Eat fat, stay trim — that's the premise behind the popular ketogenic diet.

"I eat full fat cream in everything," kinesiologist David Harper, who's been keto for more than six years, recently told Business Insider.

The eating plan is designed to send the body into a state of ketosis, which is the same fat-burning mode triggered when a person is starving. Keto dieters consume very few carbohydrates in order to foster this metabolic state, shifting the body out of its default carb-burning status and forcing it to use fat for fuel instead.

Celebrities like LeBron James and Kourtney Kardashian, as well as some Silicon Valley techies, swear by the diet, saying it helps them lose weight and also lifts mental fog.

Harper, too, said the diet helps him and his wife stay trim and satisfied. He's also studying whether the regimen plays a role in improving cancer treatments; a few other oncologists are looking into this as well.

But not everyone is convinced of the keto diet's merits.

Dr. Shivam Joshi, who sees patients at NYC Health and Hospitals Bellevue and teaches medicine at NYU, said the keto diet wrongly bans many healthy foods that are linked to long lives, such as beans and whole grains. Joshi recently co-authored an opinion piece in the medical journal JAMA Internal Medicine in which he argues that "enthusiasm outpaces evidence" for the high-fat eating plan.

"What people are doing is essentially throwing the baby out with the bath water when they label all carbs as being bad," he said. "That's not true."

Joshi believes time will eventually prove the keto plan to be no different from other passing diet fads.

Keto diets shun all carbs, including the ones studies have linked to long lives

"Whether you look at Paleo or Atkins or Dukan or South Beach, each diet has its own variation or twist," Joshi said.

In the case of keto, the "twist" Joshi is worried about centers on ketones, which are chemical compounds created in the liver when people burn fat for energy. We all produce some ketones, especially when exercising or if pregnant, but keto dieters have more of them in their bloodstream because they hardly ingest any carbs. (Keto dieters get about 70-80% of their daily calories from fat, 15% or so from protein, and just 5% from carbs.)

Joshi thinks this strategy gives good carbohydrates a bad rap they don't deserve.

"Many people who buy into the keto diet say that carbs are bad," he said, adding, "I'm not defending refined carbs, which many of my critics think I am. I'm defending your unrefined carbs, your fruits, your vegetables, your whole grains, beans, lentils, things like that. These are some of the most healthful foods on the planet."

Nutrition experts generally agree with this. People who consume more whole grains — like barley, brown rice, oats, and quinoa — tend to live healthier, longer lives. They may even reduce their risk of developing some deadly diseases.

"A higher intake of whole grains is linked with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and mortality," researchers from the Centers for Disease Control wrote in a recent paper about the US' low intake of whole grains.

Diets that are rich in whole grains, like the Mediterranean diet, are also consistently found to be linked with less cognitive decline and fewer symptoms of depression than other eating plans.

The Mediterranean diet and the keto diet have an important thing in common, though: Both restrict refined carbohydrates, which are the stripped versions of grains found in foods like white bread and donuts. In its natural state, a whole grain of wheat, say, includes an outer shell of bran and germ. But to produce the refined version, that shell gets stripped away, leaving just the wheat's carby endosperm.

Refined carbs, whether they come from cake, cereal, or other convenience foods, don't pause for long on their journeys through our bodies, which means they don't make us feel full. Instead, they're quickly digested and can send blood sugar soaring. Eating a lot of refined carbs regularly can contribute to weight gain and raise the risk of chronic health issues like heart disease and diabetes.

"When you look at it, we've been eating a lot of refined carbohydrates, like your white bread, white rice, white flour, things like that. These foods don't have fiber. These foods have never been helpful," Joshi said.

About two thirds of the US food system consists of ultra- processed food, which is to encourage overeating, so it's easy to see why the average American today consumes 400 more calories each day than they did 50 years ago.

Hunter Pence gets doused in Gatorade after a game. Energy drinks are loaded with sugar that the body converts to glucose. AP/Tony Gutierrez

The risks of following the keto diet long-term aren't well known

Joshi's other concern about the keto diet is that there just isn't as much scientific evidence about its long-term effects as there is about eating plans that emphasize whole grains and other plants.

The keto diet is not new: People have been practicing different versions of high-fat eating plans since at least the 1800s. In the 1920s, the ketogenic strategy was introduced as a way to treat drug-resistant epileptic seizures.

But the scientific literature on keto is slim, partially because there aren't very many people who follow a keto diet.

"If you think of the ketogenic diet as a medical intervention or as a prescription or anything else, you would want to know the risks, benefits, and alternatives," Joshi said. "We don't have long-term studies following a cohort of people for a long period of time documenting the safety."

Joshi noted that there are studies of children who've used the keto diet to lower their rates of epileptic seizures. When those kids go on the diet, their "bad" LDL cholesterol levels can rise up, while their "good" HDL cholesterol go down. At least one child on a keto diet for seizure control died of heart failure. Non-fatal complications can include kidney stones and iron deficiencies. And still, most seizure-prone kids don't stay keto forever: They might follow the diet for a couple of years, then start eating more carbs.

When it comes to adults, even less is known about the long-term effects.

