Prime minister to give speech after report that some ministers are unhappy over handling of the budget
Good morning. At Westminster there used to be a theory about budgets that, if they were well received on the day, they tended to go wrong later, but the ones that were widely criticised at the time turned out to be the good ones. This does not help with Rachel Reeves’s budget though, because its reception has been very mixed. On the day it was popular with Labour MPs and with the bond markets, two important audiences for the Treasury. But the public at large believe it was unfair, and it has result in Reeves’s approval ratings with voters, which were already very low, sinking further.
And that was before a huge row erupted over whether or not Reeves misled voters about the extent of the “black hole” in the national finances.
We have to confront the reality that our welfare state is trapping people, not just in poverty, but out of work. Young people especially. And that is a poverty of ambition. And so while we will invest in apprenticeships and make sure every young person without a job has a guaranteed offer of training or work.
We must also reform the welfare state itself – that is what renewal demands. Now – this is not about propping up a broken status quo.
One cabinet minister said: “Why did Keir and Rachel allow the country to believe for so long that we would break our manifesto by putting up income tax by 2p when they would have known that wasn’t true?
“At no point were the cabinet told about the reality of the OBR forecasts. Had we been told, we might have been in a position to advise against setting hares running on income tax and giving the public the impression we are casual about our manifesto commitments. The handling of this budget has been a disaster from start to finish.”
Like a typical millennial or elder Gen Zer, the outside of my fridge is overrun by wedding save-the-dates and engagement announcements. That means I spend a lot of time scrolling the clothing rental app Nuuly, searching the grid for dresses to wear and hoarding the designs in my virtual closet. I’ve spent enough time closely critiquing each look that I’ve even started to recognize dresses worn by other guests and have a pretty good idea of when I see a fellow Nuuly-ier on the dance floor.
Over the past decade, fast fashion has come under fire for its environmental impact and exploitation of workers for low wages. In turn, thrifting and meeting up with strangers from Facebook Marketplace became chic — more than 1 billion people it monthly — and apps like Poshmark and Curtsy have made thrifting seamless no matter how far away you live from the used Kate Spade bag you want. That mindset shift has made way for clothing rental apps like Nuuly, BNTO, and Pickle, which give shoppers access to current, high-quality, and designer items at deeply reduced prices.
Nuuly, owned by Urban Outfitters‘ parent company Urbn, hit its first profitable year in January. Pickle, an app that facilitates rentals from one person’s closet to another — a sort of upscaling of ransacking your sister’s wardrobe — has more than 230,000 items available. BNTO, a clothing subscription and resale app that also sells new clothing, raised $15 million in a Series A fundraising round earlier this year. “For Gen Z, style isn’t just about affordability — it’s about discovery, sustainability, and personal expression,” Notable, the VC firm that led that round, wrote last month. The clothing rental market is valued at around $2.6 billion, and projected to top $6 billion over the next 10 years, according to research firm Future Market Insights.
Rather than seeking status by purchasing trendy or designer items, sporting secondhand and borrowed pieces has become “cool to do,” says Shawn Grain Carter, a professor of fashion business management at the Fashion Institute of Technology. “It doesn’t signify your financial status within the world. It has a certain cachet that it did not have before.”
Fashion sense has become far less about the names in your closet, and more about the new, bold pieces you can post once to social media.
Rent the Runway defined the clothing rental market when it launched in 2009, but the focus was high-end designers for workwear and dress-up occasions, and the company slumped during the pandemic when there was no place to wear a Reformation gown. Nuuly captured younger, mid-tier shoppers, with the options to rent from more accessible brands like its own Urban Outfitters all the way up to pieces that sell for a few hundred dollars. The company already had a steady production line from its brands (Anthropologie and Free People are part of the family, too), and Grain Carter tells me that may make it easier for Nuuly to control and scale its offerings.
Isabella De Murguia, 27, has made more than $25,000 renting out her closet on Pickle over the past year.
Apps like Nuuly also came about after other companies normalized renting once seemingly intimate items and spaces. Need a cheap room to crash in? Airbnb. A private driver at your door? Pick to sit in someone’s backseat on Uber. Taking a risk on a dress that’s already been worn by several strangers doesn’t seem so strange anymore. “Without all of those things, we probably wouldn’t have gotten to where we are today,” says Brian McMahon, cofounder and CEO of Pickle. “Borrowing someone else’s clothes is probably a bit more intimate than sitting in the back of someone’s car using a spare bedroom.”
The acceptance of sharing is clear in the demographics: Some 60% of Pickle users are Gen Z, while the 40% are millennials, according to the company. And it’s not just clothes — there’s BabyQuip, which rents strollers and car seats to traveling families, and Tblscape for glassware, plates, and table decor to host events. According to consumer insights research firm GWI, one in five Americans said in a 2022 survey they prefer to rent an outfit for a one-off event, and as of this year, 5 percent are subscribed to clothing, cosmetics, and accessory shipping services, while 12% have previously subscribed (the survey included men and women in the US, but these types of service overwhelmingly cater to and are bought by women).
