xAI, the startup led by Elon Musk that raised $6 billion in December, has a new AI model that it claims is better than AI created by DeepSeek and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.

In a live-streamed event on X on Monday that has been viewed over six million times at the time of writing, Musk and three xAI engineers revealed Grok 3, the startup’s latest AI model. They claimed Grok 3 had higher scores on math, science, and coding benchmark tests than OpenAI’s GPT-4o, DeepSeek’s V3, and Google’s Gemini AI.

Related: Elon Musk’s xAI Is Reportedly Set to Hire Thousands of ‘AI Tutors’ With Pay Up to $65 an Hour

They also said Grok 3 was a step up in sheer power from xAI’s previous model Grok 2, released in August. The latest version has more than 10 times the computational power of Grok 2, greater accuracy, and a bigger capacity for large datasets.

“The word Grok [means] to fully and profoundly understand something,” Musk said on the livestream, noting that the word came from the 1961 novel “Stranger in a Strange Land” by American author Robert Heinlein. He added later in the livestream that “if you’re using Grok 3, you may notice improvements almost every day because we’re continuously improving the model.”

^{Animated 3D plot of a spacecraft launch from Earth to Mars and back. Credit: xAI}

xAI engineers demonstrated how Grok 3 could be used to create code for an animated 3D plot of a spacecraft launch that started on Earth, landed on Mars, and came back to Earth.

The engineers also asked Grok to combine two games, Tetris and Bejeweled, into one game. The result, which the engineers played on the livestream, was similar to Tetris with shapes inching down the screen but had the rules of Bejeweled with multicolored blocks that disappeared if there were three in a row.

Related: Google’s CEO Praised AI Rival DeepSeek This Week for Its ‘Very Good Work.’ Here’s Why.

Musk said that any AI could find examples of Tetris or Bejeweled online and duplicate them, but Grok 3 took it one step further.

“What’s interesting here is it [Grok 3] achieved a creative solution combining two games that actually works and is a good game,” Musk noted. “We’re seeing the beginnings of creativity.”

^{Tetris-Bejeweled mashup game in the background. Credit: xAI}

The researchers said they only trained Grok 3’s reasoning abilities on math problems and competitive coding problems, but they observed that Grok 3 could apply what it learned to a variety of use cases, including reasoning through making games.

xAI isn’t the only major AI startup to release advanced AI this year. Last month, OpenAI released the o3-mini, its most cost-effective yet powerful model yet, while DeepSeek came out with R1, a disruptive AI model with cutting-edge performance on a less than $6 million budget.

Grok 3 is currently available for Premium+ X subscribers paying $22 a month.

Watch the event, here:

https://t.co/hEfQ31gANQ

— xAI (@xai) February 18, 2025

You’ve probably seen it before — companies boasting about kombucha on tap and bean bags in the office as if these were the true markers of a thriving culture. But when it comes to finding the right leadership fit, relying on these superficial perks can lead to costly mistakes. Despite many companies focusing on superficial perks, leadership quality remains a significant challenge. Only 40% of leaders rate their organization’s leadership quality as “very good” or “excellent” — a decrease of eight percentage points since the pandemic.

This decline in perceived leadership quality highlights the need for a more substantive approach to hiring and developing leaders. As someone who has spent years working in executive leadership recruitment, I’ve seen firsthand how crucial it is to hire leaders who align with a company’s core values. Without this deeper connection, even the most impressive candidates can struggle to drive long-term success.

Related: Every Hire Has Been a Good One Since This CEO Started Hiring for Values

Rethinking the meaning of cultural fit

True culture fit means finding a leader who aligns with the company’s core values and mission. For example, if a company emphasizes transparency, the right leader will demonstrate clear and open communication, not just within their team but across the entire organization.

