• Anna Wintour, the former Vogue editor in chief, has been a staple of the Met Gala since the 1980s.
• Wintour has been chair of the gala since 1995, deciding who gets invited to fashion’s biggest night.
• Wintour’s Met Gala fashion has changed since she first attended.

It’s hard to picture the Met Gala without Anna Wintour.

Vogue’s former editor in chief has been synonymous with the most talked-about fashion event of the year for over three decades. She first co-chaired the fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute in 1995, and she’s been at the helm as chairperson since 1999.

Wintour, now 76, helped make the gala the world-renowned event it is today — and more lucrative. The cost of individual tickets for the Met Gala rose from $2,000 to $75,000 under her tenure; a table for 10 starts at $350,000.

Wintour doesn’t control every aspect of the gala, of course. Amy Odell, the author of “Anna: The Biography,” told the Italian women’s publication Grazia in 2016 that Wintour doesn’t choose the theme, which is often the most hotly anticipated element of the event.

However, Wintour decides who gets an invite, and she is known to approve almost every outfit A-list attendees wear on the Met Gala red carpet.

And Wintour, of course, arrives at the event in designer looks as well. Take a look back at every look she has worn for fashion’s biggest night.

Wintour wore a sparkly gold top for the 1989 Met Gala.

Wintour became the editor in chief of Vogue in 1988, a little over a year before the 1989 Met Gala, which had a “The Age of Napoleon: Costume from Revolution to Empire, 1789-1815” theme.

The silhouette of Wintour’s statement top nodded to the theme, as her pearl necklace and double-breasted top resembled the jackets soldiers wore during Bonaparte’s reign.

Wintour let her top be the focus of her ensemble, pairing it with a black skirt and tights.

Wintour kept her outfit simple for the 1990 Met Gala.

The Met Gala theme in 1990 was “Théâtre de la Mode — Fashion Dolls: The Survival of Haute Couture.”

Some attendees wore funky looks to the event, but it wasn’t common for people to dress for the theme like it is today. Wintour kept her look simple in a silky minidress and trench coat.

Wintour attended the 1993 Met Gala in a purple gown honoring former Vogue editor Diana Vreeland.

Wintour stepped out at the “Diana Vreeland: Immoderate Style” gala in a silky purple dress with an asymmetrical hemline and a white cardigan.

She carried her iconic sunglasses in her hand, of course.

Wintour’s dress for the “Orientalism: Visions of the East in Western dress” gala in 1994 featured lace detailing.

Wintour’s silver, silky dress hit her mid-thigh, and the bodice was covered in sheer lace. She paired the daring dress with a black-and-white fuzzy coat and a yellow necklace.

Wintour co-chaired the Met Gala for the first time in 1995, attending the “Haute Couture” event in an ivory halterneck gown.

For her debut as a Met Gala co-chair, Wintour nailed the night’s straightforward theme in a silky floor-length gown. She paired the white dress with opera gloves and minimal jewelry.

The look was refined and elegant, encapsulating the “Haute Couture” theme of the 1995 Met Gala, sponsored by designers Karl Lagerfeld and Gianni Versace.

Wintour wasn’t co-chair in 1996, but she attended the “Christian Dior” event in a floral gown.

The 1996 event paid tribute to Christian Dior, and Wintour arrived in a dress designed by John Galliano, who began his 14-year tenure at Dior later that year.

The figure-hugging dress had a floral pattern and delicate spaghetti straps. She also wore a statement necklace and her sunglasses, of course.

Wintour returned as co-chair in 1997, arriving in a gold dress for the Gianni Versace-themed Met Gala.

The 1997 Met Gala paid homage to Gianni Versace, who had died after being shot in Miami months prior.

The late designer was known for his love of working with metal embellishments and gold tones, so it was natural for Wintour to embrace those elements with her dress for the evening. She wore a shimmery, liquid-like gold gown with thin spaghetti straps.

She paired it with coordinating stilettos and a sparkly silver necklace.

Wintour kept things simple in a slip dress for the 1998 Met Gala, which was themed “Cubism and Fashion.”

Wintour’s look, a lightweight gold slip dress paired with a silver necklace and two bracelets, didn’t exactly scream “Cubism and Fashion.”

