February 2025

Amazon is retiring Chime, the company’s internal meeting software for video and audio calls, and replacing it with Zoom, an external solution with the same capabilities.

An internal memo to employees viewed by Business Insider on Wednesday said that Zoom would now be the “standard meeting application” for internal Amazon meetings companywide, marking a major win for industry juggernaut Zoom, which reported more revenue than expected in the third quarter of 2024 ($1.18 billion compared to $1.16 billion expected).

The memo also revealed that Amazon has begun rolling out Microsoft 365 productivity tools to employees.

Related: ‘2,000 People, 900 Parking Spaces’: Amazon’s Return-to-Office Mandate Has Hit a Snag

An Amazon spokesperson told BI in an email that the company retiring Chime because it offered “limited” use outside of Amazon, and Zoom was “a good fit” for their employees.

Amazon Chime has been Amazon’s default videoconferencing app since the company introduced it in 2017, publicizing its clear audio and high-definition video. Amazon clients, including recruiting software Jobvite and software consulting firm Kinetech, also used Chime to conduct virtual meetings.

Amazon announced earlier this week that it would stop accepting new Chime customers on Wednesday and end support for the service on February 20, 2026.

The change from Chime to Zoom affects the 350,000 employees Amazon had in its corporate workforce as of early 2023. Amazon employed 1.55 million people overall, including warehouse and operations workers, as of Sept. 30.

Amazon corporate employees are also migrating to Microsoft 365 cloud tools like Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint on a “rolling basis,” per the memo. They can use Microsoft Teams for meetings, but Zoom will be the default.

Chime isn’t the only product Amazon has shut down this week. On Tuesday the company ended Inspire, the TikTok duplicate it showcased in its mobile app that allowed users to find new products on Amazon endorsed by influencers and brands.

Related: ‘Most Successful Yet for Amazon’: Walmart Has Topped the S&P 500 for 12 Years. This Month, Another E-Commerce Giant Is Expected to Take Its Crown.

As companies like Amazon, JPMorgan, and Walmart implement return-to-office (RTO) mandates, one business is sweetening the deal by giving its employees a $10,000 annual raise for showing up to the office more often.

Cameo, a startup that allows users to purchase and receive personalized video messages from celebrities, began a new RTO policy this week requiring the 26 employees who work at the company’s headquarters in Chicago to be in the office Monday through Thursday, per CNBC Make It. The policy, which the company first announced to staff last month, enables employees to receive a $10,000 yearly raise in addition to free parking, a free daily catered lunch, and free access to an onsite gym.

“We really felt like we wanted to make HQ a perk, not a punishment,” Cameo CEO Steven Galanis told CNBC Make It. “We know we’re asking more out of you to give up the flexibility, and we wanted to compensate you for it.”

Related: AT&T and Sweetgreen Are Following Amazon’s Lead With Stricter Return-to-Office Mandates — Though Amazon’s Plan Has Hit a Snag

Cameo has two dozen additional employees based elsewhere in the U.S. and abroad, mainly in New York and Los Angeles. They were allowed to keep working remotely but weren’t given a pay raise.

Galanis, 37, chose to set the annual raise at $10,000 because the figure would make a “meaningful” difference in employees’ lives and hoped it would help junior employees find housing nearby instead of taking on long commutes.

The Chicago headquarters opened in the summer of 2024, but Cameo leadership never mandated a strict set of days employees had to report to the office. Workers based in Chicago previously came to the office whenever they needed to, showing up an average of two to three times per week, according to Galanis.

^{Cameo CEO Steven Galanis. Jose M. Osorio/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images}

When Cameo informed its Chicago employees of the four-days-a-week in-office policy last month, it also gave them the option to move out of Chicago to not have to come into the office at all.

Cameo found that none of its employees quit or moved away after the announcement. Instead, the opposite happened. Some of Cameo’s remote workers based in other locations expressed interest in moving to Chicago and taking advantage of the perks offered to in-office employees.

A HealthEquity study released earlier this month surveyed more than 600 full-time employees who shifted from fully remote to hybrid or fully in-person work. Three out of four employees said their RTO experiences were positive, with 74% saying they experienced enhanced collaboration.

