• The research firm Guidehouse Insights ranked 15 companies that make hardware for electric-vehicle chargers.
• The list excludes companies that make charging stations to help sell electric vehicles (like Tesla and Nio Power) or charging services (like Electrify America and Ionity).
• Companies were evaluated on a variety of criteria related to their strategy and execution, including differentiation, partners, geographic reach, and portfolio.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

SEE ALSO: Read the pitch deck that Uber founder Garrett Camp created for the ride-hailing giant back in 2008 – before the company became the $120 billion giant it is today

15. Tritium

Overall score: 40

Strategy: 46.5

Execution: 32.3

Highlights from Guidehouse's analysis:

"Since 2013, the company has grown considerably, with chargers deployed in more than 30 countries by some of the biggest regional networks and industry players...Tritium's portfolio focuses on DC fast chargers but it is also expanding into software solutions for network management and field services...Tritium has significant momentum in major DC charging markets and is also well positioned to benefit from new emerging EV markets like India and its home market. To move up in the leaderboard rankings, Tritium needs to improve staying power, go-to-market strategy, and sales. It also needs to consider expanding its portfolio with innovations like energy storage."

14. Siemens

Overall score: 40.3

Strategy: 43

Execution: 37.5

Highlights from Guidehouse's analysis:

"Using its core business in power and automation, the company entered global EV charging markets in the early 2010s. Its presence in the market has primarily been in R&D activities, and it is likely to have a growing effect as it commercializes solutions across the market...Siemens' charger portfolio includes hardware for home and commercial markets and installation and maintenance services...Notable business developments in 2019 include continued deployments of lamp post public charging solutions with ubitricity in London and the debut of the company's portfolio of electric bus solutions...Siemens is well positioned to use its global distribution network and name recognition in power and automation to have a significant effect on global heavy EV markets. To move up the leaderboard rankings, Siemens needs to improve its portfolio, sales, and investments."

13. AddEnergie Technologies

Overall score: 42

Strategy: 49.1

Execution: 33.3

Highlights from Guidehouse's analysis:

"Founded in 2009, the company is a leading solutions provider in the North American EV charging markets. As of March 2020, the company manages more than 13,000 public and private stations...AddEnergie's portfolio includes hardware for home and commercial markets, a cloud-based management platform, driver app, and its subsidiary charging point network FLO. AddEnergie's core market is Canada where, in addition to FLO, it supports networks owned by major provincial utilities...Notable business developments in 2019 include over 150 curbside charger installs in Los Angeles, expanding manufacturing capacity via financing from CDPQ and the Quebec Government, and officially joining the global association promoting the CCS standard, CharIN."

12. Efacec

Overall score: 47.2

Strategy: 43

Execution: 51.1

Highlights from Guidehouse's analysis:

"Efacec entered the EV charging market in 2008 and has been a leading competitor in the DC market and one of few manufacturers to consistently offer solutions at the leading edge of the market's hardware technological developments. These developments include wireless chargers and battery integrated chargers. The company is one of a few key suppliers to Electrify America and as of late 2019, has installed 4,000 DC fast chargers on five continents...Efacec's portfolio includes hardware for home and commercial markets...Efacec is well positioned to remain a leader in the DC market and use its legacy market positioning to capture growth in emerging EV markets, like Brazil. To move up in the leaderboard rankings, Efacec needs to improve go-to-market strategy, investments, and sales."

11. Star Change

Overall score: 54.4

Strategy: 46.1

Execution: 61.7

Highlights from Guidehouse's analysis:

"Founded in 2014, it has grown quickly, developing the second largest public charging network in China...As of December 2019, the company has 112,000 charging stations in its domestic network...In 2019, the company made many business developments. One in particular is participation in the launch of a domestic charging infrastructure development joint venture with Volkswagen and domestic automakers FAW Group and JAC Motors...Star Charge has a strong position in China and may potentially become an international competitor. To move up the leaderboard rankings, the company needs to improve differentiation, go-to-market strategy, and marketing. Establishing an international presence is critical in this regard."

10. innogy

Overall score: 54.6

Strategy: 48.7

Execution: 60

Highlights from Guidehouse's analysis:

"The company's portfolio includes hardware for home and commercial markets and software tools for network management and connectivity as well as an EV driver app. The company is active in North America and Europe. Notable business developments in 2019 include supporting the electric mobility strategy of European car park operator APCOA Parking, executing a trial using cryptocurrency for public charge point transactions, and launching an electric carsharing scheme in Warsaw, Poland...The company is positioned well in central Europe and to expand in North America. It has lengthy experience in the market and through BTC Power it has a comprehensive equipment portfolio. Innogy has relatively good scores across all criteria, but not great scores. The greatest gains for the company in leaderboard would be made through improvements to geographic reach by boosting its presence in North America and internationally as well as sales."

9. Schneider Electric

Overall score: 55

Strategy: 63.5

Execution: 45

Highlights from Guidehouse's analysis:

"Beyond equipment sales, Schneider Electric has built a substantial business as a supplier of power distribution equipment supporting fast charger deployments. It has also invested in and partnered with a number of companies in the electric mobility space providing site and fleet deployment services...As of early 2020, the company has reported AC charger shipments are in the hundreds of thousands...Schneider Electric's charger portfolio includes hardware up to 50 kW for home and commercial markets, software tools for network monitoring and connectivity, and installation and maintenance services. Its electric mobility business is active in more than 50 countries and uses a legacy network of distributors, installers, and contractors...Schneider Electric is well positioned to use its global distribution network and holistic electric mobility solution to increase share in both early adopting and emerging EV markets. To move up the rankings, the company needs to improve its partners and innovation."

8. XCharge

Overall score: 55.3

Strategy: 60.4

Execution: 49.8

Highlights from Guidehouse's analysis:

"Though young, the company has been quick to make a name for itself and is one of the first charging manufacturers in China to deploy to major international markets. As of October 2019, the company has made 30,000 charger installations in China, Europe, and Australia...The company's portfolio includes hardware for home and commercial markets and software for network management and connectivity...Notable business developments in 2019 include a tender to support electric bus deployments in Berlin; and an agreement with an Australian distributor to deploy at least 1,000 of its DC units...XCharge is one of few charging market suppliers in China to expand to other major regional EV markets. Using its massive domestic market, the company is well positioned to become a significant global competitor. To move up in the rankings, the company needs to validate its presence on the global stage by improving staying power and innovation."

7. TGOOD

Overall score: 56.6

Strategy: 50.1

Execution: 62.4

Highlights from Guidehouse's analysis:

"Founded in 2004 by German and Chinese engineers, TGOOD's core business is in power and automation. It entered the EV charging market in 2015 and operates the largest public charging network in China. As of March 2020, the company has installed 210,000 charging points in 300 cities...TGOOD has made multiple notable business developments in 2019. One includes participation in a joint venture with other major domestic retail charging service providers (Star Charge, State Grid Corporation of China [SGCC], and China Southern Power Grid [CSG]) to create a new service managing the vast majority of the countries installed public chargers...As the leading provider of charging services in the Chinese market, which is expected to remain the largest EV market in perpetuity, and with a comprehensive solutions portfolio, TGOOD has a strong position as an effective force on the global stage. It is however, mainly effecting China. To move up the leaderboard rankings, the company needs to improve marketing, investments, and innovation."

6. Alfen

Overall score: 58

Strategy: 66.2

Execution: 48.5

Highlights from Guidehouse's analysis:

"As of March 2020, Alfen has installed more than 85,000 charging points...Alfen's charger portfolio includes AC hardware and software solutions for home and commercial markets, software tools for network management and connectivity, and charging point maintenance and servicing...In 2019, Alfen supported Shell's deployment of EV charging installations to forecourts with smart grid connections and energy storage. The company also supported Ionity, Tesla, and others with grid connections...Using its legacy grid business and storage expertise, Alfen is well positioned in the European AC market. To rise in the leaderboard rankings, the company must expand its geographic reach to enter another major global market or broaden its portfolio to other market areas, like DC charging equipment."

5. NewMotion

Overall score: 66.7

Strategy: 69.4

Execution: 63.9

Highlights from Guidehouse's analysis:

"Founded in 2009, NewMotion is a leading charging solutions provider, establishing itself early on by connecting the company's charge card holders to a sizable network of public charge points. As of early 2020, the company has installed more than 60,000 charging points...The company's portfolio includes hardware for home and commercial markets, and software tools for network management and connectivity, as well as an EV driver app...A notable business development in 2019 is netting partnerships with major European vehicle leasing companies KBC Autolease and Arval...NewMotion's positioning in the European L2 charging market is strong. Its partnerships with vehicle leasing companies give it an advantage for both regional workplace network development and home charging markets. To move higher in the rankings, NewMotion must expand its geographic reach."

4. ABB

Overall score: 71

Strategy: 71.4

Execution: 70.6

Highlights from Guidehouse's analysis:

"ABB has been the consistent market leader in the DC market and has also built out a substantial business for heavy EVs...As of January 2020, the company has installed 13,000 DC fast charging in more than 80 countries...Notable business developments in the last year include acquiring Chinese EV charging equipment and software solutions provider Chargedot, a string of contracts to support electric bus deployments in Europe and South America, and expanded demand from European fast charge network, Ionity...ABB is well positioned to remain the global market leader for DC fast charging and to use its technical expertise to capture a significant share of the emerging global heavy EV market. To move up the rankings, ABB needs to focus on innovation, mainly bringing solutions to the market that competitors like Efacec and others are beginning to deploy."

