Month: November 2025

• This post originally appeared in the BI Today newsletter.
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Welcome back to our Sunday edition, where we round up some of our top stories and take you inside our newsroom. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has a big bet about the future of autonomy that you won’t want to miss.

On the agenda today:

• Logging off is the newest form of luxury. IRL-hangout apps are cashing in.
• Female founders say sexual harassment is still common while seeking VC funding.
• Amazon laid off 14,000 employees. Here’s what to do if it happens to you.
• From swanky offices to political neutrality, here’s what it’s like to work and live in Dubai.

But first: Going for a PR.

If this was forwarded to you, sign up here. Download Business Insider’s app here.

This week’s dispatch

The hot (and sweaty) new way to network

It’s Marathon Sunday!

Tens of thousands of runners are preparing to take over New York City today, with thousands more expected to cheer from the sidelines.

As a five-time NYC marathon runner myself, I can attest that this race is truly one of the best days of the year.

“The energy of marathon day never gets old,” Rob Simmelkjaer — the CEO of New York Road Runners, the company behind the marathon — told BI. “It’s just a giant block party.”

The sheer scale of the event — to the tune of $700 million in economic impact for the city — is a reminder of how running is experiencing a golden age.

Brooks Running CEO Dan Sheridan came to the BI office on Thursday and said we’re currently in “a running boom,” one that’s part of the wider health and wellness fixation infiltrating nearly all aspects of society — including the workplace.

Running and other forms of exercise are no longer just workouts; they can also serve as social gatherings or even networking events.

Companies, for one, are increasingly implementing group runs or fitness classes as a way to promote team building. This is creating a different kind of bonding experience for work colleagues, as opposed to the connections typically made at more traditional happy hours or dinners.

My colleague Ana Altchek spoke to several fitness studios that said they’ve seen a sharp uptick in corporate demand.

HIIT studio chain Barry’s has experienced a surge in companies booking private classes for employees. Firms are also reserving spots for workers in public classes, or paying to bring instructors to conferences or other events.

As for today’s marathon, Sheridan of Brooks Running offered some advice.

“Keep your head up even when it’s hard,” he said.

Running the marathon is an achievement of one’s personal journey: “Just soak that up,” he says.

Get outside

In a phone-first world, getting offline is the new social currency. So it’s no surprise that social connection apps are having a moment.

From concerts to book clubs to dinners with strangers, the apps are about finding friendship as well as love. For many, they’re a way to find the ever-shrinking third space, not to replace their online presence altogether.

Touching grass hands.

The hidden cost of fundraising

When venture capitalist Leslie Feinzaig surveyed female startup founders, she didn’t ask about sexual harassment on the job. Respondents told her anyway.

Of the survey’s 180 female founders, eight detailed what they described as harassment, being hit on, or being demeaned by investors while seeking funding.

A dark reality.

What to do after a layoff

Amazon’s massive job cuts this week has the white-collar workforce on edge that they could be next.

You can’t always control the challenges life throws at you, but you can control how you respond. If you get laid off, you’ll likely be in shock, so it’s important to take a breath and process. Experts told BI the steps you should take if it happens to you.

Three things to keep in mind.

Read more:

• Corporate America’s go-to layoff strategy: smaller cuts, more often
• The era of mega AI layoffs is here

On the ground in Dubai

The United Arab Emirates city is a burgeoning financial hub, with the Dubai International Financial Center boasting a 9% increase in its working population since 2024.

BI recently visited the expat-filled city for a pair of investment conferences to understand what life is like in the Gulf and meet those who have made the move.

Forever home?

This week’s quote:

“He’s got to do a lot of pyrotechnics to get this company to where he earns that comp.”

— Dorothy Lund, a Columbia law professor, on Tesla’s upcoming pitch to shareholders for Elon Musk’s $1 trillion pay package.

Satellites show America’s global military footprint

BI mapped it out using satellite imagery and archival footage, exploring what it can tell us aboutconflicts involving China, Russia, and Iran.

More of this week’s top reads:

• Exclusive: Read the memo Paramount Skydance sent to staffers after laying off 1,000 employees in its first phase of cuts.
• Watch out, ChatGPT! Google’s Gemini is catching up.
• A millennial’s guide to Gen Z’s career apocalypse.
• Chipotle says it’s lost steam with Gen Z and millennial customers due to unemployment, student loans, and stagnant wages.
• Baby boomers’ property tax revolt.
• Welcome to the “Great Freeze”: Why companies aren’t firing, workers can’t grow, and the unemployed can’t get jobs.
• JPMorgan’s analytics boss lifts the lid on how America’s biggest bank is schooling 300,000 workers on AI.
• Is Stone Street still the epicenter of Wall Street social life? We found out.

