In December 2024, CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski stated that AI “can already do all of the jobs,” which led Klarna to stop hiring and reduce its workforce from 4,500 to 3,500 employees. A year later, the fintech acknowledges that betting on OpenAI bots, which handled 2.3 million dialogues, reduced costs but negatively impacted service quality.
Now the company is reopening job vacancies and testing an Uber-style support format: freelance operators can choose shifts from anywhere in Sweden. The reason is simple — customers want to be assured that they can reach a live person when needed.
This dramatic turnaround shows that when cost-cutting pressures quality metrics, even an aggressive AI strategy can roll back, and real human-in-the-loop support proves to be irreplaceable.
Source (2025): Bloomberg
Source (2024): Business Insider
