Wait, is That Really Klarna’s CEO or an AI Clone?

Be honest. Hasn’t every leader tried to find a way out of a conversation about financial results one time or another? 

For those with their hands up, Klarna’s CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski may well have come up with a canny diversion – send an AI clone in your place. 

In fairness to Sebastian he, or rather his clone, does at least admit the ruse at the start of the short YouTube video published to reveal the fintech company’s first quarter highlights. 

It confesses: “It’s me, or rather my AI avatar, here to share Klarna’s Q1 2025 highlights.”

Clone, as we’ll call him, sets out how the company has hit 100 million active consumers over the period, a new record and its fastest growth in two years. 

The company has also delivered its fourth consecutive profitable quarter, with revenue rising 15% year-on-year. Business in the US drove 33% of that growth.

AI led growth strategy

In a self-congratulatory mood, Sebastian’s clone attributes much of Klarna’s impressive growth to AI. 

It explains that the business, headquartered in Stockholm with operations worldwide, has embedded the technology across its teams to turbocharge growth and unlock efficiencies. 

“AI is helping us work faster, scale faster and deliver more value,” it says. “From customer support and marketing to insights and product development, we’re now on track to hit US$1m per employee – very cool.

“One hundred million consumers, profit and growth. AI is the engine driving it all.”

Under Sebastian, Klarna has deployed AI organisation-wide. Since 2022 it has streamlined its workforce by ~40% while raising the share of tech employees from 36% in 2022 to 52% in Q1 2025. 

Across the organisation, 96% of employees use AI daily, an adoption rate that’s driven a 152% increase in revenue per employee since Q1 2023. 

The tech is also being put to use in a customer-facing capacity, too. Klarna reports that, as a result of growing AI use, costs per transaction have dropped by 40% since Q1 2023 while maintaining customer satisfaction levels. 

Leadership, talent and AI

Sebasatian has been vocal about the challenges and opportunities that AI presents. 

In a December 2024 interview with Bloomberg he said “AI can already do all of the jobs that we as humans do”, a remark he expanded on in a post on X in January 2025. 

Taking to the social media platform, he acknowledged the statement had “caused quite a stir”, likening the potential of AI to stating human brains could develop cars or rockets hundreds of years ago, but adding that they needed years more to be able to do so. 

“So to me AI is capable of doing all our jobs, my own included. Because our work is simply reasoning combined with knowledge/experience. And the most critical breakthrough, reasoning, is behind us,” he said. 

“Exactly how long it will take for the world to figure this out, who knows for sure? But I think we can all agree it is not in the 100s of years…”

The fintech boss is also a staunch advocate for vibe coding, a process that involves using AI as a coding assistant but interacting with it in a more informal, fluid way. 

It’s a process he says he’s been following for 20 years, but which has sped up significantly more recently. That added pace and capability means tasks that might have once taken day-long meetings with tech teams can now be completed in minutes from his desk. 

“Rather than disrupting my poor engineers and product people with what is half good ideas and half bad ideas, now I test it myself”, Sebastian told the Sourcery podcast.

What that means for future talent remains to be seen. However, most recently, the Klarna CEO warned that AI could eliminate many knowledge-based jobs, including in banking and finance, in an interview with Bloomberg.

“I feel a lot of my tech bros are being slightly, you know, not to the point on this topic. I think there is a massive shift coming to knowledge work. And it’s not just in banking, it’s in society at large,” he told Bloomberg Television.

“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.”