Klarna Stopped Hiring Because AI ‘Can Already Do All the Jobs,’ CEO Says

• Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski spoke about AI and the workforce.
• Siemiatkowski said AI “can already do all of the jobs” humans do.
• He said Klarna stopped hiring a year ago despite the company advertising jobs online.

Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski is all in on artificial intelligence at the fintech company.

In an interview with Bloomberg TV, Siemiatkowski said he was “of the opinion that AI can already do all of the jobs that we as humans do.”

“It’s just a question of how we apply it and use it,” he said.

Klarna is a payment service that offers consumers “buy now, pay later” options. According to its website, the company is connected with more than 575,000 retailers.

The increased attention toward AI has raised concerns about how it will affect careers and the workplace. A 2023 report by McKinsey & Company estimated that 12 million American workers would have to change occupations by 2030 as AI technology develops.

During the interview, Siemiatkowski said Klarna stopped hiring last year.

“I think what we’ve done internally hasn’t been reported as widely. We stopped hiring about a year ago, so we were 4,500, and now we’re 3,500,” Siemiatkowski said. “We have a natural attrition like every tech company. People stay about five years, so 20% leave every year. By not hiring, we’re simply shrinking, right?”

Siemiatkowski said his company had told employees that “what’s going to happen is the total salary cost of Klarna is going to shrink, but part of the gain of that is going to be seen in your paycheck.”

Though Klarna’s website is advertising open positions at the time of writing, a spokesperson told Business Insider the company wasn’t “actively recruiting” to expand its workforce. Rather, the spokesperson said, Klarna is backfilling “some essential roles,” primarily in engineering.