"We don't know if the ketogenic diet in adults leads to [bone] fractures, you know, 10 years down the road, we don't know that," Joshi said.

Cardiologist Ethan Weiss (who follows the keto diet himself) agrees that it's not yet clear whether the diet is safe for everyone.

"I think the vast majority of people who go on this diet will have no trouble with their cholesterol," Weiss previously told Business Insider. "But I'm not going to tell the people that do have trouble with their cholesterol that it's not a problem."

Harper, however, argues that people have been following diets that include less fat and more carbs for years, and the results are in: Diabetes and obesity rates are skyrocketing.

"We've been vilifying fat — especially saturated fat — for the last 30 or 40 years, when in fact we should have been vilifying sugar," he said.

No single diet is right for every body

David Harper/BioDiet

Disagreements about the keto diet underscore a larger truth about nutrition science: No single diet can ever be a fit for every person.

"On the personal level, we now know there is no diet or dietary intervention that is right for everyone, or even for an individual throughout their lifespan," a team of cardiologists from Scripps Research wrote in the Lancet medical journal earlier this year.

As Tim Spector, an epidemiologist and professor at King's College in London, previously told Business Insider, "just because some diet or recommendation is out there doesn't mean that you fit it."

However, nutritionists generally agree that an ideal meal for anyone — keto or not — should be full of fresh, fibrous vegetables and low on processed foods.

Billionaire Silicon Valley investor and Paypal cofounder Peter Thiel doubled down on his attack on Google conducting AI research in China on Thursday.

Thiel first started banging the drum against Google in a speech at the National Conservatism conference last month, when he described the company as "seemingly treasonous." He later went on Fox News to reiterate the remarks, and President Donald Trump swiftly tweeted saying he would look into Thiel's allegations.

Now Thiel has written an op-ed in The New York Times renewing his attack on the company, specifically the way it develops AI. Thiel takes issue with Google setting up an AI lab in Beijing in 2017, while also spiking its AI military contract "Project Maven" with the Pentagon in June of last year after an intense employee backlash.

"Perhaps the most charitable word for these twin decisions would be to call them naïve," writes Thiel.

"How can Google use the rhetoric of 'borderless' benefits to justify working with the country whose 'Great Firewall' has imposed a border on the internet itself? This way of thinking works only inside Google's cosseted Northern California campus, quite distinct from the world outside."

He added that this is symptomatic of attitudes in Silicon Valley, which he said is marked by an "extreme strain of parochialism" that means it is "incurious" about "problems of other places."

Read more: The cofounder of Palantir just called Google 'an unpatriotic company.' Here's why this alarming new level of rhetoric within tech is really just a deflection

Thiel offers no specific evidence to indicate Google is developing AI for military use, rather he says that any company which operates in China is liable to have its products used by the Chinese military.

"No intensive investigation is required to confirm this," he writes — despite having previously called on the FBI and CIA to investigate the company in a "not excessively gentle manner" last month.

He also makes mention of DeepMind, the London-based AI startup Google acquired in 2014, and in which Thiel was an early investor. Thiel said that founder Demis Hassabis described the company as a "Manhattan Project" for AI, and that Thiel should have interpreted this as a "literal warning sign."

Google and DeepMind were not immediately available for comment on Thiel's remarks. Google has previously said it does not work with the Chinese military and has a number of projects ongoing with the US Department of Defense.

Thiel is a board member at Facebook, a company that competes directly with Google for ad dollars. He is also the cofounder of big data analytics company Palantir, whose work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in targeting illegal immigrants for deportation has been sharply criticised. Palantir has also partnered with the US military.

Many consumer products categories face attacks from direct-to-consumer upstarts that have upended everything from how we sleep (Casper) to how we buy glasses (Warby Parker).

Fueling this disruption are not just these DTC brands, with their data and direct consumer connections, but venture capitalist funding that would have typically been reserved for tech startups.

Estimates vary, but consumer brands have raised more than $3 billion since 2012, with about half of that being raised in 2018 alone, according to CB Insights data cited by Digiday; and DTC brands have raised roughly $4 billion in VC funding, according to Randy Yang, senior director and head of corporate development of digital consumer brands at Walmart eCommerce.

Investors are backing companies they think are cashing in on big trends with unique perspectives and the ability to appeal to big audiences. Take the beverage category, where companies like Bev, Dirty Lemon, and Haus are creating healthy alternatives to sugary drinks. Some are betting on companies that are trying to tackle new categories, as Modern Fertility is doing with women's health.

Business Insider asked 15 investors which DTC startups they think will blow up this year and why (most picked companies they've invested in).

Here are their picks, in alphabetical order:

Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) has made its first major, direct investment in a European tech company, participating in a $550 million funding round in Babylon Health.

The round values Babylon Health at $2 billion, and will help fund the company's expansion to the US and Asia. Other backers included an unnamed US insurer, German insurance fund Ergo, and existing funders Kinnevik and Vostok New Ventures.

Babylon said it had closed $450 million of the round, and expected the final close of $550 million "shortly." A spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for clarification.

Babylon Health offers video consultations with doctors, as well as a chatbot that checks people's symptoms. It has caused some controversy over its impact on NHS funding and resources.

