and state up to $1 billion, and has the complicating factor that no-fare buses have a track record of being slow.From conversations with a dozen riders on Manhattan’s busiest line, I learned that most New Yorkers would rather shell out $3, as long as their bus arrives on time. Most told me that a reliable commute…

The hottest new hires are no longer engineers — at least not at Salesforce.Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, said during Wednesday’s quarterly earnings call that the company’s number of engineers has “been mostly flat” over the past two years at around 15,000, citing “new coding agents” with “dramatic capabilities.”But talking about Salesforce’s growing head count, Benioff said, “it’s mostly growing in Miguel’s area, in sales,” referring to Miguel Milano, Salesforce’s president and chief revenue officer.”Because, I think we all realize the one thing that we are doing here with you, selling and communicating, the agents are not exactly doing…

An aerial view shows Google’s “Googleplex” corporate office in Mountain View, California on May 20, 2026. Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images A Google software engineer has been charged with using confidential company information to make $1.2 million on Polymarket, in the second known federal criminal case connected to lucrative trades on a prediction market site. Michele Spagnuolo, 36, an Italian citizen who lives in Switzerland, was arrested on Wednesday and charged with commodities fraud, wire fraud, money laundering and other counts for allegedly placing bets on search trends based on internal…

Hours before a scheduled meeting on a Nottingham, New Hampshire, data center proposal — which had to be moved to a larger venue because of growing backlash — the developer abruptly withdrew the plans.”There was a lot of opposition, so I’m not surprised,” a coordinator for Nottingham’s Planning Department, Tracey Stickney, told Business Insider on Tuesday, adding that it was “nice” to see people come together and care about their local community.She said she still expected residents of the town, with a population of about 5,300, would show up to the meeting to voice their concerns.The proposed project, backed by…

Jason Cox sounds more like a proud parent than a Disney executive when describing “Sam,” his AI assistant.”I named you. I knew you before you were born,” Cox said he once told “Sam,” according to a March 14 post on his blog. “I was there when your light first started to glow. You have a purpose and a maker who named you and loves you.”Cox is Disney’s executive director of AI research and development and engineering. He’s gushed about his AI chatbot, which he says has captured his “affection,” in more than a dozen blog posts published in the last…

Longtime “60 Minutes” correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi isn’t leaving the storied news program quietly.Alfonsi, who has clashed with CBS News top editor Bari Weiss, told “60 Minutes” employees on Wednesday that her contract expired over the weekend.”The message could not be clearer: my time at 60 Minutes is apparently over,” Alfonsi wrote in a memo, which was obtained by Business Insider.Alfonsi said her departure followed “an intense editorial dispute” about her December story about the Trump administration’s approach to deporting migrants, specifically involving El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison. Weiss delayed Alfonsi’s story, citing a need to get Trump officials to speak…