• Jeff Bezos said “government regulation has a lot of reasonable purposes.”
• When it comes to AI, Bezos said regulators have to be careful not to go too far.
• The Amazon founder used the analogy of outlawing knives just “because it can be used in a bad way.”

The way Jeff Bezos sees it, AI and the data centers that support the novel technology are like knives.

“You don’t want to accidentally outlaw the knife because it can be used in a bad way,” the Amazon cofounder said on CNBC on Thursday.

“Knives are important tools and yes, every once in a while they get misused by someone, but you don’t say the solution to that isn’t to say, ‘OK, no more data centers, right? No more knives.’ That’s not a smart approach to regulation.”

Bezos said that government regulation has a lot of “reasonable” purposes, pointing to federal regulatory agencies like the FAA and the FDA ensuring public safety when people board planes or take prescription drugs.

“There’s lots to be said for healthy government regulation to improve safety and products and so on,” he said. “And I don’t see why that won’t be applied at some point to the kinds of new tools that are being built by AI.”

The balance, Bezos said, is not going too far.

“You want to regulate the application level,” he added.

Bezos, in addition to advising Amazon on AI as executive chairman, is taking on his first CEO role since stepping down from his post as Amazon’s CEO in 2021. Bezos is serving as co-CEO of Prometheus, a physical AI startup that he launched with Vikram “Vik” Bajaj, who helped create Google’s life sciences company, Verily. Prometheus raised $12 billion in a Series B round.

“That is a big chunk of the funding we’ve raised,” he said. “And one of the reasons we’ve had to raise a significant amount of funding is because what we’re doing is very compute intensive.”

Addressing speculation about what Prometheus will do, Bezos said the startup is not building robots. Instead, the company wants to build AI models that change the future of engineering and manufacturing, ultimately achieving Bezos’ goal of creating an “artificial general engineer.”

“It’s really a set of tools that will give those engineers the ability to turn their dreams into reality much, much more quickly than is possible,” said Bajaj, who was interviewed alongside Bezos.

AI regulation is top of mind

The debate around AI regulation has heated up in the last year amid wider backlash against the technology. Meanwhile, AI companies are spending big on lobbying efforts as various states weigh potential regulations.

President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order that allows frontier AI model makers to voluntarily submit models for federal review up to 30 days before their public release.

On Wednesday, Trump said he expects leading AI companies to agree to “giving back” to the public, a reference that came after news outlet NOTUS reported that the White House is considering whether the US government should hold equity in AI firms.

Bezos did not directly address Trump’s order, nor did Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who on Wednesday suggested that “models above a threshold of compute” should undergo mandatory third-party testing by the government or private organizations. Amodei also wrote in an essay that the government should have the power to block the release of AI models if such testing showed they would “present unacceptable risks.”

• Tanium, a $9 billion cybersecurity startup, lost five top executives.
• Tanium’s legal, people, marketing, and information security chiefs departed.
• Tanium’s IPO plans remain uncertain, and the company has stayed private since its founding in 2007.

The cybersecurity startup Tanium, which was last valued at $9 billion, recently underwent a leadership reshuffle after losing five top executives.

Tanium, based in the Seattle area, was founded in 2007 and has stayed private since then. It has raised nearly $1 billion, according to PitchBook, and is backed by investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, TPG, and Salesforce Ventures.

Tanium hired its chief financial officer, Marc Levine, in 2021 to conduct a “readiness assessment” for an initial public offering. Several employees and executives had left Tanium in the past few years over uncertainty about whether the company would ever go public, Business Insider previously reported.

The departures mark another period of uncertainty for one of tech’s longest-running IPO candidates. Now, with several senior leaders gone and new executives cycling into key legal, people, and strategy roles, the company faces fresh questions about its next chapter and whether an IPO is still part of it.

Tanium’s chief legal officer Brady Mickelsen, chief people officer Tobias Julén, and chief information security officer Chris Hallenbeck left the company in May, according to their LinkedIn profiles. Mickelsen now has the same role at DigitalOcean, and Julén now works at StillFront as chief human resources officer.

Tanium’s chief marketing officer, Tara Ryan, no longer appears on the company website. She and Mickelsen were listed on the website in early June, according to the Wayback Machine. Ryan did not respond to a request for comment.

Tanium also brought on a new chief people officer, Carol MacKinlay, who was hired in April and has since resigned.

MacKinlay says she resigned due to a sudden issue with her family.

“I feel sorry that I left them in a lurch, but family has to come first. Great company with a great trajectory, and I wish them the best,” she said.