The PIF investment cements two new trends: the emergence of sovereign wealth funds in European tech, and the growing amount of Saudi-connected cash flowing into the European startup ecosystem.

The question is whether this raises a moral dilemma for founders and investors, given the Kingdom was linked with the brutal murder of US journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018.

The horror over Khashoggi's murder prompted some soul-searching in Silicon Valley, where tech firms have accepted billions either directly from the PIF or from SoftBank's Saudi-backed $100 billion Vision Fund.

About $45 billion of SoftBank's first Vision Fund comes from PIF. Uber has also raised $3.5 billion directly from PIF. WeWork accepted $4.4 billion from the Vision Fund. PIF has also invested directly in Magic Leap and carmaker Lucid Motors.

The term Silicon Valley, at least to outsiders, connotes a certain positivity and optimism and a sense that technology is good for the world and humanity. That ethos appears incompatible with a regime that murders its opponents and then tries to cover it up.

WeWork's founder Adam Neumann said tech firms needed to "agree on a certain level of moral standards" when quizzed about Saudi Arabia.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in November 2018 that he was "anxious" about Khashoggi's killing. And in November, SoftBank's CEO Masayoshi Son denounced the "horrific and deeply regrettable act," condemning the murder as an "act against humanity, journalism, and free speech."

Privately, some deals have fallen through. Recode reported last October that at least one US fund manager cut off investment talks with Saudi Arabia over Khashoggi's murder. Sequoia also reportedly has no backing from PIF in its latest funds, despite other Saudi connections.

Babylon Health CEO Ali Parsa. Babylon

Even with the Babylon investment, there is less Saudi money flowing around European tech — at least in public view.

Since Khashoggi's murder last year, SoftBank's Vision Fund has led a $440 million round in UK lender OakNorth, and a $484 million round in German travel guide GetYourGuide.

Earlier investments include car dealer Auto1. Saudi Arabia's Kingdom Holding Company has also invested into French music streaming startup Deezer.

Aside from these direct investments, there's the question of how many European venture capital firms may have Saudi-connected limited partners. Venture capitalists aren't generally required to disclose their LPs publicly.

Investors who spoke to Business Insider were mixed on whether founders or venture capitalists would really be too high-minded about Saudi money.

Read more: I spent 24 hours living on SoftBank services like Uber, WeWork, and Oyo. It revealed some flaws in Masayoshi Son's grand $100 billion investment vision.

One investor, who backs both European and US startups, felt founders were thinking more about the origins of funding. "Founders are asking, 'Where does this money come from?'" the person said.

But another European investor simply said "No" when asked, and said venture capitalists were currently more concerned with taking money from China, thanks to greater scrutiny on Chinese investments both in the US and Europe.

A third investor added: "Sadly the money goes deeper than direct investments... How many startups do you know that would refuse the SoftBank Vision Fund? That's mostly despot money."

The person added that scrutinizing the big funds of funds, which back venture capital firms, might expose lots of unethical money. "Plenty of oil money in the mix if you go up many of those chains."

Apple will temporarily suspend and review a global program that allows contractors to listen to recordings of queries made to the voice assistant Siri, following a report from The Guardian that contractors "regularly" hear private and confidential information.

TechCrunch reported Thursday night that Apple is tabling the program — called grading — which allows the company to monitor user interaction with Siri used for quality control.

"We are committed to delivering a great Siri experience while protecting user privacy," an Apple spokesperson said in a statement to The Verge. "While we conduct a thorough review, we are suspending Siri grading globally. Additionally, as part of a future software update, users will have the ability to choose to participate in grading."

According to Apple, user recordings from Siri queries are saved for a six-month period "so that the recognition system can utilize them to better understand the user's voice." After six months, another copy of the recording "without its identifier" is saved for up to two years by Apple in order to "improve and develop" Siri functions.

Las week a report from The Guardian that revealed that contractors involved in the review program could "regularly hear confidential medical information, drug deals, and recordings of couples having sex."

Read more: Amazon workers reportedly listen to what you tell Alexa — here's how Apple and Google handle what you say to their voice assistants

An anonymous contractor expressed concern to The Guardian about the amount of "extremely sensitive personal information" picked up by Siri when its often triggered by accident by its "wake word." Contractors responsible for grading note these interactions, along with deliberate queries.

Apple told The Guardian that "less than 1%" of daily Siri activations are utilized by graders and are typically "only a few seconds long." The company told the Guardian that requests are not associated with an Apple ID and "all reviewers are under the obligation to adhere to Apple's strict confidentiality requirements."

Apple did not immediately response to Business Insider's request for comment.

Amazon's Dash buttons will soon be disabled.

The e-commerce giant will be turning off the devices, which allowed customers to order particular products with the press of a button, at the end of this month, company spokeswoman Robyn Stewart said in an emailed statement Thursday. Amazon had announced in February it was ceasing sales of the gadgets, but had since then continued to support those already in use.

"Amazon is constantly evaluating our product and service offerings to best serve customers," Stewart said in the statement. "Since sales of Dash Button devices ceased earlier this year, we have seen continued growth of other shopping options to meet customer needs."

