Swedish fintech firm Klarna will be the exclusive provider of buy now, pay later loans for Walmart, taking a coveted partnership away from rival Affirm, CNBC has learned.

Klarna, which just disclosed its intention to go public in the U.S., will provide loans to Walmart customers in stores and online through the retailer’s majority-owned fintech startup OnePay, according to people with knowledge of the situation who declined to be identified speaking about the partnership.

OnePay, which updated its brand name from One this month, will handle the user experience via its app, while Klarna will make underwriting decisions for loans ranging from three months to 36 months in length, and with annual interest rates from 10% to 36%, said the people.

The new product will be launched in the coming weeks and will be scaled to all Walmart channels by the holiday season, likely leaving it the retailer’s only buy now, pay later option by year-end.

The move heightens the rivalry between Affirm and Klarna, two of the world’s biggest BNPL players, just as Klarna is set to go public. Although both companies claim to offer a better alternative for borrowers than credit cards, Affirm is more U.S.-centric and has been public since 2021, while Klarna’s network is more global.

Shares of Affirm fell 13% in morning trading Monday.

The deal comes at an opportune time for Klarna as it readies one of the year’s most highly anticipated initial public offerings. After a dearth of big tech listings in the U.S. since 2021, the Klarna IPO will be a key test for the industry. The firm’s private market valuation has been a roller coaster: It soared to $46 billion in 2021, then crashed by 85% the next year amid the broader decline of high-flying fintech firms.

CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski has worked to improve Klarna’s prospects, including touting its use of generative artificial intelligence to slash expenses and headcount. The company returned to profitability in 2023, and its valuation is now roughly $15 billion, according to analysts, nearly matching the public market value of Affirm.

The OnePay deal is a “game changer” for Klarna, Siemiatkowski said in a release confirming the pact.

“Millions of people in the U.S. shop at Walmart every day — and now they can shop smarter with OnePay installment loans powered by Klarna,” he said. “We look forward to helping redefine checkout at the world’s largest retailer — both online and in stores.”

As part of the deal, OnePay can take a position in Klarna. In its F-1 filing, Klarna said it entered into a “commercial agreement with a global partner” in which it is giving warrants to purchase more than 15 million shares for an average price of $34 each. OnePay is the partner, people with knowledge of the deal confirmed.

For Affirm, the move is likely to be seen as a blow at a time when tech stocks are particularly vulnerable. Run by CEO Max Levchin, a PayPal co-founder, the company’s stock has surged and fallen since its 2021 IPO. The lender’s shares have dipped 18% this year before Monday.

Affirm executives frequently mention their partnerships with big merchants as a key driver of purchase volumes and customer acquisition. In November, Affirm’s chief revenue officer, Wayne Pommen, referred to Walmart and other tie-ups including those with Amazon, Shopify and Target as its “crown jewel partnerships.”

An Affirm spokesman had this statement: “We win business when merchants want superior performance and maximum value, given our underwriting and capital markets advantages. We will continue our long-term strategy of competing on our products and entering into sustainable partnerships.”

The deal is no less consequential to Walmart’s OnePay, which has surged to a $2.5 billion pre-money valuation just two years after rolling out a suite of products to its customers.

The startup now has more than 3 million active customers and is generating revenue at an annual run rate of more than $200 million.

As part of its push to penetrate areas adjacent to its core business, Walmart executives have touted OnePay’s potential to become a one-stop shop for Americans underserved by traditional banks.

Walmart is the world’s largest retailer and says it has 255 million weekly customers, giving the startup — which is a separate company backed by Walmart and Ribbit Capital — a key advantage in acquiring new customers.

Last year, the Walmart-backed fintech began offering BNPL loans in the aisles and on checkout pages of Walmart, CNBC reported at the time. That led to speculation that it would ultimately displace Affirm, which had been the exclusive provider for BNPL loans for Walmart since 2019.

OnePay’s move to partner with Klarna rather than going it alone shows the company saw an advantage in going with a seasoned, at-scale provider versus using its own solution.

