Day: October 10, 2025

• Angela Jiang, an early product manager at OpenAI, left to found her own startup, Worktrace AI.
• Worktrace AI is funded by a who’s who of OpenAI figures, including ex-CTO Mira Murati.
• Worktrace AI was in talks to raise $10 million at a $50 million valuation this summer.

The OpenAI mafia is expanding.

Angela Jiang, an early OpenAI product manager, has launched a new AI startup, Worktrace AI, backed by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati. Like Murati’s secretive startup, Thinking Machines Lab, Worktrace AI focuses on selling AI to large businesses.

Worktrace AI was in talks this summer to raise a seed round of $10 million at a $50 million valuation, according to correspondence seen by Business Insider.

Worktrace AI has a website and LinkedIn page, but it has not made any public announcements about its launch. Jiang declined to comment. Her cofounder, Deepak Vasisht, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Illinois, did not respond to a request for comment.

Worktrace AI helps businesses find and automate repetitive tasks by observing employees, its website said. It’s part of a recent interest in Silicon Valley in AI learning and replicating human tasks. Last month, for example, OpenAI announced new methods to measure the performance of its models on real-world tasks, such as writing legal briefs.

Worktrace AI has attracted funding from a who’s who of OpenAI figures. Its backers include Nick Turley, the head of ChatGPT; Jason Kwon, OpenAI’s chief strategy officer; and Joanne Jang, who led the team responsible for shaping ChatGPT’s behavior, according to a job posting for a founding engineer.

Worktrace AI is also funded by OpenAI’s startup fund, along with venture capital firms 8VC and Conviction, among others, the job listing said.

Jiang was OpenAI’s third product manager and helped launch the models behind ChatGPT, including the version that went viral in late 2022. She later worked on OpenAI’s public policy team before leaving the company in December 2024, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Worktrace AI is the latest in a wave of highly valued AI startups founded by former OpenAI employees, many of which have secured major funding before launching a product or generating revenue.

Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab closed a mega $2 billion seed funding round this year, Business Insider previously reported, and it’s now valued at $12 billion. Safe Superintelligence, founded by OpenAI’s former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, is valued at $32 billion, the Financial Times reported.

Last month, Periodic Labs, co-founded by William Fedus, one of the researchers who helped create ChatGPT, raised a $300 million round to build “AI scientists,” the company announced.

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• Some packages sent to the US from abroad are getting held up at UPS facilities for weeks.
• New rules on imports led several international carriers to suspend higher-value shipments to the US.
• Now, unexpected information and fees are required to complete some shipments.

UPS customers are finding their shipments stuck in package purgatory.

Some customers of the shipping service say that packages sent to the US from abroad are getting held up at the carrier’s facilities for weeks and, in some cases, are being subjected to higher-than-expected tariffs and customs brokerage fees, according to tracking information. Eight people whom Business Insider spoke to said that they received updates indicating they might never get their packages at all.

“The package is undeliverable and is in the process of being disposed of according to the local guidelines,” reads one tracking update sent to several UPS customers Business Insider spoke with and posted widely on a subreddit for UPS users.

For many of these UPS customers, the delayed packages marked their first encounter with international shipping in the era of tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump’s administration this year.

At the end of August, the Trump administration ended the de minimis exemption, which allowed foreign imports worth less than $800 to enter the US without being subject to tariffs. Personal gifts worth less than $100 are still allowed through, but the complexity of the new rules led several international carriers to suspend higher-value shipments to the US.

A UPS spokesperson said the company was seeing “a significant increase” in the number of shipments that require formal customs clearance.

For some UPS customers, the changes have meant that additional information or payments are required to complete certain shipments.

Kunal Sharma, an auto parts business owner in Canada, said he sent four car wheels, each in a separate box, to a customer in Texas in late August. He forgot to include the tariff codes for the wheels with the shipment information.

UPS sent three of the four wheels back to him. The fourth still hasn’t shown up, he said. Last week, its tracking page said the shipment was being disposed of, though it’s since moved between UPS facilities in Ontario, Michigan, and Tennessee.

“An entire set of wheels is worthless if one of them is missing,” he said.

After Sharma emailed UPS CEO Carol Tomé about the fourth wheel, a UPS customer relations employee apologized for the problem, in a message viewed by Business Insider. On Thursday, tracking indicated that the wheel was on its way to his customer in Texas. Sharma has started using FedEx to ship orders to his US customers.

“Because of changes to US import regulations, we are seeing many packages that are unable to clear customs due to missing or incomplete information about the shipment required for customs clearance,” a UPS spokesperson told Business Insider. The spokesperson said that “more than 90% of all imported packages” that move through UPS’s network clear customs the first day that they arrive in the US.

