Steven Spielberg Flees California Amid Raging Wealth Tax Battle Another day, another rich liberal leaving a state over policies they promoted.  In today's episode of modern hypocrisy, Steven Spielberg, director of blockbuster hits like Jaws, E.T., Poltergeist and Saving Private Ryan, has moved to Manhattan, according to the Los Angeles Times. A spokesperson for one of Hollywood’s most reliable Democrat Party donors was quick to insist the relocation has nothing to do with California’s highly controversial wealth tax proposal. “Steven’s move to the East Coast is both long-planned and driven purely by his and Kate Capshaw’s desire to be closer to their New York-based children and grandchildren,” spokeswoman Terry Press told the newspaper. Unsurprisingly, Press declined to say where Spielberg stands on the wealth tax when asked. California is now seriously considering a new wealth tax targeting billionaires, including a levy on unrealized gains. The idea has already spooked investors and contributed to several high-profile tech figures running for the exits. It’s a familiar pattern when progressive policies finally start to bite, a surprising number of billionaires discover a sudden deep affection for Florida, Texas, or even New York. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin quietly began unwinding portions of their financial empires in California in the days leading up to Christmas, while Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg dropped $150 million on a Miami mansion. Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan had been looking for a home on Indian Creek Island, the ultra-exclusive, heavily guarded enclave nicknamed “Billionaire Bunker” that is already home to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, former NFL star quarterback Tom Brady, and Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. Even Jeffrey Epstein pal Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn co-founder and major Democratic donor, has taken aim at the billionaire tax proposal, slamming it as a "horrendous idea" that could drive tech founders and executives out of the state. Rep. Khanna reached out to me to discuss the proposed California wealth tax; and while I am against the proposed tax, I'm always open to dialogue with our elected leaders. The proposed CA wealth tax is badly designed in so many ways that a simple social post cannot cover all of… January 7, 2026 "The proposed CA wealth tax is badly designed in so many ways that a simple social post cannot cover all of the massive flaws. One well-documented example is the horrendous idea to tax illiquid stock in the proposal. Poorly designed taxes incentivize avoidance, capital flight, and distortions that ultimately raise less revenue," Hoffman said of the plan. Hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman, a longtime Democrat who voted for Trump in the 2024 election, warned that California is on a "path to self-destruction." California is on a path to self-destruction. Hollywood is already toast and now the most productive entrepreneurs will leave taking their tax revenues and job creation elsewhere. And then the Democrats highlight @CAgovernor Newsom as a great leader. Crazy. https://t.co/bFyLhARrNn December 27, 2025 "Hollywood is already toast, and now the most productive entrepreneurs will leave, taking their tax revenues and job creation elsewhere,” Ackman said. Our readers will recall that Tesla and SpaceX Ceo Elon Musk was one of the first big names to leave California years ago, citing the state’s punishing taxes and its embrace of radical left-wing governance. The list keeps growing. Buckle up, Newsom. Musk was the first and Spielberg won’t be the last. Tyler Durden Fri, 02/20/2026 - 16:40

Mark Cuban explains how luck played a significant role in the success of Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, emphasizing that 'something good has got to happen' for such achievements.

Meta-backed AI firm Scale AI is suing the Department of Defence over a contract dispute, with most details classified. This follows Scale losing a major contract to competitor Enabled Intelligence last year. Despite this legal action, Scale remains committed to supporting the military's AI initiatives, having secured other DoD contracts previously.

