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Klarna CEO admitted that the quality of work done by AI agents was lower than expected. (Represntational image)
A Swedish fintech company that once embraced artificial intelligence (AI) at the cost of human jobs is now looking to rehire staff after realising machines couldn’t quite replace people.
The Swedish fintech company, Klarna, had made headlines two years ago when it reduced its workforce in favour of AI technology. In 2023, the company halted recruitment altogether and leaned heavily into automation, partnering with OpenAI to power many of its customer service functions.
At the time, Klarna’s CEO, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, championed the decision, claiming AI could handle the same tasks as human employees. The company said its AI systems were doing the work of 700 customer service agents, and Siemiatkowski boasted about saving $10 million on tasks such as translation, art production, and data analysis.
In a recent interview reported by Futurismthe Klarna CEO admitted that the quality of work done by AI agents was lower than expected. He acknowledged that relying too much on cost-cutting and automation had hurt the company’s customer experience.
“From a brand perspective, a company perspective. I just think it’s so critical that you are clear to your customer that there will always be a human if you want,” Siemiatkowski said.
“As cost unfortunately seems to have been a too predominant evaluation factor when organising this, what you end up having is lower quality. Really investing in the quality of the human support is the way of the future for us,” he added.
Klarna now plans to launch a new hiring drive to bring back human workers, especially in customer-facing roles where empathy and judgement matter most. According to BloombergKlarna is testing a new way of hiring where people can work remotely, similar to how drivers work with Uber.
The company’s headcount had fallen from over 5,500 in 2022 to just 3,400 by the end of 2024, according to its IPO filing in March.
The fintech company is best known for its “buy now, pay later” services which allows shoppers to pay up to 30 days after placing an order or making purchases in four instalments without interest.
