Klarna has frozen hiring and is planning to shrink its workforce as its chief executive bets that more jobs will be carried out by artificial intelligence (AI) in the future. Sebastian Siemiatkowski said the Swedish buy now, pay later giant was no longer bringing on new staff beyond its engineering department, predicting that AI would allow him to reduce the number of staff employed at the business. “There will be a shrinking of the company,” Mr Siemiatkowski said, attributing the change to widespread use of tools such as ChatGPT. “We’re not currently hiring at all, apart from engineers.” The hiring freeze at one of Europe’s biggest technology companies comes 18 months after it sacked hundreds of staff during a deep tech downturn. However, Mr Siemiatkowski insisted the decision to only hire engineers was motivated by his belief in the potential of AI rather than reflective of business fundamentals. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/12/03/klarna-chief-bets-ai-app-freezes-hiring/ #hiringfreeze #layoffs #klarna #eu #europe #eutech #europetech #fintech #ai #chatgpt #gpt #agi #tech #buynowpaylater #bnpl #payments
Not hiring except engineers - this should alarm PM, HR, etc
That’s a creative excuse to hide impending layoffs lmao
Bingo. Not layoff, “natural attrition”. It’s a silent layoff. In EU is very difficult to do proper layoffs.
I hate this planet.
lol they can’t even build a decent ML model for their core lending/risk offering and they’re going to leverage ChatGPT to replace humans. Love it
Nope, it’s because there is a thousand buy now pay later startups and Klarna is not the top one. It’s like the coupon craze with Groupon - everyone was doing it and then everyone realized there is only so much money in it and we don’t need a thousand companies to do it. And it doesn’t work for everyone. Similar thing with buy now pay later.
If the current crop of products, which is literally unable to innovate, can do the job, then maybe you’re not adding a whole lot of value in the first place.
Paradoxically I am using PayPal more than Klarna to slice payments. When ApplePay will allow that too I am not sure where Klarna will fit in.
Lots of companies that are having trouble are using AI and high interest rates as cover to trim their workforce. I wish they just came out and spoke the truth. Beyond all the hype there isn't that much demand for buy now and pay in installment services and it is anyways overcrowded space.
Bet this is just a cover due to unprofitability and competition from the 50 other bnpl companies
makes sense, but saying you’re not hiring because you expect ai to be able to do most of the other jobs seems pretty dumb and naive
Way off the track. Klarna broke in profitability Q3 exceeding expectations. You can google that. CXOs are just obsessed with AI. I believe it is a way to differentiate against the competition more than anything else.