In 2022, the European technological giant Klarna (one of the main actors in the world of digital payments), He fired 700 workers To replace them with a chatbot. According to the company, in just one month implementing it, they concluded that the chatbot was able to cover two thirds of the company’s customer service chats.
“He is doing the job equivalent to 700 full -time agents,” they said. Now, the company flirts again with AI to replace … to its CEO.
I’m not me, it’s an avatar. Klarna has presented Your results report of the first 2025 quarter regardless of its CEO. Or, rather, using a virtual CEO. The video begins with full transparency: “It is me, or rather, my artificial intelligence avatar.” Siemiatkowski is still CEO of Klarna, but the company wanted to show its commitment to the AI replacing it for the presentation of results.
Avatar ia.
We recommend watching the video since the avatar, Far from being one -style Facebookhe is realistic to not being able. Only the imperfect audio synchronization and the absence of natural flickering can make us suspect that we are not facing a real person. For the rest, it is an avatar that could strain perfectly.
A strong bet on AI … The company was clear that customer service services could be provided through the integration of a chatbot. Klarna said at the time of dismissals that “he is on par of human agents in terms of customer satisfaction score”, and that “it is more precise in tasks.”
Some service users such as Gergely Oroszcreator of the Newsletter The Pragmatic EngineerThey thought the opposite, pointing out that the chatbot did not do much beyond reciting documents. The most curious? When the chatbot was not able to find an answer, the solution it gave was to speak with a human assistant in case of problems.
Klarna is marking the guideline in the practical deployment of AI, and the benefits quickly accumulate. Since 2022, Klarna has rationalized its workforce by approximately 40 %, while increasing the percentage of technological employees of 36 % in 2022 to 52 % in the first quarter of 2025. 96 % of employees use AI daily, which has contributed to a 152 % increase in revenues per employee from the first quarter of 2013 and has put Klarna on the way employee income. AI is reducing costs throughout the company, especially in customer service, where transaction costs have been reduced by 40% since the first quarter of 2013, while maintaining customer satisfaction levels.
… in which humans are necessary. In February 2025 Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO of the company, He admitted that AI will never be as valuable as human talent. He acknowledged that the bot was faster responding, but that it was limited to “offering fragments of documentation”, without a real understanding of the text.
He announced thus through X that they would start working so that the company was the best offering real “people” to talk to. In other words: what They would begin to recover and reactivate the hiring of personnel which was once replaced by a chatbot.
They are not alone. Just a few weeks ago, IBM explained that they were in the process of contracting workers, after having fired 8,000 to replace them with the. It is a somewhat more particular case, since IBM automated 94% of human resources related to human resources, With positions that will not cover again. With the savings in costs that this meant, they are reinforcing the hiring in positions related to programming and sales.
There are companies guaranteeing that replacements for AI are a correct decisionothers that end up reculating and evidencing on LinkedIn that it was not a good ideaand managers fearing that be replaced in the short term.
Image | Klarna
In Xataka | At the moment, AI is not removing work for people. Its development is leaving a reguero of dismissals
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