AI companies will ultimately need the massive infrastructure projects they’re now spending so much on to build, he said.
“We’re in this new builders era where it’s a very singular moment where we are going to probably deploy more capex and more capital for enabling the AI era, and we need it,” Marietti told Business Insider.
Marietti said that energy-related issues are likely to be the primary bottleneck that stunts AI growth. Business Insider has documented how AI companies are so desperate for power for their large data centers that some are building self-contained supplies.
“We don’t have the energy we need to power all the GPUs in the following year,” he said.
Wall Street, however, is concerned about the sustainability of the capex spending craze by leading AI startups and other Big Tech companies, which is generating all kinds of bubble talk. A Business Insider analysis found that Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Google could spend an estimated $320 billion on capex, primarily for AI-related needs.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in August that he agrees AI could be in a bubble phase, echoing others who have warned that the spending cannot be sustained. Some economists say capex spending is so high right now that it is propping up the entire US economy.
Like Altman and others, Marietti compared the current spending to the building of railroads in the US in the 19th century. AI optimists argue that AI, like the railroads, will fundamentally transform the economy, and therefore, massive expenditures are needed to lay the groundwork for what’s to come.
“Some railroads were deployed ahead of time, but then all the railroads got used,” he said. “I think in AI, we’re just deploying ahead of time, and eventually something will blow up for a little bit, but we would eventually need the infrastructure that we’re deploying anyways.”
OpenAI President Greg Brockman has suggested that soon, every person will want their own GPU, a level of demand that would require massive expansion by his company and others.
Marietti said even “a down moment” won’t stop what’s coming down the tracks.
“After that, we’ll still use all the infrastructure that we build,” he said. “We still use the railroads that we deployed 150 years ago ahead of time.”
The offers and details on this page may have updated or changed since the time of publication. See our article on Business Insider for current information.
Filer moved to Sydney in April 2024.
Courtesy of Gabriel Filer
Gabriel Filer had his heart set on moving to Australia, but felt weighed down by student debt.
He lived with his parents and saved aggressively to clear over $90,000 worth of debt in four years.
Now, Filer has his own place in Australia and earns more than he did in the US.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Gabriel Filer, 34, who’s based in Sydney. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
When I was a kid, I’d look up at the sky and think about what life was like outside my hometown, Middletown, Connecticut.
As I grew older, I became interested in exploring other countries. In 2019, at the age of 28, I visited Australia and fell in love with it. During the pandemic, I thought about applying to move there once the borders reopened. Civil unrest in the US also drove me to seriously consider leaving the country.
Before moving to Australia, I wanted to pay off my student debt of over $90,000, build a six-month emergency fund, and cover my relocation expenses, such as the cost of my visa application.
I was disciplined about setting money aside, and paid off my debt in August 2023, less than four years after I started seriously saving, and almost a year before I moved.
It felt like a sacrifice, but living with my parents for 7.5 years is what made it possible.
I set aside money each month to pay off my debt balance
I graduated in 2013 with a degree in community, environment, and planning, then got myMaster’s in city and regional planning in 2016. After grad school, at age 25, I moved back home.
I was very frugal growing up, and once I started working at age 26 in 2017, I paid money into a brokerage account. By the end of 2019, I had saved roughly $47,000, but it wasn’t enough to cover my loans of roughly $90,000. Between 2019 and 2024, my annual salary as an urban planner increased from around $40,000 to $65,000.
Filer worked as an urban planner in the US.
Courtesy of Gabriel Filer.
In January 2020, I began paying $1,000 a month from my paycheck toward my student debt, and from May, I put between $1,000 and $2,000 into my brokerage account.
Using that money, the interest it accrued, and some existing savings, I paid off $65,600 of my student loan in October 2021. The three-year student loan payment pause during the pandemic, when my loans didn’t accrue interest, felt like a golden window to pay off my debt. I also wasn’t really going out and spending money on petrol, and my parents didn’t charge me for rent or groceries.
This allowed me to save a lot from my monthly salary, which was roughly $3,400 between 2021 and 2023.
Each month, I used my Apple Notes app to write down and track all my expenses. When I paid a bill, I’d strike through that expense on the note.