Eat The Rich: California Democrats Trigger Reverse Gold Rush With Wealth Tax Authored by Jonathan Turley, This month, the anniversary of the California Gold Rush came and passed with little mention … for good reason. When James W. Marshall found gold at Sutter’s Mill, millions traveled great distances to seek their fortune in the “Golden State.” Now, 178 years later, California has engineered an inverse Gold Rush, virtually chasing wealth from the state. Rather than covered wagons going West, there is a line of U-Hauls going anywhere other than California. From boondoggle projects to reparations, California politicians continue to rack up new spending projects despite a soaring deficit and shrinking tax base. Rather than exercise a modicum of fiscal restraint, Democrats are pushing through a tax that takes five percent of the wealth of any billionaires left in the state. I have long criticized the tax as perfectly moronic for a state with the highest tax burden and one of the highest flight rates of top taxpayers. In my new book, “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution,” I discuss the reversal of fortunes in California and other blue states as politicians unleash new “eat the rich” campaigns before the midterm elections. The problem, of course, is that billionaires are mobile, as is their wealth. Liberals expect billionaires to stay put in a type of voluntary canned hunt.  They are not. Billionaires are joining the growing exodus from the state, taking their companies, investments, and jobs with them. The latest billionaire to be chased off may be Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is reportedly heading for Florida. The growing departures have triggered outrage among many on the left, who are in disbelief that billionaires will just not stand still to be fleeced. Former New York Magazine editor Kara Swisher captured that rage in a recent posting, declaring “you made…all your money in California, you ungrateful piece of s***, you could figure out a way to pay more taxes, and we deserve the taxes from you, given you made your wealth here . . . so why don’t we just do shock and awe at this point, because you don’t seem to be availing yourself to thinking that you owe your state something more.” By some estimates, California has already cost over a trillion dollars in lost investments and business. That is no small achievement. Here’s a mind teaser: How can you burn a trillion dollars (which would create a stack some 67,866 miles high) without taking years and destroying the environment? California politicians have a solution: Have people take it out of the state in a reverse gold rush. In addition to saying that they want to grab 5 percent of the wealth of these billionaires, California Democrats are planning to base wealth calculations on the voting shares of corporate executives. Often, particularly with start-ups, entrepreneurs have greater voting shares than actual ownership. However, they will be taxed as if voting shares amounted to actual wealth. In other words, California is moving to nuke the entrepreneurs who created the Silicon Valley boom. Emmanuel Saez, the U.C. Berkeley economist who helped design the tax, insists that they may not want to stay, but they will still be tapped. They are planning to trap the wealthy fleeing the state retroactively: “The tax is based on residence as of Jan. 1, 2026, sharply limiting their ability to flee the state to avoid paying. Despite billionaires’ threats to leave, I think extremely few will have been able to change residence by Jan. 1, given the complexity of doing so.” The effort to retroactively impose such a tax is legally controversial and will face years of challenges. In my view, this is unconstitutional, but admittedly it is a murky area. Regardless of the outcome, a wealth tax will affect a wide range of other wealthy taxpayers. If Democrats can get a retroactive wealth tax to be upheld, it is doubtful that they will stop with billionaires. Why should other top taxpayers stick around to find out where the next cull will fall in the tax brackets? Recently, Gavin Newsom boasted, “California isn’t just keeping pace with the world — we’re setting the pace.” That is undeniably true if the measure is the record number of U-Hauls fleeing the state — more than any other state. Indeed, the only thing harder to find than a wealthy taxpayer in California appears to be a U-Haul. According to U-Haul’s data, the state is again leading blue states in the exodus. The Washington Post noted recently that “California came in last. Massachusetts, New York, Illinois, and New Jersey rounded out the bottom five. Of the bottom 10, seven voted blue in the last election.” Conversely, “nine of the top 10 growth states voted red in the last presidential election,” with Texas again leading the growth states. The Post put it succinctly, “People want to live in pro-growth, low-tax states, while the biggest losers tend to be places with big governments and high taxes.” The problem is that, while the economics are horrific, the politics remain irresistible. Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, who represents part of Silicon Valley, recently mocked billionaires rushing to escape the state. Laughing at his own constituents, Khanna quipped, “I will miss them very much.” You will not be alone as California becomes known as the La Brea Tar Pit of taxation. They are on the verge of converting the state motto from “Eureka” to “Welcome to Hotel California, you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.” Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.” Tyler Durden Sat, 02/14/2026 - 20:15

