
Gusto Scales Up HR-Payroll Software for SMBs: Tech Disruptors
Helping small businesses manage all things HR -- payroll, benefits, tax compliance, employee onboarding -- is Gusto's central focus. The company's Chief Technology Officer, Mike Tria, spells out Gusto's product portfolio suite and the evolution of the human capital management industry over the past ten years from a technology angle. In this Tech Disruptors podcast episode, BI analyst Niraj Patel sits down with Tria to discuss Gusto's appeal across a fragmented customer base, the leverage of its technology infrastructure (Ruby on Rails) to scale up for asynchronous workloads, the software ecosystem, its AI solution - Gus, and more.

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Business Insider
2 hours ago
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GOP senators water down controversial AI provision in Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill'
Amid Republican opposition, the controversial AI provision in Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" is being watered down again. The House-passed version of the bill included an all-out ban on states regulating AI for 10 years. Then, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas rewrote it to comply with Senate rules, allowing states to theoretically continue regulating AI — but lose access to a $500 million pot of federal funding for AI deployment if they did so. Now, under language reportedly negotiated by fellow Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn, the provision would only last for five years. And it also includes new carve-outs allowing states to continue to enact laws aimed at child safety and protecting individuals' names and likenesses, according to bill text obtained by BI. Blackburn had previously opposed the provision, in part because Tennessee has a law that bans the use of AI to mimic musical artists's voices and likeness without permission. "To ensure we do not decimate the progress states like Tennessee have made to stand in the gap, I am pleased Chairman Cruz has agreed to update the AI provision to exempt state laws that protect kids, creators, and other vulnerable individuals from the unintended consequences of AI," Blackburn said in a statement provided to several news outlets. In a statement to BI, Cruz said the rewritten provision "preserves the rights of states to protect consumers and content creators without giving the Left a backdoor to push their woke social agenda through AI regulation." It's not yet clear if other GOP opponents of the provision, including Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, will be satisfied by the new changes. Greene had pledged to vote against the bill when it comes back to the House unless the provision was stripped out, casting it as a violation of states' rights. Seventeen GOP governors sent a letter to Senate Republicans on Friday asking them to strip the provision from the bill, saying it's "the antithesis of what our Founders envisioned." The tech industry largely supports the provision, though Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei criticized it as "far too blunt an instrument" in a recent New York Times op-ed. Proponents of the provision generally argue that it will ensure the US wins the AI race against China, and that companies don't have to contend with a variety of state-level regulations. "The country that leads in AI innovation will shape the future, and the way to secure American leadership in the AI race is to out-innovate our competitors," Cruz said in the statement. "This pause on heavy-handed regulations can be a victory for American entrepreneurs, Little Tech, small businesses, and states like Texas."

Business Insider
9 hours ago
- Business Insider
Scale AI's rivals say they're going hard to win its contractors and clients: 'Our servers are melting'
Meta spent $14.3 billion to acquire nearly half of Scale AI and level up in the AI race — but the startup's rivals spy an opportunity as well. Executives at six Scale AI competitors told Business Insider that they have seen a big uptick in client inquiries and job interest since the Meta deal was announced on June 13. Meta now holds a 49% stake in a company handling AI training data for many of its competitors, like Google, OpenAI, and xAI. In response, those three companies paused at least some of their work with Scale AI. Independence from Big Tech has now become a core part of the pitch for rival AI training companies vying for those contracts. In a blog post following the Meta deal, Scale AI reassured clients that it remains a "neutral, independent partner." Ryan