Sebastian Siemiatkowski

“Klarna's headcount will fall from about 3,000 to under 2,000 by 2030 as AI scales across operations: "I want to be honest about the fact that I do think there's going to be a very big shift... it's going to be a lot of turmoil in this."”

Sebastian SiemiatkowskiCEO

Co-founder and CEO, Klarna

Resolves on Klarna's reported headcount at end-2030; the company has already gone from roughly 7,000 to about 3,000 employees through cuts and unreplaced attrition.

“"We stopped hiring about a year ago. We were 4,500, now we're 3,500... People stay about 5 years — so 20% leave every year — and by not hiring, we're simply shrinking." AI is already doing the work of hundreds of staff, and headcount will keep falling through natural attrition rather than layoffs.”

Sebastian SiemiatkowskiCEO

Co-founder and CEO, Klarna

Headcount did keep shrinking by attrition — Siemiatkowski said in May 2025 the company had gone from about 5,000 to 'almost 3,000' — but the 'stopped hiring entirely' framing did not hold: Klarna continued advertising open roles and in 2025 began rehiring human customer-service agents after AI service quality disappointed.