• Ford’s CEO says American customers “have spoken” after the automaker released a slate of large EVs to lackluster sales.
• Ford reported $4.8 billion in annual losses for its EV division. It expects to lose another $4 billion to $5 billion this year.
• The company is rolling out a new lineup of smaller, lower-cost electric vehicles starting in 2027.

Ford’s electric vehicle business lost nearly $5 billion last year — and CEO Jim Farley says the company got the message.

“So I think the customer has spoken. That’s the punchline,” he said during Tuesday’s earnings call.

Ford’s EV unit posted a $4.8 billion loss in 2025, as sales of its Mustang Mach-E, F-150 Lightning, and E-Transit fell 14% from a year earlier.

Now, the automaker is reshaping its electric strategy — shifting toward lower-cost, high-volume EVs and leaning harder into hybrids. It’s a reversal of Ford’s early strategy of electrifying its most iconic, priciest vehicles first, betting that brand loyalty and subsidies would offset sticker shock.

A bet that didn’t pan out

Ford was one of the earliest legacy American automakers to directly challenge Tesla with mass-market EVs.

The Mustang Mach-E arrived in December 2020 as a rival to the Tesla Model Y. In mid-2022, Ford launched the F-150 Lightning.

On paper, the bet was simple: electrify the century-old carmaker’s two most iconic nameplates to leapfrog EV startups.

Early enthusiasm was strong. Ford said it received nearly 200,000 reservations for the Lightning and projected annual sales of 150,000 units.

That early momentum faded — and never materialized into the high-volume sales Ford was hoping for.

In 2025, Ford sold 27,307 F-150 Lightnings — down 18.5% from 2024 — and 51,620 Mustang Mach-Es, roughly flat year over year.

Sales figures were even more stark after the $7,500 federal tax credit ended last September. The F-150 Lightning’s estimated sales dropped from 5,197 units in December 2024 to just 1,724 a year later, according to Ford Authority.

Meanwhile, US EV sales declined while hybrid demand climbed. For example, Ford sold 84,934 hybrid F-150s last year, a 15% increase.

So, the company is switching up its plans.

The company has since ended production of its all-electric F-150 Lightning. It will return at an undisclosed time as an extended-range electric vehicle, or EREV — a battery-powered truck with a gas generator onboard.

Ford expects the new model will have improved range and increased towing capacity, both of which were concerns for early F-150 Lightning adopters.

“We’re betting on hybrid across our lineup, and EREV where it makes sense,” Farley said during the call. “Like a large truck, where towing is a really important application, and both PHEV (plug-in hybrid-electric vehicles) and pure electric will definitely not work.”

A new all-electric plan: cheaper EVs

At the same time, Ford is developing a new “universal” EV platform designed for lower-cost, high-volume vehicles.

The first model — a roughly $30,000 midsize pickup — is expected in 2027. Ford plans to build at least five vehicles off the platform, potentially including SUVs and commercial vans.

“We aren’t just building compliance vehicles at Ford. We’re launching a cost-efficient, universal EV platform that will drive profitable growth,” Farley added. “Tesla’s shown that they could, we can make money in that market, even without subsidy from the government at the right cost level.”

It follows a trend in the auto industry. Other major automakers — including Toyota, Subaru, Rivian, Nissan, and Chevrolet — are planning launches for sub-$50,000 EVs this year.

Still, Ford expects its EV business to remain in the red for several more years. CFO Sherry House said the company is targeting break-even for the segment around 2029.

Investors have taken a cautious view of the company’s long-term financial health. Ford missed earnings estimates for the quarter, reporting 13 cents adjusted estimated earnings per share versus analysts’ estimates of 19 cents.

“On paper, it’s a big miss, but I don’t think it’s a big deal,” John Rosevear, a contributing analyst at The Motley Fool, told Business Insider. “Ford’s guidance for 2026 anticipates nice year-over-year increases in cash flow, as well as higher capital expenditures — all stuff that the market will almost certainly like.”

• Meta launched Dear Algo on Threads for feed customization.
• Users can request that specific content be visible on Threads for three days.
• Threads’ new feature highlights Meta’s AI ambitions amid rising user engagement.

