By Katherine Li
Publication Date: 2026-06-13 20:41:00
“What is an RTO?”
That was Together AI CEO Vipul Ved Prakash’s response when Business Insider asked if he ever had to send out a return-to-work (RTO) memo to force employees back into the cloud computing startup’s office.
“In general, people enjoy coming in,” Prakash said. “We never enforced it.”
Prakash’s response highlights a stark cultural difference between AI startups founded after COVID lockdowns and legacy companies where people come to the office voluntarily, sometimes on weekends.
Nicholas Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University, told Business Insider that the age demographics and personal commitment of many startup employees have created a work mode in their companies that is “almost entirely in-person” and “100% work-oriented.”
“For a single 23-year-old with $20 million in home equity, it makes sense to work 100 hours a week in the office,” Bloom said. “They don’t work from home, they come home from work.”
