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• Movie theaters are on a comeback tour.
• Gen Z and millennials are driving ticket sales, seeing an average of seven films a year.
• AMC’s CEO said “The Odyssey” had the highest first-day ticket sales of any studio release since 2022.

Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” is already breaking records, and it hasn’t hit theaters yet.

In an X post on Friday, AMC CEO Adam Aron said “The Odyssey” recorded the company’s “highest first-day ticket sales for any studio-released movie title since 2022.”

“My apologies if you encountered a long ticketing line on the AMC web site and app yesterday,” Aron said.

“The Odyssey,” based on Homer’s Greek epic poem, has seen worldwide excitement since Universal Pictures announced the film adaptation in late 2024. The film’s trailer raked in over 120 million views in its first 24 hours, in part due to the star-studded cast.

Matt Damon helms the film as Odysseus, while fans can also expect to see Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattison, Zendaya, Tom Holland, Charlize Theron, Mia Goth, Lupita Nyong’o, and more.

“The Odyssey” comes three years after Nolan struck cinematic gold with “Oppenheimer,” which won seven Academy Awards and became a pop culture phenomenon alongside Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie.”

“The Odyssey” debuts on July 17, but the build-up around ticket sales has been long in the making. In an unusual decision, IMAX announced that it would sell tickets for select screens and showtimes a year in advance. Fans who missed the first ticket drop had another opportunity on Thursday with advanced tickets for premium large-format showtimes.

On X, Aron said the only AMC releases to outpace “The Odyssey” were driven by two musical juggernauts: Beyoncé and Taylor Swift.

“Ironically, the only first-day AMC ticket sales results since 2022 that topped The Odyssey were for our very own music-oriented projects from our own AMC Theatres Distribution, namely first-day ticket sales for the Renaissance concert film from Beyonce in 2023 and our two Taylor Swift efforts in 2023 and again in 2025,” Aron said.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic and the streaming revolution dealt a harsh blow to movie theater attendance, it’s on the rebound. A Fandango report published in April said Gen Zers and millennials were driving momentum at movie theaters, spending more money and time compared to other generations.

The report said a good slate of films in 2025, the desire for out-of-the-home experiences, and social opportunities drove Gen Zers toward the movies. Both Gen Z and millennials saw an average of seven films in 2025.

“For Gen Z, it is a form of social gathering. For Millennials, it is an escape from daily routine,” the report said.

AMC has seen the boost firsthand. On Monday, the company said more than 25 million people attended its theaters in May, marking the highest May attendance since 2019.

“These immensely satisfying results reflect the strength of a diverse film slate, one that was driven both by established blockbusters with their well-known characters along with entirely new IP,” Aron said in a press release. “This current measure of success, combined with the many compelling movies coming to our screens in the weeks and months ahead, gives us great confidence as we look to the rest of 2026.”

• Polymarket paid high-profile influencers hundreds of thousands to promote its prediction market.
• Those influencers, however, never disclosed that they were being paid.
• Polymarket CMO Matthew Modabber paid the creators using a personal PayPal account, POLITICO found.

When far-right influencer Nick Shirley posted a viral video in January alleging fraud at Minnesota daycares, he showed his 1.6 million followers on X something else too: a gray hoodie emblazoned with the Polymarket logo.

Polymarket had made other appearances in the 24-year-old’s content, like in a series of man-on-the-street interviews about the “current state of America” posted in December.

The first post came after Shirley began receiving money from Polymarket’s chief marketing officer, Matthew Modabber. The second came after he had taken in a total of $3,100 from Modabber, according to records reviewed by POLITICO.

Modabber, who once wrote that the key to growth is “a product people can’t shut up about,” was putting his money where his mouth is. The Polymarket executive used a personal PayPal account to send at least $350,000 to Shirley and other content creators between January 2025 and February 2026, an analysis of the transactions shows.

That sum is almost certainly an undercount. Modabber used his personal PayPal account, which is registered to an email for a salad spot he cofounded, to send over $2.5 million to more than 800 people during the 14-month span, the analysis shows. POLITICO independently verified the identities of about two dozen content creators who received money from Modabber by using public records and analyzing their social media accounts.