Threads, Meta’s X-like social network, rolled out a feature that lets users tell the app’s algorithm what they want to see more or less of in their feed.

The feature, called Dear Algo, works like this: you write a public Threads post starting with “Dear Algo,” followed by a request, such as asking to see less about a TV show you’re not caught up on yet, for instance, or more about your favorite basketball team during a live game. The algorithm then adjusts your feed for three days based on what you asked for, and you can delete that request if you want. You can also repost someone else’s Dear Algo request to try out their preferences.

“We think we can do a better job by going deep with individuals on what they want to see more and less of,” said Connor Hayes, Meta’s head of Threads.

In a blog post about the announcement, Meta described Dear Algo as “an AI-powered feature that gives you more control over what you see by letting you tell Threads what’s important to you in the moment.”

Hayes also said that Threads will reject queries that don’t meet Meta’s recommendation guidelines or content principles.

Threads teased the feature back in December, framing it as a response to a trend Meta had noticed: people were already posting to ask their algorithms to change what showed up in their feeds.

For years, people have blamed algorithmic timelines for pulling users into echo chambers, rewarding rage bait over substance, and turning a quick scroll into doomscrolling. Dear Algo could give users back some agency.

“The best algorithms are personalized,” Hayes said, adding that what works for one user won’t work “at scale.”

Dear Algo arrives at an interesting moment for Threads. The app now has more than 400 million monthly active users, and on its latest earnings call, Meta said time spent on it jumped 20% in the fourth quarter of 2025. A recent report from analytics firm Similarweb found that Threads had edged out X in daily mobile usage. And in January, Meta started running ads, a sign it sees Threads as a real business.

The feature also provides a glimpse into the company’s broader AI ambitions. On Meta’s latest earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Meta is working on merging large language models with the recommendation systems that power Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and its ad system.

The company’s recommendation systems are “already driving meaningful growth,” Zuckerberg said on the call. He added that “the current systems are primitive compared to what will be possible soon.”

Have a tip? Contact Pranav Dixit via email at pranavdixit@protonmail.com or Signal at 1-408-905-9124. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here’s our guide to sharing information securely.

• Software veteran Steve Yegge wrote the book “Vibe Coding.”
• Now, he thinks AI will lead Big Tech companies to cut 50% of engineers, he told The Pragmatic Engineer newsletter.
• Yegge said engineers shouldn’t despair: There are still jobs, just for those willing to be inventive and defect to a startup.

He worked in Big Tech. Now, he fears half of its software engineers are on the chopping block.

Steve Yegge worked with Jeff Bezos in Amazon’s early years. Then he went to Google, where he worked for over 12 years and earned the title of senior staff software engineer. He also knows a thing or two about AI engineering, having written a book on the topic titled “Vibe Coding.”

On “The Pragmatic Engineer” podcast and newsletter, Yegge described an imaginary dial of the percentage of engineering staff a company can lay off, ranging from zero to 100. He said he believes the dial is being set at 50 in the age of AI.

“You’re going to have to get rid of half of them to make the other half maximally productive,” Yegge said. “We’re going to lose around half the engineers from big companies, which is scary”.

There’s a capital-to-labor tradeoff happening in tech. Companies are paying vast sums for tokens and enterprise AI licenses, GPUs, and computing capacity. That money needs to come from somewhere — and for some, it could come from labor costs.

Yegge pointed to this tradeoff as the reason for his forecast of 50% cuts becoming the norm. Companies will lay off some engineers to help pay for the others to have adequate access to AI, he said.

Host Gergely Orosz said that 50% cuts would be more than during the COVID-19 pandemic, when tech went through an intense layoff cycle.

“It’s going to be way bigger,” Yegge said. “It’s going to be awful.”

They aren’t the only ones referencing the pandemic. In a popular X article, HyperWrite CEO Matt Shumer wrote that AI’s impact on work would be “much, much bigger than Covid.”

In recent years, the question of AI-driven layoffs has haunted workers at Big Tech companies, many of which went on a hiring spree during the pandemic. While it’s often impossible to boil job loss down a single reason, many suspect productivity gains from AI and ballooning capex spending are fueling the cuts. Some business leaders have also explicitly cited AI when announcing layoffs.