The top motivators for office attendance weren’t free lunches or a raise, it was professional development opportunities (50%) and team-building events (47%). The biggest obstacle to in-person work identified by the survey was commuting costs (54%).

Related: Read the Letter Sent to AWS CEO Matt Garman, Signed By 500 Employees, Protesting His RTO Comments

Cameo has experienced a tumultuous few years. The pandemic catapulted the startup to unicorn status, with a valuation of $1 billion by 2021. Sales declined by March 2024, erasing 90% of Cameo’s value.

Galanis told Time in December that he thinks the momentum has shifted in Cameo’s favor.

“I’m really grateful for our investors and our team, that they’ve believed in me and allowed us the second shot to build a company that we don’t think has reached near its potential yet,” he stated.

^{This article originally appeared on Business Insider.}

Riley Willis sits behind his keyboard for 30 hours a week. When he clocks out on Saturday, he’s made it through all his shifts without speaking to a soul.

Willis is an AI contractor, working in data annotation through a company called DataAnnotation.tech. He says his job is fully remote and operates asynchronously — with no set boss, no contact with coworkers, and no daily meetings.

“It’s perfect for an introvert,” he told Business Insider.

Willis said his days consist of “fact-checking” the output of various AI models — but only because that’s what he chooses to take on. He says DataAnnotation.tech offers a variety of projects for contract workers to choose from, including teaching AI to improve its creative writing and coding skills.

“You are literally going through and you’re labeling the information based on a series of criteria that differ between projects,” Willis said. “I personally work on a lot of factual stuff, just because I just find the pay-to-effort ratio is nice. So, there’s a lot of fact-checking responses, making sure the models aren’t lying or hallucinating information.”

As companies continue the push to improve their AI models, there’s been a corresponding spike in demand for data annotators and labelers. Workers in the field spend their time either “generating data for training and labeling data for training,” Willis said, completing tasks in programming, writing, and research.

Willis said he was first drawn to the job when he was looking to move out of his parents’ house and wanted to avoid a role in retail.

“I wanted a job that wasn’t customer service or anything like that,” he said. “I was already doing remote school, so I was kind of already comfortable with the remote environment.”

When he first onboarded, Willis said he was making $20 an hour, but now nets about $25. Hourly rates vary depending on the projects workers take on, and Willis said he’s seen them reach as high as $30.

Despite not undertaking a full-time workload, Willis, who is pursuing a bachelor’s in computer science through the University of Florida’s online program, said he’s able to fully cover his expenses — including tuition and rent in Raleigh, North Carolina.

“I can pay rent, and I can pay my way through college,” Willis said. “It’s not like I have a lot of spending money in the end, especially if I’m not working 40 hours full time kind of stuff, but I have enough where I can live generally.”

Willis said his frugal lifestyle is what allows him to stretch his pay, adding that he “couldn’t support himself” if he were living alone.

“I live poor, honestly,” he said. “If I had some extravagant lifestyle — If I went out to, you know, bars and everything, and spent a lot online — I probably couldn’t do it. But, just getting through my day, it completely covers it.”

The job does have its drawbacks. Willis said the repetitive nature of the tasks can be “mind-numbing.” And unlike a full-time position, Willis only gets paid for the time he’s sitting down at his computer, actively working on assignments.

“Even in a high-paced job, I feel like, you know, there’s paid lunch breaks, stuff like that,” he said. “Or, you know, you spend a second or two talking to someone, but you’re still on the clock getting paid. With this, you’re really not getting paid unless you are doing the work.”

Willis said he sometimes spends “six or seven hours” on research but only gets paid for about “five hours of actual work” because of the need to pause occasionally. Regardless — Willis said the pros of the job outweigh the cons.

“I will personally say work-life balance is nice, in the sense that, obviously, it’s remote and I can work whenever I want,” he said. “I can work at 1 o’clock in the morning if I really feel like it.”

For someone who’s looking for a side hustle to tack onto their full-time role, Willis says working to train AI might be a better overall fit.

“I think this would be really, really good for someone who has an actual job and is doing this, like two hours a day,” he said. “I think this is really what this kind of setup shines in. If you have an actual full time job, and you just add the extra hour, hour-and-a-half, a day, earning an extra $25 to $50 a day, just when you have nothing else to do, is definitely doable.”

