Success·the future of workEuropeAI enabled Klarna to half its workforce—now, the CEO is warning workers that other ‘ bros’ are sugarcoating just how badly it’s to impact jobsBy Preston ForeBy Preston ForeStaff Writer, EducationPreston ForeStaff Writer, EducationPreston Fore is a reporter at Fortune, covering education and personal finance for the Success team.SEE FULL BIO Sebastian Siemiatkowski, who told Sam Altman he wanted Klarna to be ChatGPT’s “favorite guinea pig,” says too many CEOs are downplaying how disruptive AI will really be.Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesFrom Ford CEO Jim Farley to Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, a growing number of CEOs are ringing the alarm bells that artificial intelligence could threaten millions of jobs around the world.
But one CEO says too many of his peers are sugarcoating the truth.
“I feel a lot of my bros are being slightly not to the point on this topic,” Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski told Bloomberg on Thursday. “I think there is a massive shift coming to knowledge work.
And it’s not banking, it’s in society at large.” While some executives have tried to calm fears by saying AI will create new jobs, the 44-year-old buy now, pay later billionaire argues that optimism can be misleading—especially in the near term.
He singled out that in Brussels, thousands of people still work as translators, a job he says can already largely be done by AI.
“Society will have to figure out what are we going to do because yes, new jobs will be created, but in the shorter term, that doesn’t help the Brussels translator.
He’s not going to become a YouTube influencer tomorrow,” he added.
Klarna’s embrace of AI—and being its ‘guinea pig’ Siemiatkowski has been one of AI’s most aggressive adopters, even telling OpenAI’s Sam Altman in 2023 that he wanted Klarna to be ChatGPT’s “favorite guinea pig.” By early 2024, Klarna had launched an OpenAI-powered customer service chatbot that the company said can do the work equivalent to 800 full-time agents.
But not every experiment went smoothly. Some customers complained the lack of human support, mpting Klarna to rethink part of its AI-first hiring strategy.
“As cost unfortunately seems to have been a too predominant evaluation factor when organizing this, what you end up having is lower quality,” Siemiatkowski told Bloomberg in May.
“Really in the quality of the human support is the way of the future for us.” Even with the recalibration, Klarna’s AI push has come with real consequences for workers.
The company slowed hiring and reduced its employee base from 7,400 to 3,000, Siemiatkowski said. The cost cuts and investment have paid off financially.
In its most recent earnings report, the fin firm reported 38% year-over-year revenue growth in the U.S. and rising fits.
That momentum helped Klarna go public in September, and today its market cap is just over $15 billion. Fortune reached out to Siemiatkowski for further .
An AI-first CEO Siemiatkowski isn’t just talking AI—he’s living it.
He told Bloomberg that he uses the nology “all the time.” In May, he appeared on an earnings call as an AI-generated replica, dering scripted remarks in his own voice and ness.
Klarna also rolled out a 24/7 “AI CEO Hotline,” which answers customer questions in Siemiatkowski’s conversational style, both in English and Swedish.
Even at , the 44-year-old CEO admits AI has seeped into his off-hours, leaning into vibe coding in particular to explore Klarna’s code base.
“My wife is complaining because when the kids go to sleep, I’m , ‘Hey, can I just go and vibe code a bit?’ So she’s not too happy with me,” he said.
“But it’s so intriguing, it’s so fantastic to learn these nologies. People should not be afraid of nology.” Fortune Global Forum returns Oct. 26–27, 2025 in Riyadh.
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