At least 20 of the content creators identified by POLITICO promoted Polymarket on social media after they began receiving money from Modabber, according to payment records and POLITICO’s analysis of their social media activity. During the 14-month span reflected in the payment records, they posted about Polymarket at least 490 times on the social media platform X without clearly disclosing a paid partnership. The analysis of payment records and concurrent social posts highlights the company’s under-the-radar campaign to generate buzz in the political world around the highly controversial prediction market.

Among those paid: conservative influencer Alex LoRusso, progressive political commentator Brian Krassenstein, and Riley Gaines, a collegiate swimmer-turned-Fox News contributor who has campaigned against trans women competing in women’s sports.

The PayPal transaction records were shown to POLITICO by a person with access to the data. They were granted anonymity for fear of retribution.

A Polymarket spokesperson told POLITICO the partnerships with influencers were part of its standard business practices.

“We routinely collaborate with a diverse range of independent organizations, partners, and content creators spanning the political spectrum and constantly monitor, evaluate our progress, and make the necessary adjustments in order to achieve our core mission of providing the most accurate, transparent, and data-driven market insights to a global audience,” the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson declined to answer questions on the company’s strategy for partnering with influencers, its policies for disclosing those deals on social media, why Modabber used a personal account for the transactions, and whether the payments were reported as business expenses to the IRS.

Modabber did not respond to requests for comment.

Led by 28-year-old CEO Shayne Coplan, Polymarket has primarily functioned outside the US since Wall Street regulators banned it for operating without a license in 2022. But the company — which offers users the chance to bet on US elections, the Super Bowl, and even the Iran war — has seen its trading volumes skyrocket since President Donald Trump’s reelection in 2024, as prediction markets have entered the mainstream.

Trump’s administration faces mounting pressure to rein in prediction market platforms like Polymarket and its main competitor, Kalshi, over insider trading concerns. But the president, whose son Donald Trump Jr. is an investor in Polymarket and a paid advisor to Kalshi, has taken a mostly laissez-faire approach. Trump’s administration dropped a pair of investigations into the company last summer, effectively clearing the way for Polymarket to re-enter the US market by acquiring a federally regulated exchange. Last week, he attacked several blue state leaders who have sought to regulate the platforms, saying it’s “critically important” the federal government takes the lead and that the companies “will thrive.”

As the policy debate over prediction markets plays out, Polymarket is harnessing influencers’ massive online audiences to turn itself into a household name. On X, the influencers trumpet claims about Polymarket’s accuracy, whether it’s predicting the outcome of the New York City mayoral election in 2025 or the exact date when a government shutdown would end — all while failing to mention the company’s role in bankrolling their posts. In many of their posts, Polymarket is framed as an authoritative source, and viewers may never realize they’re scrolling past sponsored content.

“People are not consciously thinking about whether an influencer is profiting every time they see a post,” said Renée DiResta, author of a book about social media propagandists, “Invisible Rulers,” and a Georgetown University professor who studies influence in the digital age.

The Federal Trade Commission says social media influencers have a responsibility to disclose any “material connection” to products they endorse, but the agency did not respond to questions about how those rules apply to posts about prediction markets.

None of the X posts made during the records’ 14-month timeframe included disclosures that they were part of paid promotions, POLITICO found. The platform rolled out the ability to label posts as paid promotions on March 1, though an X spokesperson said clear disclosures like “ad” or “sponsored” were always required in commercial posts.

“It sounds like this would be the type of thing that generally should be disclosed,” Robin Moore, former deputy general counsel for the FTC, said in an interview.

Kalshi has been known to partner with online content creators, too, underscoring the importance of social media to prediction market companies’ growth strategies. Last year, Kalshi hired a cryptocurrency influencer to lead its digital assets efforts, and it has partnered with social media influencers to boost its profile with sports fans and women.

“Everybody was either Polymarket or Kalshi,” said one social media influencer paid by Polymarket, who was granted anonymity because they feared retribution. “Kalshi and Polymarket, they literally at some point owned all big influencers.”

The influencer, who has hundreds of thousands of followers on X, said they received thousands of dollars from Polymarket to post about the company since 2024.

Kalshi spokesperson Elisabeth Diana declined to comment for this report.

‘Cannot be faked’

In May 2024, Shane Ginsberg asked passersby in Atlanta: “Trump or Biden?” All four people featured in the video he posted on his @shaneyyricch Instagram account expressed a preference for Trump in the upcoming presidential election against Joe Biden.