CNET previously reported that Amazon was deactivating the Dash buttons.

Amazon launched the Dash buttons four years ago. Each one was tied to a particular product from a specific brand. They were designed to make it easy for customers to replenish household items when they ran out of them. Among the dozens of different brands that offered buttons were Tide, Lysol, and Red Bull.

Read this: Amazon just added a ton of new Dash Buttons — here's the full list

Instead of using the physical buttons, Amazon customers can create virtual ones on the company's web site. They can also place orders through the company's Echo smart speakers or other devices that support its Alexa voice assistant.

Got a tip about Amazon or another tech company? Contact this reporter via email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., message him on Twitter @troywolv, or send him a secure message through Signal at 415.515.5594. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

SoftBank isn't the only new kid on the block on Sand Hill Road. Outsized returns have caught the eyes of some of Silicon Valley's most successful hedge funds, and they're looking for skin in the game.

According to a report from The Information on Thursday, tech hedge fund Coatue Management has raised a $700 million venture fund to invest in early-stage tech companies.

Although typically the riskiest stage to invest in, the earlier an investor gets in, the larger the returns could be, which apparently appealed to Philippe Laffont and his brother Thomas Laffont, the founders of Coatue. The founders told The Information they were eager to get into prospective companies earlier as they continue to compete with larger, more well-known venture firms in Silicon Valley.

The early-stage fund will be run by former Facebook vice president Dan Rose, according to the report, and it's already invested in data-centric startups like Weights & Biases, Figma, AppZen, and Persona.

Read More: Andreessen Horowitz partner Scott Kupor explains the valuable lesson that today's startups can learn from the dot-com bubble: Be careful about selling to other startups

The Laffont brothers have made a name for themselves by taking big bets on some of Silicon Valley's biggest names, albeit at later stages. Coatue Management had stakes in Snap, Uber, Lyft, Grab, and Airtable, to name a few of the firm's biggest hits. But as capital continues to flow into Silicon Valley, it helps to get in as early as possible.

In addition to the $17 billion under management, Coatue Management also benefits from a proprietary data analytics tool that helps guide investment, the Laffonts told The Information. According to the report, Coatue spends more than $30 million to purchase data for its algorithms, and nearly half of its investment team are engineers.

Coatue Management did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

Venture capital firms have different strategies and philosophies when it comes to their interactions with their portfolio companies.

Some VC firms take a more laid-back approach, giving founders and executive teams plenty of room to operate. Others are much more interested in playing an active role in their companies, helping direct operations and guide decision-making.

HighBar Partners is on the more active end of the continuum. Most of its team has experience working at and managing startups. A big part of its strategy is to invest in mature startups that have already proven their business models and help them reach exponential growth by working closely with their managers, Brian Peters, a managing director at HighBar, told Business Insider in a recent interview. The firm specifically seeks out founders and managing teams that are looking for the kind of advice and guidance it can offer, he said.

"We're a hands-on investment group," Peters said. He continued: "If the management team is one that's not looking for help ... it might not be the right investment for us."

Read this: One of the first backers of Skype and Wix.com explains why the European startup scene is starting to close the gap with Silicon Valley

That philosophy guides the number and type of investments HighBar makes, Peters said. The firm manages about $500 million in assets. But it has only about a dozen active investments at any one time and it only makes a handful of new ones each year, he said.

"Our model is not high volume," he said. "We're not sitting on 10 boards each."

At a time when tech startups have a broader choice of investors than ever before, from sovereign wealth funds to corporate VC firms like Google's GV and Salesforce Ventures, HighBar is betting a high-touch approach will become increasingly valuable — at least with a certain type of startup.

HighBar's partners work closely with founders

Once HighBar invests in companies, its partners sit down with management teams and go over various aspects of their businesses, Peters said. They look at how well the startups are attracting customers and the effectiveness of their marketing efforts. They scrutinize the companies product innovation processes, he said. And they look at how well the teams are scaling their businesses, and whether they're doing so efficiently or productively.

HighBar likes to establish benchmarks for particular metrics right after it invests and monitor whether those are improving over time, Peters said.

"We're looking to roll up our sleeves with each of these teams," he said.

The firm largely focuses on software companies, Peters said. It's particularly interested in ones that help customers' process and make sense of large amounts of data.

One of its most recent investments, for example, was in Signpost, a New York startup that offers customer relationship management software for local businesses. Founded in 2010, Signpost has collected data on 70 million US consumers. Last month, HighBar led a $52 million late-stage investment in the company.

"We love large data plays," Peters said.

The firm is focusing on the digital transformation and automation

Lately, HighBar has been concentrating on companies that are focused on three big trends — the digital transformation of companies, business process automation, and the move of corporate workflows to mobile devices.

On the digital transformation front, it was an investor in Janrain, a startup that helps companies manage online customer registration and authentication. Akamai bought Janrain in January for $124 million in cash, according to the former's latest quarterly report.

In the mobile workflow area, it's a backer of PatientSafe, a San Diego-based startup that's developed an app for doctors and nurses that helps them keep track of and communicate about treatments for particular patients.

