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Three AI companiesOpenAI, Google, and Perplexityare on the verge of receiving approval to sell their technology, hosted on their own cloud systems, directly to the government, a person familiar with the matter tells Fast Company. That authorization will be on a low impact and pilot level, the person said, but constitutes a major step toward independence. That independence could help those companies avoid some of the complications created by ongoing partnerships between AI firms and longtime government tech contractors. As large language models have gone mainstream, AI companies have often relied on tech firms that have already passed arduous government security reviewsincluding Microsoft, Palantir, and Amazon Web Servicesto host their chatbots for federal users. In the early days, these partnerships made it easier for AI labs to quickly get their tech in front of government officials, but also meant ceding at least some control over when and how their AI was made available. The downside of that kind of dependence is now playing out in the brewing feud between Anthropic and the Pentagon, which appears to have been fueled, in part, by its partnership with Palantir. The Defense Department is threatening to cancel a $200 million contract after Anthropic requested limits on the use of its AI for certain applications, including autonomous weapons and mass surveillance. Anthropics Claude model was made available to military officials with the help of Palantir’s systems and was even used in the U.S. operation to capture former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, according to reports. According to Semafor, tensions mounted after an Anthropic official asked a Palantir executive how Claude had been used in the operation, prompting concern inside the Pentagon about the companys willingness to support military applications. This is all to say that not relying on a company like Palantir makes selling to the government far less complicated. In pursuit of that independence, OpenAI, Perplexity, and Google applied for, and received, expedited review of their cloud systems last year under a federal security initiative called FedRAMP 20x. Now, Fast Company can report, theyre almost certain to be approved. These approvals are separate from any decision by a specific federal agency to purchase their products, but they show the companies have taken concrete steps to engage the government on their own terms. Anthropic, by contrast, has leaned heavily on partners like Palantir to help sell its technology to government customers. The company does not appear to have participated in FedRAMP 20x, though its not clear why. Still, the question of independence is one Anthropic has publicly acknowledged. We would also like to be able to directly provide services to governments and not necessarily go through a partner at all times, Michael Sellito, the companys head of global affairs, told FedScoop in 2024. Neither Palantir nor Anthropic responded to Fast Companys request for comment.
Category:
E-Commerce
Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO of Swedish fintech company Klarna, says the organization is set to drastically downsize. And he says he shares his outlook on the workforce with another CEO: Anthropics Dario Amodei. Siemiatkowski made the comments on the 20 VC podcast with Harry Stebbings earlier this week, where the CEO didn’t deny that the company has been steadily shrinking.The CEO said that currently the company has about 3,000 employees. That’s down from 7,000 just four years ago. In another four, he says there will likely be less than 2,000a reduction of one-third. Siemiatkowski cited both layoffs and the employees leaving the company and not being replaced, and explained that AI’s integration allows for fewer employees.Klarna’s slimming down comes even as buy now, pay later (BNPL) services are booming. Around 30% of Americans say they have used them, according to a 2025 Bankrate report. And in 2025, according to a PartnerCentric survey, 35% said they planned to use the services even more. The popularity is driven by the fact that Klarna, like other BNPL options, allows shoppers to split purchases into interest-free installments, pay within 30 days, or even opt for longer-term financing options. Likewise, thousands of retailers now accept BNPL. Still, the success of such businesses no longer seems to equate to the need for more employees, as AI’s impact looms largersomething some leaders have been increasingly warning about. Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei wrote of his gravest concerns about AI in a recent essay that included items like loss of autonomy, “misuse for destruction” and “powerful AI” which he writes is “definitely coming.” Amodei writes: “I think it should be clear that this is a dangerous situationa report from a competent national security official to a head of state would probably contain words like ‘the single most serious national security threat weve faced in a century, possibly ever.’ It seems like something the best minds of civilization should be focused on.” The CEO also predicted AI could cut 50 percent of all white-collar entry-level jobs in the next one to five years, doubling down on a stance he’s warned about previously. Worryingly, Klarna’s CEO doesn’t disagree with Amodei’s stance, acknowledging that he’s “in Dario’s camp” on concerns around AI. “I want to be honest about the fact that I do think there’s going to be a very big shift,” Siemiatkowski said on the podcast. Specifically, he echoed the concerns around job loss. “I’m an optimist at heart, but I also want to be a realist around what’s going to happen in the shorter term, and it’s going to be a lot of turmoil in this.” Regardless, while the CEO seemed to express some major concerns around AI’s rapid advancements, Siemiatkowski has leaned into them heavily. In 2024, he announced that AI could handle a growing number of jobs as the company paused hiring and cut 2,000 employees. But it wasn’t long before customer satisfaction dipped, and the company had to scramble to reassign workers to customer support to handle the fallout. The CEO later took to X to explain what went wrong, writing that he was “tremendously embarrassed” about the turn of events. Fast Company reached out to Klarna to inquire on whether the company would scale back its relationship with AI. A representative said Klarna “did not lean too much into AI,” but its “thinking on human customer service” has changed. The representative continued, “When you automate a large amount of the simpler customer service requests, you are left with the most complex and sensitive cases . . . So we have begun to directly hire a small number of human agents directly employed by Klarna, not at outsourced providers.”