OnePay’s push into consumer lending is expected to accelerate its conversion of Walmart customers into fintech app users. Cash-strapped consumers are increasingly relying on loans to meet their needs, and the installment loan is seen as a wedge to also offer users the banking, savings and payments features that OnePay has already built.

Americans held a record $1.21 trillion in credit card debt in the fourth quarter of last year, about $441 billion higher than balances in 2021, according to Federal Reserve Bank of New York data.

“It’s never been more important to give consumers simple and convenient ways to access fair credit at the point of sale,” said OnePay CEO Omer Ismail. “That’s especially true for the millions of people who turn to Walmart every week for everything.”

Next up is likely a OnePay-branded credit card offered with the help of a new banking partner after Walmart successfully exited its partnership with Capital One.

“We’re looking forward to going down this new path where not only can they provide installment credit … but also revolving credit,” Walmart CFO John David Rainey told investors in June.

— CNBC’s MacKenzie Sigalos and Melissa Repko contributed to this report.

LONDON — Artificial intelligence that can match humans at any task is still some way off — but it’s only a matter of time before it becomes a reality, according to the CEO of Google DeepMind.

Speaking at a briefing in DeepMind’s London offices on Monday, Demis Hassabis said that he thinks artificial general intelligence (AGI) — which is as smart or smarter than humans — will start to emerge in the next five or 10 years.

“I think today’s systems, they’re very passive, but there’s still a lot of things they can’t do. But I think over the next five to 10 years, a lot of those capabilities will start coming to the fore and we’ll start moving towards what we call artificial general intelligence,” Hassabis said.

Hassabis defined AGI as “a system that’s able to exhibit all the complicated capabilities that humans can.”

“We’re not quite there yet. These systems are very impressive at certain things. But there are other things they can’t do yet, and we’ve still got quite a lot of research work to go before that,” Hassabis said.

Hassabis isn’t alone in suggesting that it’ll take a while for AGI to appear. Last year, the CEO of Chinese tech giant Baidu Robin Li said he sees AGI is “more than 10 years away,” pushing back on excitable predictions from some of his peers about this breakthrough taking place in a much shorter timeframe.

Hassabis’ forecast pushes the timeline to reach AGI some way back compared to what his industry peers have been sketching out.

Dario Amodei, CEO of AI startup Anthropic, told CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January that he sees a form of AI that’s “better than almost all humans at almost all tasks” emerging in the “next two or three years.”

Other tech leaders see AGI arriving even sooner. Cisco’s Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel thinks there’s a chance we could see an example of AGI emerge as soon as this year. “There’s three major phases” to AI, Patel told CNBC in an interview at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona earlier this month.

“There’s the basic AI that we’re all experience right now. Then there is artificial general intelligence, where the cognitive capabilities meet those of humans. Then there’s what they call superintelligence,” Patel said.

“I think you will see meaningful evidence of AGI being in play in 2025. We’re not talking about years away,” he added. “I think superintelligence is, at best, a few years out.”

Artificial super intelligence, or ASI, is expected to arrive after AGI and surpass human intelligence. However, “no one really knows” when such a breakthrough will happen, Hassabis said Monday.

Last year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk predicted that AGI would likely be available by 2026, while OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said such a system could be developed in the “reasonably close-ish future.”

Hassabis said that the main challenge with achieving artificial general intelligence is getting today’s AI systems to a point of understanding context from the real world.

While it’s been possible to develop systems that can break down problems and complete tasks autonomously in the realm of games — such as the complex strategy board game Go — bringing such a technology into the real world is proving harder.

“The question is, how fast can we generalize the planning ideas and agentic kind of behaviors, planning and reasoning, and then generalize that over to working in the real world, on top of things like world models — models that are able to understand the world around us,” Hassabis said.”

“And I think we’ve made good progress with the world models over the last couple of years,” he added. “So now the question is, what’s the best way to combine that with these planning algorithms?”

Hassabis and Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google’s cloud computing division, said that so-called “multi-agent” AI systems are a technological advancement that’s gaining a lot of traction behind the scenes.

Hassabis said lots of work is being done to get to this stage. One example he referred to is DeepMind’s work getting AI agents to figure out how to play the popular strategy game “Starcraft.”