On TikTok, people post videos of their hauls, similar to when they splurge on a shopping trip — but showcasing their rentals straddles both consumerism and the de-influencing movement, a social trend that discourages people from buying products with abandon. Renting gives people the dopamine of a shopping spree without the guilt.
All of that word-of-mouth and influencer marketing seems to be paying off. Nuuly reported this month that it now averages 400,000 active monthly subscribers. Pickle has expanded from its start in New York, and saw rentals increase by 195% in Los Angeles and nearly 500% in Miami this year. Rent the Runway announced it would double its inventory this year, with more styles in workwear, dresses, vacation, and casual clothing. As of July, the company saw its subscribers grow 13% year-over-year, and revenue for the quarter topped $80 million.
For renters, there’s a potential killing to be made. Isabella De Murguia, a 27-year-old who works in consulting, has made more than $25,000 renting out her closet on Pickle over the past year. She calls the extra cash her “fun money,” and she uses it to travel on luxe vacations to places like Mykonos. De Muguira tells me she started renting out pieces because she loves shopping and would splurge on several new outfits to wear on vacation or for events. But afterwards, they would sit in her closet, wasting away. Now, she spends just a few hours a week at most turning her closet into the circular economy; listing clothes, washing them, readying them for pick-up, and, in one case, hand-sewing little pearls back onto a popular top that lost some when worn by some of its 30 borrowers. “Most of the time, I will buy what I like,” she tells me, rather than picking pieces just because they’re trendy and might rent well. She’s found, “what I like is generally what others will like as well.”
That seems to be the case for many who are renting clothes. Several of my friends are among the group of Nuuly-pilled customers — the app has thousands of items to rent, yet those of us with very distinct styles seem to be gravitating toward the same pieces. I once went to look at reviews of a dress and saw a photo there of my best friend wearing it (she didn’t like the fabric, and her review helped me steer clear of the same mistake). With the increased purchasing power of a rental subscription, maybe it’s only a matter of time before we end up somewhere in matching outfits. At least we’ll be able to send them back at the end of the month.
Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.
In the three years since, the AI chatbot has become one of the most popular tech products in history. As of September 2025, ChatGPT had accumulated nearly 800 million weekly active users.
Available online or as an app, ChatGPT’s widespread adoption among the public and among businesses has helped OpenAI become a leader in the AI race, solidifying its position as a serious contender in Silicon Valley, even in the face of competition from tech giants like Meta and Google.
Here’s a look at ChatGPT’s meteoric rise over its short history.
GPT-5: OpenAI’s latest release
Samuel Boivin via Reuters Connect
Altman described the first iteration of ChatGPT as a “research release.”
“Soon you will be able to have helpful assistants that talk to you, answer questions, and give advice. Later, you can have something that goes off and does tasks for you,” Altman wrote on X. “Eventually, you can have something that goes off and discovers new knowledge for you.”
At the time, ChatGPT relied on OpenAI’s GPT‑3.5 large language model. As the company built more advanced models — like GPT-4o in 2024 — ChatGPT became faster and more efficient in tackling a wider range of tasks.
The most recent version, GPT-5 replaced older versions — to the disappointment of some who missed the “personality” of GPT-4o. In response, Altman said users subscribed to ChatGPT Plus would still be able to use GPT-4o.
GPT-5 is the default model for non-subscribers, and OpenAI said it is designed for casual users.
“GPT‑5 not only outperforms previous models on benchmarks and answers questions more quickly, but—most importantly—is more useful for real-world queries,” the company said in August. “We’ve made significant advances in reducing hallucinations, improving instruction following, and minimizing sycophancy, while leveling up GPT-5’s performance in three of ChatGPT’s most common uses: writing, coding, and health.”
ChatGPT has 800 million weekly active users
Johner Images/Getty Images/Johner RF
One month after its November 2022 launch, ChatGPT had attracted one million weekly active users, according to a study by the company’s Economic Research team and Harvard economist David Deming.
“ChatGPT had more than 100 million logged-in WAU after one year, and almost 350 million after two years,” the study, published in September, said, referring to weekly average users. “By the end of July 2025, ChatGPT had more than 700 million total WAU, nearly 10% of the world’s adult population.”
An OpenAI spokesperson told Business Insider that ChatGPT has now reached 800 million weekly active users.
ChatGPT initially had more users with masculine names, but the apparent gender gap has shrunk
pocketlight/Getty Images
Researchers for OpenAI’s study said that users with masculine names initially dominated ChatGPT’s user demographics.
“A significant share (around 80%) of the weekly active users (WAU) in the first few months after ChatGPT was released were by users with typically masculine first names. However, in the first half of 2025, we see the share of active users with typically feminine and typically masculine names reach near-parity.”
Researchers said that as of September 2025, women appear to outnumber men on the platform.
“By June 2025, we observe active users are more likely to have typically feminine names. This suggests that gender gaps in ChatGPT usage have closed substantially over time,” researchers wrote.
They said the users with “typically female first names” tended to use ChatGPT for queries about practical guidance and writing. On the other hand, users with “typically male first names” were more likely to create queries about multimedia, technical help, and seeking out information.