Leaders who resonate with these deeper values help prevent the kinds of disruptions that occur when there’s a misalignment between leadership and company culture. I’ve seen organizations bring in highly qualified leaders who failed because their values didn’t align with the company’s goals. These leaders might have succeeded elsewhere, but without that alignment, they couldn’t generate the energy, collaboration or engagement necessary for success in their new roles.

What is the impact of misaligned leadership?

When a leader doesn’t align with a company’s core values, the consequences can be severe. I’ve watched as organizations that hire misaligned leaders experience rapid declines in employee morale, decision-making and collaboration. In many cases, this results in higher turnover and lost productivity.

One standout example is a tech company that hired a CEO from a different industry. This individual had an impressive track record of turning around struggling businesses, but their leadership style clashed with the collaborative, innovative culture of the company. The CEO’s misalignment led to tensions within teams, slowed innovation and eventually caused several key leaders to leave. In just two years, the company missed major market opportunities, and the CEO was quietly replaced.

This is a common pitfall I’ve seen many companies fall into — prioritizing qualifications over leadership fit. The result? Lost opportunities and a significant drop in engagement across the board.

A four-step framework for identifying leadership fit

From my experience, I’ve found a framework that helps companies avoid these mistakes and ensure they’re hiring leaders who meet the technical requirements of the role while also aligning with the company’s values. This value-based hiring approach focuses on both qualifications and cultural alignment. Here’s how I recommend structuring it:

Related: A Healthy Approach to Hiring That Actually Works

1. Clarify core values

Before you begin the hiring process, you need to define the company’s core values and make sure your selection committee understands these values from the inside out. These should be non-negotiable. For instance, if collaboration is a core value, you need to collectively evaluate how well each candidate fosters teamwork and cooperation across different departments.

2. Use a diverse selection panel

I always advise involving a diverse group of decision-makers in the hiring process. Relying on a narrow group can lead to biased decisions and “groupthink.” A diverse panel helps ensure that the candidate is evaluated from multiple perspectives, which leads to a more objective assessment of their potential fit.

Many companies try to cut costs by conducting leadership searches internally or relying on their own networks, but I’ve seen how this can backfire. While this approach might save money upfront, it often leads to costly mistakes in the long run.

For a non-biased approach, consider utilizing executive search firms. These agencies provide an objective perspective and access to a broader talent pool, leading to faster, more effective hiring results. By partnering with an executive search firm, you can avoid the pitfalls of relying solely on internal candidates and ensure that you’re hiring the right leadership fit.

3. Ask probing questions

It’s essential to ask the right questions during interviews. Don’t just focus on accomplishments or leadership style in general terms. Instead, ask candidates about specific situations where they had to navigate challenges that reflect the values important to your company. For example, if resilience is a key value, ask about a time when they had to overcome significant obstacles to achieve a goal.

4. Evaluate beyond the first impression

First impressions can be deceiving, and I’ve seen too many companies make quick decisions based on superficial traits. It’s crucial to dig deeper and evaluate how well a candidate truly aligns with both the company’s values and the specific requirements of the role. This helps you avoid falling into the trap of hiring based on comfort or familiarity.

Additionally, take time to establish a balance between technical qualifications, cultural expectations and leadership alignment. It’s important to establish consistent criteria for each leadership role. For example, if the Chief Financial Officer requires ten years of experience, the Chief People Officer should have the same level of experience. Consistency helps ensure fairness and avoids bias in the hiring process.

Related: I Hire a New Employee Every Week. Here’s What This Practice Has Taught Me About Hiring and Recruiting

The quest for the perfect candidate involves far more than a stellar resume or an easy rapport with the existing team. Through my years of experience in leadership recruitment, I’ve seen how focusing on value-based hiring ensures a deeper alignment between a leader’s values and the company’s mission. This alignment creates a leadership team that can drive long-term success, innovation and employee engagement. When you hire for true leadership fit, you’ll find that the rewards far outweigh the superficial perks of bean bags and kombucha.