But the man-on-the-street-style interviews were not just about the election.

“I bet $5,000 on Trump to win the election,” Ginsberg tells one interviewee, as an image of Polymarket pops up on the screen. “Are you confident enough that he’ll win that you would bet?”

“Well, pull out your phone real quick,” Ginsberg responds, after the man says yes. “There’s a place called Polymarket. Polymarket.com. It’s the only place where you can bet on news, the election.”

Ginsberg was 19 at the time — old enough to vote in his first presidential election. And the self-proclaimed 8th-grade dropout had just started working with Polymarket to boost the company’s brand recognition, according to his website.

Ginsberg had started a social media marketing business called Street Poller, touting his ability to “dominate the scroll” by making videos of unscripted man-on-the-street interviews, then using a network of 50-plus content creators to boost their reach, as a Polymarket case study on his website describes it.

In some cases, Ginsberg’s fleet of interviewers didn’t even mention Polymarket. They simply wore the company’s logo on a T-shirt.

The timing couldn’t have been better.

Polymarket was paying social media influencers across the country to promote election betting in the months leading up to the presidential race. US bettors were still barred from placing wagers through Polymarket under the company’s 2022 settlement with federal regulators, but the influencers rarely mentioned that.

Ginsberg, who received at least $77,000 from Modabber over PayPal, did not respond to emails requesting comment on his work for Polymarket.

Asked about Modabber’s use of a personal PayPal account for what appear to be business transactions, a PayPal spokesperson declined to comment on specific accounts but referred POLITICO to a section of its user agreement that describes personal accounts as “primarily for personal, family, or household purposes.”

“If the activity associated with your personal account primarily involves business or commercial activity, PayPal may close your account unless you agree to cease the business or commercial activity or convert your personal account to a business,” the company’s agreement states.

In the lead-up to the election, when Polymarket users successfully wagered millions of dollars on Trump beating then-Vice President Kamala Harris to win a second term, the platform saw a surge in popularity. More than $1.5 billion traded hands on Polymarket’s wager that Trump would win, while more than $1 billion flowed behind Harris’ candidacy. One measure of monthly trading volumes on the company’s main platform jumped nearly 400% between September and October 2024, according to Dune Analytics, which tracks prediction market data.

The second Trump administration seemed to augur a friendlier regulatory environment for prediction markets after a Biden-era crackdown. Under Biden, the Justice Department and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission were investigating whether Polymarket was continuing to accept bets from U.S. customers, in violation of the company’s 2022 settlement. Shortly after the 2024 election, FBI agents raided the Polymarket CEO’s New York City home — a step he painted as a “last-ditch effort” by the Biden administration “to go after companies they deem to be associated with political opponents.”

Trump’s return to the White House yielded plenty of possibilities to bet on. After Trump created the slash-and-burn DOGE initiative with an executive order in January 2025, Polymarket debuted a dashboard to track all the cuts.

Influencers spread the word on X, the social media platform known as Twitter before Tesla CEO — and DOGE leader — Elon Musk bought it in 2022.

Eric Daugherty, a conservative content creator who received at least $15,000 from Modabber, according to the records reviewed by POLITICO, announced the Department of Government Efficiency dashboard’s release to his 1 million followers as a “BREAKING” update on February 14, 2025.

Riley Gaines, who was paid at least $6,600, according to the records, shared the DOGE news with well over 1 million followers on X, opining: “This is awesome!”

Conservative media personality Elijah Schaffer, who received more than $8,400, wrote “Exciting news!” in a post last February, adding that the new dashboard would “be bookmarked for the next 4 years.”

None of these posts mention being paid by Polymarket or Modabber, though in a comment on his post, Schaffer said he is a “long term brand rep” for Polymarket. “I’m not paid for this post directly and they don’t force me to say anything so it’s technically not an ad. However I do clarify we work together,” he wrote.

Daugherty, Gaines, and Schaffer did not respond to emails requesting comment on their Polymarket partnerships and whether they were paid to post about the DOGE dashboard. Months after his DOGE post, Schaffer also said on X that he partnered with Polymarket and “made some pretty solid money.”