In August 2023, I made a second payment to clear my balance before the student loan payment pause ended that September.
After paying off my debt, I saved over $38,000 to relocate and for emergencies
Once I got my debt under control, I focused on setting aside money for my visa fees and relocation. By April 2024, I had accumulated over $38,000 in short-term reserves to contribute to my emergency fund and relocation costs.
Filer hired an immigration lawyer to help with his relocation.
Courtesy of Gabriel Filer
I hired an immigration lawyer to help me navigate applying for permanent residency in Australia. I’m don’t have great reading comprehension, so it was helpful to have a professional assist me with the complicated immigration process. I also joined a Facebook immigration support group, which provided me with a network of people who were also moving to Australia, and was helpful for information sharing about the process.
I volunteered virtually so I’d have professional references when I got to Australia
In April 2024, I moved to Sydney. I’d made contacts by volunteering virtually for an Australian nonprofit while I was in the US. That helped me gather professional references for my job search.
Filer earns more in Australia than he did in the US.
Courtesy of Gabriel Filer
Within two months of being in the country, I got a job as a grants officer in the education sector. My salary is 113,575 AUD, roughly $73,700, which is more than I was earning in the US.
Initially, I rented an apartment for the equivalent of $1,645 per month, which felt much better value than what I could rent in a big American city.
In June 2025, I finalized the down payment on a unit. It’s nice to have my own place and be able to invite people over after years of living with my parents.
I prefer living in Australia compared to the US. People are very nice here, and going to the pharmacy doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. The work-life balance here is unparalleled. When I finish work, I don’t feel guilty about leaving, whereas I always felt stressed in the US.
Moving to Australia was a dream come true. I had a feeling life would be better outside the US, I just needed the courage to step out of my comfort zone and go for it.
Isaac Stein, a 31-year-old IRS lawyer, has been spending his days selling hot dogs since the government shutdown began.
Bryan Metzger/Business Insider
Isaac Stein, 31, has been working as a lawyer at the IRS for 3 years.
He was recently furloughed as a result of the ongoing government shutdown.
That’s given him more time to pursue a passion project: running a hot dog stand.
Hundreds of thousands of federal workers have been sent home amid the government shutdown. One of them has been using his newfound free time to sell hot dogs.
“This is self-expression,” Isaac Stein, the 31-year-old owner of “Shyster’s Dogs,” told Business Insider at his hot dog stand in Washington, DC’s NoMa neighborhood. “This is me having artistic fun.”
Stein has a day job: He’s been working for three years as a lawyer at the Internal Revenue Service, where he handles tax regulations around employee benefits. But for the last three weeks, he’s been working as a full-time hot dog vendor on the corner of First and M Street NE.
The hot dog stand idea came to Stein months before the shutdown cleared his schedule. He said that he first made the decision to start the business in June, though it took months to obtain all of the necessary permits. Stein said he invested a “five-figure sum” into buying all of the equipment.
By the time he was ready to go, it was September. He had originally planned to operate the stand outside of work hours, on Thursday and Friday evenings and over the weekend. “To be real, Thursday was a bit ambitious,” Stein said. “It’s hard to function in the office without enough sleep, and I want to be good at my legal job.”
Then, on October 8, he was “furloughed” — essentially suspended from his job until the shutdown ends. That turned his side gig into a nearly full-time job, and he now typically sells hot dogs from noon to 5 p.m. on weekdays.
Stein’s hot dog stand is laden with humor. The name “shyster,” a slang word referring to a deceptive or unethical lawyer,” is about wanting to “bring a laugh to the legal community,” he told Business Insider.
“Part of what I’m doing with my expression here is there are many layers of irony,” Stein said. “One of the layers is that I’m a lawyer, and I’m doing everything correctly. I have all the right permits, and I pay taxes.”
The menu at “Shyster’s Dogs.”
Bryan Metzger/Business Insider
On his menu, he offers the “SHIRT OFF MY BACK” for $1,000. And the menu itself is fairly simple: if you order “The Only Choice,” you’ll get a hot dog with mustard and sauerkraut for $10. If you order “Hot Dog with the Wrong Toppings,” you can have other toppings, such as ketchup — but you’ll be charged more. That option costs $11.
