Klarna says AI drive has helped halve staff numbers and boost pay

Klarna has claimed that AI-related savings have allowed the buy now, pay later company to increase staff salaries by nearly 60%, but hinted it could slash more jobs after nearly halving its workforce over the past three years.Chief executive Sebastian Siemiatkowski said headcount had dropped from 5,527 to 2,907 since 2022, mostly as a result of natural attrition, with departing staff replaced by technology rather than by new staff members.The figures add to the impact of an internal artificial intelligence programme, which had steadily reduced its use of outsourced workers including those in customer service, with technology now carrying out the work of 853 full-time staff, up from 700 earlier this year.It meant the company, which was founded in Sweden in 2005, had managed to increase revenues by 108% while keeping operating costs flat. Siemiatkowski told analysts on an earnings call on Tuesday that it was “pretty remarkable, and unheard of as a number, among businesses”

Ocado shares fall 17% after US partner announces warehouse closures

The value of online grocer Ocado has fallen sharply after Kroger, it’s major partner in the US, announced the closure of three warehouses using the UK company’s high-tech equipment.Ocado signed a deal to build 20 automated warehouses – known as customer fulfilment centres – for Kroger, the US’s fourth largest retailer, in 2018. Eight of those facilities are currently operating with two more planned for next year. The deal was seen as a major part of Ocado’s plan to sell its online grocery delivery technology internationally.However, on Tuesday, Kroger said sites in Frederick in Maryland, Pleasant Prairie in Wisconsin, and Groveland in Florida would close in January

Cloudflare outage causes error messages across the internet

A key piece of the internet’s usually hidden infrastructure suffered a global outage on Tuesday, causing error messages to flash up across websites.Cloudflare, a US company whose services include defending millions of websites against malicious attacks, experienced an unidentified problem that meant internet users could not access some of its customers’ websites.Some site owners could not access their performance dashboards. Sites including X and OpenAI suffered increased outages at the same time as Cloudflare’s problems, according to Downdetector.The outage was reported at 11

Amazon vs Perplexity: the AI agent war has arrived

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery.A tech titan and a startup are fighting over who controls the next phase of artificial intelligence.Amazon has sued Perplexity AI, a prominent artificial intelligence startup, over a shopping feature in that company’s browser that allows it to automate placing orders for users. Amazon accused Perplexity AI of covertly accessing customer accounts and disguising AI activity as human browsing

Ben Stokes the thunder god primed for Ashes series that may change his Australian legacy

Perth has some good memories for England captain at the culmination of a four-year project cast in his aggressive imageEngland hope to strike a healthy balance between work and play and at the start of this Ashes week: as Australia trained at the ground to prepare for the first Test, the tourists were being, well, tourists.As well as the usual golfers, a handful of players took a boat trip out to Rottnest Island, with Brydon Carse later showing off an impressive fish he had caught. No doubt some of the grouchier past players would sooner his mind was on reeling in a far bigger one: Steve Smith.But they resumed in earnest on Tuesday morning in nets that had Joe Root purring about their quality. There was certainly more pace and bounce than during the warmup game at Lilac Hill last week, Root confident that three good sessions is plenty before the big push on Friday

‘This wasn’t about money, this was a life at stake’: the world of a sports lawyer

Simon Leaf was sitting in the doctor’s office next to a footballer receiving news that would change the player’s life. The footballer knew something wasn’t quite right and medical tests had been ordered. This was not long after Fabrice Muamba had been saved by the speed of paramedics after having a cardiac arrest on the pitch at White Hart Lane, Leaf recalls, so tensions were heightened.As the player’s lawyer, Leaf was asked to attend when the worst was confirmed and the consultant revealed the player had hypertrophic cardiomyopathy – the same condition as Muamba, where the heart muscles thicken and blood is pumped less efficiently.“To get the results with him, to talk him through his options, to try to guide him through that process was a truly humbling experience,” Leaf says