Time management is one of the top skills business owners need to succeed. Struggling with notoriously difficult PDFs is not the best use of your time. Fortunately, you can now zip through PDF tasks with UPDF, and a lifetime subscription is currently available to new users for 60% off at $59.99.

UPDF is an all-in-one PDF editor with powerful tools compatible with Windows, Android, Mac OS X, and iOS. It makes all of the previously frustrating PDF tasks incredibly easy.

Quickly convert PDFs to and from common Office formats, such as XLSX, DOCX, and PPTX. You can also convert to common image formats, including JPEG, TIFF, PNG, BMP, and even GIF. You can even compare PDFs to find the differences between two files.

Organizing your PDF documents is just as simple. Insert, extract, remove, replace, reorder, split or crop pages. UPDF makes advanced annotations of your PDFs a breeze. Add signatures, comments, highlighting, underlining, strikethrough, stickers, sticky notes, and much more.

Edit, add, or remove headers, footers, and watermarks. Extract, replace, add, remove, rotate, resize, and crop images. Add or edit links and text, including changing the font, size, color, orientation, and more. You can even create backgrounds for your PDF documents, choosing the color, an image, or another document.

UPDF supports text-to-speech; multiple viewing modes, including scrolling of single and two-page views; search and find; bookmarks, fillable forms, batch processing, and digital signatures.

Something especially cool about this tool is that an AI Assistant add-on is available for purchase. It allows you to chat with your PDF documents, requesting them to translate, summarize, rephrase, and explain long PDFs in mere minutes.

It’s easy to see why users love the platform, rating it 4.2 stars out of 5 on the App Store.

Get a lifetime subscription UPDF – Edit, Convert, AI Chat with PDF while it’s available to new users for the price of $59.99 a discount of 60% off the regular $149 subscription price.

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If you’re trying to move up in your career with a new position, you can get up to three times more job interviews by using LoopCV, the company claims. A lifetime subscription to the Premium Plan is on sale for only $39.

Since you’ll have lifetime access to LoopCV, you can use it to search for jobs throughout your career. It’s connected to more than 30 platforms and job boards, including LinkedIn, Indeed, Monster Jobs, Workable and many more. There is even a LinkedIn Apply extension included.

The monthly allowances are 50 job title searches and 300 emails or applications. You can create a custom email address just for your job searches, label some applications high-priority, and even perform global searches for remote jobs worldwide.

First, create a profile and upload a resume or CV. Then choose your settings, including locations, job titles, and other options. Once LoopCV shows you jobs that fit your criteria, you can apply for them manually or let LoopCV apply for you.

LoopCV allows you to apply automatically to just the jobs you like best, via email or by filling out application forms. When the program applies automatically, it uses your resume or CV. You can literally apply to hundreds of jobs at a time.

LoopCV also provides you with data that can help you improve your odds of getting interviews. It gives you statistics on which resumes/CVs got the most attention, how many companies opened the emails you sent, how many replied, and more. This allows you to A/B test various email and resume/CV versions so you can use the one that works best.

Get a lifetime subscription to the LoopCV Premium Plan while it’s available for just $39.

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In 2025, it’s not enough to simply use AI; you need to leverage it strategically to make serious money. This video reveals a powerful, three-step framework for turning Google AI Studio (a free tool!) into your personal, profit-boosting machine.

Using a data-driven approach to marketing, you’ll learn how to succeed where others fail in monetizing AI technology. You’ll discover how to train an AI chat window to become your top sales and marketing analyst, uncovering hidden opportunities and maximizing your returns.

This isn’t about vague theories; it’s about actionable steps you can take today. We’ll cover how to gather your crucial business data, teach AI to analyze it like a pro, and then translate those insights into real-world strategies for boosting sales and profits.

Download the free “AI Success Kit” (limited time only). And you’ll also get a free chapter from Ben’s brand new book, “The Wolf is at The Door – How to Survive and Thrive in an AI-Driven World.”

