Fintech firm Klarna has replaced 1,000 jobs with AI in a year

• "Pay later" company Klarna says it doesn't need to hire because of AI.

• It's shed 1,000 jobs over the last year already.

• CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski has suggested AI can replace any role, including his own.

Artificial intelligence is already replacing human employees at scale at payments company Klarna, according to CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski.

The technology has made so many roles redundant it essentially allowed the "pay later" company to stop hiring new staff about a year ago, the fintech boss told Bloomberg TV. Since then, it's shed about 1,000 employees.

"We were 4,500, and now we're 3,500," Siemiatkowski said. "We have a natural attrition like every tech company. People stay about five years, so 20% leave every year. By not hiring, we're simply shrinking, right?"

He didn't specify exactly which roles were vanishing from the company, which allows users to split online payments over several installments. But Klarna said earlier this year an AI assistant now handles about two-thirds of its customer service chats.

A fast-growing trend

Siemiatkowski is one of the few CEOs of a well-known company to publicly admit the technology is behind a shrinking workforce.

But with AI predicted to replace 800 million jobs by 2030, he will hardly be the only tech boss thinking along these lines. Firms like Dukaan have already said they've slashed jobs in favor of AI.

Microsoft also thinks AI will be a crucial thread running through most digital business operations in the not-too-distant future. It's betting hard on demand for AI, recently plugging its agent-building tools to a library of more than 1,800 large language models to create the biggest business AI ecosystem out there.

Fewer staff, higher salaries

Siemiatkowski told Hyde he believes "AI can already do all of the jobs that we as humans do... It's just a question of how we apply it and use it."

Existing staff, he said, will see their salaries grow faster as the company's headcount falls.

Earlier this year, he delivered an investors update via an AI avatar of himself in a tongue-in-cheek effort to prove that even his job was replaceable.

He said:

"What are the jobs that people like the least? It's lawyers, CEOs and bankers. And I happen to be both CEO and banker... Let's replace [these] jobs first and [AI will] become more popular."

But whatever Siemiatkowski says, Klarna is still looking for humans to fill certain roles. The company is currently advertising a number of engineering, marketing and business development jobs on its website.

A spokesperson told Business Insider these were "essential" positions, and it wasn't "actively recruiting" to grow its headcount.