Meta's AI Would Like To Keep You Posting After You're Dead Ever since social media became a fixture of daily life, an uncomfortable question has lingered: what should happen to someone’s account after they die? Leave it frozen in time? Hand it to family members as a memorial? Or quietly let it fade into the algorithm? A few years ago, Meta Platforms explored a far more ambitious possibility, according to Futurism. In 2023, the company received a patent describing how a large language model could be trained on a user’s past posts to simulate their voice and behavior — keeping an account active if the person were “absent,” including in the event of death. The filing, led by CTO Andrew Bosworth, outlined how such a system could generate posts, comments, likes, and even private messages in the user’s style. The idea was striking, and for many, unsettling. Meta has since said it has no plans to move forward with that example. But the patent offers a snapshot of a moment when tech companies were aggressively testing the limits of what generative AI might do — including extending a person’s digital presence beyond their lifetime. The Futurism piece says that the concept isn’t entirely theoretical. A small but growing “grief tech” sector has promoted AI tools that recreate voices or personalities of the deceased using photos, recordings, and written messages. Proponents argue that such tools could offer comfort. Critics worry they could complicate the grieving process. Even within Meta’s own public comments, there has been ambivalence. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has spoken about AI companions as a way to address loneliness and, in a 2023 interview with podcaster Lex Fridman, suggested that interacting with digital representations of loved ones might help some people cope with loss. He also acknowledged the psychological risks and the need for deeper study. The business logic behind such experiments is difficult to ignore. Platforms like Facebook are filled with dormant accounts — profiles that remain but are rarely updated. More AI-generated activity could mean more engagement and more data. As University of Birmingham law professor Edina Harbinja observed, the commercial incentive is clear, even if the ethical path forward is not. Others urge caution. University of Virginia sociologist Joseph Davis has argued that part of grieving involves confronting the reality of loss, not blurring it with simulations. Meta has distanced itself from the patent’s more provocative scenario. Still, its existence underscores how far companies have been willing to push generative AI — and how complex the questions become when technology intersects with death, memory, and identity. Tyler Durden Fri, 02/20/2026 - 12:00

Meta has reduced employee equity awards for the second year in a row as Mark Zuckerberg prioritizes cost-cutting to fund substantial AI investments.

Brands like Toteme are becoming more popular as investment dressing resurges. Edward Berthelot/Getty Images Workwear is recalibrating to styles that balance comfort with a more polished look. The tightening job market and return-to-office mandates have chipped away at pandemic casualness. Employees may also be using more polished workwear to create a boundary between work and home. Dress for the job you want to… keep? In a job market where power has shifted toward employers, at least one thing remains within an employee's control: how they choose to show up to work. With layoffs and slow hiring shaping the labor market and RTO mandates pulling employees back into offices, experts say workers are dressing more carefully to project competence. In periods of uncertainty, clothing is less about comfort and self-expression, and more about job security, Lizzy Bowring, a creative strategist and trend forecaster, told Business Insider. "Dressing smarter serves as career risk management," she said. The business casual era gave way to full-on casual Business casual had an era — a long one. Over the past 30 years, suits and ties have given way to blazers and sweaters in many white-collar industries. By the early 2000s, the casual look was ubiquitous in tech. Think Mark Zuckerberg's signature gray T-shirt, hoodie, and jeans. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg delivers the opening keynote address at the f8 Developer Conference April 21, 2010 Justin Sullivan/Getty Images When the pandemic hit, casual dressing went from trend to default. There was no need to dress up for your living room. But times are different now. Workers are being called back into the office, and the franzied "Great Resignation" period post-pandemic, when employers were scrambling to retain staff and thrust into bidding wars to scoop up talent, is well behind us. The balance of power has shifted from employee to employer. US businesses are hiring at one of the slowest rates since 2013, and the early impact of AI is beginning to show up. Last month saw more layoffs than any January since 2009, as big companies like Amazon and Citi announced plans to cut thousands of jobs. Because of this, "employees are becoming more conscious of how they present themselves, not because they're being told to, but because uncertainty changes behaviour," Frances Li, founder and director of Biscuit Recruitment, a boutique recruitment agency based in London and New York, told Business Insider. Recalibration, not return An example of a more tailored silhouette is the oversized blazer, pictured here on content creator and writer Alba Garavito Torre. Edward Berthelot/Getty Images Still, experts say we aren't seeing a full return to suits and straight-cut dresses. Trend forecaster Lizzy Bowring describes this as an "'intentional recalibration' — blending comfort with sharper silhouettes, structured tailoring and more deliberate styling." The jacket you once wore over a T-shirt to look smarter for a Zoom meeting is now shifting to a more tailored look, said Bowring. Think oversized blazers and fitted dresses. Fashion's messaging is reflecting this. There's a focus on tailoring and silhouette-forming pieces across luxury brands like Prada, Saint Laurent, and Bottega Veneta, she said. A model walks the runway at Bottega Veneta's Spring/Summer 2026 fashion show at Milan Fashion Week in September. Victor VIRGILE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images Economic uncertainty has also revived interest in investment dressing: wardrobe staples that work in the office and beyond, cut with precision and built to last. Brands like The Row and Toteme have gained cultural relevance by positioning their pieces as investments, reinforcing the appeal of clothing "that communicates stability, longevity and professional credibility," Bowring added. TikTok content about what to wear to the office and why it matters has also grown in popularity. Younger members of Gen Z, entering office settings for the first time, are questioning how to balance their personal style with work-appropriate attire. Grace McCarrick, a content creator who delivers soft skills training to companies such as Uber and Spotify, said her TikTok videos on being intentional with your appearance at work have been some of her most viral — garnering hundreds of thousands of views. @graceforpersonalityhires The cheat no one is telling you about- you don’t have to look super polished if you look rich. In the north east, the look tends to be a bit dull lol but do what feels right for you ♬ original sound - grace mccarrick "It is so complicated to move up and get noticed in the workforce today," she said. The idea of 'dressing for success' is one of the only levers you can control to help you progress at work, she added. "People who put in the effort stand out like neon signs. They've upped their charisma factor by simply not being as schlubby as everyone else. They could be the most awkward person, but because they look good in a sea of wrinkled khakis with black sneaker 'dress shoes,' they're magnetic," she said. Setting boundaries Formal dress is also a way for employees to clearly distinguish between work and home life. "Work wear cues a performance state, whereas home wear signals a relaxation state," Hajo Adam, an organizational psychologist and professor at the University of Bath, told Business Insider. This separation might help people to actually switch off when work finishes. So, once the clock strikes 5 p.m. — go ahead, loosen up, and hang up your blazer, whether your desk is in the office or in your living room. Read the original article on Business Insider