Both investments exemplify its strategy. Both were part of larger, late-stage deals that occurred after the companies had already proven themselves.

"We like to own large stakes in business with a significant capital infusion and leverage our expertise," Peters said.

Got a tip about a startup or venture capital? Contact this reporter via email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., message him on Twitter @troywolv, or send him a secure message through Signal at 415.515.5594. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos just sold $1.8 billion worth of the company's shares in what may have been his largest stock sale in the internet company's history.

Bezos cashed in more than 960,000 shares valued at about $1,900 per share in the last three days of July, as company filings with the Security and Exchange Commission show. That represented 1.6% of Bezos' total stake in the company, and it could be the largest sale of Amazon stock that Bezos has ever made since he started the company more than 20 years ago, according to Forbes.

Bezos also transferred 19.7 million shares to ex-wife MacKenzie Bezos, making her the company's second-largest individual shareholder as Bloomberg notes. Her 4% holding in the company is worth $37 billion.

It's unclear why Bezos decided to sell off his shares at this time. To be sure, the sales were part of a so-called 10b5-1 trading plan, in which shares are automatically sold at pre-determined dates to avoid any perception of trading on insider knowledge.

Still, an executive cashing out big chunks of stock is often considered a negative sign, since it suggests the person may not be as bullish about the stock's potential as in the past.

As the owner of several other companies, including a space exploration company and the Washington Post newspaper, Bezos has a lot going on. There are plenty of personal reasons why Bezos might have sold his shares that have nothing to do with Amazon.

Here are our best guesses at where the money from his stock sales might be going, as well as some of the big issues clouding Amazon's future that coincide with the moves.

Amazon did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for more details about the sale.

Tyler "Ninja" Blevins, the most followed streamer on Twitch, is already facing backlash after announcing that he'll be leaving the platform for Microsoft's streaming service, Mixer. Ninja currently boasts more than 14 million followers on Twitch — more than twice as many as the second-most popular account.

While Microsoft is clearly betting that this exclusive partnership with Ninja will bring that massive audience to Mixer, upset Twitch users have already started slamming the superstar for swapping platforms.

It's not clear exactly what Mixer offered Ninja to secure the exclusive partnership, or how long the deal will last. Viewers will still be able to watch Ninja for free on Mixer, and people who paid to subscribe to Ninja's Twitch stream will be allowed to transfer their subscription to another Twitch user at no additional cost.

Twitch removed Ninja's verified checkmark from his account shortly after the announcement, but his channel remains open.

When asked about his departure, Twitch offered the following statement: "We've loved watching Ninja on Twitch over the years and are proud of all that he's accomplished for himself and his family, and the gaming community. We wish him the best of luck in his future endeavors."

Despite the well wishes from Twitch, some have already started criticizing Ninja for moving to Mixer, even before his first official stream on the platform, which is expected to go down on Friday, August 2nd.

Ninja's Mixer debut will come live from Lollapalooza 2019. His stream will broadcast from a Red Bull-sponsored studio from August 2 through August 4 starting at 12 p.m. CT each day.

Read more: Ninja wants to be more than just 'the Fortnite Guy,' but the world's most popular gamer is headed into uncharted territory

While there have been plenty of harsh responses, some people have credited Ninja for making a wise business decision. The streamer is best known for playing "Fortnite," but he has said he wants to expand his repertoire and be open to more opportunities.

Even before this news, data from Streamlabs showed that despite his massive number of followers, Ninja had started to fall behind other Twitch streamers in actual viewership this year. The move to Mixer seems to come as his popularity on Twitch has passed some kind of inflection point.

Ninja's move to Mixer seems likely to provide him greater financial security, but it remains to be seen if he can maintain the same level of viral popularity on the platform, which is far less visible and generally less popular than Twitch.

In the past Ninja has talked about the struggle to main subscribers on Twitch, including losing 40,000 paying subscribers during a two-day trip — the equivalent of $100,000 in monthly income.

Three Republican Congressman on the House Oversight Committee have some questions for Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos about the security of Amazon's cloud, Amazon Web Services.

They sent a letter to Amazon on Thursday expressing concerns about the Capital One breach and the underlying security of AWS.

Amazon, with its market leading cloud, is widely considered to be the frontrunner for a winner-take-all contract to provide cloud services for the defense department. This contract, known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI), is worth up to $10 billion over 10 years.

The lawmakers who sent the letter are Jim Jordan (R-OH); Michael Cloud (R-TX) and Mark Meadows (R-NC), and it was sent in response to Capital One's major hack, and AWS's role in that hack.

A former AWS employee, Paige Thompson, has been arrested and accused of being behind the attack. Capital One famously uses AWS. That hack affected the personal information of over 100 million people, including some Social Security and bank-account numbers.

AWS has acknowledged in other news reports that Thompson was a former employee and that Capital One is one of its customers. But Capital One has said that Amazon was not at fault, and the criminal complaint seems to back that up. The complaint says that the hacker discovered and used a "misconfiguration" of a computer security device known as a firewall.

