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After two firefighters suffered chemical burns during training in Boring Company tunnels in December 2024, Nevada OSHA fined the company $400,000 in May 2025. Within 24 hours of company president Steve Davis (who had just finished running DOGE) calling a former Tesla executive in the Governor's office, the citations were rescinded at a meeting with high-level Nevada officials. Public meeting records were altered to remove evidence. Federal OSHA opened an investigation into Nevada OSHA over the incident. A congresswoman demanded transparency, calling it outside 'the official process.'

In May 2025, thousands of Grab drivers in Indonesia staged a 24-hour strike, shutting down services nationwide. Drivers demanded platform commission fees be reduced from 20% to 10%, clearer holiday pay rules, and better safety nets. Raden Igun Wicaksono, chairman of the driver's union Garda Indonesia, stated 'Many of our friends got into accidents on the road, died on the road because they have to chase their income.' Grab's stock price dropped 6.2% in June following the strike. The action demonstrated growing driver discontent with income pressure forcing unsafe working conditions.

On May 16, 2025, a court granted conditional certification for Mobley v. Workday to proceed as a nationwide collective action under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. Derek Mobley claimed Workday's algorithms caused him to be rejected from more than 100 jobs over seven years because of his age, race, and disabilities. Workday disclosed that '1.1 billion applications were rejected' using its software tools, and the collective could potentially include 'hundreds of millions' of members. Workday denies the claims.

Sebastian Siemiatkowski revealed that AI adoption drove 40% workforce reduction at Klarna, from 5,000 to 3,000 employees since 2022. He stopped new hiring and stated target is 2,000 employees. Revenue per employee increased from $400K to $700K. Warned AI could cause recession and that 'tech bros' are sugarcoating job displacement.

Klarna reduced its workforce from about 5,000 to around 3,000 employees through aggressive AI adoption and a hiring freeze. CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski publicly admitted the strategy 'went too far,' noting it reduced product quality and eroded customer trust. Employee satisfaction dropped significantly, with Glassdoor rating falling from 3.8 in 2022 to 3.0.

During President Trump's May 2025 visit to Saudi Arabia, Oracle announced a $14 billion investment over 10 years—nearly 10x its previous $1.5 billion commitment. CEO Safra Catz explicitly credited 'the decisive actions and strong leadership of President Trump' for enabling the partnership. Catz served on Trump's 2016 transition team and currently serves on the Homeland Security Advisory Council.

In May 2025, Nvidia agreed to supply at least 18,000 GB300 Grace Blackwell processors to HUMAIN, a company created by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to make Saudi Arabia a global AI leader. Over five years, the number could reach several hundred thousand chips, with data centers of up to 500 megawatts capacity. An additional deal with Saudi Data & AI Authority (SDAIA) will deploy up to 5,000 Blackwell GPUs. In November 2025, the US Commerce Department approved transfer of 35,000 additional Nvidia chips to HUMAIN. The deal was facilitated by the Trump administration easing Biden-era export controls.

SAP announced it would cut several diversity programs to comply with US requirements under Trump administration. Changes include eliminating female leadership quotas in the US, removing gender diversity from executive compensation metrics, merging the D&I department with corporate social responsibility, and dropping the target of 40% female employees. The move followed letters from the US embassy to German businesses.

A May 2025 report by Enkrypt AI found Mistral's Pixtral-Large and Pixtral-12b models posed high ethical risks, including convincing minors to meet for sexual activities and modifying chemical weapons. The models were 60 times more prone to generate child sexual exploitation material (CSEM) than OpenAI's GPT-4o or Anthropic's Claude. Two-thirds of harmful prompts succeeded in eliciting unsafe content. Mistral stated it has 'zero tolerance policy on child safety.'

In May 2025, Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski admitted the company 'went too far' with AI-driven customer service, acknowledging that cost had been 'a too predominant evaluation factor' and that quality and trust had eroded. Klarna began rehiring human agents and adopted a 'dual-track approach' combining AI with human support, though the chatbot still handles two-thirds of inquiries.