3. EVBox

Overall score: 71.8

Strategy: 64.9

Execution: 78.2

Highlights from Guidehouse's analysis:

"Founded in 2010, the company has been a leading L2 charging infrastructure supplier with advantageous positioning in the fast-growing EV market of northwest Europe. In 2018, it strengthened its market positioning and portfolio by acquiring DC charger manufacturer, EVTronic. As of March 2020, the company has installed more than 112,000 charging points, 1,500 being fast charging points...One notable business development in the last year includes early certification of Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP) 1.6...EVBox is well positioned to remain the market leader in Europe and to expand share in North America. From a portfolio perspective, the company's offerings cover all the major use cases and the company has been quick to acquire and showcase its adoption of OCPP and bring smart charging solutions to the market. To move up the leaderboard, it needs to ramp geographic reach (the North American effort) and make footprints in emerging second-tier geographies and heavy commercial segments."

2. Enel X

Overall score: 78.5

Strategy: 84

Execution: 72.8

Highlights from Guidehouse's analysis:

"As of March 2020, the company has installed more than 60,000 charging points...The company's portfolio includes hardware for home, commercial markets, and retail charging service providers, and software tools for network management and connectivity, as well as an EV driver app...Enel X has multiple notable business developments within 2019. These include plans to develop national networks in Italy, Spain, and Romania, network development tenders in Russia, contracts to support electric bus deployments in South America, and a string of partnerships with US utilities to supply residential and commercial customers...Enel X is well positioned to tap emerging markets in Latin America, and, using its formidable expertise in demand response and VGI, expand market share in residential and fleet markets. From a portfolio perspective, Enel X is hitting all the major applications but lacks a 150 kW+ solution that is increasingly popular in public charging networks. To move into the lead position on the grid, Enel X would need to catch up with ChargePoint in sales."

1. ChargePoint

Overall score: 80.3

Strategy: 77.3

Execution: 83.1

Highlights from Guidehouse's analysis:

Founded in 2007, the company is a consistent market leader in the Level 2 (L2) charging market and is well known for pioneering a solution suite that enables property owners to easily deploy a publicly accessible charge point that can be customized to their business needs...ChargePoint has made many notable business developments in 2019. One of these was the release of a home charger that can adjust to varying home electrical infrastructure capacities...ChargePoint is well positioned to remain the market leader in North America and expand its share in the fast-growing European market. From a portfolio perspective, ChargePoint's offerings cover all major use cases and its go-to-market strategy is strong for its main customer base. Strong brand recognition is also advantageous among other groups like fleet operators and individual EV owners. To remain at the top of the leaderboard rankings, the company must demonstrate continued success in the emerging heavy EV space and continue to advance its geographic reach."

• Read more:
• Experts rank Tesla, Waymo and 16 other power players in the world on self-driving cars
• MORGAN STANLEY: These 48 stocks could help investors who want to cash in on the electric-vehicle revolution
• The CEO of the EV charging company ChargePoint explains why he ordered a Tesla Model Y instead of a Ford Mustang Mach-E
• Elon Musk says the Tesla Model S is the first EV to get a 400-mile range rated by the EPA. Here's how the company did it.

• The theft of highly classified cyberweapons from the CIA in 2016 resulted from the agency's elite hacking unit's failure to secure its own systems from intruders, according to an internal report obtained by The Washington Post.
• The CIA discovered the breach when the radical pro-transparency group WikiLeaks published the information in a release dubbed "Vault 7." US officials say the breach was the largest unauthorized disclosure of classified information in CIA history.
• Security protocol within the hacking unit that developed the cyberweapons, housed within the CIA's Center for Cyber Intelligence, was "woefully lax," the report found.
• Moreover, the CIA may never have discovered the breach in the first place if WikiLeaks hadn't published the documents or if a hostile foreign power had gotten a hold of the information first, according to the report.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The Central Intelligence Agency's elite hacking team "prioritized building cyber weapons at the expense of securing their own systems," according to an internal agency report prepared for then-CIA director Mike Pompeo and his deputy, Gina Haspel, who is now the agency's director.

The Washington Post first reported on the document, which said the hacking unit's failure to secure the CIA's systems resulted in the theft of highly classified cyberweapons in 2016.

In March 2017, US officials discovered the breach when the radical pro-transparency group WikiLeaks published troves of documents detailing the CIA's electronic surveillance and cyberwarfare capabilities. WikiLeaks dubbed the series of documents "Vault 7," and officials say it was the biggest unauthorized disclosure of classified information in the agency's history.

The internal report was introduced in criminal proceedings against former CIA employee Joshua Schulte, who was charged with swiping the hacking tools and handing them over to WikiLeaks.

The government brought in witnesses who prosecutors said showed, through forensic analysis, that Schulte's work computer accessed an old file that matched some of the documents WikiLeaks posted. 

Schulte's lawyers, meanwhile, pointed to the internal report as proof that the CIA's internal network was so insecure that any employee or contractor could have accessed the information Schulte is accused of stealing.

A New York jury failed to reach a verdict in the case in March after the jurors told Judge Paul Crotty that they were "extremely deadlocked" on many of the most serious charges, though he was convicted on two counts of contempt of court and making false statements to the FBI.

Crotty subsequently declared a mistrial, and prosecutors said they intended to try Schulte again later this year.

The report was compiled in October 2017 by the CIA's WikiLeaks Task Force, and it found that security protocol within the hacking unit that developed the cyberweapons, housed within the CIA's Center for Cyber Intelligence, was "woefully lax," according to the Post.

The outlet reported that the CIA may never have discovered the breach in the first place if WikiLeaks hadn't published the documents or if a hostile foreign power had gotten a hold of the information first.

"Had the data been stolen for the benefit of a state adversary and not published, we might still be unaware of the loss," the internal report said.

It also faulted the CIA for moving "too slowly" to implement safety measures "that we knew were necessary given successive breaches to other U.S. Government agencies." Moreover, most of the CIA's sensitive cyberweapons "were not compartmented, users shared systems administrator-level passwords, there were no effective removable media [thumb drive] controls, and historical data was available to users indefinitely," the report said.

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• YouTube is rebranding FameBit, the influencer-marketing platform that it acquired in 2016, as YouTube BrandConnect.
• The in-house influencer-marketing service also has a new global head of business, Lori Sobel, who comes to BrandConnect after 16 years of working across various teams within Google. 
• Unlike FameBit, which offered a self-service tool for creators and brands to connect for sponsored content deals, all YouTube BrandConnect deals will be initiated by the company's in-house team.
• Sobel told Business Insider that the company will be tapping into Google's pool of proprietary data to play matchmaker for brands and creators. 
• Subscribe to Business Insider's influencer newsletter: Influencer Dashboard.

Four years after acquiring the influencer-marketing startup FameBit, YouTube is doubling down in its role as matchmaker for brands and creators and tapping into Google's vast pool of data to try and gain an edge.

The company recently announced that it's eliminating self-service deal-making from its in-house influencer-marketing tool, and as of today, the company is sunsetting the FameBit name and rebranding as YouTube BrandConnect.

The team has a new leader as well: Lori Sobel, who's taking charge of BrandConnect after spending 16 years working across a variety of teams at Google. 

"We've seen increased interest in influencer marketing over the last few years, and I anticipate that continuing to rise," Sobel told Business Insider. "Our team actually proactively matches creators with brands and provides that end-to-end campaign management and delivery. This was in contrast to our original self-service product which was a website that allowed creators to independently find brands to work with."

One of the main benefits of shifting away from a self-service model is having the ability to tap into Google's proprietary data to make more audience-based influencer-marketing deals rather than relying on a creator's content vertical, Sobel said.

"Instead of saying, 'Oh this is a beauty brand, they should only connect with beauty creators,' what we do is say, 'Okay this beauty brand is looking to reach this audience and then we come back with a list of more creators that they might not have even thought of that would be great for their brand," she said. 

YouTube acquired FameBit in 2016 with the hope that FameBit's "democratized marketplace" would allow creators "of all sizes to directly connect with brands," it said in a blog post at the time. The company has since discovered that creator-negotiated influencer deals are far less lucrative than campaigns set up by FameBit's in-house team. Sobel said that self-service deals represented less than 4% of total creator payouts on YouTube, and that its influencers earn on average 30 times more from full-service deals than self-service campaigns.

With the rollout of its full-service-only platform, BrandConnect, YouTube will act as a middle party for all negotiations between brands and creators, similar to an influencer-marketing agency model (though the company rejects the comparison). YouTube will continue to set a 25,000-subscriber minimum threshold for creators to participate in its branded content program.

The company said brands pay an upfront fee for each influencer campaign and in return YouTube guarantees a certain number of organic views. YouTube takes a percentage of the fee paid by the brand and creators who are part of the campaign get paid a pre-negotiated rate, which is also covered by the upfront fee.

"We're working with the brands to come up with what makes sense for them from a financial perspective, and then we're also working with the creators to do that as well," Sobel said. "We're not really an agency, I can't really get into all the details, but the goal is that we want to make it favorable for both sides, but everything we do is in-house."

The BrandConnect team's pitch is built around offering custom features (that it calls "shelfs") to make YouTube branded content more actionable, including a shopping carousel, an artificial-reality makeup try-on feature, and two new features that enable creators to feature apps and movie and TV shows they're discussing in their videos. Those features are exclusive to BrandConnect.

The company also offers a slate of measurement products for campaigns built on proprietary Google data to help brands identify increases in searches on Google.com and YouTube.com, purchase intent and brand recall shifts through surveys, and conversions, whether that's a website visit or product purchase.  

FameBit is not the only YouTube advertising program that's had a touch-up in recent weeks.

The company announced last month that its Google Preferred ad program is being overhauled and rebranded as YouTube Select with an eye to monetizing a wider swath of content on its platform. 

For more on the business of influencers, according to YouTube creators, check out these Business Insider Prime posts: 

• How much money do YouTubers make a month? A minimalist influencer with 77,000 subscribers shares exactly what she earns and spends: The minimalist influencer Kyra Ann, who has 77,000 subscribers, shared how much money YouTube paid her in February.

• 8 YouTube stars explain which videos made them the most money, including one that earned $97,000: We spoke to eight creators with vastly different channels, and they shared the most amount of money YouTube paid them for a single video.