A misconfiguration is a common mistake made with software and it doesn't indicate any inherent security vulnerabilty in the software or the underlying hardware. That underlying infrastructure is the part that Amazon provides. Capital One even credited the cloud for helping it find and analyze the hack quickly, in 10 days.

"AWS services or infrastructure were not compromised in any way," a person familiar with the matter told Business Insider.

Still, lawmakers say that they want to investigate because the government is on the brink of trusting AWS with some of the nation's most sensitive data.

"Because AWS will provide the trusted Internet connection and cloud support for the 2020 Census and could potentially run the Department of Defense's Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud computing system, the Committee may carefully examine the consequences of this breach," the letter said.

Amazon should be equipped to respond. It has already achieved an armload of federally mandated security certifications and is the cloud of choice for a number of federal agencies.

But the fact that these lawmakers have brought up the JEDI contact is interesting. JEDI competitors have been lobbying President Trump to try and stop the award from going to Amazon, the biggest cloud competitor out there. Such pressure means that Microsoft has become a real contendor for the contract, even though Amazon is said to have more of the cloud features that department departments want in a cloud provider.

On Thursday, Trump's Secretary of Defense put the award of this contract on pause so his office could personally review it. And the three Republican congressmen are known to be vocal supporters of Trump.

Washington's anomosity towards Amazon these days seems to be one of the few things that both parties agree on. Trump has routinely fueded with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post. And the FTC has begun asking questions about Amazon.

Meanwhile Democrat presidential hopefuls have been slamming Amazon for paying no federal taxes with some, like Elizabeth Warren, even calling for Amazon to be broken up.

On Thursday, Dynatrace became the latest tech company to go public — and soared as high as 58% in its first day of trading, before closing the day up 49% at $23.85.

The software intelligence company, which is majority-owned by private equity firm Thoma Bravo, creates software that helps companies monitor and manage their business applications, spotting performance bottlenecks and spotting cybersecurity problems. It competes with companies like Cisco and Broadcom.

In 2014, Thoma Bravo bought a company called Compuware for $2.5 billion. That same year, Thoma Bravo took some of Compuware's business and spun it out as an independent company that we now know as Dynatrace, though it kept a controlling interest.

Dynatrace raised $570 million in its IPO, which it sees as giving it some fuel to continue chasing growth.

"This is a huge opportunity with this market," Bernd Greifeneder, founder and CTO of Dynatrace, told Business Insider. "It gives us the right funding to invest more. Honestly, I'm primarily driven by the best solutions for our customers."

According to that filing, Dynatrace posted revenues of $431 million in its 2019 fiscal year which ended March 31, up 8% from the previous year. It reported a net loss of $116 million in FY19, down from a profit of $9 million the previous year.

Dynatrace CFO Kevin Burns says that over the last three years or so, the company went through a "significant technology refresh." Before, Dynatrace sold traditional software licenses, but in the last two to three years, it transitioned to a subscription business.

Now, he says, over 80% of Dynatrace's revenue comes from subscriptions. The company saw 35% growth in subscription and services revenue in the most recent quarter.

"For the last couple of years, technology transformation, we've been starting an acceleration in revenue growth," Burns said.

This change in business model has been the biggest motivation for the company to go public, Burns says. With the faster pace of growth, he says, the company has a better position from which to reach customers, and being publicly traded

"We've got a lot of momentum in the business," Burns said. "As a public company, there's bigger podium to speak from."

Read more: Dynatrace, a Cisco and Broadcom rival, is going public in an IPO that could raise as much as $300 million

Burns says that going forward, he wants Dynatrace to continue on the path it's been on. It plans to continue growing its customers and hiring more talent to its company.

"We've been a market leader, a technology leader," Burns said. "We continue to reinvent and innovate. We want to continue to scale."

Dynatrace is the latest in a string of other enterprise tech companies, like Zoom, PagerDuty, CrowdStrike, Slack, Fastly, and Medallia, that have all gone public this year.

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DoorDash announced Thursday that it plans to buy competing delivery company Caviar from Square in a $410 million cash-and-stock deal.

Caviar, which operates in about thirty cities throughout the United States, was originally acquired by the payments company, helmed by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, in 2014.

DoorDash said it was interested in buying the competitor in order to acquire its "leading technology and exceptional team." Gokul Rajaram, head of the Caviar division at Square, will join DoorDash as well, the company said, adding that the deal is expected to close this year.

"We have long-admired Caviar, which has a coveted brand, an exceptional portfolio of premium restaurants and leading technology," DoorDash CEO Tony Xu said in a press release.

The acquisition further enhances the breadth of our merchant selection, enabling us to offer customers even more choice when they order through DoorDash. We look forward to welcoming the Caviar team to DoorDash and expanding our partnership with Square in the future."

Shares of Square sank as much as 8% in after-hours trading Thursday Markets Insider Shares of Square sank as much as 8% in after-hours trading following the Caviar deal's announcement, which coincided with a quarterly earnings report that was mostly in-line with Wall Street's expectations.

DoorDash came under fire in July for a controversial tipping policy, which it eventually changed, after backlash from customers and workers. Under the old system, some customer tips were counted towards a delivery partner's guaranteed base pay. Tips are now always counted on top of a minimum base rate, Xu announced in late July.