“We’ve done a lot of work on that with things like Starcraft game in the past, where you have a society of agents, or a league of agents, and they could be competing, they could be cooperating,” DeepMind’s chief said.

“When you think about agent to agent communication, that’s what we’re also doing to allow an agent to express itself … What are your skills? What kind of tools do you use?” Kurian said.

“Those are all elements that you need to be able to ask an agent a question, and then once you have that interface, then other agents can communicate with it,” he added.

The Federal Trade Commission is going after an e-commerce company that allegedly took millions of dollars from consumers as part of a “passive income” scheme, which spun up Amazon storefronts on their behalf and promised “insane returns” that were higher than the stock market.

The FTC said Tuesday it filed a lawsuit against the company, called Click Profit; its co-founders Craig Emslie and Patrick McGeoghean; and two other business associates. It also asked a judge to bar the parties from doing business temporarily.

The case is the latest example of the FTC cracking down on e-commerce “automation” services. These companies launch and manage online storefronts on behalf of clients, who pay money for the services and the promise of earning tens of thousands of dollars in “passive income.” The companies often make extravagant claims about potential earnings and the use of artificial intelligence technology to guarantee profits. Despite their assurances, consumers frequently end up losing money.

Click Profit, which also operated under the names FBALaunch, Automation Industries and PortfolioLaunch, promised investors they would “build you a massively profitable e-commerce store from the ground up” by selling products on Amazon, Walmart and TikTok, according to the FTC.

The company charged consumers between $45,000 to $75,000 for the initial investment, plus an additional $10,000 or more to pay for inventory, the FTC alleged in its complaint, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. Click Profit took up to 35% of any profits from their customers’ stores, the complaint states.

The company claimed the business opportunity was “safe, secure and proven to generate wealth,” according to marketing materials referenced in the FTC’s complaint. They posted screenshots of purportedly successful Amazon storefronts, including one they claimed generated product sales of over $540,000 in one month.

Emslie often appeared in TikTok videos and other online ads to pitch prospective consumers. In one ad, he said that “the stock market, real estate or precious metals will never be able to offer you” the level of security offered through investing in Click Profit, according to the FTC’s complaint. Other TikTok videos show him appearing alongside an image of Warren Buffett while “fanning himself” with wads of cash, per the complaint.

Click Profit talked up its expertise by claiming it had product sourcing partnerships with legitimate brands, including Nike, Disney, Dell, Colgate and Marvel, the complaint alleges. It also claimed to have spent $5 million to build a “super computer” and other AI technologies to locate the “most profitable products,” claiming the super computer had generated “around $100 million in sales,” per the complaint.

The company even implied that investors’ online store could be bought out by venture capital firms connected with Click Profit “at a 3-6x multiple,” the FTC alleged.

“In reality, the highly touted AI technology and brand partnerships do not exist, and the promised earnings never materialize,” the FTC said in its complaint.

Amazon suspended or terminated about 95% of Click Profit’s stores after they violated Amazon’s seller policies, the FTC alleged. After accounting for Amazon’s fees, more than one-fifth of Click Profit’s stores on the platform earned no money at all, while another third earned less than $2,500 in gross lifetime sales, the FTC stated.

As a result, most consumers were unable to recoup their investments and “some are saddled with burdensome credit card debt and unsold products,” according to the FTC, which also said that Click Profit often refused to refund victims their investments and threatened them with legal action if they posted publicly about their experience.

One unnamed consumer mentioned in the lawsuit invested “his life’s savings” in Click Profit and was later terminated as a client “with nothing to show for his payments,” the complaint states. He posted a negative review online and was allegedly approached by Emslie’s attorney, who threatened to sue the consumer and “take everything he and his wife owned,” per the complaint.

The consumer took the reviews down, then asked Emslie whether he could receive a partial refund, according to the FTC.

“The attorney told the consumer that Emslie had responded, ‘F*** off,’” the FTC alleged.

Representatives for Emslie and Click Profit didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The FTC alleges Click Profit violated the FTC Act, the Consumer Review Fairness Act and the Business Opportunity Rule. It seeks to permanently prohibit Click Profit from doing business, as well as monetary relief for the victims.