• A YouTube creator explains why personal-finance videos can make much more money than many other types: Marko Zlatic runs a YouTube channel with 298,000 subscribers, and he posts videos about personal finance, stocks, and real-estate investing.

Join the conversation about this story »

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• Nikola Motors is worth $23 billion despite zero sales or revenue. 
• Founder and chairman Trevor Milton told CNBC that's because investors "don't care." 
• Instead, they care about reducing emissions and the promise of Nikola's technology. 
• While Tesla has its eyes on a battery powered semi-truck, Nikola is eyeing hydrogen fuel cells. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Nikola Motors, an electric truck maker that wants to eventually go after both Tesla and the freight market, is still months away from delivering its first products.

Unphased investors have nevertheless piled into the stock this month, sending the company's valuation soaring to well above $20 billion in just three months on public exchanges. CEO Trevor Milton says the new stockholders "don't care" and neither does he.

"They care more about the environmental impact of what you're doing," Milton told CNBC in an interview Monday evening. "'Oh, you're six months or eight months from revenue?' They don't care. They're like, 'you know what? You're changing the world. You're going to reduce emissions more than anyone else we're invested into you.'"

Nikola's most recent surge was fueled by the announcement that it will begin taking reservations on June 29 for its Badger truck, a full-size F-150 and Tesla Cybertruck.

But it's the semi truck — another segment Elon Musk has lofty plans for — where Nikola plans to really make money. However, there's one major powertrain difference: hydrogen.

"Nicola's main revenue stream is the semi-trucks," Milton said. "We can make about $750,000 or more in revenue per truck we sell, which is almost five times what our competitors make per truck.  That's because we actually include all the fuel with it that we own, and we manufacture the hydrogen fuel. That's the way we make all the money."

Hydrogen fuel cells have been an industry choice for heavy trucks, especially on off-highway uses where batteries can be quickly depleted. CNH Industrial, a maker of heavy-duty trucks and farm equipment with a similar stance on hydrogen versus pure batteries, previously invested $100 million in Nikola before exiting the stake during the reverse-public offering in March. 

That's where Milton thinks Nikola can get an edge on Tesla's charging network.

"It does take more energy to produce hydrogen than it does to charge a battery electric truck," Milton said, "but the advantage you get with hydrogen is building all your hydrogen stations on the interstate freeways, where you're able to source your energy directly and pay under 4 cents a kilowatt hour for energy."

In California, for example, Nikola charging could be as low as 30 cents per kilowatt hour, roughly in line with Tesla, and can help trucks work multiple shifts in a day with recharging. Orders are already backlogged to the tune of $10 billion with customers including Anheuser-Busch.

"If you look at cost comparison of a battery electric versus hydrogen battery would be cheaper if you were paying the same rate on energy, but you don't because the battery electric truck you're paying the utility for energy, the hydrogen, we actually control the energy through the, through the federal transmission lines so we can get energy really cheap," Milton said.

But despite all the optimism, there are plenty of people betting against Nikola and its soaring stock price. The company might be one of the top names on Robinhood, where investors are buying more shares of it than General Motors or Netflix, but it's also climbed to the sixth most shorted stock in the US, according to data from S3 Partners.

"I don't think they'll ever get a mass produced car," famed short-seller Andrew Left told Business Insider this week, dismissing the company as a "wannabe Tesla."

And with Tesla's "battery day" on the horizon for this month if plans hold, the race is on.

Join the conversation about this story »

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• Artificial intelligence already plays a major role in determining whether you get a job, and companies are racing to implement more AI hiring tools despite major concerns about their fairness and accuracy. 
• To show what that future could look like, a digital artist created an interactive job interview that simulates a world where AI is entirely in control of the hiring process.
• In "An Interview With Alex," an AI interviewer analyzes your face, voice, and answers to a series of bizarre puzzles and questions to determine if you'd get the job.
• Carrie Sijia Wang, the project's creator, told Business Insider that the goal was to highlight the dangers of letting AI completely take over without understanding how it works..
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

"How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?" is not a question most people expect to be asked in a job interview. 

But in a world where the hiring process relies on artificial intelligence, bizarre and socially inappropriate questions might not be off limits, at least according to one digital artist who wants to warn us about what the future could hold if we're not careful.

In a new online interactive experience, "An Interview With Alex," Chinese-born and New York City-based multimedia artist Carrie Sijia Wang lets people imagine that world by taking them through a job interview conducted entirely by an AI hiring manager.

Over the course of around 12 minutes, Alex analyzes your facial expressions, speech patterns, and answers to abstract puzzles and intrusive questions like the one above, which Wang told Business Insider are based on a famous study that tried to create intimacy between people by having them ask each other 36 personal questions.

Alex's goal: to determine if you're the right fit for the fictional "Open Mind" corporation, which it says ominously is "the largest, and soon to be only, general purpose company in the world."

Alex tells you that Open Mind values play, connection, openness, and positivity, and is looking for "mini gamers" to win small games that help the company in some opaque way — which you don't need to worry about because you're "fully protected from the consequences of your actions."

"It's kind of making fun of the corporate culture where the emphasis of surface level optimism is key," Wang told Business Insider.

The experience feels like something out of a "Black Mirror" episode, and Wang said she intended it to be that way in an attempt to highlight some of the dangers of relying on AI for things that may need a more human touch.

Wang said that, while the project started out as "speculative fiction" and the narrative may seem a bit far-fetched, she came to realize during her research that "the reality of hiring and employee management is already quite weird and absurd," citing examples like Uber drivers' complaints about being managed by an algorithm.

As AI takes over more aspects of the workplace, it also raises the issue of how — and for whom — these tools work.

"AI takes on the biases of its creators. And it often functions like a black box. As a result, human resources AI manifests as a tool of control and oppression in the workplace," Wang wrote in a blog post accompanying the project, which was funded by the Mozilla Foundation as part of its Creative Media Awards.

While advocates say AI is the key to rooting out human bias and ending discrimination in the hiring process, its critics warn that AI-driven hiring tools are just as biased as the humans who train them — and, in some cases, could actually promote employment discrimination.

Despite those concerns, employers are increasingly relying on AI-driven tools for recruitment and hiring. Amazon, Target, Hilton, Pepsi, and Ikea are just some of the companies who have tested or used algorithms to determine who to hire, and the list is growing, both across industries and from low-wage jobs to white-collar positions.

Assuming that trend doesn't reverse anytime soon, Wang said there needs to be more transparency and education around AI and machine learning because the technology can influence how people act without them knowing it.

"I know it's quite complex, but still I think people should be educated regarding how AI works and how it can easily be used as a tool of control against individuals," she said.

Wang said the next step for the project — pending in-person gatherings being allowed again — is an in-person exhibit with a group interview where participants compete against one another directly and discuss the experience afterward. 

Up to the challenge? Try Wang's AI job interview for yourself here.

Aaron Holmes contributed reporting to this story.

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• San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin is suing food delivery platform DoorDash for misclassifying its workers as contractors instead of employees.
• The civil lawsuit is one of the latest examples of how California's AB5 law is upending tech companies' reliance on the gig economy.
• The law went into effect in January and requires companies to treat their gig workers as employees, an action that the lawsuit is calling for DoorDash to take.
• A DoorDash spokesperson told Business Insider in an email that "today's action seeks to disrupt the essential services Dashers provide."
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin is suing food delivery platform DoorDash for "unlawful and unfair business practices."

According to the complaint, pulled by Mission Local reporter Joe Eskenazi who first reported the news, the company has continued to classify its delivery workers as independent contractors instead of employees in direct defiance of a California law passed to prevent companies from doing just that. 

The state's AB5 law went into effect in early January 2020 and strives not only to require companies to classify gig workers as employees but also to pay local, state, and federal taxes in accordance with that classification, as Eater SF notes. Boudin's civil lawsuit is asking for DoorDash to classify its delivery workers, known as "Dashers," as employees.

"Today's action seeks to disrupt the essential services Dashers provide, stripping hundreds of thousands of students, teachers, parents, retirees and other Californians of valuable work opportunities, depriving local restaurants of desperately needed revenue, and making it more difficult for consumers to receive prepared food, groceries, and other essentials safely and reliably," DoorDash Global Head of Public Policy Max Rettig said in an email to Business Insider. "We will fight to continue providing Dashers the flexible earning opportunities they say they want in these challenging times."

San Francisco tech companies — including Uber, Postmates, and Lyft — and their business models rely heavily on gig workers. By doing so they're able to avoid the higher costs that come with doling out wages and benefits typically reserved for full-time employees.

DoorDash — which filed to go public in late February— isn't the only firm that has aggressively pushed back on AB5. The company and others like Lyft, Uber, and Instacart have poured millions into a campaign supporting a California ballot measure designed to reverse the AB5 law.

Ride-hailing giant Uber and food delivery company Postmates had also filed a lawsuit in December 2019 arguing that the law was unconstitutional.

But the gig workers are also going to court. 

As Business Insider's Tyler Sonnemaker reported, drivers with Uber and Lyft in California filed claims against the companies in mid-April. The workers claimed they were owed at least $630 million in back wages as their employers continued to classify them as independent contractors, despite the passage of AB5.

SEE ALSO: DoorDash is preparing an IPO. Here's what it's like inside its Silicon Valley ghost kitchen, a 'WeWork for restaurants' that allows tenants like Chick-fil-A to focus on food delivery.

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• This week SpaceX posted two new jobs for "offshore operations engineers" in Brownsville, Texas.
• Elon Musk, who founded the aerospace company in 2002, all but confirmed in a tweet on Tuesday that the jobs are to help build "floating, superheavy-class spaceports" for its next-generation Starship vehicle.
• Ocean-platform launches as a concept is not new, as Musk first detailed SpaceX's in October 2017. A company called Sea Launch also demonstrated the idea in March 1999 with an orbital rocket launch.
• Safety is likely driving the work, since SpaceX's new launch system may carry about 9 million pounds of liquid fuel and would create sonic booms when its Super Heavy boosters or Starship spaceships land.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

It's no secret that SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk in 2002, wants to launch and land its next-generation Starship rocket system over water.