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UnitedHealthcare is offering some of its employees a buyout, or a financial package in exchange for their resignation, if they agree to leave by March 3.

The buyout, called the Voluntary Resignation Separation Program, applies to employees in UnitedHealthcare’s benefits operations unit, sources told CNBC on Wednesday. They clarified that anyone who does not accept the offer will keep their current job for the time being or be moved to a comparable role.

The sources also told the outlet that if the company does not meet an unspecified resignation quota, it will lead to layoffs.

“This voluntary option is part of our ongoing efforts to ensure our team is best positioned to meet the evolving needs of the people and customers we are honored to serve,” a UnitedHealth spokesperson told CNBC in a statement.

UnitedHealthcare did not disclose how many employees received a buyout offer, but an internal memo sent to employees Monday and viewed by CNBC showed that the buyout applied to full-time and part-time workers in four subdivisions under the benefits operations unit: corporate, consumer operations, core services, and provider services.

Related: A Cyberattack on the Largest Health Insurer in the U.S. Could Put Your Prescriptions and Personal Data at Risk

Per the memo, employees who accept the buyout will leave by May 1 at the earliest and November 13 at the latest. They will receive resignation packages on their termination date, and the amount will vary depending on how many years they have been at the company.

UnitedHealthcare is the health insurance division of UnitedHealth Group, which has more than 440,000 total employees, including 160,000 clinical professionals, as of a December 31, 2023 filing. UnitedHealth Group is the largest healthcare company in the U.S. based on revenue — it brought in over $400 billion in 2024, its highest annual revenue yet. It is also the largest company based on market cap, which stands at about $465 billion at the time of writing.

The company faced a tumultuous end of 2024 after the killing of its CEO, Brian Thompson, in December. Thompson’s death has placed the U.S. healthcare system and its rising costs under scrutiny. UnitedHealthcare named a new CEO, Tim Noel, in January.

UnitedHealth Group also faced a cyberattack on its subsidiary Change Healthcare in February 2024 that forced it to pay over $3 billion to healthcare providers affected by the breach.

Related: Should Business Leaders Fear For Their Lives? What You’re Not Hearing About the UnitedHealthcare CEO Tragedy.

Apple has a new affordable iPhone option to replace its 2022 iPhone SE: the iPhone 16e.

Apple announced the new 6.1-inch phone on Wednesday in a press release, touting its upgraded features and compatibility with Apple Intelligence, Apple’s suite of AI features that enable users to do a host of tasks, including removing distracting objects from photos, cleaning up writing in emails, and generating custom emojis.

The iPhone 16e provides Apple Intelligence capabilities at the lowest price on the market. So far, only the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max and the iPhone 16 lineup have Apple Intelligence, but these phones range in price from $799 to $1,599, compared to the iPhone 16e’s starting price point of $599.

Related: Apple Is Adding ChatGPT to iPhones This Week. Here’s How It Works.

“We’re so excited for iPhone 16e to complete the [iPhone 16] lineup as a powerful, more affordable option to bring the iPhone experience to even more people,” Kaiann Drance, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide iPhone Product Marketing, stated in the press release.

^{Apple iPhone 16e. Credit: Apple}

The iPhone 16e also corrects one of the biggest weaknesses of the iPhone SE: poor battery life. Compared to the SE, the 16e has 12 more hours of battery life for a total of 26 hours of video playback. Apple says in the press release that the 16e has “the best battery life ever on a 6.1-inch iPhone,” lasting 6 hours longer than the iPhone 11.

The home button and touch ID on the iPhone SE are gone too — the 16e is a more modern-looking iPhone. It also has a bigger display at 6.1 inches, compared to the SE’s 4.7 inches, and comes with the latest A18 chip used by the iPhone 16 instead of the A15 chip used in the SE for faster processing.

Related: Apple Is Reportedly Creating New Foldable iPads and iPhones. Here Are the Details.

All of those upgrades come at a price. The iPhone 16e is still $170 more than the $429 iPhone SE, raising the bar of what it means for a phone to be called “affordable.” Budget AI phones from competitors are sold at lower price points. For example, an unlocked Google Pixel 8a with AI retails for $399.