However, in Wintour’s defense, the trend of wearing an outfit that nodded to the Met Gala theme still wasn’t huge at the time.

In 1999, Wintour blurred the lines between high fashion and punk rock for the “Rock Style” Met Gala.

In 1999, Wintour graduated from being a standard co-chair to officially taking the reins as the Met Gala’s chairperson.

That year, the theme was “Rock Style,” highlighting how iconic performers like Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, and Alice Cooper, among others, influenced style trends.

Unlike the previous year, Wintour didn’t shy away from the theme. Her eclectic John Galliano couture look consisted of a purple embellished skirt, a patterned white top, and a tanned fur stole.

Wintour channeled Jackie Kennedy’s preppy yet elegant style at the 2001 Met Gala that paid tribute to the former first lady.

The 2000 Met Gala failed to go ahead after an exhibit of Coco Chanel’s works was canceled, but the event returned in 2001 with a gala dedicated to the late Jackie Kennedy Onassis and her fashion legacy. The former first lady is remembered for her sophisticated wardrobe, including vibrant dresses, pillbox hats, long-sleeve turtlenecks, and chic evening gowns.

Wintour arrived at the Met that year in a timeless ensemble: a floor-length gown comprising a classic, flowing white skirt and a shimmery, baby-blue high-neck top with floral embellishments and shoulder pads.

Wintour arrived in an angelic Christian Dior ensemble for the 2003 Met Gala.

Wintour’s ethereal Christian Dior look was perfect for the 2003 Met Gala’s “Goddess: The Classical Mode” theme, the first held after a 2002 hiatus following the 9/11 attacks.

The Vogue editor’s look consisted of a silky floor-length white gown paired with silver strappy stilettos and a cropped, fringed cardigan.

She wore one of her quirkiest Met Gala looks for the 2004 “Dangerous Liaisons: Fashion and Furniture in the 18th Century” event.

Wintour partnered with Christian Dior again for her look at the 2004 Met Gala. She wore a pastel-green silk dress embellished around the neckline and a crystal-encrusted jacket with exaggerated shoulder pads.

The look is one of the most eclectic that Wintour has worn to the Met Gala, though it was in line with the year’s theme, which focused on the “refined elegance and delicate voluptuousness” of interiors and style during the 18th century, according to the Metropolitan Museum website.

The fashion editor wore a silky white gown with a floral-embellished cardigan for the 2005 “House of Chanel”-themed Met Gala.

Wintour stayed on theme in an asymmetrical white Coco Chanel gown and a coordinating cardigan with floral appliqué.

She accessorized with silver heels and a statement pearl necklace that featured a fringed pendant.

The 2006 Met Gala was about honoring British fashion, a perfect theme for Wintour, born in London.

“AngloMania: Tradition and Transgression in British Fashion” was the theme of the 2006 Met Gala.

While Wintour opted not to work with a British designer on her look for the evening, instead choosing Chanel, her ensemble oozed English elegance.

It consisted of a black sequined gown with pink rose details along the train and chest, and a flowing beige coat, perhaps a high-fashion nod to the iconic Burberry trench coat.

Wintour went for an edgy look at the 2007 Met Gala in a black sequin-heavy ensemble with scale-like detailing.

In 2007, the Met Gala theme was “Poiret: King of Fashion,” in honor of Paul Poiret, a designer famous for influencing the transition in women’s fashion from corsets to looser clothing items.

For the event, Wintour wore a sequined Chanel gown with a segment of black-and-white scales embroidered down the center and on the shoulders.

She embodied power and fashion at the 2008 “Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy” Met Gala.

Wintour arrived on the red carpet in a silver Chanel gown designed by Karl Lagerfeld. The dress featured shell-shaped padding along the waist and shoulders.

The ensemble looked like it could’ve been pulled from the costume department of an epic sci-fi movie, proving she nailed the event’s fantasy theme.

For the 2009 Met Gala, themed “The Model As Muse: Embodying Fashion,” Wintour went for a black-and-white number.

Chanel designed her white dress, featuring a black oval pattern.

While it was one of the safer looks Wintour has worn to the Met Gala, it featured a few playful details, such as pointed shoulders and a thick black belt.

