Klarna CEO Says AI Will Cut Workforce From 7,000 to 2,000

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Klarna CEO says AI will reduce the company’s workforce from 7,000 to 2,000 by 2030.

Klara CEO on How AI is Reducing Jobs

Klarna is one of the world’s largest fintech companies. So, their CEO’s comments are not random opinions.

Sebastian Siemiatkowski appeared on the “20VC” podcast with Harry Stebbings and made a huge prediction for his company. He believes Klarna will lose about 20% of its workforce every year through 2030.

He said:

“But for the rest, it's going to be smaller. So we're shrinking through natural attrition with about 20% per year.”

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The CEO himself revealed that the company had over 7,000 employees in 2022, but now in 2026, there are already down to 3,000. By 2030, he expects the number to drop below 2,000.

However, this didn’t happen through layoffs (while there were some, but not anything huge), and he is not directly responsible for it.

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Here’s what's happening at Klarna: Employees typically stay with Klarna for about 5 years before moving on naturally. That’s the natural attrition of 20%. When an employee leaves, the company simply doesn’t hire replacements. 

How AI Fits into All This?

They don’t need to hire any more people because AI can now do much of the work those employees once handled.

This approach isn’t theoretical. In early 2024, the company launched an OpenAI-powered customer service chatbot that can handle the workload of 600 full-time agents.

Also, for the remaining employees, there’s an upside. Klarna has increased compensation by nearly 50% as profits have grown.

One more interesting prediction from him was that the roles centered on human relationships will remain essential. But for the rest of us, the jobpocalypse is coming.

He agrees with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who has warned that AI could eliminate 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs.

And the impact will be on SaaS companies a lot. The ability of AI to generate software at minimal cost will lead to a re-evaluation of software company valuations, potentially bringing them closer to utility companies. That means they will also hire a lot less in the future.

However, all this is getting criticism from people. Just imagine when employees read that their CEO expects the workforce to shrink every year, it can feel unsettling.

On one hand, he agrees with Elon Musk that all this would lead to “golden age of humanity” but it skips over some hard realities. History shows that when technology replaces jobs, the benefits don’t automatically get shared equally. Productivity may rise, but workers who lose jobs don’t instantly gain wealth. 

Even if AI eventually leads to a richer society, millions of people could face years of unemployment.

Bottom Line

According to the World Economic Forum, about 40% of employers expect to reduce their workforces as AI automates tasks.

What makes Klarna’s approach particularly revealing is its methodology. Rather than dramatic rounds of layoffs that grab headlines, the company is demonstrating how workforce reduction can happen gradually and almost invisibly through attrition. When someone quits or retires, their desk simply stays empty.

This “natural shrinkage” model could become a blueprint for other companies looking to integrate AI without the public relations nightmare.