Day: September 23, 2025

• Some of the hottest AI companies are scaling by “good instincts and good vibes,” said a former Facebook VP.
• Julie Zhuo, now cofounder of AI analytics startup Sundial, said these startups need data as a check.
• “Data helps you figure out what’s actually happening,” Zhuo said.

Some of the hottest AI companies are scaling by “good instincts and good vibes” without much of a data foundation, a former Facebook vice president said.

Julie Zhuo, the former VP of design at Facebook who cofounded the AI analytics startup Sundial, said many startups riding the AI boom have grown at such a breakneck pace that they haven’t had time to build proper data infrastructure.

“We see companies that are growing insane, and they’re still about 10 people or two people,” she said.

“They’ve got hundreds of millions in ARR and hundreds of millions of users, and you know what, they don’t actually have all of that infrastructure, that logging, to be able to truly do data analysis,” she added, speaking of annual recurring revenue.

Traditionally, companies didn’t hit 100 million users overnight. Slower growth gave teams years to build out logging systems, hire a data team, and develop “observability” — the ability to understand what’s actually driving user behavior and revenue, Zhuo said.

But Zhuo warned that the growth won’t last forever. When the curve flattens, these startups will be “scrambling” to answer basic questions like why users churn, which features people value, and what levers really drive the business, she said.

“At that point, that’s usually when people start investing a ton in data,” she added. “Data helps you figure out what’s actually happening.”

Zhuo also said it’s important to rethink how success is measured in the AI era, especially given the speed at which some companies are growing.

Products built around chatbots or conversational interfaces need new analytical methods. Instead of counting clicks or page views, “we have to probably use an LLM or a machine learning model to bucket user intent,” she said.

Zhuo did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

The boom of AI companies

The breakneck pace Zhuo described reflects a broader trend across the industry.

AI startups have been raising record amounts of money and soaring in valuations, with more than $35 billion raised in 2024, Business Insider reported last year.

A number of investors are concerned that the AI market might be overheating and that we’re at risk of reliving the dot-com bubble burst in 2000. Some are wondering whether large language models are actually powerful enough to develop the long-desired superintelligence; some fear tech companies’ massive expenditures won’t pay off; and some are worried that less experienced investors are getting caught up in the hype.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said last month that it’s “insane” and “not rational” that some tiny AI startups are getting funding at high valuations.

“Are we in a phase where investors as a whole are overexcited about AI? My opinion is yes,” he told reporters, per The Verge. “Is AI the most important thing to happen in a very long time? My opinion is also yes.”

Claims of a link between paracetamol use in pregnancy and autism have been repeatedly disproven – despite what the US administration suggests

• Matthew McConaughey says a small furniture swap in the bedroom has been good for his marriage.
• He and his wife, Camila Alves, have downsized to a queen-size bed from a king-size bed, he said.
• He added that how he and Alves treat each other sets the tone for how their kids will learn love.

Matthew McConaughey says making a small adjustment to their bedroom furniture has been good for his marriage to Camila Alves.

In an interview with Fox News Digital published on Saturday, the actor said couples who sleep on king-size beds should consider downsizing.

McConaughey told the outlet that when he visits a friend’s house, all of the friend’s kids pile into a massive double king-size bed.

“The wife’s on one side with her side table, and the husband’s on the other side, and it’s great when you’ve got all three kids, but all of a sudden the kids get too big. They’re out of the bed,” he said.

When it’s just the two of them, a big bed can feel like too much distance, McConaughey said.

“I wake up one morning. I’m looking over there, and Camilla’s like a football field away, man. Then you go to bed at night, like you want to snuggle up, and ‘Well, we’ve got to cover up. You come about 12 feet and I’ll come 12 feet,'” McConaughey said.

That’s when they decided to downsize their sleeping space.

“So we got a queen-size where we’re shoulder to shoulder. I’m telling you, it’s good for your marriage,” he said.

McConaughey and Alves have been married since 2012 and share three kids: Levi, 17, Vida, 15, and Livingston, 12.

No matter how busy life gets, McConaughey says he makes sure to carve out time for his wife.

“You’ve got kids, so you’re spending as much time being a good mother and father to them, but you also got to make sure — and I can do a better job of this — of going, ‘No, this is our time,'” McConaughey said.

He believes the way he and Alves treat each other sets an example for how their kids will one day understand love.

“You got to make sure to remember that one of the best examples you can give the kids of how to treat a woman or a man, or how to treat someone they end up falling in love with down the line, is how you treat their mother and how the mother treats the father,” he said.

A representative for McConaughey did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider outside regular hours.

From bedtime habits to date-night rules, other celebrities have also revealed the ways they make their relationships last.

In a July 2024 interview, Bette Midler said that sleeping in separate bedrooms was the secret to her decades-long marriage to Martin von Haselberg.

The “Hocus Pocus” star added that they’ve been sleeping separately since the start of their relationship, but “it’s been a fabulous ride.”

Gordon Ramsay’s wife, Tana, said in a September 2024 interview that she and her husband often get dressed to go out on dates without their kids.

“In our relationship, having little kids again, our present to each other on our last anniversary was, we have to go to the theater once a month, and we have to go out three times a month, and we’re not allowed to wear trainers,” she said.