“From a young age, I have wanted to punish people for putting ketchup on a hot dog. It’s utterly mystifying to me as to why someone would want this. But to be commercially viable, you have to have it,” Stein said. “The pricing difference is reflective of incentives: I want people to do it the right way.”
So far, Stein says his hobby has worked out well for him. He’s been serving 40 to 50 customers per day, he said, and has been making $200 to $300 in profit each day. But for him, the hot dog stand has been less about making ends meet and more about taking on a creative project.
“It’s given me a chance to be in the community more,” Stein said. Some of his customers, he said, have very particular orders and have become regulars. “If I can bring that to their life, that makes me really happy.”
Stein said he’s been serving 40 to 50 customers per day and has been making $200 to $300 in profit each day.
Bryan Metzger/Business Insider
Still, Stein said that he’s looking forward to returning to his day job, whenever that may be.
“People who are tax lawyers for the government aren’t doing it for the money,” he said. “Everyone wants to get back to work, because we actually like what we do.”
Hannah Neeleman pictured on her Utah farm. She is known for cooking from scratch on social media.
Niki Chan Wylie for BI
Hannah Neeleman, the face of Ballerina Farm, makes lunch for her husband and eight kids every day.
They always eat a combination of carbs, lean protein, and vegetables.
Dietitians back the sort of minimally processed diet that Neeleman follows.
Hannah Neeleman, the face of the lifestyle brand Ballerina Farm and “tradwife” influencer known for cooking elaborate meals from scratch, doesn’t overthink lunch.
“It’s super simple,” Neeleman told Business Insider. This may surprise her over 21 million social media followers, who have watched her make intricate dishes like fresh buttermilk pie or asparagus tart.
Most days, the 35-year-old entrepreneur and homesteader prepares a simple, balanced meal consisting of a carb, a lean protein, and some vegetables for herself, her husband, Daniel Neeleman, and their eight homeschooled kids. It’s a custom they picked up in Brazil, where the couple lived for four years after college.
Dietitians and nutrition researchers have previously told Business Insider of the importance of eating a balance of high-fiber produce, lean protein, and healthy fats, while minimizing ultra-processed foods where possible. This whole-food diet is, of course, easier to follow if you live on a farm than, say, in a tiny apartment in a city.
Homemade bread, steak, and fresh vegetables are on the menu for lunch
For carbs, Neeleman tends to make potatoes, pasta, rice, or quinoa. “I make bread a few times a week, so if it’s a bread day, then we have bread as well,” she said.
For protein, it’s usually steak or a roast — living on a cattle farm, there’s no shortage of frozen meat— and the veggies are sourced from their garden.
Hannah Neeleman walks among the cattle on her Utah farm, Ballerina Farm.
Niki Chan Wylie for BI
Protein is crucial for building and maintaining muscle mass, which not only keeps us strong and mobile but also plays a key role in metabolic health.
Meanwhile, fiber — found in fresh produce, whole grains, and beans — aids digestion. Research has also linked eating a variety of high-fiber plants to a more diverse community of gut microbes, a marker of good gut health. Fiber feeds these “good” gut microbes.
The family washes their minimally processed meal down with a glass of water kefir, a fermented drink made of water and water kefir grains, which contains probiotics or microbes beneficial to the gut.
Neeleman simple diet includes sweet treats
Neeleman’s breakfast is super simple, too. She has homemade yogurt and a scoop of Ballerina Farm’s maple cinnamon protein powder.
Dinner is more flexible as the kids have different extracurricular activities and schedules. She’s in the routine of making quick meals with the ingredients she has on hand.
“If you make just pasta with meat sauce, we always have ground beef in the fridge, and boil pasta and put your marinara sauce. It takes 15 minutes,” she said.
The majority of what they eat is homemade, but occasionally, she’ll throw a frozen sourdough pizza from the Ballerina Farm farmstand in the oven.
Neeleman doesn’t enjoy junk food because she said it hurts her stomach, but is partial to a chocolate croissant or a good-quality chocolate ice cream.
“Strauss has a really good Dutch cocoa ice cream that I always buy at Whole Foods when we go. It’s just so good, and I hide it in the freezer,” she said.