Read more: We asked Uber, Lyft, Instacart and other gig-economy startups how much of your tips go directly to their workers

DoorDash's acquisition is the latest in a string of delivery startup mergers in the red-hot industry. Earlier this week, Delivery.com announced it would acquired Mr. Delivery, a smaller competitor based in Austin, Texas. In July, two European delivery powerhouses, Takeaway and Just Eat, merged in a $10 billion deal. Amazon, meanwhile, has backed another European competitor, London-based Deliveroo.

"We are increasing our focus on and investment in our two large, growing ecosystems—one for businesses and one for individuals," Square CEO Jack Dorsey said in the press release. "This transaction furthers that effort, and we believe partnering with DoorDash provides valuable and strategic opportunities for Square."

Carmen Reinicke contributed to this report.

A Wall Street analyst says some investors now see Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst as a likely successor to IBM chief Ginni Rometty, in what could be the most meaningful result of IBM's blockbuster $34 billion acquisition.

IBM closed its acquisition of Red Hat three weeks ago, and on Thursday unveiled its ambitious plan for the open source cloud software company. The acquisition was a controversial move that some observers said would lead to another failed megamerger. A big worry is that Red Hat would lose its edge under IBM given the two companies diverse cultures.

Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty noted that one of the risks in big mergers is that the "acquired company loses key executives, sales or R&D teams, diluting the value of intangibles spanning culture, brand and customer relationships."

But that may not be a worry with the IBM-Red Hat merger.

"In the case of Red Hat, Jim Whitehurst will remain with IBM and is viewed by many investors as a potential CEO successor," Huberty wrote in a research note.

Whitehurst's possible ascent to the IBM's top post has come up in media reports in the past. The latest speculation on Whitehurst's IBM future comes at a time IBM is unveiling its ambitious plans for Red Hat, which it says will be key in its bid to dominate the hybrid cloud market. IBM is meeting with investors on Friday "to talk about our go-to-market strategy with Red Hat," a spokesperson told Business Insider.

Red Hat's products are popular among developers and could potentially expand the tech giant's reach in enterprise cloud.

IBM certainly needs such a boost. The company has seen its revenue decline in 26 of the last 29 quarters.

Known as a corporate powerhouse that dominated the enterprise tech market for decades, IBM found itself outmaneuvered in the rapid growth of the cloud, which allowed businesses to set up and maintain computing networks on web-based platforms. That market is dominated by the likes of Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

But IBM has been pushing for a bigger cloud presence by zeroing in on the hybrid cloud market, where businesses store and process data and use applications on a public cloud, while keeping a significant portion of the workload in their own data centers.

Huberty of Morgan Stanley resumed coverage of IBM on Thursday with an overweight rating, which is equivalent to a buy, based on recent trends in IBM's business and the potential gain from Red Hat.

"IBM is in the latter innings of a transformation meant to return the company to growth and margin expansion, both of which kicked in over the past year and should accelerate post the closing of the Red Hat acquisition."

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Pinterest raised its revenue forecast for the rest of the year on Thursday after reporting second quarter results that came in well above Wall Street targets, sending the social media company's stock soaring more than 12% in after-hours trading.

Pinterest's revenue in the second quarter increased 62% year-over-year, to roughly $236 million, as the number of consumers and advertisers using the platform grew. In his second earnings report since taking Pinterest public in in April, CEO Ben Silbermann said the company reached 300 million monthly active users (MAUs) by the end of the second quarter, up from the 231 million MAUs (or, 30%) it had during the same period the year prior.

Silbermann said in prepared remarks that the company made progress diversifying its roster of advertisers during the quarter and improved its tools for marketers to measure the effectiveness of their spending.

Here are the key numbers from Pinterest's Q2 financial report:

On the heels of strong earnings reports recently from some of Silicon Valley's top tech companies, Pinterest joined in the hot streak by posting $261 million in revenues for Q2, up 62% from the same period the year prior.

Although Pinterest is still relatively tiny compared to tech giants like Facebook and Google, some analysts have pointed to its positioning as an advantage — as the company will likely dodge the looming antitrust investigations facing the industry's largest companies. Analysts also see Pinterest's avoidance of any privacy-related issues, as well as its high-potential ad products as reasons the company could fare well in the near term.

South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate said he would allow gig workers to unionize to "put the interest of workers first."

"There are people in the gig economy who go through more jobs in a week than my parents went through in their lifetime," Buttigieg said during the debate when answering a question about trade. "That's why I propose that we allow gig workers to unionize, because a gig is a job and a worker is a worker."

"That's why we need to put the interest of workers first. Of course we need to do retraining — we're doing it now in South Bend — we'll continue to do it, but this is so much bigger than a trade fight," Buttigieg said. "This is about a moment when the economy is changing before our eyes."

Organizing among some gig-economy workers is already beginning.

Drivers for popular ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft, who are listed as independent contractors not employees, went on strike earlier this year, calling on passengers across the nation to boycott the ride-sharing companies until better wages were provided.