Meanwhile, tech leaders describe smaller teams working more efficiently. On a recent earnings call, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said one engineer could now do the work of a whole team, thanks to AI.

As AI productivity grows, so have complaints of AI fatigue. Software engineer Siddhant Khare penned a lengthy essay about growing more productive, but also feeling more drained than ever. He told Business Insider that he felt like a “reviewer” as opposed to an engineer.

Yegge said it’s not all bad news for the engineers — just those who want to work at a big company. Engineers who have “seen the light” are now getting together, leaving their companies, and creating startups that outpace the industry’s giants, he said.

“We’ve got this mad rush of innovation coming up, bottom up,” he said. “And we’ve got knowledge workers being laid off by big companies because clearly big businesses are not the right size anymore.”

• Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl shirt has led to lookalikes appearing on resale sites such as eBay and Vinted.
• Some of the Zara-designed shirts are being listed for thousands of dollars.
• The shirts were reportedly given to employees at Zara’s parent company and weren’t intended for sale.

Shirts inspired by Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl outfit are fetching high price tags on resale sites.

The Puerto Rican singer wore an ensemble designed by retail giant Zara during his Super Bowl LX performance on Sunday. In the days following the show, similar T-shirts have popped up on resale platforms such as eBay and Vinted.

They’ve appeared in listings that feature a thank-you card from Bad Bunny, whose name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, and tags that state that the garment is not intended for sale.

A limited number of the tops were given to some employees at Zara’s parent company, Inditex, to commemorate the performance, multiple outlets reported. In the thank-you note, the pop star praised the time, talent, and heart that went into the project.

Zara and Inditex did not immediately respond to requests for comment by Business Insider.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the shirts were being listed for between 500 euros ($595) and thousands of dollars on eBay and Vinted, with at least one Vinted post asking for nearly $10,000.

Some of the cheaper options came without the thank-you note.

“This garment has been created as a special gift from Benito to Puerto Rico,” read the tag on one shirt, which was listed without the thank-you note.

The jersey features the name Ocasio across the back and the number 64, in honor of his late uncle, representatives for Bad Bunny told Complex.

• Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on Tuesday that he had lunch on Epstein’s island in 2012.
• He earlier suggested he cut off ties with Epstein in 2005.
• Lutnick has faced calls to resign after his name appeared in the latest releases of Epstein files.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told senators on Tuesday that he had lunch on Jeffrey Epstein’s private island in 2012. In October, Lutnick was quoted in the New York Post saying he’d decided to cut ties with Epstein in 2005.

Lutnick told the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that he had lunch with Epstein on Little Saint James, Epstein’s private island in the US Virgin Islands, during a boat trip with his family.

“My wife was with me, as were my four children and nannies,” Lutnick said. “I had another couple with— they were there as well. with their children.”

Lutnick said the lunch only lasted “for an hour.”

“We were on family vacation,” Lutnick added. “To suggest there was anything untoward about that, in 2012, I don’t… I don’t recall why we did it.”

The comments came after Lutnick was asked about recent disclosures from the Department of Justice’s ongoing release of the Epstein files, which indicated that the commerce secretary had contact with Epstein after 2008, when the financier pleaded guilty to procuring a minor for prostitution and soliciting a prostitute.

The two had several calls and meetings over drinks scheduled in 2011, the emails show.

Email exchanges in the files show Lutnick planning to visit the island with his family and friends in December 2012.

“We are landing in St. Thomas early Saturday afternoon and planning to head over to St. Bart’s/Anguilla on Monday at some point,” Lutnick wrote to Epstein in an email. “Where are you located (what is exact location for my captain)? Does Sunday evening for dinner sound good?”

Both Epstein and Lutnick purchased shares of a now-closed advertising technology company later that month, according to records that were originally reported by CBS News.

In an interview with the New York Post published in October, Lutnick said that he decided to cut off ties with Epstein in 2005 after visiting his Manhattan home and being shown his massage table. The two men were neighbors at the time.

“My wife and I decided that I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again,” Lutnick told the Post. “So I was never in the room with him socially, for business, or even philanthropy. If that guy was there, I wasn’t going, ’cause he’s gross.”