By July 2025, ChatGPT users were sending billions of messages a week
Qi Yang/Getty Images
An OpenAI spokesperson told Business Insider that ChatGPT users were sending the chatbot 18 billion messages a week by July.
The company’s study broke down the number of messages even further: Users were sending “more than 2.5 billion messages per day, or about 29,000 messages per second” by July.
OpenAI announced that it had accumulated one million business customers in November 2025.
“This includes all organizations that actively pay OpenAI for business use—either through ChatGPT for Work, or through direct consumption of our models through our developer platform,” the company said.
ChatGPT helped boost OpenAI’s valuation to nearly $500 billion
Shelby Tauber/REUTERS
ChatGPT has played a big role in driving OpenAI’s sky-high valuation.
A New York Times report valued the company at $80 billion in February 2024. By October 2024, the valuation skyrocketed to $157 billion.
More recently, OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar told attendees at the Goldman Sachs tech conference in September that after a secondary share sale, the company had reached a $500 billion valuation, making it the most valuable startup in history.
In October, a Reuters report said OpenAI could achieve a $1 trillion valuation if it ever goes public.
ChatGPT is available in over 150 countries
AP Photo/Richard Drew
The AI-powered chatbot is available for use in over 150 countries. An OpenAI spokesperson shared the top 10 countries using ChatGPT:
United States
India
Brazil
Germany
Indonesia
France
Japan
Mexico
United Kingdom
Philippines
More ChatGPT users are sending more non-work-related messages
KARRASTOCK/Getty Images
OpenAI’s study on ChatGPT said that 53% of messages users sent were non-work-related and 47% were work-related in June 2024.
A year later, researchers said non-work-related messages jumped to 73%, while work-related messages fell to 27%.
“Both types of messages have grown continuously, but non-work messages have grown faster and now represent more than 70% of all consumer ChatGPT messages,” the researchers wrote. “While most economic analysis of AI has focused on its impact on productivity in paid work, the impact on activity outside of work (home production) is on a similar scale and possibly larger.”
Users can now do more with ChatGPT.
AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato
When ChatGPT first launched, users were confined to writing prompts and receiving written responses from the chatbot.
Now, ChatGPT has several features, including the ability to generate images and transcribe speech to text. In April 2025, the company introduced a new AI shopping feature that curates product suggestions.
Users have created millions of custom versions of ChatGPT.
Luis Alvarez/Getty Images
In November 2023, OpenAI announced that users could create custom versions of ChatGPT. No coding is required to build a GPT.
“GPTs are a new way for anyone to create a tailored version of ChatGPT to be more helpful in their daily life, at specific tasks, at work, or at home—and then share that creation with others,” the company said.
OpenAI said users had created more than 3 million custom GPTs as of January 2024. “Many builders have shared their GPTs for others to use,” OpenAI said.
Jeeva AI raised $9 million to expand its agentic sales platform.
Gaurav Bhattacharya
Jeeva AI raised $9 million from Marc Benioff, Jack Altman, and Sapphire Ventures.
The sales tech startup created an AI-powered platform to help users improve sales outreach.
Jeeva AI plans to use the funding to enhance its AI models and expand sales and marketing.
Gaurav Bhattacharya came up with his idea for Jeeva AI, a sales tech platform, when he was struggling to keep his last venture afloat.
“Even though we sold to some really large customers, I feel like our downfall was that we were not super good at selling,” Bhattacharya, Jeeva AI’s founder and CEO, said. “It became a very technical, very hard problem for us.”
So, the San Francisco-based company pivoted from a customer intelligence platform, keeping its own problem in mind.
“What we want to build with Jeeva is some kind of companion that truly helps anyone become a really good salesperson,” he said, about the new product. “Just how Cursor is doing with coding.”
The agentic sales platform just raised $9 million in funding from JLL Spark and Sapphire Ventures, along with investments from Jack Altman’s Alt Capital, Marc Benioff, Launch Capital, Bonfire Ventures, Techstars, and Mucker Capital.
The platform, which launched this year, allows individuals or businesses to find leads and customers based on who they’re already in conversation with and craft outreach across channels.
It’s like a “coach” that follows you around on email and phone calls, Bhattacharya said.
Jeeva AI offers two pricing tiers: free and paid, where users can purchase credits in amounts of $20, $50, and $100. It has about 300 paying customers, including real estate giant JLL and energy company Whisper Energy.
To land new customers, the company transferred 2 cents on PayPal to prospective customers with a short note introducing the company and inviting people to share their “2 cents” on the product.
“We got the same amount of negative and positive reactions,” Bhattacharya said. “We sent it to about 250 people, and about 50 of them booked meetings with us, 20 of them became customers. About 50 of them were like, ‘This is the worst strategy, I would never do this again.'”
The company, which employs 20 people, plans to split the $9 million cash injection into two areas: half toward sales and marketing, and the other half toward product by improving its AI models.
Check out the 10-slide pitch deck Jeeva AI used to raise fresh funding:
