Fintech giant Klarna thought it could replace its employees with AI. It was wrong

For months, Swedish fintech giant Klarna has boasted about cutting its workforce thanks to AI .

But his strategy didn't work : the company went back to hiring humans.

Klarna's AI Strategy

Klarna was one of the first companies to collaborate with OpenAI . In February 2024, the Swedish company announced that its AI-powered customer service chatbot can do the work of 700 human agents . And do it faster and more efficiently.

Last December, Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski revealed that he had not hired any humans through 2024, saying that the company’s employees were doing “everything” to integrate “as much artificial intelligence as possible” into their work.

But Siemiatkowski was wrong.

The “lower quality” results

Klarna’s CEO admitted as much in an interview with Bloomberg , where he said that cost-cutting was, “unfortunately,” a major factor in the development of the company’s AI strategy, and “the result was lower quality.”

So Siemiatkowski backtracked: “For us, the future is about real investment in the quality of human support,” the CEO told Bloomberg, announcing a new wave of hiring of real-life agents who will have the ability to work remotely.

The Return to Humans

“From a brand perspective, and from a company perspective,” Siemiatkowski said, “I think it’s absolutely critical that the customer knows clearly that, if they want, there will always be a human being they can turn to.”