“My wife taught me something,” Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski told the crowd at London SXSW. He was addressing the headlines about the company looking to hire human workers after previously saying Klarna used artificial intelligence to do work that would equate to 700 workers. “Two things can be true at the same time,” he said.
Siemiatkowski said it’s true that the company looked to stop hiring human workers a few years ago and rolled out AI agents that have helped reduce the cost of customer support and increase the company’s revenue per employee. The company had 5,500 workers two years ago, and that number now stands at around 3,000, he said, adding that as the company’s salary costs have gone down, Klarna now seeks to reinvest a majority of that money into employee cash and equity compensation.
But, he insisted, this doesn’t mean there isn’t an opportunity for humans to work at his company. “We think offering human customer service is always going to be a VIP thing,” he said, comparing it to how people pay more for clothing stitched by hand rather than machines. “So we think that two things can be done at the same time. We can use AI to automatically take away boring jobs, things that are manual work, but we are also going to promise our customers to have a human connection.”
He spoke about how the company plans to balance employees and AI workers. Siemiatkowski said that right now, engineering positions at the company haven’t shrunk as much as those in other departments, but he notes that this could shift.
“What I’m seeing internally is a new rise of businesspeople who are coding themselves,” he said, adding that the challenge many engineers have these days is that they are not business savvy. “I think that category of people will become even more valuable going forward,” Siemiatkowski continued, especially as they can use AI and put their business understanding to good use.
He himself is using ChatGPT to help him learn to code and help him understand more of the data side of Klarna. He said doing this has helped Klarna become a better company. Before, he thought he would never catch up in learning what was needed to take a more present role in database conversations at the company.
“I’ll take a Slack thread, I’ll throw it in ChatGPT and say, ‘This makes sense, right?’” he said, adding that he uses ChatGPT like a private tutor.
But he is also aware that AI isn’t just about employees. He spoke of the increase in scams and how it impacts high-trust societies like his native Sweden. The Financial Times recently reported on the rise of fintech scams, pointing out, for example, how susceptible residents in Singapore can be to them because they are more naturally trusting of various institutions.
“And AI is obviously accelerating this,” Siemiatkowski said.
Siemiatkowski also once again addressed why the company stopped using Salesforce and Workday, saying it was because Klarna wanted to consolidate its data in a way that would be easier to feed into AI. He said, for example, if Klarna wanted to gather information about one of its clients, it would have to go through the Google Suite, Slack, Workday, Salesforce, and so forth.
“We realize that the only way forward is going to be to consolidate [data],” he said, adding that the company stopped using around 1,200 small software services.
About it’s pending IPO? He indicated that Klarna could soon move ahead with it but was otherwise noncommittal. “I can say that I’m happy there’s less turbulence in the market,” he said with a smile.
And if he had a magic wand and could change one thing? He would make the U.K. part of the EU again. The crowd then erupted into applause.