PepsiCo said Monday that it is buying prebiotic soda brand Poppi for nearly $2 billion.

While soda consumption has broadly fallen over the last two decades in the U.S., prebiotic sodas, fueled by industry newcomers Poppi and Olipop, have won over health-conscious consumers over the last five years. The category’s growth makes it attractive for Pepsi and its rival, Coca-Cola, which recently launched its own prebiotic soda brand, Simply Pop.

Pepsi said it plans to acquire the upstart Poppi for $1.95 billion. The deal includes $300 million of anticipated cash tax benefits, making the net purchase price $1.65 billion.

Pepsi will also have to make additional payments if Poppi achieves certain performance milestones within a set time frame after the acquisition closes.

Pepsi did not say when the deal is expected to close, pending regulatory approval.

Poppi’s founders Allison and Stephen Ellsworth launched the brand back in 2018, the same year that Olipop was founded. Poppi’s formula includes apple cider vinegar, prebiotics and just five grams of sugar.

The company recently made its second straight Super Bowl appearance with an ad during the big game, demonstrating both its deep pockets and a desire to reach an even wider audience.

But as Poppi’s sales have grown, it has also attracted backlash for its health claims. The company is currently in talks to settle a lawsuit that argued Poppi’s drinks are not as healthy as the company claims, according to court filings.

For its part, rival Olipop was valued at $1.85 billion during its latest funding round, which was announced in February. In 2023, Olipop founder and CEO Ben Goodwin told CNBC that soda giants PepsiCo and Coca-Cola had already come knocking about a potential sale.

Over a double cheeseburger and fries, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told Fox News host Sean Hannity earlier this month of his plans to improve the country’s health by incentivizing companies to step away from processed foods.

From across the red high-top table of a Florida Steak ’n Shake, the health and human services secretary went on to praise the Indianapolis-based fast-food chain as a shining example of change since it began cooking its shoestring fries in beef tallow instead of one of the many seed oils that have become targets of Kennedy’s health agenda.

“Steak ’n Shake has been great,” Kennedy said. “We’re very grateful to them for RFK’ing the french fries.”

The nationally televised praise marked the latest conservative endorsement for Steak ’n Shake, a 91-year-old company with 450 locations nationwide that has become one of the most high-profile businesses to support Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda — a move that has been boosted by Republican politicians and MAGA influencers including Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, Charlie Kirk, Laura Loomer, Kari Lake, Tony Shaffer and Benny Johnson.

“I just had a cheeseburger and fries cooked in beef tallow today for lunch! Delicious!!” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., wrote on X.

At a time when many companies might be looking to avoid politics, Steak ’n Shake is opting to publicly align itself with Kennedy and other high-profile conservatives. On social media, the brand has transformed its feed from the usual steam of burgers and shakes into a near nonstop stream of Trump-adjacent iconography: Elon Musk, Teslas, Fox News clips and even a red hat emblazoned with the words “Make Frying Oil Tallow Again,” a version of which is available for purchase on Kennedy’s MAHA merchandise website.

The company has not publicly embraced Trump or any of his policies but has been full-throated in its embrace of Kennedy.

“We support MAHA,” Steak ’n Shake Chief Operations Officer Dan Edwards told NBC News last week. “Restaurant chains like ours would like to meet customer demand for better quality.”

Edwards said support for the company is “across the political spectrum” and that “there is nothing political about great-tasting fries.” He did not answer specifically whether the company had any fears about alienating customers who do not support Kennedy’s MAHA agenda or Trump.

“We are grateful to Secretary Kennedy for his leadership and for raising awareness about beef tallow,” he added.

It’s a bold move for a company that has weathered a rocky financial situation that forced the reported closure of 200 locations since 2018. While there is a wide array of relatively new and small brands that have sought to capitalize on the strength and passion of the MAGA movement, few, if any, established companies have shifted their public identity so quickly.

Politics aside, Steak ’n Shake’s choice to focus on seed oils comes with its own controversy.

