• Inference rolled out an open-science CEO named “Project AELLA.” The OnlyFans model Aella responded: “Lmfao.”
• Aella is a sex worker and Substack researcher whose theories have been praised by Marc Andreessen.
• CEO Sam Hogan changed the name and responded to Aella on X, “I didn’t know who you were until today.”

Inference CEO Sam Hogan announced the open-science initiative Project AELLA on Tuesday. Nine hours later, he changed it to Project OSSAS.

In the hours leading up to the change, Hogan learned that Aella wasn’t just the name of an “open-science initiative to make scientific research accessible via structured summaries created by LLMs,” as the company described it. It was also the name of a famous OnlyFans model, sex worker, and Substack researcher.

“Thank you to those who brought the context surrounding this name to our attention, and to our partners and the research community for their ongoing support,” Hogan wrote on X.

Aella reposted Hogan’s renaming: “Lmfao.”

In 2020, Aella was in the top 0.04% of OnlyFans creators in terms of monthly revenue generated, telling Business Insider that she made up to $100,000 a month. She is also an escort. On the “Dating Talk” podcast in February, Aella said that she charges $4,000 for the first hour, and then $1,000 for every additional hour.

Now, Aella makes most of her money through research, she said on the podcast. Aella launched the Substack “Knowingless,” which analyzes sex and relationships via data mining. Her approach has taken off within tech circles. Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen called one of her ideas “fantastic.”

The naming debacle sparked a broader conversation between Hogan and Aella.

“I didn’t know who you were until today,” Hogan wrote. “Now I do! Love your work.”

“Your work seems great too!” Aella responded. “I love ppl working on making science better.”

Hogan’s Inference closed an $11.8 million seed round in October, per PitchBook. The round was led by Multicoin Capital and Andreessen Horowitz.

On LinkedIn, Hogan described Inference as “the world’s largest GPU cluster for LLM inference.”

The exchange between Hogan and Aella seems to have ended with an opportunity for collaboration. “Would be cool to do visualizations for some of your surveys,” Hogan wrote. Aella responded: “I’d love that!”

There are also signs that the name change itself may be short-lived.

“After seeing your work I don’t think naming this project AELLA is crazy at all,” Hogan wrote. “If you’re open to it, could we have your blessing to change the name back?”

Aella responded that he was welcome to, though “it might be confusing/googleable issues for people tho.”

She suggested an alternative: “maybe some mild modification AELLA-B or something idk?”

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• Ukraine has an online market that allows troops to buy weapons with points earned for Russian kills.
• This platform will soon let troops earn points for using robots to evacuate their wounded comrades.
• A top Ukrainian official said troops will earn significantly more points than they would for a kill.

Ukrainian soldiers will soon be able to purchase weapons from an online “Amazon”-style marketplace using points earned for evacuating wounded comrades from the battlefield with ground robots, a top government official told Business Insider on Wednesday.

Mykhailo Fedorov, the first deputy prime minister of Ukraine and its minister of digital transformation, said that the new incentive will begin within a month and fall under guidance from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“We are already tracking and incentivizing logistics,” Fedorov said in an interview, speaking through a translator and confirming the future rollout of the new points feature.

Earlier in the war, Ukraine launched the Brave1 Market, a first-of-its-kind program that awards “ePoints” to soldiers for killing Russian troops or destroying their equipment and verifying the successful hit by uploading drone footage to a military network.

The Ukrainian soldiers can use the reward points to buy drones, robots, electronic warfare devices, and other defense technology and systems from an online marketplace. Each Russian target has its own value; killing a soldier might be worth a dozen points while destroying a tank may be worth as many as 40. Wounding or damaging a target yields fewer points.

The portal allows military units to order directly from manufacturers, skirting government-run supply chains and streamlining the overall procurement process. Weaponry can be delivered straight to the front lines in a matter of days.

Last week, Zelenskyy said Ukraine should include soldier evacuation by robot as a way for troops to earn points. “I think this is fair because saving a person’s life, our person’s life, is a priority.”