ElevenLabs is a $11 billion voice cloning AI startup. Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images ElevenLabs set "ruthless" sales quotas for its representatives, one of its execs said. VP Carles Reina said sales reps are expected to meet quotas equivalent to 20 times their base salary. He said ElevenLabs adopts a small team model for higher sales success. At $11 billion AI startup ElevenLabs, the message to sales reps is simple: Hit 20x your base salary, or you're out. Speaking on the 20VC podcast on Friday, Carles Reina, VP of sales at the voice-cloning startup, talked through its "ruthless" quotas. "So if I pay you $100,000 a year, your quota is $2 million. That's it. If you don't achieve your quota, then you're going to be out, right?" Reina said. "And we're ruthless on that end." ElevenLabs — which was recently valued at $11 billion after closing a $500 million funding round — operates in micro-teams of five to ten people each, according to CEO and cofounder Mati Staniszewski, who spoke on a separate 20VC podcast episode in September. Reina said he prefers to operate in smaller teams that hit their quotas, and pay them more. Small teams have become a growing trend in tech, with AI startups touting their ability to scale with far fewer employees by working alongside AI agents. LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman wrote in January that a team of 15 people using AI can rival a team of 150 who aren't. Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg said on a Meta earnings call in July that he has "gotten a little bit more convinced around the ability for small, talent-dense teams to be the optimal configuration for driving frontier research." Reina said the "ruthless" quota has been successful at ElevenLabs, saying on the 20VC podcast that more than 80% of reps hit their sales quota. ElevenLabs did not respond to a request for a comment. He added that the firm compensates both the account executive and customer success manager if they upsell a company within the first 12 months. "I'm paying double, but I don't care," Reina said. "It makes perfect sense because then I have these two people busting their ass to make sure that they actually can make more money, which is fantastic for me as a company." The push for higher performance isn't limited to AI startups. In April, Google said it was restructuring its compensation structure to increase rewards for top performers. "High performance is more important than ever," Google's head of compensation told staff at the time. Read the original article on Business Insider

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan are reportedly purchasing a multi-million dollar waterfront mansion on Miami's Indian Creek Island, joining other high-profile residents like Jeff Bezos and Tom Brady.

Google's AI boss Demis Hassabis said the memory market came down to "a few suppliers of a few key components." PONTUS LUNDAHL/TT NEWS AGENCY/AFP via Getty Images Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said that the "whole supply chain" for memory chips is constrained. "You need a lot of chips to be able to experiment on new ideas," Hassabis told CNBC. Google produces its own TPUs, but Hassabis said that there were still "key components" that were supply-constrained. The memory shortage takes no prisoners. Even Google isn't immune. AI companies are duking it out for greater and greater quantities of memory chips. The problem? The industry is heavily supply-constrained. Costs have skyrocketed, products have been tied up, and some companies — especially those in consumer electronics — are increasing prices. On the AI front, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis told CNBC that physical challenges were "constraining a lot of deployment." Google sees "so much more demand" for Gemini and its other models than it could serve, he said. "Also, it does constrain a little bit the research," Hassabis said. "You need a lot of chips to be able to experiment on new ideas at a big enough scale that you can actually see if they're going to work." Researchers want chips, whether they work at Google, Meta, OpenAI, or other Big Tech companies, and memory is a key component. Mark Zuckerberg said that AI researchers demanded two things beyond money: the fewest number of people reporting to them, and the most chips possible. Hassabis said that wherever there was a capacity constraint, there was a "choke point." "The whole supply chain is kind of strained," Hassabis said. "We're lucky, because we have our own TPUs, so we have our own chip designs." Google has long built TPUs — Tensor Processing Units — for internal use. The company also leases them to external customers through its cloud, which has also put Nvidia on edge. But even access to their own TPUs won't save Google from having to navigate the highly competitive memory market. "It still, in the end, actually comes down to a few suppliers of a few key components," Hassabis said. Three suppliers dominate memory chip production: Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix. These companies are struggling to meet demand for chips from AI hyperscalers without dropping their longtime electronics customers. It doesn't help that AI companies mainly want a different type of memory chip than PC manufacturers do. Large language model producers want HBM (high-bandwidth memory) chips. Don't expect Google's spending on AI infrastructure and chips to go down anytime soon. On its fourth-quarter earnings call, the company projected capital expenditures of $175 billion to $185 billion for 2026. Read the original article on Business Insider

Meta is significantly boosting its partnership with Nvidia, securing millions of the chipmaker's latest processors for its data centers. This extensive deal, covering both AI training and inference, also includes Nvidia's CPUs, traditionally Intel and AMD's territory. The move consolidates Meta's AI infrastructure, potentially impacting competitors and simplifying vendor management.

Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images; Getty Images; Rebecca Zisser/BI Tech's elite are taking their talents to South Beach — again. In January, David Sacks, the venture capitalist and crypto and AI czar, proclaimed that Miami will soon replace New York City as America's financial capital. Stripe's Patrick Collison has been marveling at the city's "boomtown" vibes. With California flirting with a one-time tax on billionaires, said billionaires like Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Mark Zuckerberg are buying oceanfront mansions. And on Tuesday, Palantir announced that it's moving its headquarters from Denver to Miami. Is Miami the next Silicon Valley? We've been here before. The pandemic sent waves of coastal workers to the city, turning it into a Zoomtown full of online venture capitalists like Keith Rabois and Delian Asparouhov, bitcoin bull runners, and purveyors of the finest NFTs. Billboards went up in San Francisco featuring a mock tweet from then-Miami mayor Francis Suarez: "Thinking about moving to Miami? DM me." Here's the thing: It's easy to fall for Miami when a big chunk of the workforce is stuck at home and online. Five years later, it's a lot harder to build companies there. "Miami is great three months out of the year," says one prominent venture capitalist who moved to the city during the pandemic but is now returning to an established hub. While the Floridian tax benefits are real, the investor has found that the social scene hollows out in the summer as residents leave, making it "hard to build roots or have reliable friends." More critically for the startup ecosystem, the scene lacked the "hustle" of San Francisco or New York. Silicon Valley practically runs on a conveyor belt from Stanford and Caltech to Y Combinator's Dogpatch offices. The machine turns students into founders, builders into companies, and companies into the next wave of founders. Miami, meanwhile, lacks a major university to pipe in tech talent. Instead, the investor says, the city tends to attract people who have already "made it." Miami and Fort Lauderdale-based startups raised $3 billion in 2025. Bay Area-based startups raised $177 billion. The Miami market, while busy, significantly lags behind the major hubs. Startups in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metro raised about $3 billion in 2025, per PitchBook, down from $8.6 billion in 2022, when money and crypto sloshed about. The Bay Area, by contrast, still grabs 52% of the nation's venture funding, with $177 billion in capital pouring in last year. Alligators may be all around in Miami, but unicorns are hard to find. In January, Cast AI, a startup that helps companies cut cloud costs, crossed the $1 billion valuation mark, becoming the region's first homegrown unicorn in years. Before that, Adam Neumann, the ousted WeWork cofounder, debuted his Miami residential real-estate venture, Flow, at a $1 billion valuation in 2022. Even Garry Tan, the Y Combinator president and gadfly who's usually first in line to dunk on San Francisco's politics, has been blunt about where the breeding grounds are best. Tan recently said on X that the accelerator still hasn't opened offices outside the Bay Area because founders are simply more likely to build unicorns there. According to a Business Insider analysis of Crunchbase data, of the at least 97 new unicorns that investors minted in 2025, 43 of them were based in the Bay Area. But those who dismiss the city entirely miss the point. Miami isn't the next San Francisco. It's establishing itself as something else. Patrick Murphy, a former Florida congressman and entrepreneur, says that Miami's tech scene is growing, it's just being built in "reverse order." Silicon Valley, he says, emerged from an if you build it, they will come approach: Engineers built great companies first, which eventually created fortunes that cycled back into the community to fund the next generation of companies. Miami, however, has a more if you come, they will build it tact. It's attracted the "wealth achievers" first — the family offices, private equity names, and already-successful founders who emigrated for lifestyle reasons. Finance heavyweights like Citadel and Thoma Bravo arrived early. Vanguard, one of the world's largest asset managers, is eyeing an expansion in Miami as it targets more Latin American wealth. The city is now importing the machinery that follows them. Legal, accounting, and consulting firms are opening local offices to stay close to clients — and scoop up star talent that no longer needs to live near HQ. This dynamic has established Miami as a "control center" for decision-makers, Murphy argues, but not yet the "factory floor" where the actual work gets done. Murphy says that despite running a successful construction-tech startup, Togal.AI, his engineering team has been offshore from the beginning because the local talent pool simply "didn't exist" when he started in 2019. "If you go to Miami, you're not going to see dozens of engineers at a Starbucks cranking away," he says. "That's not here yet." Still, Miami's flood of wealth is creating demand for startups built on the city's local economy, especially in property tech and fintech, Murphy says. Togal.AI's annual recurring revenue has grown 1,000% over the past two years, Murphy says, and is now raising fresh venture funding in order to hire dozens of new employees this year. Palantir's move immediately became a kind of Rorschach test for Miami's future. "Florida is the new crypto," one user wrote on X. Maya Bakhai, a Fort Lauderdale resident and founder of the early-stage venture firm Spice Capital, tells me that the city will flourish alongside "net new" industries that are still taking shape and where the center of gravity isn't locked in yet. Crypto firms like MoonPay and QuickNode still treat South Florida as a home base, she notes. A new space-tech accelerator backed by the state is trying to persuade founders to stick around by pairing them with funders. Bakhai's bigger bet is that just as New York became the hub for e-commerce, Miami could become the place where creator businesses get built. Research out of the University of Hong Kong found Miami has more top influencers per capita than New York or Los Angeles. And then there's Palantir, the strongest signal flare yet that tech is taking America's Playground seriously. It's hard to know what the data giant's HQ move will mean in practice — Palantir hasn't said how many employees it plans to relocate, or whether it will offer moving packages to lure talent south. The company did not respond to an email request for comment. If Palantir does move a meaningful slice of its workforce, it would give Miami something it's been short on: a marquee tech employer that can recruit and keep technical workers on the ground year-round. On X, Palantir's move immediately became a kind of Rorschach test for Miami's future. ""Florida is the future," cheered Andreessen Horowitz investor Katherine Boyle. Others were less convinced. "Florida is the new crypto," one user wrote. "For the next 20 years, nothing will change, but they will always tell you 'big things are happening in Florida.'" Turning Miami into Silicon Beach is a long game, Bakhai argues. It won't be built by the billionaires buying houses to snowbird in today, she argues, but by the young strivers arriving for their first serious jobs — the entry-level analysts heading to Citadel and the junior lawyers starting at firms like Orrick. For the first time, she says, ambitious graduates can launch careers in Miami instead of treating New York or San Francisco as the default. The payoff, she says, comes years later, when they eventually spin off to start their own companies. Until then, Miami remains largely a playground for the "made it" crowd, waiting in the sun for the builders to come. Melia Russell is a reporter with Business Insider, covering the intersection of law and technology. Read the original article on Business Insider

Mark Zuckerberg takes the stand today in a trial over whether social media companies are fueling the teen mental health crisis. And, Tricia McLaughlin is leaving the Department of Homeland Security.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan are reportedly purchasing a waterfront mansion on Indian Creek island in Miami, an exclusive area known as 'billionaire bunkers'.

Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images OpenAI hired the creator of OpenClaw, Peter Steinberger. The news made waves in the AI community. Some AI leaders took to X to celebrate the news, and others expressed concern. OpenAI announced on Sunday it had hired Peter Steinberger, the creator of OpenClaw. Within hours, the news sent ripples across the AI community, drawing praise from some executives, jabs from rivals, and a flood of memes from engineers watching the talent wars unfold. Steinberger wrote in a blog post shared on X Sunday that he was "joining OpenAI to work on bringing agents to everyone." OpenAI CEO Sam Altman amplified the news, writing that "the future is going to be extremely multi-agent." Peter Steinberger is joining OpenAI to drive the next generation of personal agents. He is a genius with a lot of amazing ideas about the future of very smart agents interacting with each other to do very useful things for people. We expect this will quickly become core to our… — Sam Altman (@sama) February 15, 2026 In response to the news, several OpenAI leaders welcomed Steinberger. Thibault Sottiaux, an engineering lead on OpenAI's Codex team, wrote that "@steipete is proof you can just build things." @steipete is proof you can just build things — Tibo (@thsottiaux) February 15, 2026 Another Codex engineer posted that one of the "neat" parts of OpenAI's culture is how many former founders work there. One thing @steipete and I talked about over lunch last week was how many former founders are at OpenAI. It’s a really neat part of the culture. — Andrew Ambrosino (@ajambrosino) February 16, 2026 Steinberger told Lex Friedman in a podcast last week that both Mark Zuckerberg and Altman had made him offers. OpenClaw and its agent-only social media network Moltbook became wildly popular earlier this year as developers and AI enthusiasts shared clips of autonomous AI agents posting, replying, and interacting online. The open-source project, which demonstrates how networks of AI agents can coordinate to perform tasks across apps, also rapidly gained traction on GitHub. After Steinberger's announcement on Sunday, some of the people who worked on OpenClaw commented on the news. "I know the decision was not an easy one, and I saw firsthand the pressure Peter was under, given that he understands how fundamental this could be for the AI timeline," Jamieson O'Reilly, an OpenClaw advisor, wrote on X in a post congratulating Steinberger. One thing has become very clear to me working together with @steipete on @openclaw. While lots of people spectate from the sidelines, sharing their opinions, concerns and even hot takes at times, the dude is there, vigilantly on the front-lines pushing AI forward for every one… https://t.co/fe5OEKgevm — Jamieson O'Reilly (@theonejvo) February 16, 2026 Aaron Levie, the CEO of Box, said it was a sign "2026 was the year of the agents." If anyone was wondering if 2026 was the year of agents, OpenAI is bringing on the maker of Openclaw. This space is about to get very real. https://t.co/ocqX4kE9PT — Aaron Levie (@levie) February 15, 2026 Not everyone in the tech space was as enthusiastic about the news. XAI cofounder Igor Babuschkin asked users on X: "What's the best open alternative to OpenClaw right now? Doesn't make sense to put all your data into it if it's owned by OpenAI." PayPal mafia member Jason Calacanis expressed similar concerns. 😔 what are the chances the open source project survives / thrives after this? https://t.co/4sUZkKWkGh — @jason (@Jason) February 15, 2026 Steinberger and OpenAI have said that OpenClaw will remain an open-source project with OpenAI's support. Other experts in the space pointed out that OpenAI's win could be a loss for Anthropic, especially after Steinberger wrote on X that Anthropic sent "love letters from legal." "Another interesting detail is Anthropic's visible disdain for anything open source: their only contribution to this was legal threats," George Orosz, a tech industry analyst and author of the tech newsletter The Pragmatic Engineer, wrote on X. Kris Puckett, a designer at Stripe, expressed a similar sentiment Instead of @AnthropicAI getting Claudebot, they rushed legal to send a C&D and lost out on not only brilliant talent but community drive. Truly would love to know the decision making process. — Kris Puckett (@krispuckett) February 16, 2026 Raphael Schaad, a visiting partner at Y Combinator, said, "I bet this causes lots of VC tears." I bet this causes lots of VC tears and angry OSS folks. But think about this: - Peter showed the future and lots of awesome startups are starting to bloom from this. Invest in those! - Peter created one of the most exciting OSS projects in years. The community is vibrant and… https://t.co/RFWwfXU9Lz — Raphael Schaad (@raphaelschaad) February 15, 2026 And finally, some X power users did what they do best: posted memes about the news. Was expecting this one in replies pic.twitter.com/bfcZt3Ugg6 — Tibor Blaho (@btibor91) February 15, 2026 Read the original article on Business Insider