Ten years ago, I stood on the edge of a tall, craggy rock with waves crashing dramatically around me. Three or four feet away, surrounded by foamy ocean surf, rose an even taller, craggier rock. The sun was hot, the air refreshingly cool. I was enjoying some much-needed downtime in Seychelles, and I’d climbed the rock because I wanted photographic evidence for my six daughters back home in California.

It occurred to me that it’d look even better if I could somehow make it to the second, more impressive rock, so I immediately set about trying to figure out how. I noticed a series of stones between the two that might serve as a sort of bridge; the problem was that my current perch was too slippery to simply climb down. I’d have to jump.

I was nervous but determined. I felt strong — a little athletic. Any doubts were overridden by a sudden surge of confidence, which instructed me to go for it. Then I heard my wife of 15 years, Rachel, who was filming from the shore, say, “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

Related: The Only 2 Answers You Need to Figure Your Next Move

The video evidence of the disaster that followed will never see the light of day. Suffice it to say that I didn’t quite reach the second rock. Back at the hotel that night, as I lay in bed contemplating my painfully gashed leg, battered body and bruised self-esteem, it occurred to me that there was probably a leadership lesson in here somewhere.

I could think of my accident in one of two ways. The first was that my loving wife had fatally undermined my confidence at the moment of truth; otherwise, I’d have landed nimbly as a cat. The moral for aspiring business leaders is: Be bold. Don’t listen to naysaying voices. Believe in yourself, and success will follow.

The second perspective was that Rachel had asked precisely the right question. At nearly 40 years of age and not quite in my svelte prime, I should have understood that assaulting the second rock was a less-than-stellar idea. In fact, I probably had understood it. What I’d taken for confidence was actually bravado. I knew I was talking myself into a bad deal, but by then, it was too late to retreat.

After carefully considering the available evidence for a millisecond, I chose door number two. In my experience, leadership isn’t always about boldly preceding others over dangerous terrain. Often, it’s a matter of listening to all sides and thoughtfully accepting the best advice. Did I take time to listen to input from all directions as I ran my business?

Related: Are You Ready to Start a Company? Ask Yourself These 6 Questions.

Did I value other points of view to the point that I allowed them to alter outcomes?

In no particular order, here are some thoughts that occurred to me over the next 24 hours as I sat on the beach (poor me, I know) nursing my injured leg instead of scuba diving:

• Having a strong, competitive personality in any walk of life has its advantages, but humility doesn’t usually top the list. Being known for good ideas can cloud your memory of all the many, many bad ones that preceded or even accompanied the former. I’ve gotten okay at not emotionally investing personally in my own ideas over the years, but there are times when my king-of-the-hill side can take charge and propel me toward an unpleasant tumble. These are the times when I need as many people as possible to question my wisdom.
• If Rachel had asked her question ten seconds earlier, there’s a chance I would have thought it over and concluded that no, monkeying around on slick, hard, uneven surfaces was probably better left to climbers much more agile than myself. I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if she held back like she did because she doubted that I’d take the hint anyway.
• In the future, shaving off even a second or two of that hesitant doubt could mean the difference between a smooth, unmarred shin and the complete opposite. And the only psychological razor at my disposal in this scenario is to train and retrain myself to listen to people — especially people who know me well. There’s a very fine line between a leap of faith and a leap of hubris, and sometimes, you need partners with perspective to help you judge.
• Sparing room in your personality for approachability is exactly that: a conscious decision followed by practice. When it comes to sports, school, creativity, etc., we accept the relationship between practice and improvement without much fuss. With moral, ethical and temperamental matters, our approach is less precise. If I can train myself to climb, I can train myself to listen.
• Sometimes, you’re going to be wrong regardless. Rachel had a different view than I had as I crouched there precariously with waves crashing into me. A little exercise and training on my part, though, will probably alter her view if we find ourselves in similar circumstances in the future. Being wrong once doesn’t mean that I have to choose the less scenic spot from now on; it just means that I have to prepare better.