When Polymarket inked a partnership in June with xAI, an artificial intelligence startup co-founded by Musk, paid influencers again swooped in to hype the news. Eight of the roughly two dozen influencers reviewed by POLITICO posted about the partnership on the same day, all within hours of one another.

Dominick McGee, a conservative content creator who received at least $3,200 from Modabber and was once ranked by an analytics firm as the third-most-influential user on X, wrote: “X is about to change the game with this, and it’s honestly a match made in heaven.”

“Polymarket really took over, it feels like they have always been here,” McGee, who goes by Dom Lucre on social media, wrote in another X post about the collaboration several days later. Musk and spokespeople for xAI did not respond to requests for comment.

On McGee’s website, where he touts his “media influence” as someone “delivering unfiltered truth,” he says he charges at least $2,500 to comment on a social media post and upward of $15,000 to post a “breaking” or “developing” item. McGee did not respond to requests for comment.

Modabber also sent money to two people, Debbie D’Souza and Amjed Yacu, who have substantial online followings on the right — and ties to Trump’s administration — but do not appear to have posted about Polymarket on social media. D’Souza is the wife of conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza, whom Trump pardoned in 2018 following a felony campaign finance conviction; she helped write and direct Dinesh D’Souza’s 2024 documentary “Vindicating Trump” and contributes to her husband’s self-titled podcast. Yacu serves as the Defense Department’s deputy digital director and runs a far-right Instagram account called Snowflake.Tears.

D’Souza, who netted at least $20,000 from Modabber, and Yacu, who received at least $850 prior to his employment with the administration, did not respond to requests for comment.

Acting Pentagon press secretary Joel Valdez said Yacu “currently maintains no active business partnerships related to his personal social media pages” — nor would he in the future as a Defense Department employee. Valdez declined to answer a follow-up question on whether Yacu held any business partnerships related to his personal social media accounts at any point during his employment with the department.

Last summer, Trump’s administration dropped the two investigations into Polymarket. The company proceeded to spend $112 million to acquire a licensed exchange and clearinghouse, putting it well on its way to a US comeback.

“The cultural relevance and brand recognition of Polymarket is something that cannot be faked,” one person posted on X in August 2025.

Modabber shared the post on his own X account, adding, “CANNOT BE FAKED.”

Obsessed with accuracy

When former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo faced off against democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani in last year’s Democratic primary to become New York City’s mayor, content creators invoked Polymarket to gauge the odds of an upset.

Alexander Kaufman, a climate reporter who runs a Substack newsletter, received at least $1,200 from Moddaber. “Wild,” he wrote on X the day before the primary, including a screenshot of the platform’s trading volume on the race. “Polymarket finally has @ZohranKMamdani with pretty good odds of actually winning the primary against Andrew Cuomo.”

After Mamdani bested Cuomo to win the Democratic nomination, influencers posted about Polymarket as a kind of oracle.

Arash Azizi, a historian who writes about Iran for The Atlantic and received at least $3,000 from Moddaber, wrote in October 2025: “It’s fascinating how Polymarket numbers are a good guide for the direction of events. Before any polls, it saw the rise of Mamdani for instance!”

Neither Kauffman nor Azizi responded to requests for comment about whether they were paid to post about the mayoral election.

The paid influencers’ posts about Polymarket often drew attention to specific bets by framing betting odds as news developments. About a third of the more than 490 X posts identified by POLITICO characterized Polymarket’s odds for a given event as “BREAKING” or “NEW” updates.

They appear to be conscientious choices. The influencer, who was granted anonymity, told POLITICO that the company wrote posts for them to share on X and asked them to promote specific bets.

“They actually told us, ‘This one needs to get out now, this one needs to get out now,’ as if we were cattle,” the influencer said.

Moore, the former FTC official, said advertisers should include disclosures in any sample text they draft for their partners because they could be liable for what their endorsers say.

“As a general rule, if an endorsement is paid, the endorser needs to clearly and conspicuously disclose a material connection to the advertiser,” Moore said.

Polymarket and Kalshi have sought to cement themselves as authoritative sources on politics and current events, namely through partnerships with traditional media brands like CNN and Dow Jones, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal’s website now highlights a “Featured Prediction Market” from Polymarket.