Wintour dazzled at the 2010 Met Gala in a silver-tiered Chanel dress.

She paired the silver Chanel dress with a sequin-heavy silver jacket and a necklace.

While elegant, it isn’t Wintour’s most on-theme Met Gala look of all time, given the event was themed “American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity.”

In 2011, Wintour wore an ombré sequined dress that paid tribute to Alexander McQueen.

The theme for the 2011 Met Gala was “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty,” in honor of the late British designer known for his originality and meticulous tailoring.

Honing in on McQueen’s mastery of tailoring, Wintour opted for a fitted Chanel gown adorned with tiny multicolored sequins to create a bold ombré effect. It also had a section of gold sequins running down the center.

She looked glamorous at the 2012 Met Gala that honored not one but two iconic fashion houses.

The 2012 Met Gala’s theme paid tribute to two iconic Italian designers: Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada.

In line with “Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations,” Wintour chose to wear a textured white Prada gown with a white fur stole.

The dress may have been Prada, but that doesn’t mean Wintour forgot about Schiaparelli. Her gown featured a large gold lobster, a not-so-subtle nod to Elsa Schiaparelli’s “lobster dress” from 1937.

Wintour put a playful, feminine spin on the 2013 Met Gala theme, “Punk: Chaos to Couture.”

Wintour wore a floral Chanel dress with white stilettos.

To the untrained eye, the gown might not scream “punk,” but the DIY-inspired pattern and the fact that a couture house created the dress nailed the theme.

The 2014 Met Gala was themed “Charles James: Beyond Fashion,” to which Wintour wore a ball gown covered in floral details.

Wintour’s Chanel gown had a sheer neckline and featured an array of red, blue, beige, and black flower petal appliqués. She accessorized with gold heels and a chunky silver necklace.

The ball gown was in line with the night’s theme, which paid tribute to the late designer Charles James, known for his “sculptural” and “scientific” approach to dressmaking, according to the Metropolitan Museum website.

The 2015 Met Gala theme was “China: Through the Looking Glass.” Wintour arrived in an orange-and-red floral gown.

The dress, designed by Chanel, was covered in varying-sized floral appliqués in orange and red hues.

Wintour’s color palette for the night was a subtle nod to the evening’s theme, “China: Through the Looking Glass.”

Wintour wore an intricately beaded white gown with fringed sleeves for the 2016 Met Gala.

Joining forces with Chanel for yet another Met Gala, Wintour arrived on the red carpet in a floor-length beaded gown with fringe detailing along the sleeves and train and light-brown feathers stitched around the chest.

The intricate detail throughout the dress paid tribute to the “Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology” theme, which delved into how fashion designers create through their handiwork and machinery.

In 2017, she wore a gold-embellished gown with a playful feathery segment and a sheer train.

The 2017 Met Gala was themed after Rei Kawakubo, a Japanese designer known for challenging classic silhouettes through asymmetry and dress construction.

For the event, Wintour honored the theme and Kawakubo by wearing a technically adventurous Chanel gown that featured heavy embellishments, a feathery white skirt, and a semi-sheer train.

Wintour wore a semi-sheer silver dress with sleek cutouts and accessorized with a rosary at the “Heavenly Bodies”-themed Met Gala in 2018.

The 2018 Met Gala theme, “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination,” is among the most popular in recent history.

Wintour served a master class in abiding by the dress code when she arrived in a silver Chanel halterneck gown, overlaid with a sheer cream fabric with two delicate cutouts around the neck. The best part of her look was her dark silver rosary, which fit the theme perfectly.

The 2019 Met Gala was all about camp fashion, and Wintour delivered.

The 2019 Met Gala’s theme, “Camp: Notes on Fashion,” was about bold, exaggerated, playful looks.

Wintour, wearing Chanel again, nailed the assignment in a pink gown covered in pastel flowers and a coordinating pink-and-purple feathery stole.

Following a yearlong hiatus during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Met Gala returned with force in 2021 — and so did Wintour’s fashion.

“In America: A Lexicon of Fashion” was the 2021 theme of the Met Gala, paying tribute to the evolution of fashion and culture in the US.