The BI Today team: Steve Russolillo, chief news editor, in New York. Dan DeFrancesco, deputy editor and anchor, in New York. Akin Oyedele, deputy editor, in New York. Grace Lett, editor, in New York. Amanda Yen, associate editor, in New York.

• The owner of KitKat, an iconic San Francisco bodega cat, said the feline was killed by a Waymo.
• Waymo confirmed that its vehicle encountered a cat in front of Randa’s Market on Monday night.
• The ride-hailing company is drawing ire in the neighborhood and online for the beloved cat’s death.

In front of Randa’s Market on 16th Street in the heart of the Mission District, the spot where you would usually find an affectionate cat is now replaced by bouquets of marigolds, candles, and a card that reads, “Kill a Waymo, save a cat.”

KitKat, a well-fed, nine-year-old tabby cat with emerald eyes, belonged to Mike Zeidan, who owns the liquor store that’s sandwiched between a popular bar and the Roxie Theater. KitKat’s friendly demeanor made him a popular bodega cat, and he was given the title “Mayor of 16th Street” by residents in the neighborhood.

Tragedy struck on Monday. According to an anonymous 311 complaint filed with the city at 12:51 a.m., a Waymo hit KitKat, who was “sitting in the sidewalk next to the transit lane.”

“The Waymo did not slow down, swerve, or even try to avoid the cat in any way,” the complaint said. “Waymos should not be on the street if they can’t spot small animals in the dark.”

Waymo confirmed to Business Insider that one of its vehicles encountered a cat at the location.

“We reviewed this, and while our vehicle was stopped to pick up passengers, a nearby cat darted under our vehicle as it was pulling away,” a Waymo spokesperson told Business Insider in a statement. “We send our deepest sympathies to the cat’s owner and the community who knew and loved him, and we will be making a donation to a local animal rights organization in his honor.”

Zeidan told Business Insider he wasn’t the individual who filed the 311 complaint and did not witness the event. He said a couple told him that KitKat had gone under a Waymo and that they attempted to rescue the cat and stop the vehicle. They were unsuccessful.

Zeidan said he was at home sleeping when he was woken up by a call that KitKat had been struck. An employee rushed the feline to an emergency room about a mile away, and Ziedan and his wife soon followed. Not long after the pair arrived, the vet informed them that KitKat had died.

“He really was the special, one-of-a-kind thing that brought everybody together,” said Zeidan. “People come a long way just to see him and give him treats and toys — he brought so much love.”

Waymo’s autonomous technology

Waymo did not address questions about what a bystander should do if they urgently need to stop a moving autonomous vehicle. Riders can stop the car using the emergency mechanisms in the app or click the “pull over” button.

Waymo relies on radar, lidar, and at least 13 external visual cameras to detect objects and movement.

Business Insider’s Lloyd Lee described Waymo’s 5th-generation autonomous driver as “a safe but not an annoyingly cautious driver.”

Missy Cummings, director of George Mason University’s Autonomy and Robotics Center, told Business Insider that Waymo cars “do not have a sensor that could detect something underneath the vehicle.”

Cummings said that another company, Cruise, once failed to detect a pedestrian caught under the car and dragged the woman for 20 feet. Cruise is no longer in operation.

Cats that are not kept entirely indoors run the risk of being hit by a car — autonomous or not — in an urban environment.

Throughout the week, KitKat’s memorial spot grew from just a few candles to a multitier altar, as residents turned out to grieve the feline and protest Waymo. “My name is Kitty Cat and I am resting in power,” read one handwritten sticker on the altar.

Similar sentiments spread online. A Reddit thread detailing KitKat’s passing received nearly 2,000 upvotes in a local tech forum, and a post on Randa’s Market’s Instagram account, which memorializes the cat, received thousands of likes, as well as comments directed at Waymo.

“BY A WAYMO?? This means war,” one Instagram user commented.

“Lyft and Uber drivers need our business,” wrote another on Instagram. “Killing KitKat is another strike against the billionaire techies.”

Questions of liability

Bryant Walker Smith, a professor in engineering and law at the University of South Carolina, told Business Insider that the most an owner could do in the event an autonomous vehicle hit their pet is to sue for property damages, but that could be a hurdle in this case, since KitKat mostly roamed freely.