Paid social media activity has been reinforcing that narrative for months, quietly sowing Polymarket’s legitimacy as it gears up for legislative battles.

As Brian Krassenstein, a progressive political commentator, put it in an October X post with no paid-promotion disclaimer: “It really is unbelievable how accurate Polymarket has been these last 9 months.”

Krassenstein, who received more than $9,300 from Modabber in the PayPal records reviewed by POLITICO, did not respond to requests for comment.

Over a two-week period in late December and early January, six influencers shared 10 posts on X about the Polymarket odds for Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, facing criminal charges over allegations of day care fraud stemming from Nick Shirley’s viral videos. Later in January, six influencers posted about the odds of the US acquiring Greenland.

Alex LoRusso — a conservative influencer who received at least $18,750 from Modabber over PayPal, according to the records — was another avid X user who posted dozens of times about Polymarket without mentioning a sponsorship.

“Polymarket odds of a government shutdown are spiking with just under 10 hours to go before the deadline,” he wrote in September. “Democrats know exactly what they’re doing.”

Sometime after POLITICO reached out to LoRusso, asking if he was paid to make that post, a “paid partnership” label appeared at the bottom. LoRusso did not respond to requests for comment. Some — not all — of his Polymarket-related posts now bear that disclosure.

Sam Sutton contributed to this report.

This story originally appeared on POLITICO and is courtesy of the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, which harnesses the resources of the company’s newsrooms to publish ambitious scoops, investigations, interviews, opinion pieces, and analysis. It allows journalists — including those from POLITICO, Business Insider, WELT, BILD, Onet and Fakt — to collaborate on major stories for an international audience of hundreds of millions across platforms.

• Companies are trying to figure out the best way to manage all the AI agents they’re using.
• Part of the answer might involve treating them like people, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said.
• AI agents should have identities and permissions like human employees, he said.

Microsoft uses a lot of AI agents. To help manage them, it’s starting to think of them like human employees.

CEO Satya Nadella said the software giant is figuring out what kinds of tools and policies it needs to oversee all the agents it’s created. That includes giving agents specific permissions for what they can and cannot access within the company, as well as ways to audit their work, he said.

“You need to give them identities, you need to give them sandboxes, then you need to set policies to govern them,” Nadella told Reid Hoffman in an episode of the “Possible Podcast” posted on Friday.

During the discussion, Hoffman also said that after 10 years, he’d be leaving Microsoft’s board to return to what he called “founder mode.”

While companies are spending vast sums to adopt AI, many are still figuring out how their AI agents will work with their human employees. Figuring out how to manage AI agents represents a particularly tough problem.

It’s a challenge that Nadella himself has dealt with, he told Hoffman. The Microsoft CEO said that he often runs 100 AI coding agents at once, and guiding each through a chat interface is tough. “The cognitive load on me managing this is so high,” he said.

Microsoft has created Agent 365, a suite of tools that includes Entra, its digital identity and network access product, as well as Purview, which the company uses to label data AI agents create, he said.

“I think security, containment, managability, and observability is the way we’re going to have confidence around these agents,” Nadella said.

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

• US News & World Report conducted a study of the best countries in the world.
• Switzerland ranked No. 1 for its high-ranking governance, health, and culture scores, among others.
• The European country also boasts strong opportunities and economic development, the report found.

While many people know Switzerland best for its chocolate, watches, or neutrality, a new global ranking highlights its strengths in a range of areas.

Switzerland recently topped US News & World Report’s annual ranking of the best countries in the world, released in May. The ranking evaluated 100 countries on factors such as economics, environment, health, and infrastructure.

European countries were the most prominent among the top half of the list, occupying all but one spot in the top 15. Switzerland finished first overall — ahead of Denmark in second, and Sweden in third — thanks to its high scores in nearly every major category considered by the study.

Switzerland’s cultural contributions come in different forms, from art to academics

Switzerland ranked No. 2 in culture and tourism in the report, which cited 19 Nobel Laureates who were born in Switzerland. This doesn’t include Albert Einstein, who emigrated from Germany and lived in Switzerland for roughly 20 years.

Switzerland is home to 13 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Other notable historic sites include Chillon Castle on Lake Geneva, a medieval castle dating back roughly 800 years, classified as a Swiss Cultural Property of National Significance.

