Klarna AI Strategy: An AI-Powered Company, with a Human on Request

Klarna calls itself an AI-powered company, and it reports the most detailed results for a single AI system of any company profiled so far. Its assistant handled 80% of customer-service chats in 2025. Klarna is also the clearest case of a course correction: since May 2025, customers can always reach a human.

The ambition is an AI-powered company. Klarna’s 2025 annual report (Form 20-F, February 2026) says “We Are an AI-Powered Company” and that it uses AI to transform commerce.

The ambition is tied to cost. In his Q4 2025 letter, CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said Klarna is “fundamentally reshaping our cost base through focused, disciplined AI adoption.”

Klarna sees AI-driven commerce as an opportunity. Its Q2 2026 results highlight AI shopping tools, including a shopping app inside ChatGPT.

The primary focus is efficiency. Customer experience and new products come second. The annual report groups Klarna’s AI use under three headings:

• merchant conversion and revenue
• consumer experience and cost, through the AI assistant
• productivity, through coding copilots, legal, marketing and an internal assistant called Kiki

Klarna has not said publicly what it will not prioritize. The closest it comes is a service model. The CEO has described AI as the standard service and human support as the premium tier.

One system carries the strategy. Klarna’s AI assistant, built with OpenAI, launched in February 2024. In 2025 it handled 80% of customer-service chats in more than 35 languages. It resolves refunds, returns and payments, and passes complex cases to humans.

The design changed in 2025. In May 2025, the CEO said the cost-led push had produced “lower quality” service. He also said Klarna would recruit human agents in “an Uber type of setup,” as reported by Forbes.

Klarna said it was “not reversing on AI” and described a dual-track approach. AI stays the default, and a human is available on request. Klarna’s partial retreat is one of the cases discussed in The AI Implementation Sandwich.

The technology is partner-and-build. OpenAI is the main partner. Klarna also built Kiki, its internal assistant.

The workforce has shrunk sharply. Klarna’s full-time headcount fell from 5,527 in 2022 to 2,831 at the end of 2025, according to its filings. Klarna attributes the fall to AI-driven efficiency, a hiring freeze and attrition.

The CEO expects fewer than 2,000 employees by 2030, through attrition rather than layoffs. He has also said that average pay rose along with revenue per employee.

Usage is high, but enablement is not described. Klarna says 96% of employees used generative AI in their daily work by August 2024. It also says 80% of engineers and data scientists had connected an AI coding copilot by June 2025. Both figures are company-claimed.

It has not disclosed a training program, champion network or usage mandate.

Ownership sits with the CEO. Sebastian Siemiatkowski is the public owner of the AI strategy. No Chief AI Officer has been named, and no AI budget has been disclosed.

Governance is the gap. Klarna holds a Swedish banking licence. Even so, the sources reviewed show no published responsible AI principles, no AI governance body and no position on the EU AI Act.

AI fluency, coded against the Lead with AI Fluency Matrix (September 2026 edition):

• Fluency floor: Not disclosed. Usage is reported as high, but no mandate, hiring standard or training commitment was found.
• Highest level evidenced: Level 4 (Transforming), company-claimed. The assistant is a working agentic system that resolves customer requests from start to finish, at scale, with a measured result. Humans stay in control because complex cases go to people and a human is always available. The quality problems Klarna acknowledged in 2025 are part of this record.
• Portfolio design: Not disclosed.

Klarna measures AI in hard numbers. It tracks:

• the share of chats handled by AI
• full-time agent equivalents
• cost savings and resolution time
• customer satisfaction
• revenue per employee and headcount

It publishes specific results. All of the following are company-claimed:

• In 2025, the assistant handled 80% of customer-service chats. It did work equal to more than 850 full-time agents and saved about $59 million.
• Internal surveys showed no drop in customer satisfaction.
• Revenue per employee reached $1.24 million, 3.6 times the 2022 level, with headcount down 49%.

The savings figure varies by source. Klarna’s November 2025 investor presentation gives $58 million, its annual report says about $59 million, and other sources cite about $60 million.