Preorders for the iPhone 16e start at 5 a.m. PT on February 21. The phone will be generally available on February 28 and comes in black and white with storage options of 128 GB, 256 GB, and 512 GB.

Apple CEO Tim Cook first teased the new iPhone on February 13, writing in a post on X, “Get ready to meet the newest member of the family. Wednesday, February 19.”

Apple discontinued the iPhone SE on Wednesday, as well as the iPhone 14 and 14 Plus.

Apple no longer sells any iPhones with home buttons.

Related: Is an Ultra-Thin iPhone 17 ‘Air’ on the Way? New Rumors Float About a Potential Fall Release.

Barbara Corcoran, known for her role on “Shark Tank” and her remarkable real estate success, has never been shy about breaking from tradition. One piece of conventional wisdom she challenges is the assumption that the wealthy need to fly first-class on commercial airlines. In the business world, many view first-class as the gold standard for business travel; Corcoran’s perspective, however, emphasizes a growing sentiment among corporate leaders: there is often a more strategic, convenient and cost-effective way to travel.

Her stance — eschewing first class in favor of private aviation — may seem counterintuitive at first. Yet, when you factor in time savings, productivity gains and certain cost comparisons, the argument that top executives could be better served on a private jet becomes more difficult to brush off.

The illusion of first-class comfort

Many executives who fly first-class feel like it’s a natural perk of the job. They enjoy spacious seats, streamlined boarding procedures, and a measure of “peace and calm” compared to economy. However, these comforts do not always translate into genuine productivity or control.

A first-class traveler is still bound by the airline’s schedule and faced with the possibility of cancellations, delays and the hustle of major airport terminals. There is also no guarantee of a discreet environment, which is crucial for executives who may need to discuss sensitive matters or review confidential documents. Even the best airline lounges cannot fully eliminate the distractions of a bustling airport.

The average cost of a domestic first-class round-trip ticket on major airlines ranges between $1,800 and $5,500 per person, and it often escalates for last-minute bookings or international routes. While this expense might be considered a necessary luxury for critical personnel, it does not address the fundamental issues of lost time and limited privacy.

Related: Use This 4-Step Framework to Find Leaders Who Truly Fit Your Company Culture

Productivity in the sky

The real value of private aviation becomes clear when you consider how executives can use their travel hours. Instead of lining up at security checkpoints or waiting in crowded airport lounges, executives who fly privately often drive straight onto the tarmac and bypass much of the typical pre-flight shenanigans. This streamlined process can save significant time — an estimated two to three hours per domestic round trip. Those hours are a powerful resource that can mean more meetings, extended negotiation time or focused preparation for major presentations.

A private jet also offers a secure, distraction-free environment. Teams can hold sensitive discussions without risking eavesdroppers, and the atmosphere can be customized for specific business needs. Instead of just enjoying a fancier seat, executives can treat the flight itself like a mobile conference room. This ability to transform flight time into productive work time may be the true hallmark of executive travel efficiency.

The cost conundrum and surprising comparisons

A common myth is that chartered jets are prohibitively expensive for most businesses and environmentally harmful. The image of celebrities or high-net-worth individuals jetting around the globe might make it easy to assume that private travel is out of reach. Yet, for larger executive teams, the math can tell a different story.

Private flights can indeed cost anywhere from $20,000 to $40,000 for a mid-size jet on a domestic round trip, but that total cost can be split among several executives who might otherwise each be purchasing first-class tickets at prices nearing $3,000 — or, in some cases, even exceeding that amount if flights are booked last minute or during peak seasons. When eight to ten executives need to travel, the collective total of first-class tickets can quickly approach or surpass the cost of a private charter.

Beyond direct ticket prices, there is a host of hidden savings to consider. Private charters allow access to smaller airports that might be closer to meeting venues or company sites, which can reduce ground transportation time and costs. They also cut down on hotel stays that might be needed when commercial flight schedules do not align well with your executives’ commitments. Many charter jets are also flying green to ensure they positively contribute to addressing climate change. Some even have carbon matching programs that empower travelers to directly contribute to environmental restoration through tree planting initiatives.