Seattle became the first city to allow ride-share drivers to unionize in 2015, though there have been legal challenges, The Guardian notes. In New York City, the Independent Drivers Guild represents around 70,000 drivers, according to The Guardian, and the city enacted a higher minimum wage for ride-share drivers in January of this year. Some Los Angeles drivers are also organizing.

"We have to respond to all of these changes," Buttigieg said. "In addition to confronting tech, in addition to supporting workers by doubling unionization, as I've proposed to do."

Read more: Uber and Lyft are trying to make an end-run around unionization

The California State Assembly passed "gig work" legislation in May that will allow independent workers to meet certain criteria to be determined employees. The bill still needs to go through the state senate and get the governor's signature. The governor is encouraging unions to work with gig economy companies to figure out a compromise, Bloomberg reported.

In response, officials for the companies said that "a change to the employment classification of ride-share drivers would pose a risk to our businesses," as written in an op-ed published in the San Francisco Chronicle written by Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and Lyft cofounders Logan Green and John Zimmer.

Going into Apple's earnings report Tuesday, investors and analysts had a lot of concerns, including about such things as its iPhone sales, how the trade war with China was affecting its business there, and the development of its services segment.

One thing few seemed to focus on was its research-and-development spending. But maybe they should have paid it a bit more attention. Apple's earnings fell in its most recent quarter despite a rise in sales, and that incongruous result is largely the product of yet another significant uptick in the company's research efforts.

What's more, Luca Maestri, Apple's chief financial officer, indicated that Apple's R&D investment isn't going to abate anytime soon.

"It's very important to us to continue to invest in the business, particularly on the R&D side, because we always want to bring more innovation into the market, we want to improve the user experience, and differentiate our products and services in the marketplace," Maestri said on a conference call with analysts. "So we will continue to do that."

Apple's sales rose, but profits fell

In its fiscal third quarter, Apple's sales grew 1% from the same period a year earlier to $53.8 billion. But its net income plunged 12.8% to $10 billion over the same time period.

To put it another way, Apple's sales rose by $544 million from its third quarter a year ago to its just-completed third quarter. But its profit fell by $1.48 billion over the same period.

Part of the explanation for the divergence between its top and bottom lines was that its cost of good sold — its direct costs for producing and providing its products and services — rose. Despite having higher sales, Apple's gross profit — the amount of revenue that's left over after accounting for those direct costs —was actually down about 1% from the same period a year earlier. That's likely a function of the price cuts and trade-in incentives that Apple used to help juice sales, particularly in China.

Overall, Apple's direct costs were $738 million higher in this year's third quarter than they were a year earlier, more than wiping out its sales gain.

Apple's R&D spending is enormous and growing

But the next biggest factor weighing on Apple's bottom line was its research-and-development spending. Apple spent $4.3 billion on R&D in its just completed quarter. Compared with last year, that was up by $556 million, or 15%, far outpacing its sales growth.

Business Insider Intelligence

Perhaps more significantly, Apple spent 7.9% of its revenue on research in the quarter, compared with about 7% in the same period a year earlier. On an annualized basis, that would the highest proportion it had spent on R&D in 18 years. The last time Apple devoted more of its sales to research was in 2001, when it saw a slump in revenue due to the dot-com bust and it was investing heavily in developing the iPod, iTunes, and a new operating system for its Mac computers.

The company's R&D spending was likely boosted as a portion of revenue by the fact that its third-quarter is typically a seasonally slow one. But the jump still reflects a larger trend.

Since Apple's research spending bottomed out in 2012 at less than 2.2% of its sales, the company has consistently increased the amount of its revenue that's going to R&D. For all of last year, it devoted 5.4% of its sales to R&D. In the first nine months of this year, it's devoted 6.2%.

Read this: Apple now spends 18 times as much on research as it did when it launched the iPhone. These 6 charts show how it became an R&D giant.

Part of that increase is a result of declining sales. But it also reflects that fact that Apple is devoting ever more dollars to its R&D effort even as its revenue has fallen. In the first nine months of this year, it's spent $12.1 billion on research, $1.6 billion, or 15.5%, more than it spent in the same period last year.

Business Insider Intelligence

Apple may not be "harvesting" its investment anytime soon

As it's ramped up its research spending, Apple R&D effort has become one of the largest in the world. But the company doesn't have a lot to show for it, at least not in terms of hit new products. Its last major new product, Apple Watch, debuted in 2015, a year in which its R&D spending was about half what it will likely be this year. Reported investments in cars and interactive televisions, meanwhile, have yet to bear much fruit.

Business Insider Intelligence

Citigroup's Jim Suva was the only analyst who questioned Apple's R&D effort on Tuesday, wondering what he and other analysts should expect going forward.

"You've been investing a lot, a lot, lot, lot," he said. "Are we at a point now," he continued, "where a lot of the harvesting is going to happen?"

Maestri declined to answer his question directly, but his response suggested Apple isn't going to be moving to harvest mode. The amount of revenue that Apple devotes to all of its operating expenses, which include marketing and administrative costs in addition to research and development, has been "competitive" with other tech companies, he said.

"We want to continue to be competitive, and, at the same time, we will not under-invest in the business," he said.