Fedorov, who spearheads Ukrainian defense innovation, said that a soldier who saves their comrade using the evacuation robots will earn “10 times more points” than if they were to kill a Russian.

‘A believer’ in robots

Uncrewed ground vehicles have emerged as valuable tools for the Ukrainian military because of their many battlefield functions — some of which would otherwise be tremendously dangerous tasks if performed by humans.

These remotely controlled robots can carry out logistics and combat missions, including evacuating wounded soldiers, delivering ammunition to the front lines, carrying weapons, launching assaults on Russian positions, placing mines, and even exploding next to enemy armored vehicles.

“We are truly a believer in UGVs,” Fedorov said, sharing that more and more Ukrainian brigades are opting to use the robots for logistics missions. Some units are using them to move tens of thousands of tons of cargo and supplies.

Fedorov said there are some “high-profile cases” of the UGVs helping to evacuate soldiers, and many other instances that are less public. The new incentives on the Brave1 Market could significantly increase the frequency of this particular mission for the robots.

Casualty evacuation is particularly challenging in Ukraine, given the difficulties of bringing wounded soldiers back from vulnerable spots near the front line, US military veterans who have fought there previously told Business Insider.

The prevalence of drones for surveillance and strikes makes it dangerous for the wounded and medical personnel to carry out an evacuation, even at night under the cover of darkness.

UGVs lower the risk to medical crews, presenting a less valuable target, but Ukrainian soldiers have said that the ground robots have issues as well at times. A severed connection, for instance, could leave a wounded soldier exposed and vulnerable.

Russia also fields UGVs, one tool in an ever-expanding inventory of uncrewed systems. Kyiv and Moscow also operate aerial and naval drones, and both sides continue to make modifications to their uncrewed weapons to make them harder to stop, such as by leaning more on jamming-resistant fiber-optic cables instead of radio frequency connections.

‘Living its own life’

The Brave1 Market catalog is extensive, and soldiers can use it to buy all sorts of military equipment, from drones, ground robots, and guns to electronic warfare devices, cameras, batteries, engines, and satellite communication systems.

Units from across Ukraine’s armed forces compete, and a leaderboard tracks the accumulation of points. “Birds of Madyar,” a prominent drone brigade, topped the Brave1 Market charts last month.

Fedorov calls it the “Amazon for war” because soldiers can purchase hardware directly from manufacturers in just a few clicks; when they exchange their “ePoints,” the Ukrainian government foots the bill.

In just three months, Ukrainian units have already procured some 6 billion hryvnias ($142 million) worth of equipment, Fedorov said, adding that the Brave1 Market plays a crucial role by showcasing defense products for quick purchase rather than forcing soldiers to rely on a slower-moving, centralized, government-led procurement process.

The development of the marketplace highlights Ukraine’s efforts to accelerate the delivery of arms and other military equipment to the front lines through more grassroots-level initiatives. Crowdfunding, for instance, has been a way for the government to quickly raise funds that are then used to purchase weapons.

However, the marketplace also amplifies some long-standing concerns about drone warfare — that the ability to kill an enemy remotely and share the footage dehumanizes conflict.

For Ukraine, Brave1 Market is yet another example of government innovation brought on by the full-scale invasion.

Fedorov said the platform allows manufacturers to list new technology that the government — or military units — might not have known about otherwise. Tens of thousands of drones alone have already been ordered through the platform.

“It’s kind of living its own life,” he said. “So in a network-centric war, in hindsight, this feels like a very revolutionary — yet logical — step.”

• A sports dietitian strength trains or runs almost every morning before her kids wake up.
• She shared how she eats enough protein, carbs, and fiber throughout the day.
• She meal-preps most of her meals, from turkey meatballs to sheet pan dinners.

At 4:30 a.m., before her husband and two kids are up, Morgan Walker is typically just starting her workout.

“I’m kind of a first-thing-in-the-morning type of person when it comes to exercise,” Walker, a 32-year-old registered sports dietitian at Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania, told Business Insider.