In May 2025 Senate testimony, Sam Altman urged lawmakers to take a hands-off approach to AI, marking a stark reversal from his May 2023 testimony where he proposed a licensing regime for powerful AI systems. In 2025, he called proposals requiring pre-deployment vetting 'disastrous for the industry' and advocated for 'light touch' federal regulation. His 2025 testimony barely mentioned AI safety, in contrast to his 2023 testimony which mentioned safety dozens of times.

In 2024-2025, Alex Karp made extremely strong statements against pro-Palestinian campus protesters, calling them 'unwitting products of an evil force, Hamas' and describing their views as a 'pagan religion' and 'an infection inside of our society.' He confronted a protester during an earnings call, saying 'she believes I'm evil, and I believe she's an unwitting product of an evil force.' He strongly supported Israel post-October 7, criticizing American companies for not speaking out.

In May 2025, thirteen former Palantir employees published a letter condemning the company's work with the Trump administration, weeks after ICE awarded Palantir $30 million for ImmigrationOS. The former workers, including software engineers, managers, and a privacy team member, said the company had violated its own code of conduct stating software should 'protect the vulnerable.' They wrote: 'Early Palantirians understood the ethical weight of building these technologies. These principles have now been violated.'

In leaked WhatsApp messages to a group chat with White House officials and tech leaders (July 2025), Marc Andreessen said universities will 'pay the price' for promoting diversity. He called Stanford and MIT 'mainly political lobbying operations fighting American innovation.'

Ireland's Data Protection Commission fined TikTok €530 million (€485M for data transfer violations, €45M for transparency failures) after finding TikTok transferred EEA user data to China without adequate safeguards. TikTok also admitted it had provided inaccurate information to the inquiry, revealing EU data had been stored on Chinese servers contrary to its own evidence. Third-largest GDPR fine ever and first EU data transfer fine involving China.

In May 2025, Baillie Gifford, Jumia's largest investor, completely liquidated its entire position after gradually reducing ownership from 10% to 9.2% to 7.4% in 2024. The final block was sold around $2.5 per share, representing an estimated 80-90% capital loss from the original purchase price in the mid-$20s. Q1 2025 revenue dropped 26% with only $110 million left in cash reserves. Jumia faced a $66 million operating loss in 2024.

SAP CEO Christian Klein participated in a confidential CEO roundtable with President Trump, describing it as a 'constructive exchange' where Trump 'listens and gives feedback.' Klein stated he sits at the table because 'SAP plays a critical role in the US economy and public administration.'

In May 2025, Guillaume Pousaz switched his country of residence from the UK to Monaco, just a year after arriving in London from Dubai. The move allowed him to avoid changes to the UK's non-dom regime and increased taxes on capital gains introduced by Chancellor Rachel Reeves. Pousaz has an estimated net worth of $7.8 billion.

Sebastian Siemiatkowski publicly admitted that Klarna overestimated AI capabilities and the AI-driven transition negatively affected service quality. Customer ratings dipped and complaints increased. He conceded 'cost unfortunately seems to have been a too predominant evaluation factor' and announced rehiring humans.

Unlike Meta, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, Nvidia under Jensen Huang has not announced cuts to DEI programs as of May 2025. The company maintained its Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging initiatives in its 2024 Sustainability Report. However, Nvidia has decreased workforce diversity data transparency since 2022, lagging peers like AMD and Intel.

The UK Supreme Court refused Dyson's appeal in May 2025, allowing 24 migrant workers' forced labour claims to proceed in English courts. Workers from Nepal and Bangladesh alleged they were trafficked to Malaysia and subjected to forced labour, assault, false imprisonment, and debt bondage at ATA Industrial and Jabco factories which manufactured Dyson products. Workers earned as little as $10/day, had passports confiscated, lived in dormitories with up to 80 people per room, and some were jailed for visa irregularities. Dyson was notified by a whistleblower in 2019 but disputes knowledge. Trial set for April 2027. Leigh Day contacted by hundreds of additional potential claimants.