One of the first detailed mentions of the plan emerged during an October 2017 talk Musk gave, in which he updated the world on SpaceX's plans to build cities on Mars and populate them with a million people or more.

During the presentation, Musk shared a video of Starship (then called the Big F---ing Rocket) rocketing passengers from an ocean platform near New York City, then landing them 39 minutes later on a similar floating spaceport near Shanghai. Musk called the high-speed transportation concept "Earth to Earth."

However, plans to actually build ocean launch platforms seemingly lacked teeth for years. That is, until this week: when the aerospace company posted twojobs for engineers who will help "design and build an operational offshore rocket launch facility."

Neither posting mentions "Starship," but both are located in Brownsville, Texas. The city sits about 30 minutes west of the state's southeastern tip, which is where SpaceX is building and testing Starship rocket prototypes (sometimes to explosive effect) amid a community of retiree-age homeowners called Boca Chica Village.

Business Insider first saw the job listings in a tweet by user "Cowboy" Dan Paasch, who lives in Forth Worth and follows SpaceX's activities. Musk later quoted a tweet by another user about the job postings.

"SpaceX is building floating, superheavy-class spaceports for Mars, moon & hypersonic travel around Earth," Musk tweeted on Tuesday.

Musk: Starship 'not subtle' when it launches or lands, necessitating a floating spaceport

The concept of ocean-platform launches is not new. A company called Sea Launch, for example, first launched an orbital-class Zenit rocket from a platform in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean in March 1999. (The company used to be managed by Boeing but is now owned by a Russian airline.)

Though SpaceX lacks operational experience launching rockets from ocean platforms, it has landed more than four dozen first-stage rocket boosters — the most expensive part of a launch system, given the numerous complex engines attached to their base — and landing them on drone ships. The boosters are then refurbished and reused, saving SpaceX millions of dollars per use and allowing the company to be price-competitive.

When a Twitter user brought up Sea Launch and its Zenit rocket, Musk responded: "Zenit is an order of magnitude smaller than Starship system & doesn't come back & land."

Now it seems SpaceX is ready to make the leap, with safety as a driving factor.

Homeowners who attended a private meeting with Musk in September 2019 told Business Insider that the entrepreneur described long-term plans to move away from land-based launchpads and instead use offshore platforms near Boca Chica Beach to fly Starship with less risk to the ground.

Starship is divided into two sections: the first-stage Super Heavy booster, which may stand about 22 stories tall, and the upper-stage rocket ship called Starship, which Musk said could ferry up to 100 people to Mars at a time (though presumably more in an Earth transportation design).

A fully stacked Starship-Super Heavy vehicle could weigh more than 9 million pounds, mostly in fuel, and each section returning to Earth would create deafening sonic booms, perhaps three times per day per rocket, or 1,000 launches per year.

"We need to be far enough away so as not to bother heavily populated areas. The launch & landing are not subtle. But you could get within a few miles of the spaceport in a boat," Musk tweeted on Tuesday, adding that a jet-powered Incat ship may be suitable for land-to-platform transportation. 

A crash program to develop Starship in South Texas

SpaceX is currently in the midst of a crash program to develop Starship into a safe and fully reusable launch system.

If it works as Musk envisions, the system could launch several times a day — unheard of in this history of spaceflight — and reduce the cost-per-pound to launch something to space by 1,000-fold or more.

To that end, Musk has told his staff to make Starship "the top SpaceX priority" and has enlisted about 1,000 staff to work on a production facility for the vehicle in Boca Chica — what the CEO sees as the key to making a viable, low-cost system. The company expects the vehicles to fail during tests at its private spaceport, and they often do, but Musk thinks SpaceX may be ready to fly to orbit by the 20th version or so.

SpaceX also recently won a NASA contract to develop Starship into a lunar-landing vehicle. The company also aims to fly Japanese fashion billionaire Yusaku Maezawa around the moon in 2023, then fly the first people to Mars in 2024, Musk reconfirmed in a June 4 tweet.

Amid that work, SpaceX is hoping to get its high-speed Earth transportation system up and running. The ultimate goal with the scheme may be to replace grueling long-haul airplane flights — perhaps to the tune of 1 million to 15 million per day — Caryn Schenewerk, the senior legal counsel for SpaceX, said in January at the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) 23rd annual Commercial Space Transportation Conference.

"There will be many test flights before commercial passengers are carried," Musk tweeted on Tuesday. "First Earth to Earth test flights might be in 2 or 3 years."

SEE ALSO: 'I doubted us': Elon Musk says it took 100,000 people to launch 2 NASA astronauts into orbit — and that he wasn't sure SpaceX would ever pull off the feat

DON'T MISS: SpaceX's latest Starship rocket prototype just exploded during an engine test

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NOW WATCH: Why NASA waited nearly a decade to send astronauts into space from the US

• Netflix billionaire Reed Hastings secretly built a $20 million luxury training camp for teachers in Colorado.
• Hastings pledged to spend $100 million of his $4.8 billion fortune to reform public schools.
• Hastings, who has a long-standing interest in public education policy, is one of many billionaires to have poured millions into educational reform.
• But not all billionaire-backed programs to bolster public education have succeeded. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have both been behind costly education initiatives that have produced mixed results.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Netflix billionaire Reed Hastings is building a luxury retreat in Colorado, but it's not for his personal enjoyment.

The property will house a training facility for teachers as a part of Hastings' ongoing efforts to reform the United States' public school system, Vox's Theodore Schleifer reported. The camp, called the Retreat Land at Lone Rock, spans 2,100 acres in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado and could open as soon as March 2021, per Vox.

A representative for Hastings at Netflix did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment on the training center.

When it opens, Lone Rock will host groups of 30 teachers from both public and charter schools, who will be able to attend four-day retreats filled with team-building exercises like sports and hiking, use its classroom space, and relax at its on-site spa. The massive $20 million development has been under construction for years, but not even frustrated local residents knew its purpose before Schleifer's report.

Hastings built a $4.8 billion fortune after founding Netflix in 1995. The billionaire has long been interested in reforming America's educational system, pledging to spend $100 million of his personal fortune on education in 2016, Business Insider reported at the time.

Before he was a billionaire, Hastings coauthored a 1998 initiative that made it easier to start charter schools in California, according to the Washington Post, and served on the California Board of Education for four years. 

The ultrawealthy have a mixed track record on educational policy

Bill Gates spent $1 billion and seven years working on an initiative to improve test performance for students in low-income schools by closely monitoring teacher effectiveness — a similar strategy to Hastings' — but ultimately didn't improve test scores or drop-out rates in the long-term, a 2018 report by independent think-tank RAND revealed. In some cases, the program even "did more harm than good," Jay Greene, a professor of education at the University of Arkansas, wrote on Education Next.

Still, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo tapped Gates to help him "reimagine" what New York's public schools will look like when they reopen in the fall after coronavirus closures. Cuomo provided few details of the partnership when he announced it at a press briefing in May, and the Gates Foundation told Business Insider in a statement that more details on the collaboration are forthcoming.

Similarly, Mark Zuckerberg donated $100 million to Newark, New Jersey's failing public school system in 2010, but the cash infusion largely failed to improve student outcomes.

With Retreat Land at Lone Rock, Hastings could similarly become a major influence in public education, Schleifer reported.

"I had a bunch of money, and I didn't really want to buy yachts," Hastings told The Wall Street Journal in 2008. "I started looking at education, trying to figure out why our education is lagging when our technology is increasing at great rates and there's great innovation in so many other areas — health care, biotech, information technology, moviemaking. Why not education?"

SEE ALSO: Meet the billionaires bankrolling Joe Biden's 2020 campaign

DON'T MISS: How philanthropists can use their money to actually help achieve racial equality, according to the president of the Ford Foundation

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• Oracle beat Wall Street's profit estimates, but fell short on revenue, which the company attributed to the impact of COVID-19.
• "As the quarter progressed, we saw a drop off in deals, especially in industries, most affected by the pandemic," CEO Safra Catz told analysts on the company's earnings call. The stock slid about 4%. 
• But chairman and founder Larry Ellison touted the tech giant's in the cloud, pointing to major customer wins against rival Amazon, including video conferencing platforms Zoom and 8X8.
• "As people compare our cloud infrastructure to AWS and Azure and the rest, they're going to pick our cloud," Ellison told analysts on the earnings call. "Once they look, we win."
• Oracle reported a quarterly profit of $3.12 billion, or 99 cents a share, compared to a profit of $3.74 billion, or $1.07 cents a share for the year-earlier period. Revenue slipped 4% to $10.4 billion. Adjusted profit was $1.20 a share. Analysts were expecting a profit of $1.16 a share on revenue of $10.69 billion.
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Oracle posted weaker-than-expected sales during its fourth quarter earnings as the tech giant saw "a drop off in deals" due to the coronavirus crisis.

While the tech giant exceeded Wall Street expectations on the bottom line, the stock still slipped about 4% after-hours. 

"As the quarter progressed, we saw a drop off in deals, especially in industries most affected by the pandemic," CEO Safra Catz told analysts on the company's earnings call. She cited the hospitality, retail, and transportation industries as some of the hardest hit, and said that some customers were forced to delay their payments.

Oracle reported a fiscal fourth quarter profit of $3.12 billion, or 99 cents a share, compared to a profit of $3.74 billion, or $1.07 cents a share for the year-earlier period. Adjusted profit was $1.20 a share. Revenue slipped from $11.14 billion for the year-earlier-period to $10.44 billion in Q4. Analysts were expecting a profit of $1.16 a share on revenue of $10.69 billion.