The country draws large numbers of tourists for its mountains and historic cities. In 2024, the Swiss hotel industry had a record number of overnight stays, largely because of American tourists, Reuters reported.

The country also exports $59 billion in creative goods and services per year, according to US News & World Report.

It has one of the highest GDPs per capita in the world

Switzerland ranked No. 1 in economic development. The report cites “low corporate tax rates, a highly developed service sector led by financial services and a high-tech manufacturing industry” as factors contributing to the country’s strong economy.

The country also has a high number of patent applications, indicating strong research and innovation. Switzerland exports $90 billion in high-tech products each year, according to the report.

“Exports surge, inflation stays low, and innovation keeps us ahead,” Sven Siepen, a senior partner at Roland Berger’s Zurich office, said in a 2025 report about the country’s economy. “Even as global challenges mount, Swiss stability remains our greatest asset.”

Switzerland also has a strong and stable government

This earned the country the No. 1 spot in the governance category. US News & World Report gave the country perfect scores in political violence, regime turnover, and inflation volatility.

Switzerland has a federalized government in which two chambers elect a seven-member body known as the Federal Council, according to Presence Switzerland.

Swiss residents generally find their government to be trustworthy. In 2023, “62% of people had high or moderately high trust in the national government,” according to the OECD. Across all OECD countries, the average is 39%.

Despite these promising figures, the country has issues with voter turnout — which averages 46.09%, per the International Foundation for Electoral Systems — earning a low score from US News & World Report.

High life expectancy and ample medical care can be found in the country

The report ranked Switzerland No. 4 in health. The country has a life expectancy at birth of 84.1 years, earning it a perfect score in the metric in the report. Based on data from the World Bank Group, Switzerland has the fourth-highest life expectancy in the world.

The country has universal health coverage through a mandatory private system. Though everyone is covered, the country spends the second-most per capita on healthcare in the world, trailing only the US, according to the Bern University of Applied Sciences.

In 2022, the country had 4.5 physicians per 1,000 residents, compared to 3.7 in the US and the global average of 1.9, according to the World Bank Group.

It did, however, receive a low score for the number of hospital beds per 1,000 residents, at 4.4 in 2023. This is below the European Union average, which was 5.1 beds per 1,000 people in 2022, according to World Bank data.

Swiss residents have access to educational opportunities

Switzerland, which is home to top universities such as the University of Zurich, ranked No. 2 in opportunity. The average number of years spent in formal education for adults aged 25 and older is 13.9 years, according to the report. This is roughly on par with the US, per the State of the Nation Project.

The average annual tuition for Swiss students at public universities was equivalent to $1,427 in 2022-23, according to the OECD.

Though Switzerland has strong educational opportunities, the report found that it lagged behind in economic opportunity, indicated by low scores in income taxation and foreign direct investment.

Despite ranking highly in most major categories, the country fared lower in others

Switzerland ranked 19th in natural environment, with only 12.5% of its land designated as protected areas, compared with 21.1% across the European Union, according to World Bank data.

The country ranked 15th in civic health, having relatively low scores in anxiety, which measures anxiety disorders per 100,000 residents, and income equality, among other metrics.

It also ranked 15th in infrastructure, where the report gave it lower marks on the renewable-electricity metric. The report’s metric excludes hydroelectric power, Switzerland’s biggest renewable electricity source.

• I stayed in a cylindrical tiny home hotel in Germany during a train trip through Europe in 2022.
• The 106-square-foot home made smarter use of space than any tiny home I’ve seen in the US.
• The European tiny home was two stories and less than half the size of the US tiny homes I’ve booked.

As a New Yorker who’s rented several cramped apartments over the years, tiny homes inspire me.

Making the most of a minimal square footage requires some creativity. I often book fun-sized accommodations when I travel, hoping to discover new space-saving hacks to make the most of my own little dwelling.

From Florida, Maryland, and Tennessee to Canada, Austria, and Switzerland, I’ve stayed in several tiny Airbnbs around the world.

None of those homes utilized indoor space as efficiently as this tiny home hotel in Germany, which I found on Airbnb back in 2022.

I was looking for tiny stays in Germany when I found one with a unique, cylindrical shape that packed a lot inside, so I booked it for two nights for $140.