Wintour broke from her tradition of wearing Chanel by choosing an Oscar de la Renta dress. Boldly printed with sunflowers, lilacs, and posies, the long-sleeved dress featured ruffles along the train and neckline.

She returned to wearing Chanel at the 2022 Met Gala, emphasizing “Gilded Glamour.”

In 2022, for the “Gilded Glamour” dress code, Wintour opted for a rainbow-colored Chanel dress embellished with tiny beads.

She added a touch more glamour with a coordinating feathery poncho.

The 2023 Met Gala honored the late Karl Lagerfeld, so it made sense that Wintour wore Chanel.

Lagerfeld, who died in February 2019 at age 85, was a fashion juggernaut best known for serving as the creative director of Chanel.

Paying tribute to the designer, with whom she was close friends for decades, Wintour attended the 2023 Met Gala in a white skirt and a sparkly sequinned Chanel coat.

Wintour enlisted Loewe to create an ornate floral jacket for the 2024 Met Gala.

With the 2024 Met Gala’s “Garden of Time” dress code in mind, Wintour stepped onto the red carpet in a black wool floor-length jacket. Floral appliqués made of feathers, beads, and pearls decorated the collar.

According to Loewe, the jacket was inspired by a 1889 cape designed by Charles Frederick Worth — regarded by some as the father of haute couture. Wintour let it shine by pairing it with an understated white silk-satin long-sleeve dress.

She chose a custom Louis Vuitton look for the 2025 Met Gala.

Wintour celebrated the 2025 Met Gala’s “Superfine: Black Dandysim” dress code in a custom Louis Vuitton by Pharrell Williams look.

A delicate floral appliqué adorned her silver gown, which she paired with a floor-length, pastel-blue coat. The coat had a blazer-style top, which fit the theme. Wintour said on the red carpet that the garment paid tribute to ensembles Virgil Abloh designed before his death in 2021.

She accessorized the look with a large blue brooch and necklaces.

• A personal injury lawyer apologized for filing court documents with fabricated quotations.
• The lawyer told the judge that he had begun using software from a venture-backed startup called Eve.
• The episode highlights a growing risk for the startups selling artificial intelligence to lawyers.

Lawyers keep getting burned by artificial intelligence that invents cases and makes up quotes. Now, some attorneys are naming the software they used.

Last month, a Louisiana personal injury lawyer apologized after submitting briefs that cited a real court decision but quoted passages that didn’t exist. The mistakes appeared in two filings in the 19th Judicial District Court in Baton Rouge and were flagged by opposing counsel.

“I’m trying to understand how I made this mistake,” Ross LeBlanc, a partner at Dudley DeBosier, wrote in a private letter to Judge William Jorden on March 27. Earlier this year, he said, he began using an artificial intelligence program called Eve to draft pleadings. At first, he checked the citations often. “They were always correct when I checked them,” he wrote.

That consistency gave him confidence, and eventually, he stopped checking, he said.

“I never thought this could happen to me,” LeBlanc wrote, adding that he could not be sure whether the mistake involved Eve’s software or if he copied and pasted something too hastily.

Jay Madheswaranm, Eve’s chief executive, told Business Insider on Thursday that after a close audit of the case with Dudley DeBosier, the company confirmed Eve “did not hallucinate any case citations in this matter,” including any fabricated quotations.

Courts have slapped sanctions on attorneys for filing briefs with errors created by artificial intelligence — often called “hallucinations.” Last week, Sullivan & Cromwell, one of the country’s oldest and most elite law firms, apologized to a federal judge over a similar slip-up.

What’s new here is the blame game. When an attorney names the tools involved, the companies behind the software are put in the spotlight and could face reputational repercussions.

Legal software companies like Harvey, Legora, and Eve have raised billions of dollars on the promise that they can make lawyers faster — and offer firms a level of reliability that general-purpose tools can’t match. If their software starts to embarrass customers in court, that trust erodes.

Damien Charlotin, a French researcher who tracks hallucinations in court filings, estimates that fewer than 10% of cases identify the software used. Many lawyers, he suspects, keep that part private because they’re relying on free chatbots like ChatGPT or other off-the-shelf tools that may not be authorized for client work.