Walker focuses her own workouts on a mix of cardio and strength training. Each week, she spends three to four days building muscle mass by gradually increasing the weights and rep counts of exercises like bench presses, deadlifts, and squats. She also runs twice a week, for up to an hour at a time.

Occasionally, she’ll throw in a higher-intensity workout. “Usually, it’s a shorter session that’s 30 minutes during one of my kids’ naps where I’ll do some sprint intervals or use our heavyweight bag at home,” she said. The rest of the time, she and her husband try to walk outside as much as possible with their kids, who are three and one and a half years old.

Fueling up for her workouts takes a little effort — Walker said she preps the bulk of her meals in advance, from homemade meatballs to sheet-pan dinners.

She also has to consider her children’s preferences. “I have one who will eat everything, and then one — she’s been doing a lot better, but is a little bit on the pickier side.”

Walker shared the protein-packed, nutrient-dense meals she eats to build muscle, feel energized for workouts, and stay full throughout the day.

Dried fruit for a pre-workout boost

Right when she gets up, Walker starts with a small snack.

“I always have something small, easy to digest, and carbohydrate-focused,” she said. Her favorite pre-workout snacks are dried fruits (such as dried mango), applesauce, or half of a granola bar.

She sneaks in protein-packed cottage cheese and Greek yogurt

Walker loves cottage cheese and Greek yogurt, both of which are high in protein and easy to incorporate into meals.

They tend to be some of her favorite protein sources for breakfast, which she eats right after working out. One of her go-to breakfasts is mixing overnight oats, another high-protein food, with Greek yogurt, milk, and occasionally whey protein powder. She’ll top it with fruits and chia seeds for extra nutrients.

Cottage cheese often features in her lunches, such as when she blends it into butternut squash soup for added protein. Another recent favorite is her take on a baked sweet potato: “Putting cottage cheese on top of that with pumpkin seeds and walnuts and a small drizzle of honey, that’s been something kind of easy, and satisfying too.”

Snacks include quick smoothies made with yogurt, frozen fruit, and protein powder, or low-fat Greek yogurt topped with fruit and dark chocolate to satisfy her sweet tooth.

“I’ve been on a big pistachio kick lately, so recently it’s been blackberries and pistachios and just a small drizzle of honey,” she said.

She meal-preps lean protein sources like turkey meatballs and sheet-pan eggs

Walker prefers lean, whole protein sources such as chicken, turkey, fish, and eggs, which have lower cholesterol than beef or processed meats.

To save time in the morning, she meal-preps homemade chicken and sage patties, baking them in the oven. She also bakes eggs on a sheet pan, cutting them up and reheating them instead of using a skillet.

After a hard workout, she’ll have a breakfast sandwich that she preps in advance — eggs and a patty on an English muffin or bagel for replenishing carbohydrates paired with fruit for extra fiber.

For dinner, she has a rotation of protein-forward options. “Because I have two kids, I have to keep in mind things that are also going to be friendly with them,” she said. They love turkey meatloaf, which she pairs with steamed vegetables and either baked potatoes or a grain such as farro or quinoa.

If the kids prefer pasta, she swaps regular pasta for protein-enhanced lentil pasta, which she serves with a homemade meat sauce or chicken-and-turkey meatballs that she batch makes and freezes in advance for easy meals throughout the week.

Sheet pan dinners pack in lots of nutrients

Walker is a huge fan of sheet-pan meals. She pairs a main protein source, like a grilled chicken breast or one of her sausage patties, with roasted seasonal vegetables for fiber.

“I do really love the seasonal fall veggies,” she said. A recent meal included maple-dijon grilled chicken, turmeric couscous, and roasted beets and Brussels sprouts.

She also tries to add fiber into her main protein sources, such as cannelini beans in her meatball-and-pasta dinners.

She makes homemade sweets and pairs them with fruit

While sweets like ice cream don’t help with gym gains, Walker still enjoys them.