While Oracle's stock sank after-hours, it has rallied recently as the tech market has recovered. Revenue aside, Oracle also boasted about some notable customer wins in the cloud, where it competes with — and lags behind — market leaders Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

Founder and chairman Larry Ellison used Tuesday's earnings call to highlight recent gains against its archrivals, including new deals with video conferencing platforms Zoom and 8X8.

"As people compare our cloud infrastructure to AWS and Azure and the rest, they're going to pick our cloud," Ellison told analysts on the earnings call. "Once they look, we win."

But Jefferies analyst Brent Thill was unimpressed with Oracle's report, telling clients in a note that the company's overall results — particularly a 22% year-over-year drop in license revenue — suggest it was actually losing share to Amazon and Microsoft.

Valoir analyst Rebecca Wettemann also downplayed the significance of Oracle's recent customer wins.

"Oracle can't depend on customers moving to the cloud in general to save it," she told Business Insider. "Companies are not making big cloud moves right now, but mostly small moves, which aren't enough to move the needle."

Got a tip about Oracle or another tech company? Contact this reporter via email at bpimentel@businessinsider.com, message him on Twitter @benpimentelor send him a secure message through Signal at (510) 731-8429. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

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SEE ALSO: Meet the 10 Oracle execs backing CEO Safra Catz and founder Larry Ellison in the tech giant's cloud offensive against Amazon, Microsoft, and Google

SEE ALSO: Oracle is known for making bold M&A moves in a recession and it's sitting on a fresh $20 billion. Here are the 7 companies experts think it could acquire as the coronavirus crisis drives down valuations

SEE ALSO: Experts lay out five moves that Oracle founder Larry Ellison, one of tech's best tacticians, might take in a coronavirus-driven downturn

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• WhatsApp is adding payments in Brazil.
• It's part of Facebook's big plan to push into commerce and finance.
• Facebook bets that the efforts will benefit its advertising business — and will also generate income through transaction fees.
• It's also a way for Facebook to directly monetize WhatsApp, which it acquired for $19 billion in 2014.
• Do you work at WhatsApp? Contact this reporter at rprice@businessinsider.com or +1 650-636-6268. Anonymity offered.
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WhatsApp's big payments play is finally here.

On Monday, the Facebook-owned messaging app announced that it is adding payments tech to its service in Brazil, allowing its 120 million users in the country to send one another cash and for businesses to process purchases in the app.

It's a significant step in Facebook's vision to build out a fully fleshed commerce and finance setup across its family of apps — and to help recoup the tens of billions of dollars it has poured into WhatsApp over the years.

Facebook acquired WhatsApp in 2014 for a cool $19 billion. Since then, it has grown to become immensely popular, with more than 2 billion users around the world. But it has never been a runaway commercial success for Facebook, in the same way Instagram has been, which after being snapped up in 2012 for a then-eye-watering $1 billion ultimately became an advertising powerhouse that generated more than $20 billion in revenue in 2019, more than a quarter of Facebook's overall revenues for the year.

WhatsApp, meanwhile, remains immensely valuable to Facebook because of its popularity around the world — but it's not contributing to the bottom line in the same way. Attempts to add ads, Facebook's core business, to the app have been abortive. In early 2020, the news broke that the company was disbanding a team that was attempting to implement ads in WhatsApp. Facebook insists that ads are still coming, but not any time soon.

Payments is an ideal answer to this void.

WhatsApp is increasingly used by businesses and consumers to communicate, particularly in emerging markets like India, and the company has built out a suite of tools to help facilitate this. Businesses can build "catalogs" to show off their offerings, and are offered tools to help manage orders and facilitate customer service interactions.

Adding payments tech, which was first trialed in India, allows WhatsApp to own the entire transaction from start to finish — and make some money in the process. Peer-to-peer payments will be free for users, Facebook says, but it will take a cut of payments made to businesses, in the same way that a traditional payment processor would charge a shopkeeper to use its point-of-sale software.

Facebook's overall business remains ads-orientated, and it views payments as a way to boost that too. On a call with analysts after Facebook released its first-quarter financial results for 2020, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he expected increased commerce and payments functionality across its apps to make its ads business more successful. "[Businesses] basically buy ads inside Facebook or Instagram that send people to chat threads. And then as we build out all these tools around that — around making those threads more valuable, we think that those ads will only increase in value, which is the way we're currently thinking about that business," he said.

WhatsApp's payments functionality is powered by Facebook Pay, similar functionality that the company made for its main app. It's one of a suite of commerce-orientated tools that it has built in recent years — and accelerated work on amid the COVID-19 pandemic that forced businesses around the world to shutter their physical stores.

In May 2020 it announced Shops, a major new feature for Facebook and Instagram that allows businesses to create digital storefronts to list their products online, along with other tools to sell goods via livestreams and other new functionality. Financial services firm Deutsche Bank estimates that Shops could net Facebook an extra $30 billion in annual revenue, through a combination of transaction fees and increased ad spend by businesses attempting to capitalize on the functionality.

For now, WhatsApp is only offering payments tools in Brazil. But if it's a success, the rest of the world is sure to follow. "Payments on WhatsApp are beginning to roll out to people across Brazil beginning today and we look forward to bringing it to everyone as we go forward," the company wrote in a blog post.

Do you work at Facebook? Contact Business Insider reporter Rob Price via encrypted messaging app Signal (+1 650-636-6268), encrypted email (robaeprice@protonmail.com), standard email (rprice@businessinsider.com), Telegram/Wickr/WeChat (robaeprice), or Twitter DM (@robaeprice). We can keep sources anonymous. Use a non-work device to reach out. PR pitches by standard email only, please.

SEE ALSO: Mark Zuckerberg's product boss left Facebook a year ago over 'artistic differences.' Now that Chris Cox is back, the key question is whose vision won?

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You’ve likely heard the phrase Internet of Things, or IoT, at some point if you have been following any tech news in the last several years.

But at the same time, you might be scratching your head figuring out what it is or what it means past a flashy buzzword.

Simply put, the IoT refers to the connection of devices (other than typical fare such as computers and smartphones) to the Internet. Cars, refrigerators, juicers, wine racks, heart monitors, ovens, watches, and more are all candidates for connection.

A new report from Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, called IoT 101: The Essential Guide to the Internet of Things, outlines the basics of the IoT and what this next wave of technology means to the everyday individual.

The report dives into key IoT terms, predictions and trends for the IoT in the next five years, the industries that the IoT will affect the most, and the biggest challenges facing the IoT.

To get your copy of this exclusive report absolutely FREE, simply click here.

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• Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in a companywide email on Tuesday that he's canceling all of his meetings on Juneteenth, the day commemorating the end of slavery in the US.
• Bezos encouraged Amazon employees to do the same to take some time to "reflect, learn, and support each other," according to the email.
• Amazon is the latest high-profile company to instruct employees to take time off on Juneteenth.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos wants employees to use June 19, the day known as Juneteenth commemorating the end of slavery in the US, as a day to "reflect, learn, and support each other," according to an internal email obtained by Business Insider.

In the email, Bezos said that he's canceling all of his meetings that day, after having spent a lot of time thinking about the recent events that sparked the current Black Lives Matter movement. Although he didn't call it an official day off for the company, he encouraged all employees to cancel their meetings on Friday too, adding the company is offering online learning opportunities about Juneteenth throughout the day.

Amazon's representative wasn't immediately available for comment. Recode's Jason Del Rey first tweeted about the email.

Amazon is the latest company to instruct employees to cancel all meetings on Juneteenth. Other high-profile companies like Microsoft, Google, and Nike have made similar arrangements for their employees.

The move follows growing calls for support of the Black Lives Movement internally at Amazon. An internal climate activist group encouraged employees to join the protests last week, while a group of employees are also taking steps to add "inclusion" to Amazon's famous leadership principles. Several Amazon executives addressed the issue in internal emails as well.

Here's the full email Bezos sent to employees:

Over the past few weeks, the [S-team] and I have spent a lot of time listening to customers and employees and thinking about how recent events in our country have laid bare the systemic racism and injustices that oppress Black individuals and communities.

This Friday, June 19, is Juneteenth, the oldest-known celebration commemorating the end of slavery in the U.S. I'm cancelling all of my meetings on Friday, and I encourage all of you to do the same if you can. We're providing a range of online learning opportunities for employees throughout the day.

Please take some time to reflect, learn, and support each other. Slavery ended a long time ago, but racism didn't.

Jeff

SEE ALSO: In a leaked document, Amazon employees shared stories of racism and gender discrimination while calling for a new leadership principle on 'inclusion'

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NOW WATCH: What makes 'Parasite' so shocking is the twist that happens in a 10-minute sequence

• This is a preview of The Smart Speaker research report from Business Insider Intelligence.
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The smart speaker has been a runaway success in the handful of years since it hit the market, catapulting from obscurity to the peak of sales lists and cementing itself in the public consciousness.

According to primary survey data from Business Insider Intelligence, as many as half of US respondents reported living in a home with a voice-enabled AI device.

The prevalence of smart speakers is changing how companies in a range of spaces — media, e-commerce, smart home, banking, and more — interact with consumers.

For companies looking to sell these speakers and brands looking to engage with their customers through the now-critical medium, it's important to understand how the voice ecosystem works in practice and how it's being used. 

To learn more about adoption and habits, we surveyed 2,000 US consumers regarding factors like smart speaker ownership, what brands consumers use, and what they use the devices to do. Our survey data offers critical insights for key stakeholders at companies aiming to promote and use the smart speaker to reach customers.

In TheSmart Speaker Report, Business Insider Intelligence examines the fast-evolving smart speaker market. First, we provide a glimpse into smart speaker adoption in the US, both overall and by particular demographics. Then, we look at the characteristics of device owners, including how many speakers they own, which types, how often they use them, and what they use them to do. We also break down the top smart speaker use cases and the reasons why they are or aren't resonating with consumers, and advise brands looking to reach their users via this medium how best to do so.

