Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO of Swedish fintech company Klarna, says the organization will employ drastically fewer people. And he says he shares his views on the workforce with another CEO: Anthropic’s Dario Amodei.
Siemiatkowski made the comments about the 20 VC podcast with Harry Stebbings earlier this week, where the CEO did not deny that the company is steadily shrinking.
The CEO said the company currently has about 3,000 employees. That’s down from 7,000 just four years ago. In another four cases, he says, there will likely be fewer than 2,000 – a reduction of a third.
Siemiatkowsk said that employees who leave the company will not be replaced, explaining that the integration of AI allows for fewer employees.
The downsizing of Klarna comes at a time when ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ (BNPL) services are booming. About 30% of Americans say they have used them, according to one Bank interest report 2025. And in 2025, according to a PartnerCentric survey35% said they planned to use the services more. Its popularity is driven by the fact that Klarna, like other BNPL options, allows shoppers to split purchases into interest-free installments, pay within 30 days or even opt for longer-term financing options. Likewise, thousands of retailers now accept BNPL.
Yet the success of such companies no longer seems to equate to the need for more employees, as the impact of AI increases – something some leaders are increasingly warning about.
CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, wrote about his biggest concerns about AI in a recent essay including things like loss of autonomy, “exploitation for destruction,” and “powerful AI,” which he writes is “certainly coming.”
Amodei writes, “I think it should be clear that this is a dangerous situation; a report from a competent national security official to a head of state would likely include words like “the most serious threat to national security we have faced in a century, possibly ever.” It seems like something that the best minds of civilization should concentrate on.” The CEO also predicted that AI could eliminate the need for 50 percent of all entry-level white-collar jobs in the next one to five years. which was previously warned about.
Worryingly, Klarna’s CEO disagrees with Amodei’s position and acknowledges that he is “in Dario’s camp” on concerns around AI.
“I want to be honest about the fact that I think there’s going to be a really big shift,” Siemiatkowski said on the podcast.
In particular, he reiterated concerns surrounding job losses. “I am an optimist through and through, but I also want to be a realist about what will happen in the shorter term.
Regardless, while the CEO seemed to express some major concerns about the rapid advancement of AI, Siemiatkowski has leaned heavily on it. In 2024, he announced that AI could handle a growing number of jobs as the company halts hiring and reduces its size by 2,000 employees. But, like Business insider reported, it didn’t take long for customer satisfaction to drop, and the company had to make efforts to reclassify employees to customer support to deal with the consequences. (Klarna says that because AI can handle the simple requests, the remaining requests are more complex and require new customer support agents to be hired).
Fast Company reached out to Klarna to inquire whether the company would be scaling back its relationship with AI. A representative said Klarna “didn’t rely too much on AI,” but that “thinking about human customer service” has changed.
The representative continued: “When you automate many of the simpler customer service requests, you are left with the most complex and sensitive cases… That’s why we’ve started hiring a small number of human agents directly who are employed directly by Klarna, rather than outsourced providers.”
This article has been updated to reflect that Klarna’s downsizing is due to attrition and not layoffs. In addition, we have removed a reference to a social media post from Siemiatkowski that was taken out of context.
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