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Why Klarna’s statements can sound contradictory
The apparent conflict comes from comparing different kinds of statements made at different times: a CEO’s broad comments about AI and headcount, a company spokesperson’s qualification about hiring, and later company figures on AI use. In September 2025, CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said Klarna may have overemphasized cost-cutting and was trying to course-correct toward better services and products. That did not amount to a claim that the company would stop using AI.
What Klarna said about hiring
2023: AI was described as an organization-wide tool
In an interview with the Associated Press, Siemiatkowski said Klarna had used OpenAI across the organization and used DeepL for translation across more than 20 languages. That was his description of the company’s use of those tools, not an independent evaluation of their performance. The AP interview also connected AI to a hiring freeze announced in November 2023.
2024: the hiring claim came with a qualification
In a December 2024 Bloomberg TV interview, Siemiatkowski said, “We stopped hiring about a year ago. We were 4,500, now we’re 3,500.” He also said, “I am of the opinion that AI can already do all of the jobs that we as humans do.” The first statement was a brief description of hiring and headcount; the second was his opinion about AI’s potential, not evidence that Klarna had automated every job.
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Klarna global press lead John Craske told TechCrunch the CEO had been “simplifying for brevity in a broadcast interview.” Craske said the company was not actively recruiting to expand its workforce but was backfilling some essential positions, predominantly in engineering. He added that Klarna had hired between 1,000 and 1,500 people a year from 2019 to 2022. TechCrunch also noted that the company had open positions. In this context, “hiring freeze” is best understood as restrained expansion—not a ban on every hire. TechCrunch’s account of the interview and clarification reports the CEO’s comparison of 4,500 and 3,500 employees; it is not a standalone audited workforce series.
September 2025: the CEO said the company was course-correcting
Reuters reported that Siemiatkowski said Klarna may have “over indexed a little bit” on using AI to cut costs. He said the company had been trying to course-correct over the previous six months, with a focus on improving services and products for customers and merchants. Reuters also reported that Klarna was hiring again. Reuters’ September 2025 report describes a later point in the company’s approach, not a definitive role-by-role hiring plan.
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What Klarna reports about AI in customer service
Klarna’s 2025 annual report says its AI assistant, developed with OpenAI and launched in 2024, handled 80% of customer-service chats during the year ended December 31, 2025, with “no drop in consumer satisfaction levels.” These are company-reported figures. The share of chats handled by an assistant is not the share of jobs eliminated: it does not establish how staffing changed, how work was redistributed, or how many employees were affected. Klarna’s 2025 annual report also describes AI copilots used to create and review code, reduced use of some third-party suppliers, and other internal efficiencies.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the productivity figures do—and do not—show
Klarna’s 2025 annual report puts average annual revenue per employee at approximately $344,000 in 2022 and approximately $1,240,000 in 2025. These are company-published figures for revenue divided by employee count. They indicate a large increase in that measure, but by themselves they do not show how much AI caused it, which specific tasks changed, or how many jobs were lost because of automation.
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What remains unclear
- The available statements do not establish a current, role-by-role hiring plan or forecast which occupations Klarna expects AI to replace.
- Klarna’s chat-handling and revenue-per-employee figures are company-reported; they do not independently establish a number of jobs eliminated by AI.
- The CEO’s claim that AI could do all human jobs was an opinion about AI’s capabilities, not a report that Klarna had automated every role.
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