โMy wife taught me something,โ 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. โTwo things can be true at the same time,โ he said.
Siemiatkowski said itโs 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 companyโs 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 companyโs salary costs have gone down, Klarna now seeks to reinvest a majority of that money into employee cash and equity compensation.ย
But, he insisted, this doesnโt mean there isnโt an opportunity for humans to work at his company. โWe think offering human customer service is always going to be a VIP thing,โ he said, comparing it to how people pay more for clothing stitched by hand rather than machines. โSo 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.โย
He spoke about how the company plans to balance employees and AI workers. Siemiatkowski said that right now, engineering positions at the company havenโt shrunk as much as those in other departments, but he notes that this could shift.ย
โWhat Iโm seeing internally is a new rise of businesspeople who are coding themselves,โ he said, adding that the challenge many engineers have these days is that they are not business savvy. โI think that category of people will become even more valuable going forward,โ Siemiatkowski continued, especially as they can use AI and put their business understanding to good use.ย
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.ย
โIโll take a Slack thread, Iโll throw it in ChatGPT and say, โThis makes sense, right?โโ he said, adding that he uses ChatGPT like a private tutor.
But he is also aware that AI isnโt 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.
โAnd AI is obviously accelerating this,โ 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.ย
โWe realize that the only way forward is going to be to consolidate [data],โ he said, adding that the company stopped using around 1,200 small software services.ย
About its pending IPO? He indicated that Klarna could soon move ahead with it but was otherwise noncommittal. โI can say that Iโm happy thereโs less turbulence in the market,โ 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.