Albert Einstein reportedly said, “Any fool can know. The point is to understand.” I’ve known about the virtue of listening since I was a child, but how deep is my understanding? You might ask yourself the same question. Take it from a battered well-wisher: a warning that comes ten seconds too late is really a prophecy, and it sucks being at the wrong end of one of those.

JPMorgan has begun laying off what is expected to be fewer than 1,000 employees, according to a report by Barron’s.

The outlet notes that this round of layoffs affected “several” Houston offices and some now-former employees were notified on February 5. However, this isn’t the end.

JPMorgan is set to announce job cuts in mid-March, May, June, August, and September, though Barron’s states it is not clear how many roles will be impacted by the planned layoffs throughout the year.

Related: JPMorgan Shuts Down Internal Message Board Comments After Employees React to Return-to-Office Mandate

“We regularly review our business needs and adjust our staffing accordingly—creating new roles where we see the need or reducing positions when appropriate,” a spokesperson said in a statement to Barron’s.

A source also confirmed the news to Reuters on Wednesday. A spokesperson told the outlet the layoffs are due to “regular management of the business” and noted the high number of roles open at the bank (around 14,000).

“We continue to hire in many areas and work hard to redeploy impacted employees,” the spokesperson told Reuters.

JPMorgan had 317,233 employees at the end of 2024 and reported record profits in 2024.

Related: Here’s How Much 8 CEOs Made in 2024, From JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon to Disney’s Bob Iger

What if the most pressing danger of AI is not its ability to replace jobs, as more than one in five U.S. workers fear, but its potential to cause cognitive decline?

Researchers at Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University published a new study last month that claims to be the first to examine the effects of AI tools on critical thinking.

The researchers found that the more confident human beings were in AI’s abilities to get a task done, the fewer critical-thinking skills they used. Humans confident in AI left critical thinking to ChatGPT instead of doing it themselves and strengthening their cognitive abilities.

Related: Would You Pay $200 for ChatGPT? OpenAI’s New Reasoning Model Has a Hefty Price Tag.

“Used improperly, technologies can and do result in the deterioration of cognitive faculties that ought to be preserved,” the researchers wrote, adding that “a key irony of automation is that by mechanizing routine tasks and leaving exception-handling to the human user, you deprive the user of the routine opportunities to practice their judgment and strengthen their cognitive musculature, leaving them atrophied and unprepared when the exceptions do arise.”

The researchers surveyed 319 knowledge workers, or workers who handle data or information, to find how confident they were in AI’s capabilities and how much critical thinking they employed when using AI to complete tasks. Critical thinking was defined as falling under one of six categories: knowledge (remembering ideas), comprehension (understanding ideas), application (putting ideas to work in the real world), analysis (contrasting and relating ideas), synthesis (combining ideas), and evaluation (judging ideas).

The surveyed knowledge workers used AI like ChatGPT at least once a week and gave 936 examples of how they used AI at work, ranging from looking up facts to summarizing a text. They mainly used critical thinking to set clear prompts, refine prompts, and verify AI responses against external sources.

Six out of the seven researchers listed are associated with Microsoft Research, the research subsidiary of Microsoft created in 1991. Microsoft has deep interests in AI, with its investment in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI totaling close to $14 billion and its plans to spend $80 billion on AI data centers in the fiscal year ending in June.

The researchers caution that while AI can make workplaces more efficient, it could “also reduce critical engagement, particularly in routine or lower-stakes tasks in which users simply rely on AI, raising concerns about long-term reliance and diminished independent problem-solving.”

In other words, AI has a hidden cost: It could lead workers to lose muscle memory for more routine tasks.

Related: DeepSeek AI Cost Less Than $6 Million to Develop. Here’s Why Meta and Microsoft Are Justifying Spending Billions.