Kolln, the CEO of data annotation firm Appen, told BI the deal would "create a pretty big disruption to our industry and create huge opportunities for Appen and our peers to fill the hole that's going to be left by Scale." "The added pitch is, 'hey, we are a publicly listed company and we're really focused on data neutrality,'" added Kolln, whose company counts Amazon and Nvidia as clients. "Our customers are really evaluating their vendor ecosystem." UK-based Prolific, which provides vetted freelancers for academic and commercial AI research, is also using neutrality as a selling point, its CEO, Phelim Bradley, told BI. "We don't build models. We don't compete with our customers. We don't have conflicting incentives," Bradley said. He added that clients are now reluctant to go all in on a single AI training provider. Big companies often spread their work among vendors, like cloud providers. "Scale benefited a lot from their awareness and being synonymous with data labeling for Big Tech," Bradley said. "Now, it's a much easier question to answer: 'How are you different from Scale?'" A Scale AI spokesperson told BI that "nothing has changed" about its customer data protection. "A lot of this confusion is being driven by smaller competitors who seek to gain from promoting false claims," they added. "Security and customer trust have always been core to our business, and we will continue to ensure the right protections are in place to help safeguard all of our work with customers." Meta did not respond to a request for comment. Jonathan Siddharth, the CEO of Turing, which trains models for major AI labs including Meta, Anthropic, and Google, said that discussions with customers have increased tenfold as frontier labs realize they need "top talent and impartial partners." "Labs increasingly want a Switzerland-like collaborator — someone model-agnostic — who can help them win the AGI race, rather than being tied to a single player," he said, referring to artificial general intelligence. He added that data annotation companies are often working on the exact capabilities that differentiate one AI model from another. Talent war Scale AI's competitors are also moving to pick up its freelance workers, some of whom have had projects they are working on paused after clients like Google halted them. Scale has at least 240,00 gig workers globally who conduct AI training projects, such as flagging harmful chatbot responses. After some of Scale AI's projects were paused, the market became flooded with freelancers looking for work. Sapien AI CEO Rowan Stone told BI that his company had 40,000 new annotators join within 48 hours of Meta's Scale AI deal. "Our servers are currently melting," Stone said last week. "Our engineering team spent the entire weekend bolstering load balancers, spinning up new infrastructure, and getting us ready for the load that we're seeing." Many of these new sign-ups were from India and the Philippines — regions where Scale AI had long been a leader, Stone added. "The change in user signup pattern coincides pretty neatly with the Scale news," he said. Mercor AI's head of product, Osvald Nitski, said that the startup has received applications from full-time Scale employees, adding, "Our hiring bar is extremely high — we're only taking the best people." Mercor says it works with six of the "Magnificent Seven" tech companies and is picking up projects from clients leaving Scale. In terms of contractors, Nitski said the company is focused on recruiting elite-level annotators, like International Math Olympiad medalists, Rhodes Scholars, and Ph.D. students. Nitski said it's been a busy two weeks at Mercor, as it has seen a sharp increase in inbound interest from major tech clients. "There was simply no time for podcasts and blog posts these past few weeks with all of the demand to be fulfilled," Nitski said. Nitski added that Mercor has received applications from full-time Scale AI employees, adding, "Our hiring bar is extremely high — we're only taking the best people." Surge AI's CEO, Edwin Chen, told BI that his company saw a tangible jump in contractor sign-ups after the Meta-Scale news, and that it has work for both expert contractors and generalists. "It's certainly true that the models are getting more advanced in capabilities. However, I think there's almost a misconception that it's only about expert data," he said. "It still needs to learn all these general things that it simply can't do right now," Chen said. He added that models still need to be taught basic skills like using a search engine and using apps like Photoshop, Microsoft Word, or Microsoft Excel.