No independent verification was found for the assistant figures.

Cost lines are worth watching. In Q2 2026, customer service and operations costs were $58 million, up from $51 million a year earlier, on revenue growth of 27%. These figures are not AI-specific.

The roadmap is long-range only. The one dated milestone is headcount below 2,000 by 2030. Klarna has published no near-term AI roadmap.

Change log

• February 2024: The AI assistant launches, doing the work of 700 full-time agents in its first month.
• May 2025: The CEO says the cost-led approach lowered quality and human agents will be recruited. Klarna says it is not reversing on AI.
• September 2025: Klarna lists on the New York Stock Exchange.
• November 2025: Klarna reports 853 agent equivalents and $58 million in savings.
• February 2026: The annual report says the assistant handled 80% of chats in 2025. The CEO projects fewer than 2,000 staff by 2030.
• August 2026: Q2 2026 results highlight AI shopping tools.

• Disclosure: 3 of 4. Klarna answers questions 01, 02 and 04 in detail. It answers 03 only in part, because it discloses no governance and no AI owner other than the CEO.
• It has the strongest evidence for a single system. The assistant’s results are specific and repeated across filings.
• The numbers back the story. Revenue per employee rose from $344k in 2022 to $1.24 million in 2025 while headcount fell 49%. No other company in the index shows that pattern.
• It is the first company in the index evidenced at Level 4. That rests on one system, and the figures are company-claimed.
• It is the clearest course correction. An AI-first service design lowered quality, and Klarna added a guaranteed human option while keeping AI as the default.
• The say-do gap is governance. The cost ambition is backed by outcomes and headcount, but no AI governance framework has been published.
• Watch service quality as headcount heads below 2,000, and whether Klarna publishes how it governs AI.

What the numbers show: This is the clearest case in the index of the AI story showing up in the numbers. Headcount fell 49% while revenue rose 85%, taking revenue per employee from $344k to $1.24 million. Klarna uses this metric to report its own AI results.

Revenue, headcount and revenue per employee, FY2022 to FY2025

• FY2022: $1.90bn revenue, 5,527 employees, $344k per employee
• FY2023: $2.28bn revenue, 4,352 employees, $523k per employee
• FY2024: $2.81bn revenue, 3,422 employees, $821k per employee
• FY2025: $3.51bn revenue, 2,831 employees, $1.24M per employee

Change, FY2022 to FY2025: revenue up 85%, headcount down 49%, revenue per employee up 261% (3.6x).

Notes: Revenue is as reported. Headcount is full-time employees at year-end. The 2022 revenue figure is rounded and comes from Klarna’s IPO-period data. The 2025 figure matches the $1.24 million revenue per employee Klarna reports itself.

These figures give context on scale and productivity. They do not show that AI caused any change. Sources: Klarna IPO prospectus (F-1) and 2025 20-F.

What is Klarna’s AI strategy?

Klarna describes itself as an AI-powered company and uses AI to reshape its cost base. Its main AI system is a customer-service assistant built with OpenAI. It also uses AI for merchant conversion, coding, legal and marketing work.

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Did Klarna reverse its AI strategy?

No, but it changed its customer-service design. In May 2025 the CEO said the cost-led approach had lowered quality, and Klarna began guaranteeing access to a human agent. Klarna says AI remains the default.

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How much has Klarna saved with AI?

Klarna says its AI assistant saved about $59 million in 2025 and did work equal to more than 850 full-time agents. These are company figures, and sources give slightly different savings totals.

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Is Klarna cutting jobs because of AI?

Klarna’s headcount fell from 5,527 in 2022 to 2,831 at the end of 2025. The company attributes this to AI-driven efficiency, a hiring freeze and attrition. The CEO expects fewer than 2,000 employees by 2030, through attrition rather than layoffs.

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How is this profile put together?

Lead with AI profiles use public sources only, such as annual reports, earnings materials, filings and on-record interviews, dated at the time of writing. AI fluency is coded against the Lead with AI Fluency Matrix. Company figures are marked as company-claimed unless they have been independently verified.