The Airbnb was part of a tiny home hotel in Neustrelitz, Germany, called Slube. The company designs minimal concrete “Slubes” for up to two people.

There are three types of Slubes: a one-story Basic, a two-story Home, and a Tower, which is two stories with a rooftop terrace. I booked a Home Slube.

It was less than half the size of any tiny home I’d stayed in before.

The 16-foot-tall Slube with two floors was 106 square feet. Prior to this stay, the tiniest home I’d ever booked was 250 square feet.

There was no physical key to my room. I checked in with a code sent to my phone.

When I arrived by train from the airport in Berlin, I didn’t see any employees at the tiny home hotel.

At first, I was confused, but then I checked my email. A message from Slube informed me I’d be staying in room five and could check in by myself.

Inside, the 53-square-foot bottom level had a bathroom on the right, a sitting area on the left, and a ladder to the second floor.

The sitting area had a foldout table that I could push against the wall to save space.

Across from a foldout table was a bench with two seat cushions in lieu of a couch.

I stored my luggage beneath the bench.

This tiny home utilized more vertical space than those I’ve seen in the US.

There were hooks and storage cubbies above the bench, so I stored all my clothing and toiletries on the first floor.

I was impressed by the amenities packed into such a small room.

In the back right corner of the sitting area, there was a nook with built-in shelves that housed a small coffee machine, a hair dryer, and a few dishes.

The bathroom had an efficient layout.

There was a curtain separating the showerhead and sink from the toilet and storage space.

Even with two windows, I felt I had enough privacy.

The first-floor windows had a film covering most of the glass, letting in natural light without sacrificing privacy.

After checking out the first level, I headed up the ladder to the second-floor bedroom.

I thought it was easy to climb, but it could be challenging for some.

There was a latched gate at the top of the ladder, which I imagine was installed to prevent people from falling.

Knowing I was securely fastened into the bed area made sleeping easier.

The bedroom was the same size as the living space and bathroom combined — 53 square feet.

The floor space was covered by a comfy, full-size bed. The pillows had the ideal ratio of fluff to firmness for my neck and head.

Above the bed was a mounted TV equipped with Netflix and other streaming services.

Before bed, I watched some of my favorite shows on Netflix.

I used the lower platform on the far side of the bed as a nightstand.

It had easily accessible outlets, a pocket for the TV remote, and more space for my electronics and water bottle.

Above the bed, a large window opened so I could let the breeze into my room.

It had a blackout curtain for privacy and blocking early morning light.

The Slube also had smart electricity that made my stay feel a tad luxurious.

I controlled the lights and temperature of each story from my phone.

I found it fascinating that this tiny home truly left no space unused, from the loft bed to the wall cubbies.

I can’t stick a second story into my own rental, but the European tiny home still gave me inspiration for how I could make better use of my space, starting with vertical storage hacks.

• Kevin O’Leary agreed to scale back his proposed Utah data center project.
• The concession follows pressure from Utah Senate President J. Stuart Adams, who wanted a 75% cut.
• The project has drawn concerns over water, energy use, and its rural footprint.

Kevin O’Leary has agreed to scale back his proposed Utah data center project after pressure from a top state lawmaker.

On Thursday, O’Leary pledged to cut the proposed 40,000-acre Stratos development in Box Elder County in half, Bloomberg reported Thursday. Most of the remaining project area would be left as open space, O’Leary wrote in a letter to Utah Senate President J. Stuart Adams.

It’s a major concession in the fight over one of the country’s most closely watched AI infrastructure projects. The proposed data center — dubbed the Stratos Project — has sparked a wave of backlash from community members who are concerned about rising energy prices, water use, and environmental damage.

The initial project was expected to require 7.5 to 9 gigawatts, making it one of the largest data center projects in the US.

In a press release responding to the project’s reduced scale, Adams wrote that O’Leary had agreed to all of the conditions outlined in a demand letter he sent to the famed “Shark Tank” investor on Monday, including scaling back the project area and dedicating new water to the Great Salt Lake.

“O’Leary’s concessions in response to the demand letter I sent are a positive step forward,” Adams wrote.

The proposal still faces a lengthy review process. Adams said “no approvals or permits have been applied for, let alone issued,” and that written commitments, permitting, and environmental review would be required before the project could move forward.

A representative for O’Leary Digital didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.