For packages that don’t have complete customs information and when UPS cannot contact the shipper, the company either returns the package to the sender at their expense or disposes of it “consistent with US customs regulations.” The spokesperson did not provide details on how the disposal process works.

David Ordal, who lives in California’s Bay Area, shared tracking information for his order of an annual supply of French sunscreen, which has been languishing for a month in Louisville, Kentucky.

“It’s still not out of purgatory,” he said.

UPS customers receiving shipments are also getting hit with unexpected costs or delays

Katie Golden, who resells vintage clothing on Depop, told Business Insider that she ordered $179 worth of used apparel from the UK. The package left that country and made its way to UPS’s facility in Louisville, Kentucky, according to a screenshot of UPS tracking information seen by Business Insider.

UPS notified her that she had to pay $769 in import fees, including tariffs, as well as a UPS broker fee. At over four times the cost of her order, that’s more than she was expecting to pay for used clothes, she said.

Golden is currently trying to dispute that tariff amount with UPS. In the meantime, she said she’s worried about her shipment being disposed of. “I’m going to keep bothering UPS,” she said.

And it’s not just tariffs.

Recent changes to the Food and Drug Administration’s review process for imports could also be causing issues.

A consultant in Los Angeles who is starting a coffee business told Business Insider she received two out of 12 boxes of inventory from Taiwan and was notified that the remaining 10 would be marked as abandoned and disposed of. She requested her name be withheld out of concern for her privacy.

In a recording of a call with UPS that the customer provided to Business Insider, an agent tells her that the FDA and Border Protection “decided to approve only a percentage of the shipment.”

“They are getting very strict now,” the UPS agent said, adding that they had received about 10 calls from other customers about similar issues.

Heather Elliott, who lives in Virginia, told Business Insider she ordered about $750 worth of French cosmetics in July, and was charged $165 when the shipment was processed at a UPS facility in Philadelphia. She paid that bill only to receive a second charge for roughly $289.

In an email exchange shared with Business Insider, UPS representatives itemized the charges as “PGA disclaimer ($25), disbursement fee ($14), entry line charge ($45), and FDA processing ($111),” as well as a duty of $94.

Elliott’s package was delivered, and UPS later refunded the initial $165 payment.

She said she has since ordered several shipments from a Korean retailer that have arrived via FedEx without any issues. A FedEx receipt Elliott shared with Business Insider shows a $180 order of personal care items that received a $27 duty charge and a $27.50 FDA clearance fee.

Some UPS customers are turning to other delivery companies

Alex Castellani, cofounder of Toronto-based coffee roaster Subtext, said that many of his shipments to the US since late August have sat for weeks at UPS facilities in Buffalo, New York, and Detroit, according to tracking information. That, plus higher-than-expected tariffs and broker fees, prompted him to switch to DHL for his US-bound shipments to cafés and individual consumers.

“They’re now paying more in brokerage and tariffs than the entire value of their package,” Castellani told Business Insider.

UPS has made changes this year in response to the Trump Administration’s tariff policies. In April, the shipping service said that it would cut 20,000 jobs and shutter dozens of facilities in response to what CEO Tomé called “a changing trade environment.”

Last week, UPS suspended its service guarantee for international shipments and many within the US. The guarantee allowed customers to get a refund if their package arrived later than UPS projected.

Some recipients say UPS has items that can’t be easily replaced.

Nicole Lobo, a graduate student in Philadelphia, said that she shipped 10 boxes of personal possessions, including clothing that belonged to her grandfather and rare books on art history, using UPS after a year studying in the UK. Lobo shipped the boxes from the UK in late August but hadn’t received them when Business Insider spoke with her on Thursday.

“It’s my life’s work,” she said. “I’m probably one of only a few people in the world who have this sort of library.”

The LA consultant said this is her second time launching a business that depends on imports, though it is her first time dealing with food. Now, she says she’s not sure if there’s a path forward if other carriers have the same problems as UPS.

“It impacts my decision whether or not to continue my business,” she said.

Do you work at UPS? Are you affected by international shipping issues? Reach out to these reporters via email abitter@businessinsider.com and dreuter@businessinsider.com or by phone or Signal at 646.768.4750.

• Dawn Belisle, an attorney and part-time pastry chef, dreamed of moving to France.
• In 2022, she finally moved, settling in Nice, a city along the Mediterranean coast.
• After three years in Nice, Belisle told Business Insider she feels healthier and more fulfilled.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Dawn Belisle, a 56-year-old who moved from Atlanta to Nice, France, in 2022. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

I’m an attorney from Atlanta and have practiced for three decades — 25 years as a prosecutor and five in defense — but I’ve always had a creative side.

