Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski is so bullish on synthetic intelligence that the Swedish purchase now, pay later (BNPL) platform plans to chop 50% of its workforce over the following few years.
In direction of financial timesSiemiatkowski stated Klarna hopes to scale back its headcount from 3,800 to 2,000 staff. Klarna’s present headcount has been lowered from 5,000 following main redundancies final yr. Siemiatkowski plans to shift almost half of the corporate’s customer support and advertising and marketing obligations to synthetic intelligence. “Not solely can we do extra with much less, we are able to do extra with much less,” he stated monetary occasions.
None of this comes out of nowhere. Siemiatkowski has been outspoken concerning the cost-saving advantages of synthetic intelligence. Klarna applied Recruitment freeze Final December, the final word aim was to “downsize” the corporate and substitute sure duties with synthetic intelligence. in a Archived posts On the deleted X, Siemiatkowski obtained rebound Boasting thousands and thousands of {dollars} saved by automating duties like AI picture era, implementing AI assistants, and doing extra with a advertising and marketing workforce half the scale.
Combine and match pace of sunshine
Within the quick time period, Klarna’s method seems to be paying off. BNPL’s web loss narrowed sharply from $84 million to $980,000 after changing Swedish krona into U.S. {dollars}, in response to reviews on Tuesday’s second-quarter earnings name. However betting huge on AI automation is of venture that will not pan out. Goldman Sachs Financial Knowledgeable Report Seeing as “synthetic intelligence has restricted advantages to the U.S. economic system,” if historical past tells us something, the automation of sure providers, like self-checkout kiosks and customer support, can contrary to expectations and create new problems.
Klarna is not the one tech firm reducing jobs to put money into synthetic intelligence. January Duolingo It laid off 10% of its contractors and blamed synthetic intelligence for the layoffs. As Meta and Google enhance their funding in synthetic intelligence, additionally they reduce jobs.
