Swedish 'buy now pay later' firm Klarna says AI chatbots led to layoffs

The company, which said it had swung to a first-half adjusted profit of 673m Swedish krona (€60m), said its AI assistant was performing the work of 700 employees, reducing the average resolution time from 11 minutes to just two

Klarna also reported first-half revenue of 13.3bn Swedish krona, up 27% from a year before and boosted by revenue growth of 38% in the US.

Swedish payments group Klarna said it had reduced hundreds of jobs and sees more reductions to come as it implements AI to handle customer queries, saying chatbots can sharply reduce the time taken to resolve issues.

The "buy now pay later" company, widely expected to seek a stock market listing next year, has been one of the early adopters of GenAI to cut costs and boost productivity.