“Law unfortunately treats pets as mere ‘chattel’ — that is, physical property,” said Smith. “The owners are generally entitled only to economic damages such as vet costs and the pet’s ‘fair market value.'”

“This is sad, because law might consider KitKat, a living creature with inherent value, to have a ‘fair market value’ of zero,” Smith added.

Autonomous vehicles have stuck pets before. In 2023, a Waymo vehicle fatally struck a dog in Bernal Heights, and in the same year, a Cruise vehicle hit a Labrador that survived. But the expansion of autonomous vehicles is not slowing down. As of July, Waymo has expanded its operation in the Bay Area to cover more of the San Francisco Peninsula, as well as parts of Palo Alto and Menlo Park in Silicon Valley.

At a recent TechCrunch event, journalist Kirsten Korosec asked Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana if she thinks society would accept a death potentially caused by a robot.

“I think that society will,” Mawakana responded.

• My husband and I had dreamed of renovating our bathroom for years, but we hit a construction snag.
• We moved in with my father-in-law back in March and will likely stay until December.
• There have been a lot of benefits to our new living situation.

For years, we wanted to renovate our bathroom. Months of picking out the perfect tile pairing, a gorgeous countertop, a shower door that swings just right, and a bathtub of my dreams. Little did we know that doing so would necessitate an extended stay out of our home.

A few days into our remodel, the living room turned into an indoor pond, ruining the hardwoods and drywall. With an adventurous toddler, we couldn’t stay in an active construction zone. In March, our little family of three packed our bags and headed a few neighborhoods over to live with my father-in-law in the guest room his house. We’re likely to be here until early December. Here are the pros and cons of our unexpected extended stay in our makeshift “studio apartment.”

Living here has unexpectedly given us free childcare

We went from a quiet home of three to a multigenerational household. One of the biggest benefits of this whole situation has been having help with our son. I tend to have a hard time asking for help, and moving into a multi-generational household unexpectedly opened the door not just to childcare, but free childcare. My son’s grandpa and great-grandparents, who also live here, wanted nothing more than to spend time with him.

Suddenly, since the beginning of our temporary move, I’ve had help whenever I want to do things like take a shower without having a little one pull the curtain back a million times or take hourlong breaks for Pilates. They began asking each morning if I had something to do, just so he could be with them.

Before this experience, I saw asking for help as a burden. I thought our family would be upset with us if we ever needed them to watch our son, because it would leave them unable to do whatever they needed during that time. I also felt guilty for leaving him. Now, I’m seeing that not only does it help him form bonds with his family, but it also brings them immense joy to be able to see him.

There are other unexpected perks to our living arrangement

The most laughable pro that I am certainly going to miss is having our laundry folded. My husband’s grandmother loves doing laundry, a chore I absolutely despise. If she hears the dryer running, she puts a timer on her phone so she can get to it as soon as it’s done.

I used to try to beat her to it, because I didn’t want her thinking I was lazy; over time, however, I realized how much joy it gives her to do things for us (and I sure don’t mind it, either). I also began to understand that by not letting her help us, it made her feel like we didn’t need her. Allowing her to do certain things became a win-win; it made things easier for us, and showed her that we do need her in our lives, and she’s very useful to us.

I’ve also greatly enjoyed splitting the cooking and enjoying a meal as a family. After we moved into my father-in-law’s house, my husband has been better about leaving work at a decent time. There are now more nights than not when we sit down for dinner as a family. Some nights we don’t talk much and just enjoy each other’s presence; other times, we have dinners full of conversations about anything and everything. It’s just a time to slow down and enjoy being together.

The only real con will be how much we’ll miss living here

Surprisingly, there aren’t many cons of living with my husband’s father. I may not be accustomed to the extra noise or sharing a smaller space with my husband and toddler, but overall, the experience has been a pleasure.

The biggest con of all is going to be when we go back home, and my son won’t get to see his grandpa every day. Especially the cherished moments he has with his great-grandparents. Sometimes life throws you unexpected curveballs for reasons greater than you know, and I think in this case, it was to give us extra time. Time with our family, to remind us to slow down and reconnect.

One of the greatest joys to come out of this has been the bond that my little one and his grandpa have formed. He has brought a spark of new joy and hope into our family. Being able to spend these months here, seeing how much my father-in-law has enjoyed it, has been the biggest blessing of all. The happy dances my son did in the morning, asking for Grandpa, and the skinned knees from playing a little too roughly outside, will all be missed.