Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski not too long ago informed Bloomberg TV that his firm basically stopped hiring a yr in the past and credited generative AI for enabling this large workforce discount.
Nonetheless, regardless of Siemiatkowski’s bullishness on AI, the corporate just isn’t relying completely on AI to exchange human staff who depart, as open job listings — for extra people — and the corporate’s personal statements affirm.
“We stopped hiring a couple of yr in the past. We have been 4,500, now we’re 3,500,” Siemiatkowski informed Bloomberg TV. “We now have a pure attrition, as [does] each tech firm. Folks keep about 5 years — so 20% depart yearly — and by not hiring, we’re merely shrinking.”
The corporate’s CEO additionally mentioned he believes AI can successfully change staff. “I’m of the opinion that AI can already do all the jobs that we as people do,” mentioned Siemiatkowski. “We’re gonna give among the enhancements [from] the effectivity that AI offers by rising the tempo at which the salaries of our workers will increase.”
Siemiatkowski usually makes this number of feedback. To begin 2024, the Klarna CEO mentioned ChatGPT was doing the work of 700 human workers. At one other level, he mentioned that Klarna was dropping Salesforce as a CRM supplier and changing it with AI, a remark Marc Benioff expressed skepticism about. Simply this week, the Klarna CEO made an AI deepfake of himself to report his monetary outcomes, making an attempt to show that even a CEO might be changed by AI.
However in observe, whereas Klarna has considerably decreased its workforce within the final yr, the purchase now, pay later firm has not utterly stopped hiring.
Klarna is at the moment hiring for greater than 50 roles across the globe, in keeping with the job postings web page on its web site. Moreover, Klarna’s managers have mentioned they’re actively hiring or rising their groups a minimum of half a dozen occasions all through 2024, in keeping with posts on LinkedIn seen by TechCrunch. Klarna additionally employed a number of new workers within the final yr to fill roles on its coverage, software program engineering, and world partnerships groups, in keeping with LinkedIn posts from not too long ago employed Klarna workers.
Klarna’s world press lead, John Craske, tells TechCrunch that Siemiatkowski’s feedback about hiring are directionally true however says the CEO was “simplifying for brevity in a broadcast interview.”
“While you take a look at it traditionally, we have been hiring between one to at least one and a half thousand individuals a yr from 2019 to 2022,” mentioned Craske in an electronic mail. “Now, we’re not actively recruiting to increase the workforce however solely backfilling some important roles, predominantly engineering.”
In different phrases, not each job might be changed with AI at this time.
Whereas AI could also be serving to Klarna do extra work with fewer individuals, it’s price noting that Klarna has the identical variety of workers at this time than it did in 2021. Like most tech firms, Klarna was hiring lots in the course of the pandemic. Many firms, together with Meta and Amazon, have decreased their workforces in the previous couple of years, both by slowing down hiring or having layoffs.
It’s additionally price mentioning that Klarna is trying to IPO quickly. Siemiatkowski could possibly be attempting to persuade traders that his firm is aggressively incorporating generative AI into its workflows and that the advantages are already exhibiting up.
However for many firms lately, AI adoption and implementation are taking place at a a lot slower charge.