Last year, a Latham & Watkins lawyer defending Anthropic in a copyright lawsuit made headlines after citing an article that does not exist. The lawyer said the mistake stemmed from using Anthropic’s own chatbot, Claude, which fabricated an article title and authors.

Eve builds software for plaintiff-side lawyers using large language models, helping them draft documents, map out medical histories, and send and respond to discovery requests. The company was valued at $1 billion after it raised a $103 million funding round about a year ago. Madheswaranm said Eve now processes more than 200,000 documents and other results a month — up around 100-fold from a year ago.

LeBlanc told the judge that he had been wary of the technology generally because of the “horror stories” about hallucinated case law. He said he was persuaded after Eve pitched the tool to his firm and assured attorneys it had safeguards to reduce errors. He believed the risk was limited as long as he conducted his own legal research and directed the software to rely only on approved sources.

Then, opposing counsel in the personal injury case pointed out his mistakes.

LeBlanc’s apology surfaced this month in a separate case involving a trip-and-fall at a Lowe’s store. The opposing counsel found hallucinations in a brief filed by Dudley DeBosier and included LeBlanc’s letter in a request urging the court to expand its inquiry into possible sanctions.

Dudley DeBosier has filed a motion to strike opposing counsel’s request because it says the cases are unrelated. The firm also indicated that a lawyer used Claude to help draft the brief in the Lowe’s case.

It’s a view widely shared across software companies and law firms that artificial intelligence can assist in research and drafting, but responsibility for the final product remains with the human who signs the filing.

Madheswaran said Eve makes that explicit in its contracts and onboarding with new customers. The software also includes features designed to catch errors before they reach a courtroom, though they don’t always work. Some errors are harder to spot than others, he said. Confirming a case exists is easier than verifying a quote is exact.

As the legal profession races to adopt artificial intelligence, mistakes are more likely to be caught. Courts are getting wiser to the technology, and opposing counsel are adjusting their tactics. Instead of only attacking legal arguments, lawyers are scanning filings for errors that could undermine the other side’s credibility.

Chad Dudley, a founding partner of Dudley DeBosier, a firm with about 40 attorneys, said it trains its lawyers to carefully review generated results and requires them to agree to use the technology responsibly.

For his part, LeBlanc said he hopes other lawyers learn from his mistake. He told Business Insider on Thursday that Eve helped him move faster under time pressure, but after the errors surfaced, he felt “sick to my stomach” and couldn’t sleep.

“I’m responsible for checking everything, no matter what technology comes along,” he said.

He doesn’t blame Eve for the blunder. Still, he’s setting the tool down for now.

“I feel like, given what happened,” he said, “it’s fair to have a cooling off period, you know, touch grass.”

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at mrussell@businessinsider.com or Signal at @MeliaRussell.01. Use a personal email address and a non-work device; here’s our guide to sharing information securely.

• Senators and their staff are now banned from trading on prediction markets.
• The change came via a unanimous addition to Senate rules on Thursday.
• The resolution also urged the House, executive branch, and judicial branch to do the same.

As of Thursday afternoon, senators and their staff can’t trade on prediction markets like Kalshi or Polymarket.

The Senate passed a resolution amending Senate rules to forbid members and Senate employees from making prediction market trades via a “voice vote” — meaning no senator objected, and a formal roll call vote was not taken.

The resolution was introduced by Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio last week.

“Serving in Congress is an honor, not a side hustle,” Moreno wrote on X after the resolution passed. “Americans deserve to know that their leaders are here for the right reason!”

The resolution also urged the House, the executive branch, and the judiciary to enact similar rules.

Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour applauded the move, noting that his platform already bans members of Congress from trading.

Polymarket also wrote on X that it’s in “full support” of the resolution. Americans are currently forbidden from trading on the company’s main international exchange, though many are known to use VPNs to do so anyway.

The resolution’s passage comes amid broad public concerns about the risk of insider trading on prediction markets.

Lawmakers have introduced a variety of bills to regulate the industry, including some that also would’ve banned members of Congress from trading on the platforms.