A Commerce Department spokesperson said in a statement that “Mr. and Mrs. Lutnick met Jeffrey Epstein in 2005 and had very limited interactions with him over the next 14 years.”

“This is nothing more than a failing attempt by the legacy media to distract from the administration’s accomplishments including securing Trillions of dollars in investment, delivering historic trade deals and fighting for the American worker,” the spokesperson said in an email.

Asked about the testimony later on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Lutnick “remains a very important member of President Trump’s team, and the president fully supports the secretary.”

Lutnick has faced calls to resign from lawmakers on Capitol Hill over the revelations of his association with Epstein.

While most of those calls have come from Democrats, Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky has also said Lutnick should go.

“He should just resign,” Massie said in a CNN interview.

• Monica Aksamit is a 35-year-old Olympian who won bronze for fencing in 2016.
• Her mom, her coaches, and her prize funded her passion at the start.
• When she made the USA Olympic team in 2016, she was paid $300 a month and fell into credit card debt.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Monica Aksamit. It has been edited for length and clarity.

When I ask people how much they thought I earned as a US Olympian, they always guess an amount far above what I actually got paid.

During the years I was part of the US fencing team from 2016 to 2021, I made $300 a month. This was the pinnacle of my fencing career, and yet I wasn’t making enough to cover my living expenses.

But this had always been my dream, and I had to pursue it at all costs.

I started fencing as a child

I’d been fencing since I was about 8. My mom, a Polish immigrant, had signed me up after a client of hers suggested she bring me along to a practice. He said there was a scholarship opportunity if I did well, and my mom was hooked.

Fencing was a great outlet for me during my parents’ divorce. Most kids get yelled at for hitting other kids — I was being applauded for it.

My mom financially supported my fencing. She put herself into credit card debt to ensure we could pay for equipment, travel, practices, and tournaments.

I remember her once telling one of my coaches that she couldn’t afford to bring me to practices anymore. The coach told her to just pay what she could. He wanted me to chase this dream and saw potential. My road to the Olympics wouldn’t have been possible without him.

I wanted to compete in the Olympics

As I got a bit older, I started winning competitions, and with that came prize money. My mom’s sacrifice, the coach’s generosity, and the prize money kept me pushing forward.

After watching the 2004 Olympics in Greece, I became fixated on the idea of one day competing on the US Olympic fencing team. It was the first Olympic Games that my event, the women’s saber, was added. Nowadays, they’re a lot more lenient with adding events — but it wasn’t like that then — it was a big deal.

That year, I sat on my grandparents’ couch in Poland and watched, telling them one day, I’d become an Olympian. It was a crazy dream, and that time, my mom didn’t necessarily think I’d achieve it, but she kept paving the way for me to get there.

I had to fund my Olympic dream myself

When I graduated from college in 2012, my main goal was to get to the Olympics. But now, I was an adult and had to fund it myself.

I alone had to pay for a big portion of the competitions, travel, and all of my own living expenses. I stayed at home because there was no way I could afford to pursue my dream while paying rent.

I worked endlessly as a fencing coach and a referee at tournaments. I handed out flyers for companies and took low-end modelling gigs.

My fencing club and those who contributed to my GoFundMe continued to financially support me along the way, helping fund my dream.

In 2016, I qualified for the US Olympic team. Team USA started covering all of my tournaments, training camps, and travel. But I was only given a monthly salary of $300.

There wasn’t any way I could take on another job because what employer was going to let me take several weeks off throughout the year to train and compete?

I took on credit card debt

My only option was to take out credit cards to fund what I needed to achieve my dream — car insurance, train travel into the city to train, food, bills, and any extras I did. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I didn’t want money to be the reason I couldn’t achieve what I had worked so long for.

People are shocked when I tell them how much I made each month as an Olympian and how I went into debt to represent the US on an international stage.

It did eventually pay off. I took home a bronze medal at Rio in 2016, but I’m still paying off my credit cards from those years of training and competing with Team USA.

After Rio, I put on a fundraiser to cover the costs of getting to Tokyo 2020, and people generously donated enough to go over my goal — it was the only way to fund my Olympic dreams as someone who didn’t come from money.