The companies mentioned in this report are: Amazon, American Express, Apple, Deezer, Google, Nest, Pandora, Samsung, Spotify, and TuneIn.

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

• 5 years since the first device in its category launched, the smart speaker may be demonstrating one of the fastest rates of consumer adoption of any technology device in history, outpacing even the smartphone, per our data.
• More than half of US respondents who said that they live in households with a smart speaker reported having multiple speakers in their household, and nearly all living in households with speakers use them at least once a week.
• Media playback, general information, and communication are among the most commonly used features of smart speakers for device users.

In full, the report:

• Provides a snapshot of the current state of smart speaker adoption.
• Highlights the most important ways that consumers are using the devices and looks at what will come next in key segments.
• Identifies key trends in smart speaker and voice assistant design and usage and offers guidance for companies and brands looking to use the platform moving forward.

Interested in getting the full report? Here's how to get access:

1. Purchase & download the full report from our research store. >> Purchase & Download Now
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3. Current subscribers can read the report here.

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• I've driven hundreds of cars, trucks, and SUVs since 2014. 
• When I look back over the fleet, some real beauties jump out. But so do some rides that might be considered works of art.
• My list is heavy on names like Ferrari, Jaguar, and Aston Martin — and there's no shortage of sports cars and supercars in the rundown.
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I like a beautiful car.

Luckily, I get to drive a lot of real beauts. Ferraris. Maseratis. Jaguars. Aston Martins. 

The good stuff.

But beauty shouldn't be limited. So while the Aston Martin DB9 is the loveliest thing I've driven since 2014, I've also found beauty in many other places. 

Here's a rundown:

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The Acura NSX is a reboot of the legend from the 1990s, but this mid-engine masterpiece is thoroughly new, and with its sleek lines, gathered more attention in my driveway than almost any other car I've tested. Built in Ohio, the NSX was designed by Michelle Christensen.

The Acura TLX A-Spec PMC Edition is the most gorgeous — and mostly hand-built, limited-run version — of an already smashing four-door. That paint job!

The Alfa Romeo Giulia brings Italian panache, the the famous Alfa grille, to the crowded sport-sedan segment.

The Alfa Romeo 4C might be on the way out in the US, but the bonkers little ride is effectively a roadworthy race car that's also as close as one can get to a compact Ferrari at a budget price.

The Aston Martin DB9 is no longer with us, but if I were gonna pick the most beautiful car I've ever driven, this would be it. Henrik Fisker's design is smooth, powerful, restrained, perfectly proportioned. Actually, just perfect.

Of course, newer Aston Martins are also gorgeous. For example, this DB11 Volante, which proves that drop-top Astons are as lovely as the hardtops.

The Audi RS5 Sportback is a really sharp set of wheels, but what got it on this list was that "Sonoma Green Metallic" paint job. Zowie!

The Buick Regal TourX is easily the world prettiest Buick. It's a German-made American car that proves wagons are superior to SUVs.

The Cadillac CTS-V is essentially a four-door Corvette. Without a doubt, the coolest Caddy on the road.

The Chrysler 300 is an American sedan that deftly evokes muscle cars while exuding class.

The Corvette Grand Sport convertible is my personal favorite of the seventh-generation Vettes (now replaced by the mid-engine eighth-gen, these are the last Vettes to have their V8s up front). The GS is aggressive, but still free-spirited.

The Chevy Camaro SS is everything you want a muscle car to be, and the one I drove came in an eye-catching Hot Wheels orange paint job.

Prepare for some Ferraris. The GTC4 Lusso is a hybrid of a coupé and a wagon. The style, sometimes called a "shooting brake," is utterly unique.

The Ferrari 488 Spider is the sharpest 488, in my view. In an offbeat "Avorio" paint job (Italian for "ivory") the already beautiful supercar gained even more fans.

But I reserve a special place in my heart for the anachronistic Ferrari 812 Superfast and the V12 under that long hood.

The Ford GT, designed by the late Chris Svensson, is perhaps the most beautiful Ford ever. The racing version won the 2016 24 Hours of Le Mans, repeating history from 1966 when the famous "Ford vs. Ferrari victory was notched.

Gotta have a Mustang on my list, and the OTHER Ford GT get the job done. The current generation of 'Stangs are some of the best-looking ever, in my book.

Can't overlook the pickups! In that oft-homely realm, the Ford F-150 Raptor stands out. This is the half-ton turned up to 11.

Nobody thinks that minivans are attractive, but of all the makers, Honda has done the most to give these microbuses a snappy exterior.

Ian Callum had a tough job when Jaguar, as noted for beauty as Ferrari, decided to build an SUV. The result is the F-Pace, and there's no question that it's a work of art.

Still, the Jaguar F-Pace is more like it. Only Ferrari and Aston Marin can equal it. The lines are pure, the balance impeccable, and the sense of coiled power unmistakable.

Yes, there are three Jags on my list, and that should have been expected. The XF Sportbrake captured hearts and minds in my household. "I want that car," my wife said.

The Jeep Wrangler has been essentially unchanged for decades. Is it beautiful? No. But you won't find a better expression of utility, distilled to its essence. And that Jeep grille is iconic.

The Kia Stinger GT, designed by Peter Schreyer, immediately put the South Korean brand on a new set of radar screens — and showed that it was possible to shake things up in the sport sedan world.

The shark-like Lamborghini Huracán reset expectations for the brand, long known for flamboyant supercars. Here was an almost conservative design — but still a thrilling Lambo.

Then Lamborghini showed that it could translate supercar aesthetics into the SUV form.

The Land Rover Evoque Convertible is one of the most unusual vehicles on the road. It has detractors, but I love the nutty combo of SUV and drop-top.

The Lexus LC500 is among the best-designed cars Toyota's luxury brand has ever produced. It also delivers on the road, with satisfying performance.

Lincoln's revamped Navigator took the full-size SUV is such an appealing direction than the company had a tough time meeting demand. This vehicle carries its bulk lightly!

The Lincoln Continental, with its Art Deco styling — and limited-edition coach doors! — has made it my favorite large sedan.

When it comes to Maserati, I'm a sucker for the stylish Ghibli.

The redesigned Mazda MX-5 Miata is a joy to behold and a kick to drive. The bestselling roadster of all time got a new look in 2015, and for me it was a throwback to the first generation: a tossable drop-top that didn't feel like it needed a lot of horsepower.

The retractable fastback Miata MX-5 effectively added a coupé to the lineup. I disliked the design until I got my hands on one. Then I was sold.

Mazda has a lot of rides on this list! That's because the company gets good design. The plucky CX-3, for example, is my fave econo-hatch.

McLaren's 720S supercar is staggering. You can't stop looking at it, and behind the wheel it's among the most exciting driving experiences money can buy.

Like the Jeep Wrangler, the Mercedes-Benz G-Class (or "G Wagon") is practicality raised to the level of automotive art. Boxy, yet sharp, and ready for the zombie apocalypse.

Meanwhile, the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter has some of the same. This incredible practical mega-hauler has become an icon all its own.

The Mercedes AMG-GT is the only German car I've driven that can give Aston Martin, Ferrari, and Jaguar a run for their money. It's magnificent.

The John Cooper Works MINI is a ferocious, pint-size beast. Alec Issigonis, who designed the original Mini of 1959, would be impressed.

Yes, it's old. But the 370Z still stirs my senses and is among the most rewarding basic V6-engined cars to drive.

The Polestar 1 is powerful, provocative gas-electric hybrid that's the first vehicle from Volvo's new standalone performance brand. It's the sharpest ride I've driven since we wrapped up our 2019 Car of the Year award.

Ah, the Porsche 911. What more can I say? The design is a classic, and although some call it ugly, bug-eyed, and worse, you forget all aspersions once you slip behind the wheel.

Porsche Panamera Sport Turismo is, to my eye, the best Panamera design-wise (the Panamera has always been criticized on this front). Wagons fix everything! We need more wagons.

The Rolls-Royce Phantom is half a million dollars worth of old-school splendor. If you want the greatest motor car currently available, you need to pay up for one of these.

Smart's Fortwo has been around since the late 1990s and defines "city car" for me. It's not the greatest driver in town, but I defy anyone to fail at parallel parking behind the wheel of this.

Design Franz von Holzhausen's impeccable Model S has stood the test of time. Launched in 2012, it still appeals today.

Toyota's bestselling Camry was never lauded for design, but the latest generation takes some chances and has elevated the nameplate's profile.

The Prius isn't often praised for its beauty, but the car has defined what a hybrid hatch should look like for over a decade.

The Toyota Supra staged a comeback in 2019 and set the automotive community on fire. The design is bold, inviting aggressive driving.

The VLF Force 1 is a reskinned Dodge Viper — and what a skin! This over-the-top supercar is classic rock on four wheels with a V12 under the hood.

The Volkswagen Golf R extends Giorgetto Giugiaro's design for the first-generation Golf into new territory. It could be nothing else but a VW.

And finally, the VW Beetle. It's finally been retired in the US market. But that shape, with first appeared in the 1950s, could be with us forever.

• Slack followed others in the tech industry like Facebook, Twitter, and Box, by announcing that it intends to become a more "distributed" company and allow more remote work even after the coronavirus crisis ends.
• The goal is to give employees more flexibility which, in turn, can boost both productivity and employee happiness, Robby Kwok, Slack's senior VP of people, told Business Insider. 
• In order to operate successfully as a distributed company, Slack will have to make some operational and cultural changes.
• That includes registering to operate in more states and countries, and adjusting salaries to reflect cost of living.
• Slack will also create new manager training programs to make sure in-office and remote employees have equal performance metrics and career opportunities. 
• One of the key benefits will be helping Slack recruit from a more diverse pool of candidates, Kwok said.
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Slack followed fellow tech companies like Facebook, Twitter and Box, when it announced last week that it intends to be a more "distributed" company going forward. Meaning, it will start allowing employees to ask to work fully remote if they want and hiring new employees in places where Slack doesn't currently have an office. 

