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Klarna’s workforce has halved in the last four years, but its CEO and cofounder says it isn’t done shrinking yet.
In an interview with Harry Stebbings on the “20 VC” podcast on Monday, CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski talked through the impact of AI and how he expects Klarna’s workforce to drop below 2,000 employees by 2030.
He said there are about 3,000 employees at the company right now, down from 7,000 in 2022. This reduction is due to layoffs and “natural attrition” — where employees leave the company, and their roles are not replaced, he said.
“Occasionally, we hire somebody here and there,” he said, but if you “go to LinkedIn and look at the insights, you’re going to see how the company is shrinking.”
Siemiatkowski said he has seen the speed at which AI is improving and believes these technologies can be integrated into the company without expanding the head count.
Klarna declined to comment further when contacted by Business Insider.
Siemiatkowski’s comments come as the debate around the extent to which AI will replace jobs intensifies.
While Tesla and xAI CEO Elon Musk has said AI will create abundance for all, other tech CEOs have a more gloomy outlook.
Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei has warned about the impact AI could have on society, writing that it presents “a serious civilizational challenge” in his January essay on the future of technology. Amodei has also said that he believes AI could cut 50% of all white-collar entry-level jobs.
“I’m more in Dario’s camp,” Siemiatkowski said on Monday. “I want to be honest about the fact that I do think there’s going to be a very big shift.”
“I’m an optimist at heart, but I also want to be a realist around what’s going to happen in the shorter term, and it’s going to be a lot of turmoil in this,” he said of AI’s impact on jobs.
Some major companies, such as IBM, HP, and Salesforce, have already signaled they are cutting jobs because of AI.
Siemiatkowski said that jobs at Klarna involving “human connection,” such as relationships with retailers, will not be replaced by AI.
“It’s going to be vital to offer a human connection there. So those jobs will remain, but for the rest it’s going to be definitely smaller,” he said.
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