Some lawmakers in both the House and Senate had also contemplated banning their own staff from prediction market trading without a broader change to Senate rules. Several governors have also signed executive orders banning state employees from trading on prediction markets as well.

Last week, the Department of Justice indicted a US Army soldier for using classified information about the raid to capture Venezuelan Leader Nicolás Maduro to make a lucrative trade on Polymarket.

He pleaded not guilty to the charges earlier this week in federal court, and a judge agreed to a $250,000 bail package that included travel restrictions.

• Silvio Pfeufer uses Saltz to save time on food procurement at his Michelin-starred restaurant, Matthias.
• Saltz uses agentic AI to modernize a typically complicated process between food buyers and sellers.
• For independent eateries, the streamlined process can reduce costs and increase access to high-quality ingredients.

When Silvio Pfeufer first got into cheffing, he was surprised by the amount of administrative work involved.

“It’s not only the evening, sending nice plates to guests. There’s a lot of stuff to do to make that happen,” Pfeufer told Business Insider. He took long phone calls from food suppliers and producers that kept him away from the kitchen.

Sourcing and buying food is a process riddled with disorganization, since farmers, wholesalers, logistics providers, and restaurants communicate in different ways — by phone, email, text message, and PDF blast — starting as early as 4 a.m. The cost and availability of products are constantly in flux, so sellers issue frequent updates: The price of wild-caught fish could change three times a day, for example.

When Pfeufer opened his own restaurant in 2024, he wanted to streamline his food procurement process. At Matthias, which pays homage to his late grandfather, Pfeufer uses an AI-assisted platform for food business owners called Saltz to speed up food procurement and reduce phone calls.

The time savings are critical, said Pfeufer, a co-owner and head chef at the Berlin-based eatery. Using AI agents, Saltz connects restaurants directly to suppliers via a marketplace that brings together disparate catalogs, transactions, and logistics so restaurants can compare and buy fresh, high-quality, and specialty products more quickly than with traditional food procurement processes.

The platform’s standardized, real-time food data can be a game-changer for independently owned and operated restaurants like Pfeufer’s, given their limited purchasing power. Saltz said that thousands of buyers and hundreds of suppliers use its technology, though it didn’t share exact numbers. It said around 80% to 90% of its buyers are independent restaurants.

Connecting with high-quality and specialty suppliers

Pfeufer said he chose Saltz because he liked how the platform modernized old processes. In the two years he’s used it, it’s allowed him to discover new suppliers, order outside business hours, and gain better oversight on pricing, he said.

Founded in 2022, the startup uses AI agents to ingest PDFs, emails, and text messages that food sellers send to Saltz, standardize and enrich all the data, and consolidate it into a single platform. Its AI agents automatically update each seller’s listings on the platform, eliminating the need for manual updates.

Buyers, meanwhile, see once-disparate product options, information, and up-to-date prices in one place. They can also order food at a time that’s convenient for them and track their deliveries. “On a Sunday, at night, or in the morning, I can do it by myself, and don’t have to have all these calls,” Pfeufer said.

At Matthias, which was awarded its first Michelin star in 2025 after 10 months of service, meals must meet a high standard every day, and products have to be of the freshest quality. Pfeufer orders vegetables, milk, and other items from Saltz every week, plus fresh fish twice a week. Before using Saltz, the quality of his products wasn’t necessarily worse, he said, but access to new or specialist suppliers was more limited and supply chains were longer.

“The fish is now often sourced directly from the trader or farmer, without the need for intermediate storage. This allows us to avoid additional storage times that could negatively affect freshness,” Pfeufer said, adding that more oversight into the supply chain — and it being shorter — means his food is more consistently high quality.

“We’ve definitely been able to connect with better suppliers,” he told Business Insider. The chef added that he still works directly with certain local farmers, as he is often on the hunt for rare items that aren’t on the platform.

For Pfeufer, using Saltz also allows him to see more costs upfront, so he can better plan how much to charge for new dishes. “It makes all the calculations much easier, which is very important for us,” he said.

Agentic AI acts as a foundational tool

Saltz was founded by brothers Andrius and Thomas Šlimas, who previously built the Shopify-acquired dropshipping platform Oberlo. After spending four years inside Shopify’s supply chain machine, the brothers teamed up with industry veteran Reinis Štrodahs. Their goal: modernize the $9.8 trillion food procurement industry.