Business Insider
a day ago
- Business Insider
Chase Sapphire, Walmart, Starbucks: Talking with BI's Katie Notopoulos about her recent hot takes
Welcome back to our Sunday edition, where we round up some of our top stories and take you inside our newsroom. Want to know what a day in the life is like for the CEO of a superyacht firm? Anders Kurtén of Fraser Yachts told BI about his daily drive to Monaco and his nightly unwinding routine. On the agenda today: Scale AI locked down Big Tech training documents after BI revealed security holes. Two retired Air Force pilots share what it's like to fly a B-2 bomber mission. Gen Z has an oversharing problem at work. A private-equity professional shared his stressful on-cycle recruiting experience. But first: One writer's " vindication." If this was forwarded to you, sign up here. Download Business Insider's app here. This week's dispatch Hot takes Katie Notopoulos is one of those people who articulates what you think before you quite realize you think it. A senior correspondent for BI who writes about tech and culture, she is curious, observant, funny, and spot-on. 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Earlier this month, you wrote about Meta AI's public feed and raised the possibility that people might not have understood their posts were public. After your piece, Meta changed the app's controls. Tell us how you sniff out stories. I'm always interested in how people are using technology in unexpected ways. A lot of it is just spending a ton of time scrolling around and just being a user on social media. Meta is interesting because it wears its heart on its sleeve in a sense. You can get an understanding of the company's worldview — and how it sees the future of AI — just by using its apps and the AI chatbots they're rolling out. You can be contrarian. You recently suggested that Starbucks customers should pay for their add-ins, and that Walmart apparel was getting cool. You wrote that President Trump was onto something when he suggested families were essentially over-toyed. I love low-stakes heterodoxy. One of my favorite older Business Insider stories was Josh Barro arguing that grilling is overrated. It's the perfect contrarian position, and he makes a strong case for it. I only want to argue something I truly believe and think can change someone's mind, or to have them think, "Omg yes, I've been saying this, too!" What is the most fun thing you do online (or off!)? Right now, I'm watching "Love Island USA" on Peacock. There's a really interesting fandom for the show happening on X, where people are using the "communities" feature to create custom feeds for fans of each contestant on the show, which is a new and organic user behavior. Maybe I should write about that … Scale AI's cybersecurity problem The startup locked down its training documents after a BI review of thousands of files found that it exposed "confidential" data from its high-profile clients, such as Meta and xAI, in public Google Docs. The lockdown temporarily prevented contractors from accessing them, causing confusion and delays. Scale AI has said it's investigating security gaps, following BI's initial reporting. It said it had disabled any user's ability to publicly share documents from Scale's systems. "We take data security seriously," a spokesperson said. What it's like to fly a B-2 bomber American stealth bombers recently flew 37 hours to bomb Iran's nuclear sites, with the Pentagon calling it one of the longest B-2 Spirit flights in decades. But the record for the longest B-2 flight belongs to two retired Air Force pilots who flew 44 hours in October 2001, executing one of the first bombing missions in Afghanistan after the 9/11 terror attacks. They shared what it's like to carry out these exceedingly long bombing missions. Inside the two-day mission. Make Coworkers Mysterious Again It's a good thing that workplaces have become friendlier and more inviting. It can also be exhausting when coworkers share a little too much information. Gen Z might be the biggest culprit, but there's no age limit on oversharing. Boundaries at work are still important — talking about the wrong things can hurt your professional reputation. Authentic vs. unfiltered. Surviving PE recruiting hell On-cycle recruiting is known to drive junior bankers to extreme lengths to compete for lucrative and elusive private equity jobs. The practice got so intense that JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said he'd fire anyone with a future-dated private equity job. One private-equity professional shared with BI his experience of on-cycle recruiting when he was a junior banker. He described interviewing until 2:30 a.m. and hiding in the bathroom to text a rival firm, calling it one of the "most stressful" 12-hour periods of his life. Still, he doesn't think the practice should go away. This week's quote: "This is the hardest year I've had in HR." — Alexandra Valverde, an HR director who's been in the industry since 2019. More of this week's top reads: How data centers are deepening the water crisis. San Francisco was written off as dead. Now, real estate investors are flocking back. I worked under Anna Wintour. She wasn't warm, but she was an incredible teacher. Meta's largest AI competitors are fighting for users inside its most popular chatbot app: WhatsApp. I was laid off from Microsoft after 23 years, and I'm still going into the office. Gen Z and millennial day traders tell us about switching from the 9-to-5 experience to full-time stock investing. The real victims of the "Zillow Ban" lawsuit. The finance industry's newest social media sensation roasts PE bros — and they love it.