“I’m somebody who does find value in that all foods do fit,” she said. “Especially with my kids, it’s something I want to teach them.”

If they eat dark chocolate, she pairs it with fresh fruit, such as grapes, to encourage them to enjoy both.

She also makes many sweets like cupcakes and cookies from scratch, but always in smaller portions. She likes to freeze cookie dough to bake occasional fresh cookies.

“The kids really enjoy it, but we don’t just have a whole plateful in the house all week,” she said.

For Jan Gilg, SAP’s co-chief revenue officer and head of the Americas market and the global Business Suite, thriving within today’s economic climate and technology imperatives isn’t about avoiding disruption. It’s about using the agility those challenges cultivate to drive innovation.

That can start with understanding what’s proprietary about your business versus what’s a process most businesses rely on. Gilg refers to this as “standardizing where you don’t differentiate.” In other words, automating standard processes that don’t create value.

The question, Gilg then posed, is “where is the innovation happening?” In his view, determining which area of their enterprise management tech stack to target for innovation can be as critical as the areas of the world where they do business.

“I see that as being located on the layer above automated processes, where you can tap into your data,” said Gilg.

“It’s really about having an integrated set of business applications based on harmonized data models and a unified user experience.” That, Gilg said, “is where you build your innovation and drive the most valuable business outcomes.”

Innovation atop automation

The SAP Business Suite — where SAP’s core applications, data, and AI come together — supports this operational layering: connecting processes with modular business applications, on top of which AI and other innovations can cut through complexity to supercharge transformation.

The symbiosis the suite strikes between automation and innovation is in step with the current global C Suite perspective. In surveying 3,000 C-suite executives for its recent Pulse of Change report, Accenture found that 39% of organizations are accelerating automation to mitigate the impact of tariffs. Nearly 70% reported seeing AI as a driver of revenue growth, with half saying they would accelerate AI investment even in a recession.

To turn this resolve around AI into real ROI, Gilg and his team advocate a unified, intelligent approach that can yield insights from increasingly dense data and create system-wide visibility to drive business outcomes. This, a key foundation in the architecture of the SAP Business Suite, creates the ability to keep pace with rapid technological shifts. This includes agility to onboard emerging technology, like the current rise of AI agents — autonomous and proactive taskmasters empowered to pursue pre ordained goals.

Enterprise management in the age of agents

Signaling their momentum in business applications, earnings-call mentions of AI agents quadrupled across the fourth quarter of 2024, according to analysis by CB Insights. The group also found that more than 60% of leaders place high importance on AI agent deployment over the coming year.

Gilg sees the rise of agentic AI as analogous to the early days of the SaaS movement, when individual software vendors would bring customers a solution for a single need, creating a patchwork system that IT teams found difficult to integrate. Those arduous integrations as companies migrated from on premises to the cloud are a reason SAP worked to make its native AI agents compatible from inception.

“I believe we are really at the brink of a new era of intelligent operations. Because agents don’t care about organizational silos, and they just want to get the job done as efficiently as possible. That’s why I really think we will see another leapfrog now in terms of productivity gains.”

“Having your agents communicate with each other out of the box is a huge advantage with the Business Suite,” Gilg said. They can hand over tasks along a process and get work done end-to-end. That way you can address much more complex scenarios.”

Gilg also draws on his background overseeing on-premise to cloud transitions to understand that customers won’t accept breaks in the fluidity of hand-offs between AI agents — an orchestrated flow built into the ways SAP supports agentic infrastructure.

“I know it sounds futuristic,” he said, “but the workforce of the future in my mind will be a hybrid force between humans and agents.”

On the horizon: uncertainty tempered by insight

That future also appears to be one characterized by uncertainty. In its most recent quarterly survey of global financial professionals to determine economic outlook, the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants found that confidence in their own organizations’ prospects fell from 50% in the first quarter of the year to only 37% as of May. The global outlook held by these leaders dropped 10 points between surveys, with only 19% expressing optimism.