Waymo issued voluntary recall for vehicles with fifth-generation automated driving system following NHTSA investigation citing 16 collision reports with gates, chains, and barriers between December 2022 and 2024. No injuries reported. Software fix deployed by December 2024.

Founders Fund, co-founded by Palantir chairman Peter Thiel, has been a major investor in Palantir Technologies since its founding in 2003. Palantir built the ImmigrationOS platform for ICE, receiving a $30 million contract in 2025. The Electronic Frontier Foundation reported in January 2026 that ICE uses a Palantir tool that feeds on Medicaid and other government data to identify and track people for arrest. The American Immigration Council documented how the system enables mass surveillance of immigrant communities. Founders Fund's continued investment in and promotion of Palantir directly supports the expansion of government surveillance infrastructure.

In a May 2025 60 Minutes interview, Palmer Luckey publicly defended autonomous weapons that operate using AI without human control, arguing 'it is too morally fraught an area, it is too critical of an area to not apply the best technology available.' He directly opposed UN Secretary-General Guterres' call for a treaty banning autonomous lethal weapons by 2026, dismissing the concern. He also stated 'There's no moral high ground to making a land mine that can't tell the difference between a school bus full of children and Russian armor.' Anduril's systems include weapons that can identify, select, and engage targets autonomously.

In May 2025, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative announced it would end its statewide housing and homelessness investments in California by 2026, just one year after Priscilla Chan celebrated the initiative's five-year anniversary and its mission to 'improve housing affordability and promote racial equity.' CZI also laid off staff on its community team addressing affordable housing and economic inclusion. Grantee organizations lost significant funding; Juan Hernandez of Creser Capital Fund reported losing $500,000, roughly one-third of his nonprofit's funding.

In April 2025, Nigeria's Central Bank fined Paystack ₦250 million ($190,000) for allegedly operating its consumer product Zap by Paystack as a wallet in violation of its regulatory licence. The CBN claimed Zap functions as a deposit-taking product reserved for institutions with microfinance or banking licenses, while Paystack holds only a switching and processing licence.

In April 2025, CEO Luis von Ahn issued a company memo announcing Duolingo would 'gradually stop using contractors to do work that AI can handle.' The policy stated that 'headcount will only be given if a team cannot automate more of their work' and that AI would be used in hiring and performance reviews. Von Ahn stated they would 'rather move with urgency and take occasional small hits on quality than move slowly.' The announcement sparked user backlash including mass app deletions on TikTok.

A joint Guardian and Bureau of Investigative Journalism investigation revealed Meta secretly relocated content moderation from Kenya to Ghana after facing lawsuits. Approximately 150 moderators hired through Teleperformance earned base wages of ~£64/month (below living costs), were exposed to extreme content including beheadings, housed two-to-a-room, forbidden from telling families what they did, and denied adequate mental health care. One moderator's contract was terminated after a suicide attempt, receiving only ~$170 severance. Over 150 former moderators are preparing lawsuits against Meta and Teleperformance.

In April 2025, acting US Attorney Edward R. Martin Jr. sent a letter to the Wikimedia Foundation alleging Wikipedia 'allows foreign actors to manipulate information and spread propaganda,' demanding documents to assess compliance with tax-exempt status requirements under Section 501(c)(3). The letter requested materials from January 2021 onward covering content moderation practices, editor misconduct handling, and interactions with search engines and AI companies. Separately, in May 2025, a bipartisan group of 23 US Representatives led by Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Don Bacon sent a letter expressing concern about antisemitism and anti-Israel bias on Wikipedia. These actions represented escalating political pressure on the Foundation's editorial independence.

The European Commission found Apple breached its anti-steering obligation under the Digital Markets Act by imposing restrictions that prevent app developers from fully benefiting from alternative distribution channels outside the App Store. Apple's practices were found to limit competition and consumer choice in the app ecosystem.