The MAHA agenda, helmed by Kennedy, features several health-focused concerns of questionable veracity, including skepticism of the food and drug industry, fluoride in water and vaccines. Seed oils have also long been a target of unfounded theories about negative health impacts, some of which Kenney has touted, calling them “one of the most unhealthy ingredients we have in foods.”

Health experts have sought to counter those claims, noting that replacing seed oils with saturated fats offers little to no dietary benefit and can end up doing harm.

Maya Vadiveloo, an associate professor at the University of Rhode Island who specializes in nutrition, said it is “well established that saturated fats are linked to an increased risk of heart disease, while vegetable oils, including oils from seeds, protect heart health.”

Edwards said that while the burger brand supports Kennedy’s MAHA movement, Steak ’n Shake CEO Sardar Biglari, who acquired the company in 2008, has been trying to move to beef tallow for some time.

“My boss asked, ‘Why should Europeans have better fries than Americans?’” Edwards said. “My boss said one day that we need to RFK the fries. So, a verb was invented.”

As for the company’s sudden shift on social media, Edwards said the posts “sometimes are aspirational,” noting that “sometimes we refer to space or Mars.”

“NASA and Musk/SpaceX are the only two viable players in the area. We have referred to both,” Edwards said. “Regardless of politics, we admire Musk’s accomplishments.”

In February, Tesla wrote on X that it had signed a deal to build charging stations at several Steak ’n Shake locations after the fast food joint responded to Musk’s compliment on its fries. Edwards said discussions with Tesla and Steak ’n Shake started more than 18 months ago.

Steak ’n Shake’s shift hasn’t been entirely smooth. The Bulwark reported that the chain’s move inspired some in the MAHA world to look deeper at the company’s food practices, finding that its fries were precooked in seed oils. The company later acknowledged on its website that some of its foods arrived at locations prefried, and that the initial frying had been in seed oils.

However, Edwards said, because Kennedy has advocated for the removal of seed oils “completely,” the company is making a commitment to do so. And while he did not provide details as to how Hannity’s interview with Kennedy came about, he did say that when the Fox News host “calls, we answer.”

“Sean Hannity is the best. He knows the restaurant business,” he said. “We are honored Sean Hannity and Secretary Kennedy visited Steak ’n Shake.”

Flagging global sales and Elon Musk’s increasingly outspoken political activities are combining to rock the value of Tesla.

Shares in the once-trillion-dollar company saw their worst day in five years this week. Year to date, Tesla’s stock has plunged 41% — though it is still up by about 36% over the past 12 months.

On Monday, the stock was down another 5%.

For Musk, Tesla’s shares remain his primary source of paper wealth, though he has also turned his stake in SpaceX into a personal lending tool. But it was proceeds from selling Tesla shares that helped Musk complete his acquisition of Twitter, now known as X.

Musk’s wealth also allowed him to help vault Donald Trump into a second presidential term. Even as Musk’s net worth has diminished as a result of Tesla’s recent share-price declines, data suggests he is in no danger of losing his title as the world’s wealthiest person.

Musk has said on X that he is not concerned about Tesla’s recent drop in value. Still, evidence suggests the company is entering a period of transition.

A spokesperson for Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.

Musk’s wealth has propelled him to a global presence that lacks precedent — and has polarized world opinion about the tech entrepreneur in the process. Any weakening of his financial position, therefore, could undercut his influence in the political and tech spaces where he now commands outsize attention.According to Bank of America, Tesla’s European sales plummeted by about 50% in January compared with the same month a year prior.

Some say this is attributable to a growing distaste for Musk, who has begun dabbling in the continent’s politics in the wake of his successful support of Trump’s candidacy last year.

Others note Tesla’s European market is facing increased competition from the Chinese electric-vehicle maker BYD, which has telegraphed ambitious plans for expansion on the continent.  

A more decisive blow to Tesla’s near-term fortunes may be emanating from China itself. There, Tesla’s shipments plunged 49% in February from a year earlier, to just 30,688 vehicles, according to official data cited by Bloomberg News. That’s the lowest monthly figure registered since July 2022 — amid the throes of Covid-19 — when it shipped just 28,217 EVs, Bloomberg said.