Klarna CEO says he stopped recruiting with AI, however continues to announce many vacancies

Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski not too long ago stated Bloomberg Television that his firm all however stopped hiring a yr in the past and credited generative AI with enabling this large downsizing.

Nonetheless, regardless of Siemiatkowski’s optimism about AI, the corporate shouldn’t be solely relying on AI to interchange departing human staff, as open job postings affirm – for extra people – and the corporate’s personal statements.

“We stopped recruiting a few yr in the past. We had been 4,500, now we’re 3,500,” Siemiatkowski instructed Bloomberg TV. “We’ve got pure attrition, as [does] each know-how firm. Folks keep round 5 years – so 20% go away annually – and by not hiring we’re merely shrinking.

The corporate’s CEO additionally stated he believes AI can successfully change staff. “I’m of the opinion that AI can already carry out all of the duties that we do as people,” Siemiatkowski stated. “We will make a few of the enhancements [from] the effectivity that AI offers by accelerating the speed of wage will increase for our workers.

Siemiatkowski usually makes this number of feedback. To start out 2024, Klarna CEO stated ChatGPT was doing the work of 700 human employees. At one other level, he stated Klarna was dropping Salesforce as a CRM supplier and changing it with AI, a remark Marc Benioff expressed skepticism about. This week once more, the CEO of Klarna made an AI simulation of itself to communicate its financial resultsmaking an attempt to show that even a CEO may be changed by AI.

However in follow, although Klarna has considerably lowered its workforce during the last yr, the “purchase now, pay later” firm hasn’t stopped hiring utterly.

Klarna is presently recruiting for greater than 50 positions worldwide, in keeping with the jobs page on its website. Moreover, Klarna executives stated they actively recruit Or develop their teams a minimum of half a dozen instances all through 2024, in keeping with LinkedIn posts considered by TechCrunch. Klarna has additionally employed a number of new workers over the previous yr to fill roles inside its policy, software engineeringAnd global partnerships groups, in keeping with LinkedIn posts from not too long ago employed Klarna workers.

Klarna’s head of world press, John Craske, instructed TechCrunch that Siemiatkowski’s feedback concerning the hiring had been true, however stated the CEO was “simplifying for brevity in a broadcast interview.”

“Should you take a look at historical past, we’re hiring between a thousand and a thousand folks per yr from 2019 to 2022,” Craske stated in an e mail. “Now we’re not actively recruiting to extend the workforce, however are simply filling some vital positions, primarily in engineering. »

In different phrases, not all jobs may be changed by AI immediately.

Whereas AI might assist Klarna do extra work with fewer folks, it is price noting that Klarna has the same number of employees today as in 2021. Like most tech corporations, Klarna has performed loads of hiring throughout the pandemic. Many corporations, together with Meta and Amazon, have lowered their workforces lately, both by slowing hiring or making layoffs.

It must also be famous that Klarna eyes IPO soon. Siemiatkowski might attempt to persuade buyers that his firm is aggressively integrating generative AI into its workflows and that the advantages are already being felt.

However for many companies nowadays, AI adoption and implementation is happening at a much slower pace.