Although it may seem extravagant at a glance, private aviation can represent an overall net gain once all variables — including boosted productivity and environmental impact — are taken into account.

Related: Barbara Corcoran Says You Have One Month Left to Buy a House

A strategic move for modern executives

Barbara Corcoran’s decision not to fly first class reflects a deeper question about how organizations allocate resources and manage high-level travel. In the ever-changing business landscape, time is often the most precious commodity.

There is also a cultural aspect worth considering. Just as ‘the Shark’ sets a tone for her brand by rejecting unnecessary frills, other companies may see a reputational boost when executives demonstrate that “luxury” can align with practicality. Choosing private charters is less about ostentation and more about strategic thinking. When the cost per person becomes comparable to or even cheaper than first-class options, and when the perks include greater control, confidentiality and the potential to work without interruption, it starts to look like a wise operational decision.

Flying private does not need to be a status symbol that invites public scrutiny. Instead, it can be a solution that helps executives guard their most vital resources: time, focus and the capacity to navigate business challenges with minimal friction. Barbara Corcoran may have caused a stir by sharing her preference for skipping first class, but in doing so, she highlights an approach that more business leaders should weigh carefully.

When first-class is viewed through the lens of convenience, productivity and overall expense, it may be a takeaway that a private charter might well be the more sensible choice for an executive team determined to optimize every aspect of their work — both in and out of the office.

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xAI, the startup led by Elon Musk that raised $6 billion in December, has a new AI model that it claims is better than AI created by DeepSeek and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.

In a live-streamed event on X on Monday that has been viewed over six million times at the time of writing, Musk and three xAI engineers revealed Grok 3, the startup’s latest AI model. They claimed Grok 3 had higher scores on math, science, and coding benchmark tests than OpenAI’s GPT-4o, DeepSeek’s V3, and Google’s Gemini AI.

Related: Elon Musk’s xAI Is Reportedly Set to Hire Thousands of ‘AI Tutors’ With Pay Up to $65 an Hour

They also said Grok 3 was a step up in sheer power from xAI’s previous model Grok 2, released in August. The latest version has more than 10 times the computational power of Grok 2, greater accuracy, and a bigger capacity for large datasets.

“The word Grok [means] to fully and profoundly understand something,” Musk said on the livestream, noting that the word came from the 1961 novel “Stranger in a Strange Land” by American author Robert Heinlein. He added later in the livestream that “if you’re using Grok 3, you may notice improvements almost every day because we’re continuously improving the model.”

^{Animated 3D plot of a spacecraft launch from Earth to Mars and back. Credit: xAI}

xAI engineers demonstrated how Grok 3 could be used to create code for an animated 3D plot of a spacecraft launch that started on Earth, landed on Mars, and came back to Earth.

The engineers also asked Grok to combine two games, Tetris and Bejeweled, into one game. The result, which the engineers played on the livestream, was similar to Tetris with shapes inching down the screen but had the rules of Bejeweled with multicolored blocks that disappeared if there were three in a row.

Related: Google’s CEO Praised AI Rival DeepSeek This Week for Its ‘Very Good Work.’ Here’s Why.

Musk said that any AI could find examples of Tetris or Bejeweled online and duplicate them, but Grok 3 took it one step further.

“What’s interesting here is it [Grok 3] achieved a creative solution combining two games that actually works and is a good game,” Musk noted. “We’re seeing the beginnings of creativity.”

^{Tetris-Bejeweled mashup game in the background. Credit: xAI}

The researchers said they only trained Grok 3’s reasoning abilities on math problems and competitive coding problems, but they observed that Grok 3 could apply what it learned to a variety of use cases, including reasoning through making games.

xAI isn’t the only major AI startup to release advanced AI this year. Last month, OpenAI released the o3-mini, its most cost-effective yet powerful model yet, while DeepSeek came out with R1, a disruptive AI model with cutting-edge performance on a less than $6 million budget.

Grok 3 is currently available for Premium+ X subscribers paying $22 a month.

Watch the event, here:

https://t.co/hEfQ31gANQ

— xAI (@xai) February 18, 2025