Since then, Russ Evans has been promoted to chief legal officer, and Shannon Rosales Mirani is the interim chief people officer. Paul Black also joined as the chief information security officer in May. The website does not list a chief marketing officer.

In May, Tanium also promoted Ben Stein, previously senior vice president of global operations, to chief strategy officer.

“Like all responsible companies, Tanium continues to adapt our approach, as well as our team, to best serve our customers and partners,” a Tanium spokesperson said. “We will continue to evolve to meet the needs of our constituents — and best serve them at a time when they need us most. We are confident in our experienced team at the helm, our momentum, and our ability to continue driving innovation and value for our customers and partners.”

Last year, Tanium cracked down on its return-to-office policy in an unusual way by withholding some equity grants from employees who don’t comply, Business Insider previously reported.

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• Paramount is about to change some staffers’ assignments as it unifies its streaming platforms.
• The company is bringing together Paramount+ and Pluto TV to be more efficient.
• CEO David Ellison has prioritized tech ahead of a planned merger with Warner Bros. Discovery.

Paramount Skydance is preparing to move around some streaming staffers as David Ellison’s company wraps up its long-term project of unifying the tech platforms of Paramount+ and free streamer Pluto TV.

This so-called “convergence” project has been a top priority for Paramount. Two high-level streaming employees recently said that convergence is on pace to meet the company’s stated goal of a “mid-year launch.” While Paramount is planning to keep Paramount+ and Pluto TV as separate services, the hope is that having a single tech platform will save resources and improve recommendations across each app, which could drive higher engagement.

Once convergence is complete, Paramount is planning to reassign staffers who’ve worked on it, streaming leaders told employees during a quarterly meeting on Wednesday morning.

Paramount said it will “organize our teams against thematic pillars” like monetization, content, and live & video, according to a screenshot of the presentation viewed by Business Insider.

Streaming staffers also learned that some employees “will be utilized to create select additional Solutions Teams” focused on advertising formats, user experience for the short-form video feed on Paramount+, and video playback.

A person familiar with Paramount’s streaming strategy said these changes are about “redeploying” product employees after convergence is finished. They said most streaming staff won’t be affected by these changes and that no associated layoffs were planned.

Boosting tech beyond convergence

Since Ellison became Paramount’s CEO in August, the company has prioritized technology by shaking up teams, making key hires, and adding new streaming features.

Paramount merged some technical streaming teams in March, Business Insider reported. The company said that putting the Paramount+ Global Quality Engineering group and Pluto TV’s Software Test Engineering team under one roof helped facilitate “AI enablement and automated testing.”

Ellison’s company has also emphasized data by expanding the role of EVP Jason Kim, who, since January, has overseen data and insights across all of Paramount, not just streaming.

Paramount has made several key hires. They include former Google AI executive Barak Turovsky as head of consumer AI; fellow former Google executive Hugh Williams as an EVP; and former Amazon ad sales leader Danielle Carney as head of its US ad sales group. Ellison has also brought over product chief Dane Glasgow from Meta and revenue chief Jay Askinasi from Roku.

Paramount has had key departures as well, including former tech chief Phil Wiser in May and former head of streaming product and tech Vibol Hou in January.

Besides marrying the tech stacks of Paramount+ and Pluto TV, Paramount hopes to boost streaming engagement by adding vertical video clips and interactive features, such as a shopping tool. The company is exploring adding video podcasts; rival Netflix recently made a major move into licensed podcasts.

Paramount’s most transformative change would be buying Warner Bros. Discovery, which would give it control of the Warner Bros. Studio, HBO, HBO Max, and cable networks like CNN. The merger still needs regulatory approval in the US and abroad, which the company hopes to get by the end of September.

• Airlines are adding seats, larger aircraft, and new routes to help fans get to World Cup matches.
• Surinam Airways is running an eight-hour, multi-stop trek across the Caribbean to Miami.
• African airlines are timing all-new US route launches with the World Cup travel boom.

At least 5 million people are expected to fly across North America for the 2026 FIFA World Cup this summer, triggering a surge in short-haul and international air travel across 16 host cities in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

With fans planning multi-city itineraries to follow their teams, carriers across the globe are adding seats, flying larger-than-usual planes, and launching new nonstop services to support the boom:

• Colombia’s Avianca will run the only nonstop flight between Guatemala City and San Francisco.
• Suriname Airways is running special flights to Miami that hop across the Caribbean.
• Brazil’s GOL Linhas Aéreas is boosting flights to Florida by about 70%.
• United and American added temporary routes to Kansas City for the quarterfinals.

