This week Klarna, a buy-now pay-later company in Sweden, announced plans to terminate its Workday and Salesforce relationships and build it themselves. A bunch of tech pundits are big fans, but I have my doubts. As you’ll hear in the podcast, many big companies (much bigger than Klarna) have tried this, only to retreat to vendor solutions. And I do question the business strategy of putting high-powered engineering talent on mature, enterprise products like HCM and CRM.

Obviously AI is getting smarter and more capable by the minute. As I explain in the podcast, there are better ways to think about this problem, and this conversation opens up the door to a big discussion about the future of enterprise apps, agentic AI, and the role of large-scale incumbent vendors in our corporate IT stacks.

Additional Information

Klarna Cuts 50% of Workforce, Ends Partnerships with Salesforce and Workday Amid Generative AI Overhaul

Klarna Plans to ‘Shut Down SaaS Providers’ and Replace Them With Internally Built AI. The Tech World Is Pretty Skeptical

AI Agents, The New Workforce We’re Not Quite Ready For (Agentic AI)