Attacks come after Volodymyr Zelenskyy appeals to US for long-range missiles and urges allies to expand sanctions on Russian oil
Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukraine overnight killed at least three people and wounded 17 others, local officials said.
In the capital, Kyiv, one person was killed and 10 wounded in a ballistic missile attack in the early hours of Saturday, Timur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s city military administration, said. Three of the wounded were hospitalised, according to Ukraine’s state emergency service.
Melissa Hoeppner quit her job last October to reevaluate her priorities and take care of her health.
Courtesy of Melissa Hoeppner
Mel Hoeppner left her job last year after trying to juggle work and two new health conditions.
After taking time to reflect, she decided to invest in herself and started her own health brand.
Hoeppner said she’s found inner happiness that she thinks is hard to achieve in a corporate setting.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Mel Hoeppner, a 40-year-old CEO and founder of The Healing Habit, based in Tennessee. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
Last year, building my career and staying focused on my profession mattered the most to me. I didn’t have time for really anything else.
I’m used to powering through things. I’m a military spouse and I’m raising kids, but over the course of several months, I noticed my health was declining in ways that didn’t feel like typical burnout.
I found out I was suffering from the effects of two undiagnosed autoimmune conditions: rheumatoid arthritis and Hashimoto’s disease. Juggling everything wasn’t working, and I realized I needed to take time off to focus on my health.
I’ve always wanted to put all the work I’ve been putting toward other people’s dreams into my own, but getting sick was the real catalyst for leaving my job and starting my own brand.
Work was my identity for so long. Walking away came with a major feeling of uncertainty.
After I left my job last October, I had a knee-jerk reaction to tell myself that maybe it was just that job. Perhaps I needed to go back and find another job, and then everything would be OK.
I spent nearly three months exploring creative outlets and recovering. I went to yoga, which I had never done before, and painted a lot; I ended up painting every inch of my house. I also started doing a ton of yard work and just processing things I had put off for years.
Then I read this book called “Anticancer” about how we all have inflammation in our bodies, but there are things that you can do to decrease that inflammation and live a healthier lifestyle. I drew a lot of inspiration from this book, and then I began thinking about my own diagnosis.
After my break from working, I launched my own health brand
When I was getting my diagnosis, I had to spend an incredible amount of time doing my own research and really understanding what an inflammatory disease is. I started making this drink blend with ingredients like turmeric, cardamom, and cinnamon, all of which are rich in antioxidants.
I wanted to invest in helping people in a bigger way and do something good at scale. I decided to take a chance and develop a drink blend called The Healing Habit, which supports a healthy inflammatory response.
I began by testing the product in my kitchen and ultimately reached out to a manufacturer with the ingredients that I wanted to use. The manufacturer helped tweak it and determine the optimal ratios for the flavor profile.
Being my own boss is the scariest but most rewarding thing
It’s so scary being my own boss because at the end of the day, nobody’s coming to save me. It’s also the most incredible and rewarding thing that I’ve ever done in my professional career.
I had to dig deep within myself to find the confidence to trust my vision. When I reached that point, it filled me with an inner happiness that I think is hard to find in a corporate setting.
The fun thing about developing a brand is that I play every role. I’m the content creator, the social media coordinator, the email copywriter, the finance person, the CEO — all of it. My day-to-day life is always different, but it doesn’t feel like work anymore because of how passionate I’ve become.
My advice for preparing for a transitional period of life
There’s definitely a big financial investment in all of this. I had set aside some money, knowing that I wanted to do something of my own one day. I don’t have investors. I didn’t use Kickstarter. This was all me at the end of the day.
My dad always told me to have contingency and backup plans in life. Follow your dreams, but don’t do it blindly or without a plan. Ten years ago, my husband and I got into real estate investing. We started small and thought about how to get ourselves to a point of freedom. Not everyone’s in the same position as I am now, but one thing you do have and can use is time.
If you have a full-time job, but you want to make a plan for pursuing some other dream that you have, outline your plan and what it will take to achieve it, and then start working on it little by little.
I don’t regret leaving corporate at all because I’ve redefined success for myself
Success is now taking my kids to school in the morning and being able to follow my passion, it’s spending time with friends, family, and my husband, and learning new things.