The World Cup bump is modest in the context of the broader US airline system, which routinely flies millions of seats each week.

United Airlines’ CEO Scott Kirby recently called it a small portion of the overall booming summer travel season. It’s also possible that some regular leisure tourists who would otherwise travel may skip host cities during the games.

Still, IATA data shows bookings to most host cities rising 2%-8% year over year between June and July, with airlines preparing for a concentrated influx of travelers around marquee games featuring favorites like Spain and France.

As the tournament’s “Official North American Airline Supplier,” American Airlines said it’s adding 27,000 seats on 12 routes for the games, including two temporary ones from Atlanta and New York’s LaGuardia Airport to Kansas City for the quarterfinal round in July.

It’s also temporarily swapping some regional jets for larger Airbus and Boeing narrowbodies to carry more people.

United Airlines launched a special World Cup portal that includes special routes between Guadalajara, Mexico, and Chicago, and between Los Angeles and Kansas City, while Delta Air Lines has bolstered capacity to host cities.

Several international airlines are also adjusting or launching new long-haul services ahead of the games. Scandinavian Airlines and SWISS, for example, are ramping up frequencies to host cities.

Surinam Airways will operate three special eight-hour treks from the South American nation of Suriname to Miami in June, with two stops along the way to pick up people in Aruba and Curaçao; Curaçao’s team qualified. Tickets start at about $440 one-way.

GOL is adding hundreds of flights to Orlando and Miami during the tournament, where travelers can connect to matches through its codeshare partnership with American. Some flights are pricey: flights from Manaus, in northwestern Brazil, to Miami in the days before the team’s June 24 game there start at $765 one-way.

LATAM Brasil is also adding capacity around Brazil’s match schedule; the national team is the most successful in World Cup history, with five titles.

Colombia’s Avianca is adding some 3,000 flights to host cities to support the World Cup traffic. It’s also increasing frequencies on its Los Angeles routes from both Guatemala City and San Salvador. Colombia is one of South America’s top teams, and narrowly lost the 2024 Copa America to Argentina.

Morocco’s Royal Air Maroc is operating special flights to New York, Atlanta, and Boston for its team’s matches. Round-trip flights start around $1,000.

New and returning routes from Africa

In some cases, new flights are not launched explicitly for the World Cup, but the tournament coincides with already-strong demand on diaspora-heavy routes and a broader surge in travel to host cities.

The national airline of the small West African nation of Cabo Verde, for example, resumed nonstop flights to Rhode Island on May 4 after an eight-year hiatus — a month before its national team arrived in the US for its first-ever World Cup appearance.

The unique route, which is also the only link to the US for the 500,000 Cape Verdeans, is scheduled to continue beyond the tournament.

Similarly, EgyptAir added a new route from Cairo to Los Angeles in May, a nearly 14-hour flight, and Morocco’s Royal Air Maroc launched a new 12-hour nonstop from Casablanca to Los Angeles on Sunday.

It’s the first time Africa has been connected nonstop to the US West Coast, meaning passengers can finally skip the long layovers in Asia or Europe.

This effectively extends the continent’s reach into North America ahead of the World Cup and, in the long term, benefits diaspora communities, business, and tourism.

The World Cup is taking place against a backdrop of sky-high oil prices, with airfares rising an estimated 20% in recent months.

Argentina’s national airline even canceled some planned World Cup service because of fuel prices and lower-than-expected demand driven by expensive match tickets.

The tournament is also facing immigration restrictions that denied a referee and some team staff entry to the US.

• Uber now takes the majority of ride-hailing fares in some cities, a new study found.
• The study analyzed three drivers’ trip histories over nearly a decade.
• The company’s take rate has powered its profit and turnaround, Columbia’s Len Sherman found.

More of your Uber fare is going to the company than the driver, according to a new study.

Uber’s “take rate,” or the percentage of each fare that the company hangs on to, has risen above 50% this year in some cities, according to an analysis by Len Sherman, an executive in residence and adjunct professor at Columbia Business School.

That’s well above the 15% to 20% share of each fare that Uber took about a decade ago, Sherman found. Uber does not regularly report its take rate.

Sherman’s analysis examined nine years of ride-hailing data for three Uber drivers in different cities — Dallas, Miami, and Tampa. Collectively, the drivers have completed about 50,000 Uber trips in that time.

The findings show one reason many Uber drivers say it’s become harder for them to make money through the gig in recent years.