Airbnb announced a Live and Work Anywhere remote work policy in April 2022, which allows the company’s global employees to work from home from any location — as long as they meet up in person regularly for team gatherings.

Now Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky is clarifying for the first time what he means by “regular” meetups.

“I have a simple rule: we basically ask people to come to San Francisco one week a month,” Chesky told host Bob Safian on a recent episode of the Masters of Scale Rapid Response podcast. “Some people come for just two or three days. Some people come for the full week.”

^{Brian Chesky. Photo by Kimberly White/Getty Images for WIRED}

Chesky calls the return-to-office week a “gathering week” when Airbnb coordinates everyone being together in San Francisco. The focus is on collaboration, not on getting people to work harder by having them show up to the office, he says.

“I have not found a huge value in people being in the office all the time,” Chesky said, adding, “What I want is, for the most part, people coming to the San Francisco office, but I can’t get everyone to move here to San Francisco, and I can’t get them to fly here every week.”

Most Airbnb employees are based in San Francisco, Chesky says. Airbnb flies out-of-state or out-of-country employees to the San Francisco office once a month for in-person meetups. Chesky says that the cost is worth it and more affordable than thousands of people coming to work in person five days per week. Even if it was more expensive, he says it would still be worth it.

Related: Airbnb’s New ‘Icons’ Cost Less Than $100 Per Night, Including the House from ‘Up’ and Prince’s ‘Purple Rain’

“I think the output for us is superior,” Chesky said.

Since Airbnb introduced its Live and Work Anywhere, about 20% of employees have relocated to states within the U.S. or abroad. According to Forbes, Airbnb has 6,907 employees.

Chesky also stated in the interview that the way to make a team work harder wasn’t by forcing them to work in person from the office but by setting rigorous milestones.

“If you want a team to work harder, don’t make them come to the office, give them a crazy deadline and check on their progress every week,” Chesky said. “That’s how you get them to work harder, not by being in the office.”

Related: Airbnb Side Hustlers Are Making Thousands of Dollars Every Month. Here Are 10 Things to Know to Turn Your Extra Space Into Cash.

Several large companies have issued return-to-office mandates recently. JPMorgan, for example, announced a mandate last month directing its 300,000-person workforce to work from the office every weekday beginning in March. Gap stated a goal earlier this month of having its corporate employees back in the office five days a week by the fall.

Almost 60% of entrepreneurs worked in the corporate world before starting their own businesses, according to data from accounting software company Xero. So they are probably used to working with Microsoft Office programs. It’s always easier working with familiar programs, but a Microsoft 365 subscription is fairly pricey. Fortunately, for a limited time, you can get a great deal on the top eight MS Office programs with a lifetime license for MS Office Professional 2021 priced at $59.97.

With a lifetime license for Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Teams, Access, Outlook, Publisher and OneNote, you’ll find everything a professional needs in one suite of programs, Microsoft Office 2021 Professional. It’s the perfect choice for anyone who needs to handle documents and data. It has so many new features that will help you become more productive in tasks from processing documents to designing presentations from scratch.

Users will appreciate the familiar ribbon-based interface that makes all the available features, customizations and tools so easily accessible. Quickly customize a wide variety of details, including layout, font, indentation size in documents and much more. You also won’t need to sacrifice work-related functions such as creating presentations or formatting emails just to make your documents more aesthetically pleasing.

This one-time purchase includes an MS Office Pro 2021 license for a single PC with Windows 10 or 11 installed that you can use at work or at home. Please note that the license will be connected to the device on which it’s installed and NOT to your Microsoft account.

You’ll receive your download links instantly by email as soon as you complete your purchase and access your software license keys immediately. Free customer service is also included, so you’ll have the best support.

Get a lifetime license for Microsoft Office Professional 2021 for Windows while the price has been dropped to $59.97 through 11:59 p.m. PT February 23.

Microsoft Office Professional 2021 for Windows: Lifetime License – $59.97

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