I was always baking and entertaining, and my friends would even pay me to bake for them. Eventually, I realized I could turn it into a business — Delights by Dawn — and it blossomed. My niche became alcohol-infused cakes and cupcakes, which drew a lot of attention.

I’ve always been infatuated with French desserts and wanted to differentiate myself from other bakeries, so for my 50th birthday in 2019, I took a culinary trip to Paris and joined a baking workshop. That’s when I fell in love with France.

My spirit felt at peace there in a way that’s hard to describe. Everyone was just living. They’re out and about, enjoying each other’s company. They sit at cafés, eating and drinking together. They don’t have the same hustle-and-bustle culture we have in the US.

I loved everything about it — the atmosphere, the sense of calm. It was life-changing.

I took a shot on pastry school

In 2021, I watched Netflix’s “Emily in Paris.” It made me think seriously about how I could move to France and keep working.

After some research, I found a pastry school that I enrolled in. That year, I took a six-month leave of absence from my law career and returned to France.

I spent three months in pastry school in Cap d’Agde and three months traveling through different European countries and along the southern coast of France. After that experience, I knew I could live abroad.

When I returned to the US, I told myself, “There’s no way I’m waiting two, three, four, five years to move.”

I moved within a year of returning to Atlanta. That’s my personality. Once I set my mind to something, I do it.

I was meant to live in France

Moving to France was almost effortless — getting my documents, even finding an apartment.

I live right in the heart of Nice. Here’s my analogy: in the US, New York is constant hustle and bustle; in France, that’s Paris. Nice, by contrast, is like the South — slower pace, better weather, and, in my experience, more welcoming, especially if you’re trying to learn the language like I am.

I live in the Carré d’Or, one of the pricier, busier neighborhoods. When I arrived, I found a place within two months — unheard of now in a spot most Americans would consider prime real estate.

I have a one-bedroom apartment that’s been renovated in a more American style, which is unusual here. I also have an abundance of closet space, which is rare in France. From my balcony, I can see a slice of the sea, and it’s a five-minute walk to the beach. Being that close was important to me.

I’m in love with the quality of life I have in Nice. I go to the markets for my fruits and vegetables, which aren’t as expensive as in the US. I also feel safe and healthy here. People in France tend to live longer and stay active well into their 80s, which says a lot.

The country’s healthcare system is awesome. I’m not a sickly person, but I didn’t want the stress of wondering what would happen, or what it would cost, if I needed care in the States, even with a job and insurance.

Traveling is easy in France, too. If I want to visit another country, I can — just like Americans hop to another state. I just got back from Belgrade, Serbia, not because it was on some grand plan, but because it was affordable and something new to do.

There are still some downsides to living in France

I’m very authentic, so I’m not going to romanticize France entirely.

Many things aren’t as efficient or fast-paced here as in the States, especially when it comes to technology and bureaucracy. It can be frustrating, but you have to learn the culture and adapt to it.

I was actually surprised on my first visit by how diverse France is.

People often ask me, “Are there Black people there?” There are many Black expats here, including a lot of Black American women. That said, if you’re looking for the same concentration of Black people in the US, it’s not here.

When you’re in a new country where you don’t know many people, you have to be intuitive and put yourself out there to make friends.

I suggest joining Facebook groups; there are plenty of forums and communities, both general and specific.

You’ll likely start by making friends with like-minded expats. Then, as you attend community events, you’ll begin meeting locals. They won’t let strangers in as quickly as Americans do, but once they do, the relationships are authentic. I’ve made French and Italian friends and now have a great circle, basically a whole family here.

I can’t imagine living in any other way

I’ve been in France for three years; I just had my anniversary here 3 weeks ago.

Though I still enjoy baking, I’m no longer running a pastry business. Instead, Delights by Dawn has become a lifestyle brand. I create style and travel content for social media, and mentor people who are thinking about moving abroad.

I am still an attorney and do consultation work with a couple of offices. I train attorneys and offer services to firms and government agencies that need support for newer, younger attorneys.

Given everything I see happening in the US on the news, if I still lived there, I’d probably be extremely stressed. I miss my son and granddaughters, but as for my life in the US, I don’t see myself moving back.

The peace I have in France is unbeatable. I still do a lot and keep a schedule, but I feel more in control of my life here. I’m living to live instead of work, and I’m exploring more. To me, that’s success.

Everyone has titles and names for things — now, I guess you’d call my journey “manifestation.” Back in my 30s, I said out loud, “I’m not going to keep working in the US forever. I’ll retire and spend my life elsewhere.” And I made that happen.