Sherman said the growing take rate in its ride-hailing business is powering Uber’s forays into new verticals, like hotel bookings. In a separate study last year, Sherman argued that Uber’s rising take rate, driven by its upfront pricing model, made the company’s financial turnaround under CEO Dara Khosrowshahi possible.

“This is still the profit engine for Uber,” he told Business Insider last week.

Uber has pushed back on Sherman’s past estimates of its take rate. In a January blog post, Uber said it kept 21% of each fare on average in the third quarter of 2025, less than half of what Sherman estimated.

It’s also “false” that Uber became profitable “by raising prices while taking an ever larger share of the pie,” the blog post said.

Uber’s ride-hailing business is its largest and most profitable, with gross bookings growing 18% to $29.7 billion in revenue in 2025 and accounting for roughly 90% of its adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization — a measure of profitability — for the year.

Uber’s take rate doubled over the time frame of the study

For the study, the drivers requested and received the information from Uber. All drivers used the earnings analysis app GigU, which connected them to Sherman.

The drivers worked in different markets and turned to gig work at different times — one took nearly two years off from driving after the start of the pandemic, for instance.

Still, Sherman said, a similar pattern emerged for each. About 10 years ago, Uber took no more than 20% of each fare, and its payouts to drivers moved in lockstep with the fares it charged passengers.

That relationship between rider fares and driver payouts began to diverge in 2019, when Uber cut driver payouts. That decoupling became particularly pronounced in 2022, after Uber began using upfront pricing, a system that sets fares and payouts individually for each trip rather than charging a set amount based on time or distance.

Uber’s 50% take rate is higher than that of other digital marketplaces, Sherman wrote in his report. Secondhand marketplaces, such as eBay and Etsy, say that they keep between 10% and 15% of each sale, for instance.

The study did not examine the take rate at other ride-hailing companies, such as Lyft, and the companies don’t regularly disclose that figure.

Uber uses its algorithms to price trips and determine payouts based on market conditions, Sherman said. That has allowed the company to increase its average share of each ride, though it isn’t always clear to drivers and riders, he said.

“Whether Uber gets to stay there is now a question for riders, drivers, and regulators who, at long last, have the numbers in hand to consider their choices,” Sherman wrote.

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• The founder of private equity firm Thoma Bravo said AI means fewer late-night requests for juniors.
• Orlando Bravo said that he feels he needs to hire more associates for the first time in his career.
• Entry-level jobs at his lean firm will change, he said, as associates handle more higher-order work.

AI might mean the end of the frantic 2 a.m. email from the boss.

Orlando Bravo, the billionaire founder of software-focused private equity firm Thoma Bravo, said that AI is changing how much he relies on junior associates to perform the rote tasks that have historically kept them glued to their computers into the early hours.

“I bother them a lot less, because at midnight I can do something really quickly with AI, instead of calling them to do it in the middle of the night, which improves their life anyway, which is what they want,” Bravo told CNBC at a conference in Berlin on Tuesday.

Questions about the brutal entry-level hours on Wall Street have persisted for decades, with some employees reporting weeks exceeding 100 hours. AI tools can handle many of the time-consuming tasks that juniors on Wall Street have typically been responsible for, such as building models or pitch decks.

That prospect has fueled fears that AI could reduce demand for junior employees. Still, Wall Street executives have largely framed the technology as a productivity tool rather than a replacement effort.

Bravo said that associates can now focus more on higher-order thinking and investing, and that AI will generally allow young employees to “mature” faster. Employers across industries are offering entry-level employees the chance to work on bigger, more advanced projects, creating both opportunity and a steeper learning curve.

He rejected the notion that the technology will automate associates out of a job, saying that the opposite is true at his firm, which employs around 220 people. He said he feels the need to hire more people for the first time in his three-decade career in private equity.

“If you define the role of an associate as just doing a spreadsheet, you don’t need that, but our associates are now calling on companies a lot more, they’re developing relationships with CEOs, and we need a lot more of them,” he said.

Bravo, whose firm manages more than $180 billion and has built its business around software investing, is among the many high-profile finance leaders weighing in on the future of junior roles.

Leaders at many Wall Street banks also said AI will transform entry-level roles on the sell side, but none have publicly announced large-scale cuts related to the technology, and the number of summer interns on Wall Street has largely held steady or risen.

Some changes might be coming, though — Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said earlier this month that his bank’s post-graduation hiring could “contract a little” over the next three years as AI reshapes work.