Category:
E-Commerce
Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO of Swedish fintech company Klarna, says the organization is set to employ drastically fewer people. And he says he shares his outlook on the workforce with another CEO: Anthropics Dario Amodei. Siemiatkowski made the comments on the 20 VC podcast with Harry Stebbings earlier this week, where the CEO didn’t deny that the company has been steadily shrinking.The CEO said that currently the company has about 3,000 employees. That’s down from 7,000 just four years ago. In another four, he says there will likely be less than 2,000a reduction of one-third. Siemiatkowsk said employees leaving the company are not being replaced, and explained that AI’s integration allows for fewer employees.Klarna’s slimming down comes even as buy now, pay later (BNPL) services are booming. Around 30% of Americans say they have used them, according to a 2025 Bankrate report. And in 2025, according to a PartnerCentric survey, 35% said they planned to use the services even more. The popularity is driven by the fact that Klarna, like other BNPL options, allows shoppers to split purchases into interest-free installments, pay within 30 days, or even opt for longer-term financing options. Likewise, thousands of retailers now accept BNPL. Still, the success of such businesses no longer seems to equate to the need for more employees, as AI’s impact looms largersomething some leaders have been increasingly warning about. Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei wrote of his gravest concerns about AI in a recent essay that included items like loss of autonomy, “misuse for destruction” and “powerful AI” which he writes is “definitely coming.” Amodei writes: “I think it should be clear that this is a dangerous situationa report from a competent national security official to a head of state would probably contain words like ‘the single most serious national security threat weve faced in a century, possibly ever.’ It seems like something the best minds of civilization should be focused on.” The CEO also predicted AI could remove the need for 50 percent of all white-collar entry-level jobs in the next one to five years, doubling down on a stance he’s warned about previously. Worryingly, Klarna’s CEO doesn’t disagree with Amodei’s stance, acknowledging that he’s “in Dario’s camp” on concerns around AI. “I want to be honest about the fact that I do think there’s going to be a very big shift,” Siemiatkowski said on the podcast. Specifically, he echoed the concerns around job loss. “I’m an optimist at heart, but I also want to be a realist around what’s going to happen in the shorter term, and it’s going to be a lot of turmoil in this.” Regardless, while the CEO seemed to express some major concerns around AI’s rapid advancements, Siemiatkowski has leaned into them heavily. In 2024, he announced that AI could handle a growing number of jobs as the company paused hiring and reduced its size by 2,000 employees. But, as Business Insider reported, it wasn’t long before customer satisfaction dipped, and the company had to scramble to reassign workers to customer support to handle the fallout. (Klarna says that because AI can handle the simple requests, the ones remaining are more complex and required hiring new customer support agents). Fast Company reached out to Klarna to inquire on whether the company would scale back its relationship with AI. A representative said Klarna “did not lean too much into AI,” but its “thinking on human customer service” has changed. The representative continued, “When you automate a large amount of the simpler customer service requests, you are left with the most complex and sensitive cases . . . So we have begun to directly hire a small number of human agents directly employed by Klarna, not at outsourced providers.” This article has been updated to reflect the fact that Klarna’s reduction in size has been due to attrition, not to layoffs. Additionally, we have removed a reference to a social media post by Siemiatkowski that was taken out of context.
Category:
E-Commerce
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