“It’s impossible to make sense or structure that chaos of information which lives in different places and has no common structure,” Andrius said.

The Šlimas brothers said that previous unsuccessful attempts to modernize food procurement took two approaches: either trying to force suppliers and buyers onto a single platform, which required them to change how they work, or taking on the time-consuming task of manually inputting every PDF, email, and text message.

With Saltz, AI agents upload and update product listings for sellers, so individual stakeholder workflows don’t have to change. Making agentic AI foundational to the process, Tomas said, gives their platform an edge.

“That gives us a speed advantage, and in this market, speed compounds into market share.”

• Two internet relics are rising from the dead this week: Friendster and Vine.
• DiVine, backed by Jack Dorsey, launched a decentralized version of the short-form video app, Vine.
• Friendster, an early social network, is back with a new founder and a different experience.

It’s time to welcome back two social networks we once loved: Friendster and Vine.

After shutting down in the 2010s, the two social media platforms are rising from the dead this week.

Both of the apps, however, are Frankenstein versions of their predecessors. Neither is being resurrected by its original founders, and the app design and experiences differ from the original platforms.

Nostalgia for a simpler internet, especially for those who remember the early days with rose-colored glasses, is partially fueling this resurgence.

Evan Henshaw-Plath — who goes by Rabble — is the early Twitter employee behind the Vine reboot, DiVine.

He said that “people look back” at the era of social media before everything got so darn big. People not only miss the features and feel of these old apps, but also that time period.

“It’s very telling that in the beginning of the year, people were looking back to 2016,” he said, referring to a social media trend of people romanticizing that year.

Vine officially shut down in 2017 after being acquired by Twitter in 2012, paving the way for the rise of TikTok and other short-form feeds.

Its remake, DiVine, revived hundreds of thousands of old Vine videos from digital archives. Users can post new Vine-style six-second videos. The content must be filmed directly within the app, and DiVine has a firm anti-AI-slop stance. The project is also decentralized and built on Nostr, an open-source protocol not owned by a single company.

DiVine is funded by And Other Stuff, a nonprofit that received a $10 million grant from Jack Dorsey.

Meanwhile, Friendster, a social network that predated Myspace and Facebook, was rebuilt by startup founder Mike Carson as a no-frills mobile social app for your real-life friends. For example, users can only add new friends by tapping their iPhones in person. (So far, I have a grand total of one friend: Business Insider’s Katie Notopoulos, who told me she was an OG Friendster fan.)

Carson told Business Insider that he paid about $30,000 for the Friendster domain and trademark.

After being overtaken by the rise of Myspace and then later Facebook, Friendster rebranded as a gaming company in 2011. By 2015, it shut down its website.

The new app — which doesn’t resemble the former version much other than its shared name — quickly jumped to No. 12 in Apple’s App Store social networking category on Thursday.

Unlike DiVine, the new Friendster doesn’t have access to any of the prior version’s data or content.

What’s old is new again on the internet

I’m not old enough to be on the original Friendster, but I remember the Vine days well. I’m also not alone in feeling nostalgic for the earlier days of the internet (or particularly, the 2010s).

Carson wrote in a Medium post this week that while today’s social networks “foster a lot of negativity,” he remembers the original days of Friendster as “a positive and enjoyable experience.”

DiVine and Friendster aren’t the only internet relics that have been resurrected recently.

Last year, Digg, once a rival to Reddit, was revived by its original cofounder, Kevin Rose, and Alexis Ohanian (a cofounder of Reddit). In March, however, the company said it was downsizing its team and rethinking its strategy.

Building any new social platform is an uphill battle, even if you have a recognizable name from a previous era.

People are loyal to the platforms they’ve already dug their heels into, and getting them to migrate can be challenging, Digg’s CEO Justin Mezzell wrote in a letter shared to the platform’s website.

Friendster and DiVine could face similar challenges.

What’s abundantly clear is that there’s an appetite among founders to build alternative social platforms — especially those that strike a nostalgic chord. Newer startups, like Perfectly Imperfect or Cosmos, are leveraging nostalgia to build platforms that feel reminiscent of Tumblr.