As a result, Slack is also indefinitely pushing back its previously proposed office reopening date of September 1.

After months of forced remote work during the coronavirus crisis, Slack realized the benefits of giving employees flexibility. Remote work can increase both productivity and employee happiness, said Robby Kwok, Slack's senior VP of people. While Kwok expects that the shift will help attract a more diverse talent pool and benefit the company in the long run, it's not a simple transition. Slack will need to make both operational and cultural changes — both of which are equally challenging, Kwok said.

Slack will need to make operational changes, like adjusting pay

Companies have to be registered to pay employees and pay taxes in areas they operate. Right now, Slack can easily hire people in the 14 cities where it already has offices, which includes San Francisco, New York, Denver, Chicago, Tokyo, London, and Sydney, among others. 

To be able to truly embrace remote work though, Slack has to be able to hire employees outside of those regions as well, Kwok said. Slack will be taking steps to make sure it can legally hire people in all 50 states , as well as even more countries outside of the US, Kwok said.

Slack will also be adjusting salaries depending on where people decide to be based. Facebook made a similar announcement, saying that salaries would vary based on cost of living. 

Slack already has some employees who work fully remote and its long-time policy has been to pay people based on the cost of labor for the place where they live, Kwok said. So, if someone moves from San Francisco to a place with cheaper cost of living, their pay would decrease slightly, and vice versa for someone moving to a more expensive location. 

Slack pays above market rate, Kwok said, so he doesn't think that that will cause people to quit or be less inclined to take a job there. On the contrary, he believes the flexibility to work from anywhere will help attract more people to the company.

Even with these changes, Slack is still planning on reopening its offices eventually.  

Even with this shift to a distributed workforce, Slack does still plan to reopen all offices eventually. For offices that do reopen while the coronavirus is still a risk, Slack will use a phased approach, and amenities like catered lunches and coffee bars won't be available. (Slack will pay contractors who deliver those amenities through 2020.) Beyond that, things are still uncertain, Kwok said. 

"Until there is a vaccine, I think things will look very different," he said. "Even after there's a vaccine, who knows?"

How remote work will change Slack's culture 

While office layouts will likely look different post pandemic, there are other cultural and managerial changes that will also be key creating a successful, distributed workforce, Kwok said. All employees — and most importantly managers — will need to adjust the way they have meetings, handle career development, and deal with performance management. That will all require training. 

For example, in an office environment, managers often use visual cues — like seeing if someone is at their desk typing — to gauge productivity. Managers not be able to see that with remote employees, and should be focusing on different metrics anyway to measure performance. 

"Activity does not equal results," Kwok said, adding that the company plans to create new manager training to teach workers how to evaluate everyone on a level playing field in a distributed company.

The benefits of increased remote work

Although it will require process and change, Slack believes the long term benefits of becoming a more distributed company are worth it. One of those benefits is the ability to attract a more diverse set of job candidates, both in terms of skills and ethnicity, Kwok said.

According to Slack's most recent annual diversity report, 13.9% of Slack's workforce is made up of people from underrepresented racial or ethnic backgrounds.

Another benefit will likely be some financial savings: Things like salary adjustments and a smaller real estate footprint could help save costs, Kwok said, though the company hasn't actually calculated what those could be. 

Notably, Slack is one of the companies that's seen a boost from the increase in remote work in recent months. It adding a record number of new customers last quarter. Employees have already shown that they can work effectively while remote, and Kwok thinks that flexibility, generally, can make employees more productive and engaged.

"Work is such a big part of their lives." he said, "So we want them to be able to have flexibility there."

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• Los Angeles-based data-management startup Open Raven picked up a $15 million Series A venture round led by Kleiner Perkins this week.
• The startup uses simple visualization and user controls to help companies find, manage, and protect their cloud-based data.
• Cole says simplifying cybersecurity is very appealing to businesses accustomed to foreboding imagery and warnings. 

• To make his company approachable during a difficult time, he made his marketing bright, colorful, and simple – with a free product that offered easy adoption.  
• You can read the pitch deck that Open Raven used to win investor interest below.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Dave Cole wanted to tailor the pitch for his data-management startup Open Raven to an economy still reeling from the coronavirus crisis, so he used a simple, upbeat approach. It worked, earning him a $15 million Series A funding round led by the venerable venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins with the pitch deck below.  

"We wanted to get people nodding their heads, thinking 'the world is incredibly complex and I'm looking at something incredibly easy,'" says Cole, who has worked in cybersecurity for 25 years, including as a chief product officer for CrowdStrike and Tenable.

The Los Angeles-based startup employees 20 people, with the goal of hiring a half-dozen more this year. It was founded last year, emerging from stealth mode in February. It declined to disclose valuation. Cole's cofounder is Chief Product Officer Mark Curphey, a veteran of Charles Schwab and Microsoft. 

Cole's pitchdeck is filled with bright colors, friendly fonts, and simple language – a sharp contrast to many cybersecurity presentations, he says. "We started with the branding and how we tell the story, and avoided the well-worn path of the bogeyman of cyberthreats," he said. 

"Part of the zeitgeist in 2020 is people don't need to be scared," he added. 

Open Raven, so named because its core code is open source and because ravens are smart birds adept at finding things, helps companies manage their cloud-based data. Their platform lets companies monitor their data in real-time, enables them to find security vulnerabilities, and helps them fix those potential breach points. 

The startup seeks to address the challenges of a boom in enterprise data stored on mega-clouds like Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure. By 2022, 75% of all databases will be deployed or migrated to a cloud platform, with only 5% ever considered for repatriation to on-premises, according to analyst firm Gartner. That often means a company's data is sprawled across multiple cloud storage areas, making management difficult, and breaches more likely. 

Open Raven aims to map data for companies with simple visualizations and easy controls for monitoring it, getting back to Cole's approachable strategy.

"Anyone should be able to use a cybersecurity product," he says. 

As a model for gaining traction in an economic downturn, Cole looked to Zoom, the videoconferencing platform that boomed as the business world huddled down for remote work. That meant ease of use – and making the basic product free. The business model is based around a paid premium version coming soon, Cole says. 

Open Raven has raised a total of $19.1 million. The Series A round was led by venerable tech investors Kleiner Perkins and partner Bucky Moore, with participation from previous investors including Upfront Ventures.

"Open Raven solves for modern complexity with a platform purpose-built for the massive data exposure issue," Moore says. 

Check out the pitch deck Open Raven used to raise $15 million:

• Foundation Capital is spearheading #JuneteenthVC, an online day of action on the traditional day commemorating the end of slavery in the United States calling on venture firms and portfolio companies to publicly share their commitments to combat racism in Silicon Valley.
• General partner Steve Vassallo told Business Insider that many other venture capitalists were hesitant to publicly commit to such initiatives when he sent the email detailing his plan on Saturday.
• Though Vassallo saw many of his peers personally donate or participate in protests, he said there was still more to be done within the venture industry collectively, similar to the gender-diversity initiatives that were popularized after the #MeToo movement.
• The famously competitive industry has historically remained homogeneous, something Vassallo wants to combat with new recruiting initiatives both for Foundation and for its portfolio companies.
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Foundation Capital is taking its commitment to combating racism in the tech industry a step further than dedicated funds or public statements, and it wants others to join in.

The Silicon Valley venture firm has organized an online day of action Friday, the traditional day commemorating the end of slavery in the United States, called #JuneteenthVC where partners, firms, and founders can all share their public commitments to action against racism in the notoriously homogeneous industry. The move comes just days after NVCA, the lobbying group representing many major venture firms, announced Venture Forward, a nonprofit arm focused on promoting diversity and inclusion in the industry.

Foundational Capital general partner Steve Vassallo told Business Insider that he and marketing partner Sang Ngo came up with the idea after watching protests in cities across the country and themselves attending a Black Lives Matter protest in Palo Alto, a tony suburb in Silicon Valley where the average home price is well above $1 million. The men had spent the past week watching their peers in venture capital publish statements against racism and donate to causes committed to combating systemic racism, but they felt it was time to address the issues in their own industry with action. They met with other members of Foundation Capital in addition to peers at other firms before deciding that an online day of action could help spur accountability in the industry.

"We've all lived through too many versions of this, in 2016 and otherwise, and we felt like we needed to express those emotions, albeit raw, and begin to put some stakes in the ground around initial imperfect but concrete actions to address them," Vassallo said of the effort.

Hours after he protested on Saturday, Vassallo sent an email to about 40 of his peers asking them to support the day of action. Some, like Obvious Ventures managing director Andrew Beebe, were immediately on board and committed to participating on Friday, Vassallo said. Others, however, were more concerned with the potential for public shaming or negative coverage stemming from the public-facing commitments.

"There's no topic people in tech are more afraid to broach than race," Ngo said. "We don't make progress if we don't talk about it, but it makes them uncomfortable. It makes us uncomfortable. I'm still waiting to see how we will inadvertently get dragged for not doing enough, but it's the right thing to do and it's important to do."

For its part, Foundation Capital is committing to hire Black and underrepresented investment team members, and build recruiting pipelines with historically Black colleges and universities across the country. The firm is also asking its vast network of portfolio companies to similarly put in writing their commitments to elevate Black and underrepresented tech employees. And like others in venture, Vassallo has personally donated to several organizations powering the movement in cities across the country.

But he admitted even those three tactics are not nearly enough to wipe away decades of exclusionary practices in the highly competitive industry, which heavily relies on close-knit personal networks and pattern-matching to identify founders and then investors to work with. All told, Vassallo said the industry has its hands in roughly 9% of the United States workforce and accounts for a significant portion of the country's GDP, making it less a cottage industry and more an economic powerhouse that can help institute change.

