- Klarna shrunk its workforce by 40% over the last two years, CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski told CNBC
- The reduced headcount was largely due to its investment in AI and natural attrition
- Now, which partnered with OpenAI in 2023, seems to be backpedeling a bit, announcing a hiring drive for human customer service agents
Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said last week that the company has shrunk its workforce by 40% thanks to its investments in AI and natural attrition.
"The truth is, the company has shrunk from about 5,000 to now almost 3,000 employees," Siemiatkowski told CNBC last week. "If you go to LinkedIn and look at the jobs, you'll see how we're shrinking."
The Swedish fintech company has been an outspoken proponent of AI. In 2023, it announced a partnership with OpenAI, aimed at "level[ing] up the shopping experience." In February 2024, one month after introducing its OpenAI-powered AI assistant, Kalrna said it was doing the work of 700 full-time customer service agents and was on track to drive profits up $40 million that year.
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About three months later, the company reported that 87% of its employees were using generative AI in their work each day. "We push everyone to test, test, test and explore," Seimiatkowski said at the time. "We're aimed at achieving a new level of employee empowerment, enhancing both our team's performance and the customer experience."
According to Klarna's IPO prospectus, which was filed in March, its full-time employee count fell from 5,527 at the end of 2022 to 3,422 at the close of 2024. The company attributed the shrinkage to its efforts to increase its use of AI and natural attrition.
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"We have simply communicated to our employees that what we're going to do is we're gonna shrink, so we're going to stop hiring," Siemiatkowski told CNBC on May 14. "Natural attrition in a company like ours is 15-20% per year, so we shrink naturally 15-20% by people just leaving."
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However, Siemiatkowski might be pulling back on his AI investments a bit. In an interview with Bloomberg on May 8, he said that his pursuit of cost-cutting in customer service, which was largely fueled by investments and advancements in AI, had gone too far, and the company had begun working to hire a number of remote customer service agents.
"From a brand perspective, a company perspective," Siemiatkowski told Bloomberg, "I just think it's so critical that you are clear to your customer that there will be always a human if you want."
The hiring program is still in its early stages, but Siemiatkowski says he envisions it eventually replacing the few thousand customer service positions the agency currently outsources.
Why the change of heart? "Cost unfortunately seems to have been a too predominant evaluation factor when organizing this, what you end up having is lower quality," Siemiatkowski told Bloomberg. "Really investing in the quality of the human support is the way of the future for us."
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