The big question: Can they actually build a community?

Tech founders can build new spaces, or reimagine old ones, but getting users to stay, return, and create a culture is what gives an app life (or breathes life back into one).

“It is not the software, it is not the founder, it is not the team,” Henshaw-Plath said. “It is the community of users that makes these things work.”

• Senators advanced a bill that would give prosecutors more time to bring pandemic fraud cases.
• They cited Business Insider’s reporting on potential misuse of Shuttered Venue Operators Grant funds.
• The Small Business Administration says 69% of the $14.6 billion SVOG program may have been misspent.

Lawmakers just came closer to giving US prosecutors more time to pursue billions of dollars in suspected pandemic-aid fraud tied to restaurants and live entertainment — and cited Business Insider’s investigation into how those funds were used by celebrities.

Senators passed a long-delayed bill on Wednesday night that would extend the statute of limitations for fraud tied to two relief programs: the $28.6 billion Restaurant Revitalization Fund and the $14.6 billion Shuttered Venue Operators Grant.

The bill would put the programs on the same legal footing as bigger, better-known pandemic aid packages that lost as much as $200 billion to fraud, like the Paycheck Protection Program. If it becomes law, prosecutors will have 10 years to bring charges of defrauding the programs, instead of the usual five.

Earlier this week, the Government Accountability Office reported that as much as $10 billion from SVOG funds may have been improperly paid out, which is more than 200 times larger than a fraud estimate the Small Business Administration published three years ago.

Business Insider previously reported that hundreds of millions of dollars were paid out to successful artists like Lil Wayne, Post Malone, metal legends Alice in Chains, and DJs including Steve Aoki and Marshmello. They used the money on private jets, luxury clothes, and payments to themselves, according to the investigation.

Sen. Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican who has been the bill’s main advocate, invoked that reporting in remarks on the Senate floor on Wednesday.

“For fraudsters, time flies when you’re having fun,” she said. “Look no further than rapper Chris Brown, who exploited the SVOG program to pay for his lavish $80,000 birthday party and paid himself $5 million in the process.”

Lawyers and representatives for Brown didn’t respond to requests for comment. Previously, in response to Business Insider’s late 2024 investigation, an attorney for the accounting and wealth management firm that helped Brown’s company get a federal grant, NKSFB, called Business Insider’s questions “uninformed” and didn’t answer them.

COVID fraud cases get more time

The bill passed with an amendment that would require enforcement to be “carried out in a nonpartisan manner,” said Sen. Ed Markey, the top Democrat on the small-business committee that Ernst chairs.

The SBA has said that 70% of the restaurant support funds paid out by the RRF program were proper, but that it’s “unknown” whether the remaining $8.7 billion was legally paid to eligible recipients. The agency’s inspector general previously said more than $6 billion was paid out without doing enough to verify that recipients qualified for the money.

The agency has previously defended cutting checks under the shuttered venues program to “loan-out companies” used by big-name artists to ink performance deals.

Recipients included Broadway shows, arts companies, and cultural institutions that asked Congress for help paying bills they’d run up during the year-plus when public gatherings were limited because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The law also allowed payments to lesser-known groups, like talent agents.

There was no requirement that recipients be on the brink of bankruptcy. One Texas concert promoter received a $10 million grant in July 2021. About four months later, he bought a home for $2.1 million in cash.

The law creating SVOG allowed grant recipients to use the money for a broad range of purposes, including expenses deemed “ordinary and necessary” as well as compensation to the owners of for-profit businesses that received the money.

The new estimate of $10 billion in payment errors amounts to about two-thirds of the program’s entire budget. SBA officials said that $4.5 billion of that was overpayments to businesses that “did not align with the established statutory guidelines” for payment. They also found errors with the monitoring of recipients’ spending.

In 2023, the Biden administration said that one-third of 1% of the entertainment grants were “likely fraudulent.” Government watchdogs say only some “improper payments” amount to fraud, so the new number isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison with the 2023 figure.

More than 2,000 people have been sentenced for defrauding pandemic aid programs. The SBA inspector general has said many more cases are pending.