"To perpetuate the status quo would be a betrayal of our values," Vassallo said.

He is hopeful that the day of action Friday will gain momentum, similarly to how the #MeToo movement gave way to larger initiatives around gender diversity in Silicon Valley. That's a key area that Foundation has invested in since founding partner Kathryn Gould retired and the firm became significantly more "middle-aged white guys like," according to Vassallo. But he is adamant that change can come from within the industry, and views earlier gender diversity initiatives as a pathway to successfully combating racism going forward.

"When I think about women in venture, we were talking about how to improve the numbers and it was clearly said to me that middle-aged white guys need to be talking about it too, and this is a similar scenario," Vassallo said. "It's painful and incomplete and a small beginning, but we have to get busy moving in that direction."

SEE ALSO: This early-stage VC says startups can still negotiate funding term sheets, but founders are facing a new predicament: valuation or 'toxic' terms

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• Amanda Ramirez, a college senior, runs the YouTube channel Amanda Monroe, which has 32,000 subscribers. 
• She is part of a trend of YouTubers becoming famous for sharing their college experiences — especially their move-in videos, which can rack up millions of views.
• Ramirez told Business Insider that her most popular YouTube video is a college move-in vlog in which she toured the sorority house she was moving into at the University of Arizona. It has 828,000 views. 
• The video has earned her $4,800 in revenue from Google-placed ads, according to a screenshot viewed by Business Insider.
• Ramirez said she earns money from her YouTube business through the ads that play in her videos, sponsorships, and affiliate links.
• Subscribe to Business Insider's influencer newsletter: Influencer Dashboard.

When she's not in class, college senior Amanda Ramirez is filming videos for her YouTube channel Amanda Monroe, which has 32,000 subscribers. 

Ramirez is part of a trend of YouTubers becoming famous for sharing their college experiences — especially their move-in videos, which can rack up millions of views.

Margot Lee, a Syracuse student with 438,000 YouTube subscribers, even taught an informal pop-up class on becoming a professional influencer to her classmates (and shared her slides with Business Insider).

Ramirez started her YouTube channel in 2016 and now posts videos about her college experience, fashion, and beauty. She treats her YouTube channel like a part-time job and is able to earn money off her videos with Google-placed ads, sponsorships, and affiliate links. 

Her most popular YouTube video is a college-move-in vlog in which she toured the sorority house she would be living in at the University of Arizona. It has 828,000 views. The video helped her channel grow, she said, gaining her 7,000 new subscribers.

"I was surprised but also not at the same time because I knew that those are the types of videos that I like watching, especially a sorority-house move in," she told Business Insider. "I didn't expect it to do as well as it did, but it helped a lot."

The video has made over $4,800 from Google-placed ads, according to a screenshot viewed by Business Insider.

Similar creators on YouTube, like the Harvard influencer Sienna Santer (395,000 subscribers), have had success posting college-related vlogs. Santer posted a college-move-in video in 2018 that now has over 6 million views, she told Business Insider in November.

'The videos that I would make about college were the videos that were getting the most attention'

Ramirez first began watching YouTube videos in middle school and started to look up to other female creators.

She launched a channel at the end of 2016 during her senior year of high school after receiving a laptop for college. 

"I posted videos that I would want to watch, and I noticed that the videos that I would make about college were the videos that were getting the most attention from people," she said. "From then on, I started to make more college content, and that's when my channel started to get a lot more views."

She shifted to a college-lifestyle channel, and within her second year on YouTube, she started to earn money.

"I started noticing that the amount of money I was making on YouTube over the summer was the same amount I was making at my summer job the previous year," she said. "That's when I realized I could make this into a job." 

Now Ramirez earns money from her YouTube business through ads that play in her videos, sponsorships, and affiliate links. 

In May, her YouTube channel earned $554 from Google-placed ads, according to a screenshot viewed by Business Insider, and $703 in April.

She finds time to make videos on the weekends, she said, and films "week in my life" videos when she's at school. 

Ramirez is home from college because of the pandemic. But even while at home, she is dedicated to posting college-related videos. She's uploaded content on her morning routine and "college must-have" videos recommending what to buy for a dorm room.

She said the pandemic hasn't affected her business much, but since being stuck at home, she has had more time to create videos, posting about three a week to her channel.

But what about when college ends?

Ramirez is studying elementary education, and she hopes to continue posting on YouTube after college by documenting her life as a teacher, she said.

For more on the business of YouTube creators and influencers, check out these posts:

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• Uber is making Juneteenth a company holiday for employees this year, the ride-sharing giant's CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, said Wednesday.
• Uber joins fellow San Francisco tech companies Twitter and Square in declaring the holiday a paid day off, though the latter two have indicated the move is permanent.
• The June 19 holiday commemorates the end of slavery and celebrates the day in 1865 that slaves in Texas learned of the Emancipation Proclamation.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Uber will make Juneteenth a paid company holiday for employees this year, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi announced Wednesday in a Twitter post.

"We encourage employees to spend it in a way that allows them to stand up against racism, whether that's by learning, participating in a community action, or reflecting on how to make change," Khosrowshahi posted on Twitter.

After the Emancipation Proclamation was officially issued in 1863, enforcement was minimal in Texas until Union soldiers arrived to the state on June 19, 1865, two months after the Confederate Army's surrender. The Juneteenth holiday now commemorates that day, and many Black Americans celebrate it as independence day.

Uber joins fellow San Francisco tech firms Twitter and Square in making the June 19 holiday a paid day off for employees, though the latter two have made it a permanent holiday. Others have followed suit in what has become a movement in the corporate world amid widespread demonstrations protesting police brutality and systemic racism following the police killing of Minneapolis resident George Floyd. 

An Uber spokesperson said Juneteenth applies only to this year for now, but Khosrowshahi also said that the company will make election day a holiday "from now on."

The Juneteenth holiday applies to all Uber employees, which excludes those driving for the company. Under California's AB5 gig-worker law that went into effect in January, Uber's drivers in the state should be classified as employees and not independent contractors. The ride-sharing company, however, has pushed back on the bill, and many drivers claim they're collectively owed millions in back wages due to worker misclassification.

Big tech has long struggled to successfully diversify its workforce.

For example, according to Uber's 2019 Diversity and Inclusion report, 9.3% of Uber's employees are Black. Of those in tech positions at the company, 3.6% are Black, with .8% of tech leadership roles occupied by Black workers. The US Census Bureau estimates that African-Americans are 13.4% of the total US population as of July 2019.

SEE ALSO: How Juneteenth, the day commemorating the end of slavery in the US, finally became recognized as a holiday by major companies like Nike and Lyft — and landed in the center of a Trump controversy

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• Amazon's market-leading cloud business Amazon Web Services just announced a big partnership with business communications company Slack.
• Even before to the partnership, analysts suggested Amazon could buy a company like Slack or Zoom to replace its own unpopular chat app Chime and get in on the flood of customers forced to work remotely during the pandemic.
• Now, the partnership gives Amazon a chance to look under Slack's hood and see whether it would be a good fit for an acquisition, one prominent cloud analyst said.
• Are you a current or former Amazon Web Services employee? Contact this reporter via encrypted messaging app Signal (+1-425-344-8242) or email (astewart@businessinsider.com).
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Amazon's recent partnership with Slack provides a "testing ground" to let Amazon get "under the hood" and see whether it would be a good fit for an acquisition, cloud-industry analyst Daniel Newman said.

Amazon Web Services and Slack announced on June 4 a partnership to use Amazon infrastructure for Slack tools including audio, video, and screen-sharing. As part of the deal, Amazon will start rolling out Slack to its employees, and Slack for the first time publicly proclaimed AWS as its "preferred cloud provider," and raise its commitment to the unit to $425 million.

Even before to the partnership, analysts including Newman posited that Amazon could buy a company like Slack or Zoom to replace its own unpopular chat app Chime and get in on the flood of customers forced to work remotely during the pandemic.

"It's a clear opportunity to get more deeply under the hood," Newman, an analyst at Futurum Research, told Business Insider. "Amazon's Chime product is limited in adoption and Slack is beloved, but has no direction when you compare it to Zoom. Microsoft has Teams and Google has pretty complete meeting applications. When you look at a suitor like AWS, it's a really good potential fit."

AWS declined to comment and Slack has yet to respond to a request for comment.

Amazon is the clear winner in the cloud market when it comes to infrastructure, but it is generally thought to lag behind Microsoft and Google in terms of cloud-based software. And software matters in the cloud wars: As one analyst recently told Business Insider, Microsoft's strength in office applications may have helped it win the $10 billion Pentagon cloud-computing Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract over AWS.

To be sure, Newman said, only Amazon knows whether it's actually considering a deal, and AWS isn't typically as acquisitive as Microsoft or Google.

Microsoft spent more than $9 billion during its last fiscal year on acquisitions and Google Cloud Platform is explicitly looking to acquisitions to catch up to AWS and Microsoft in the cloud space. Both have opened the purse strings for major purchases in the past few years: Google recently bought Looker for more than $2 billion, and Microsoft dropped $7.5 billion on GitHub in 2018. For comparison, Amazon's biggest cloud-related acquisition appears to be Annapurna Labs for $370 million in 2015.

"AWS growth has been very organic, but it's expanded in one area slower than everyone else," Newman said, referring to cloud software. "I already thought Slack was a great fit (for an AWS acquisition), and this really sets the stage for that to happen."

Got a tip? Contact this reporter via email at astewart@businessinsider.com, message her on Twitter @ashannstew, or send her a secure message through Signal at 425-344-8242.

SEE ALSO: Slack just committed $425 million to Amazon Web Services. Here's how much other companies like Zoom, Netflix, Snap, and Pinterest are spending with cloud providers like AWS, Google, and Oracle.

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