When I think about whether I’ll ever return to corporate work, I never say never. I’ve put in the work for the conventional 9-to-5, and I don’t regret a bit of it. However, that’s not the path I foresee for myself and the future I’m creating.
I believe that with age comes wisdom, and now that I’m 40, I’m getting my affairs in order and making a plan for moving forward, trusting myself, and committing to the future I want to create.
Amar Saurabh says building a custom GPT for his job search only took about an hour and a half.
Amar Saurabh
Amar Saurabh created a custom GPT to aid his job search, landing a role at PayPal.
He found ChatGPT inadequate for personalized job applications, prompting the custom tool.
The custom GPT improved interview responses and helped negotiate his PayPal job offer.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Amar Saurabh, a product manager at PayPal in his 30s, based in San Mateo, California. It’s been edited for length and clarity.
I spent the last five years of my career at Meta and later at TikTok as a product manager.
While I enjoyed the high-growth, fast-paced culture at TikTok, I was looking to work for a more established company with stability in the US, so I started applying to other jobs in April.
During the first two months of filling out job applications, I only landed two or three interviews. After not finding much help from ChatGPT, I came up with the idea of creating a custom GPT.
It took less than two hours to create, and the tool helped me land my lead product manager job at PayPal. If I needed to find another job, I’d absolutely use it again.
ChatGPT kept making mistakes
At the start of my job hunt, I reached out to recruiters on LinkedIn, but personalizing each message took a lot of time. I tried using ChatGPT to draft messages, but it kept making mistakes.
I realized that, on ChatGPT, I’m not just chatting about my job search; I’m also chatting about recipe ideas, workout plans, budgeting, and travel itineraries. When ChatGPT would give me an answer, it would often get mixed up or provide generic answers that weren’t customized to me.
It also kept asking me to reupload my résumé or share more details about myself. That’s when I came up with the idea of building a custom GPT, a specialized AI assistant that performs a specific task, exclusively for my job search.
Building a custom GPT was super easy. Here’s how I did it.
You can access custom GPTs through ChatGPT’s free tier, though a paid subscription allows you to upload more documents. I use the paid version, which costs $20 a month.
I clicked on “custom GPT” and named it “PM job search advisor.” I shared my résumé, a link to my LinkedIn profile, and additional details about the projects I’ve worked on. Then I provided context that I was looking for a senior-level product management position.
It probably took me about an hour and a half to fully prep it with my initial input before it was ready to work for me.
My GPT writes messages, customizes my résumé, and helps with interview prep
Next, I started the outreach stage by asking my custom GPT to draft customized messages to recruiters or other members of the team I was applying to.
I could ask it to write a LinkedIn connection request with a character limit of 300, or I could request a longer, email-style message. I even asked my GPT to find me the right people to reach out to for a role and the email address to contact them at. When I applied for jobs, I had it refine my résumé to fit the job description.
It also helped me with interview prep. Before an interview, I would input the job description, tell it the date of my job interview, and ask, “What should I highlight from my experience? What questions should I expect from the recruiter?”
It saved me hours that would’ve been spent trying to remember everything I’ve done in my career.
My custom GPT makes mistakes like a human
There were a couple of times when it would forget certain details about me, and I’d have to remind it, “Hey, you have all my information. Do you remember this conversation we had?”
It would come back saying something like “oh yeah, sorry for not taking that into account,” and it would. It was like talking to a person. Overall, my custom GPT worked really well for me.
The number of applications I filled out didn’t change as I implemented my custom GPT, but what did change was the number of responses and interviews I got. In two months, I landed at least 7 interviews with companies like Reddit, Intuit, and PayPal.
I officially quit TikTok and signed papers to start my new job at PayPal
My GPT helped me write my custom email to the PayPal recruiter and prepared me for each round of interviews. When I did get the job offer, I even used it to help me negotiate my salary.
If I were in the job market in the future, I’d use this method again. The benefits of a custom GPT are confounding and will only get better as more information is added. My next step would be to build out my GPT to have agentic capabilities, meaning it could apply to jobs and answer application questions for me.
Do you have a story to share about landing a job in a unique or unconventional way? If so, please reach out to the reporter at tmartinelli@businessinsider.com.