“Every C-level leader feels the pressure to do more with less,” Gilg said. The bright side, as he sees it, is that technology has matured to the point it can deliver on that need.

“I truly believe companies have an opportunity right now to modernize their IT to really embrace that: to have a hard look into how to optimize the way they’re working and leapfrog in productivity gains and insights.”

The outcome of that ERP modernization, he promised, will be unprecedented insight and foresight.

“Suddenly, you’ll see far above and beyond the four walls of your enterprise, allowing you to see disruptions much, much earlier. And that creates a much more sustainable resilience.”

Explore the SAP Business Suite here.

• Hundreds of thousands of travelers have seen their flights disrupted due to the US government shutdown.
• Industry groups say schedules and capacity cannot bounce back immediately after a deal is reached to reopen.
• Cancellation rates peaked on Saturday, and the residual impact could take several days to unwind.

America’s travel nightmare isn’t over yet.

Even as US lawmakers negotiate a reopening of the Federal government, the effects of the shutdown could take a while longer to return to normal.

“This is not a rubber band, so it’s not going to snap back,” Aviation strategist Henry Harteveldt, president of Atmosphere Research Group, told Business Insider.

He estimated it could take seven to 14 days for flight schedules to return to normal after the government reopens, and expects the government and airlines to want to minimize disruptions to the Thanksgiving travel period.

One key complication affecting flights during this government shutdown compared to the last one in 2019 is that airlines are facing new restrictions from the Federal Aviation Administration on the number of routes they’re allowed to fly.

The FAA instructed airlines to begin canceling flights last Friday because of the strain on air traffic controllers caused by the government shutdown, which resulted in many controllers working without pay.

“In a way, it was easier for the airlines to restore operations following that shutdown,” Harteveldt said. “That’s why it’s going to take a little bit more time for airlines to return to normal this time.”

The Senate voted on Monday to reopen the government, and the bill will go to the House of Representatives next. If the measure passes this week, airlines would still have a significant backlog to work through.

Even under normal circumstances, NerdWallet’s travel rewards expert, Sally French, told Business Insider that one canceled flight can disrupt others, leaving pilots, flight attendants, and planes far from their typically scheduled routes.

“People shouldn’t just automatically assume if they have a flight this weekend, that everything is going to be exactly perfect,” she said. “There’s still going to be kind of the snowball effect.”

Flight cancellations spiked over the weekend

Airlines for America, an industry group that includes the largest carriers like American, Delta, and United, said in a report that the shutdown has affected the travel of more than 5.2 million passengers from October 1 to November 9.

“Airlines’ reduced flight schedules cannot immediately bounce back to full capacity right after the government reopens,” the group said in a statement on Monday. “There will be residual effects for days.”

American Airlines COO David Seymour said in an internal memo Monday that about 250,000 of the carrier’s customers were affected by the cancellations and delays over the past weekend.

“This is simply unacceptable, and everyone deserves better,” Seymore said.

Data from aviation analytics company Cirium shows cancellations for US departure flights peaked over the weekend on Sunday, with 10.2% of flights canceled, while the share of flights leaving on time fell to 62% that day. Data from OAG aviation shows that on-time rates for top-performing airports typically range between 75% to 87%.

As of Tuesday morning, the data showed the rates of planned cancellations were showing signs of improvement. Cirium also said mid-week travel days are generally slower, which could help airlines play catch-up.

At New York’s JFK airport at midday on Tuesday, Business Insider saw growing lines at security and four cancellations out of 24 scheduled Delta flights.

Although TSA agents appeared busier than usual, passengers were moving mostly smoothly through Terminal 4.

The FAA said travelers should check fly.faa.gov for real-time updates about staffing, weather, and other information, and to check with their airlines before heading to the airport.

NerdWallet’s French compared the disruption to the seasonal delays that cause knock-on effects to travel in Dallas due to blizzards in Boston or thunderstorms in Atlanta.

“This could be a really challenging Thanksgiving travel season, and Thanksgiving is almost always a challenging time to fly,” she said.