Latest news with #Siemiatkowski
CNBC
18-06-2025
- Business
- CNBC
Klarna CEO wants to turn the platform into a 'super app' with help from AI
Key Points Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski wants to make the platform more of an all-encompassing financial "super app" that's personalized and can offer non-financial services. "With AI, you can abstract and adopt the experience much more to the specific user you're dealing with," Siemiatkowski told CNBC in an interview this week. On Wednesday, Klarna is set to announce the launch of mobile phone plans in the U.S. via a partnership with telecom services startup Gigs. Klarna's CEO is so bullish about artificial intelligence that he sees it changing the way the fintech's 100 million users bank every day. On Wednesday, Klarna — a pioneer of the popular "buy now, pay later" (BNPL) payment method — is announcing the launch of mobile phone plans in the U.S. via a partnership with telecom services startup Gigs. The move follows in the footsteps of rival fintechs Revolut and N26, which have launched similar offerings. Klarna's plans come with unlimited data, calls and texts and will cost $40 a month. The new telco offering aligns with CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski's vision to make Klarna more of an all-encompassing personalized financial "super app" that can offer services outside the realms of traditional finance. It isn't the company's first attempt. Previously, Klarna tried to make itself more akin to a "super app" — similar to Ant Group's Alipay and Tencent's WeChat Pay — offering additional services through multiple different buttons. This ended up being "confusing for the customer," however, Siemiatkowski told CNBC in an interview. But the Klarna boss stressed the part AI can play as looks to diversify its services and become known for more than its BNPL offering. "I think in this new AI world, there's a better opportunity to serve customers with different services and then adopt the kind of level of articulation and visualization of those services than there was historically," Siemiatkowski said. "With AI, you can abstract and adopt the experience much more to the specific user you're dealing with," he added. Super apps are popular in China and in other parts of Asia. They're meant to serve as a one-stop shop for all your mobile needs — for example, having taxi-hailing and food ordering in the same place as payment and messaging services. However, while super apps have flourished in Asia, adoption in Western markets has nonetheless been slower due to a number of reasons. 'Tremendous opportunity' Siemiatkowski says he's spending a lot of his time focusing on AI. "There's a tremendous opportunity for that — but it's just getting it to work," he said. "Everyone who has used it knows it can spit out some exciting stuff but then you need to make sure that it works every time." Going forward, Klarna's chief sees the platform becoming more of a "digital financial assistant" for users' every-day banking needs. "If we have some information that suggests that you are overpaying for your carrier subscription or your data or whatever," Siemiatkowski says, Klarna will aim to use AI to "offer you both a suggestion of a better price model, but also with a click, implement that and make it a reality." Acknowledging issues with Klarna's previous attempt to become a super app, Siemiatkowski says the technology just wasn't "mature" enough at the time. "Ultimately, the north star for all financial products — especially the fintech companies — is to try and be the financial advisor in your pocket," Simon Taylor, told CNBC. "That private banker like experience but provided by a brand becomes the super-aggregator of your financial life, and that's what 'owning the customer' looks like in the age of AI." Taylor added that, while many firms are still figuring out how to use AI, "you've got companies like Klarna building in public and trying to grab market share for a future that might not yet be built." Klarna reported a $99 million loss for the quarter that ended in March, citing one-off costs relating to depreciation, share-based payments and restructuring. Perception problem Still, Klarna has a perception problem to overcome. In the U.S., the firm has become synonymous with the "buy now, pay later" (BNPL) payment method, which allows consumers to pay off orders over monthly installments — typically interest-free. By contrast, European consumers recognize they can use Klarna to store their deposits and pay for things in one go as well as via a credit plan, according to Siemiatkowski. He also expressed frustration with "the kind of memes that we get in in the U.S. when it's like, 'Oh, Klarna launched with DoorDash... it is a sign of the macroeconomic environment," referring to a tie-up the company announced with food delivery app DoorDash earlier this year that was met with backlash online. Siemiakowski said this kind of reaction wouldn't happen in the German or Nordic markets, where Klarna operates more like online payment system PayPal. He sees a future where Klarna works as a more all-encompassing financial ecosystem with add-on services such as features for investments in stocks and cryptocurrencies — which, he adds, is "not that far off." "Offering people the ability to invest in both stock and crypto is is what's becoming a kind of more standard part of a neobank offering," he said, while stressing he doesn't want to compete with popular U.S. stock trading app Robinhood. When will Klarna IPO? Klarna paused plans to go public in April, after U.S. President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs on dozens of countries. Siemiatkowski said that Klarna has already achieved what it set out to do in order to be ready for that milestone — namely, building up a brand in the U.S. "The U.S. is now our largest market by number of users. It's a profitable market for us," he said. "Those things have been accomplished." Whether the company does or doesn't go public, the business strategy for Klarna remains the same. "That is just a healthy way to drive liquidity for our shareholders, as well as give the company more ways to fund itself, if it would like to do so, and ... to show that this is a an established company," Siemiatkowski said.
CNBC
18-06-2025
- Business
- CNBC
Klarna CEO wants to turn the platform into a 'super app' with AI
Klarna's CEO is so bullish about artificial intelligence that he sees it changing the way the fintech's 100 million users bank every day as he sets out to diversify the company's services. On Wednesday, Klarna — a pioneer of the popular "buy now, pay later" payment method — is announcing the launch of mobile phone plans in the U.S. via a partnership with telecom services startup Gigs. The plans come with unlimited data, calls and texts and will cost $40 a month. The new phone offering aligns with CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski's vision to make Klarna more of an all-encompassing personalized financial "super app" that can offer services outside the realms of traditional finance. It isn't the company's first attempt. Previously, Klarna tried to make itself more akin to a "super app" — similar to Ant Group's Alipay and Tencent's WeChat Pay — offering additional services through multiple different buttons. This ended up being "confusing for the customer," Siemiatkowski told CNBC in an interview. But the Klarna boss stressed the part AI can play in Klarna's fresh attempt. "I think in this new AI world, there's a better opportunity to serve customers with different services and then adopt the kind of level of articulation and visualization of those services than there was historically," he said. "With AI, you can abstract and adopt the experience much more to the specific user you're dealing with," Siemiatkowski said in an interview. Super apps are popular in China and in other parts of Asia. They're meant to serve as a one-stop shop for all your mobile needs — for example, having taxi-hailing and food ordering in the same place as payment and messaging services. While super apps have flourished in Asia, adoption in Western markets has nonetheless been slower due to a number of reasons. Siemiatkowski says he's spending a lot of his time focusing on AI. "There's a tremendous opportunity for that — but it's just getting it to work," he said. "Everyone who has used it knows it can spit out some exciting stuff but then you need to make sure that it works every time." Going forward, Klarna's chief sees the platform becoming more of a "digital financial assistant" for users' every-day banking needs. "If we have some information that suggests that you are overpaying for your carrier subscription or your data or whatever, we can now offer you both a suggestion of a better price model, but also with a click, implement that and make it a reality," Siemiatkowski said. Acknowledging issues with Klarna's previous attempt to become a super app, Siemiatkowski says the technology just wasn't "mature" enough at the time. Klarna reported a $99 million loss for the quarter that ended in March, citing one-off costs relating to depreciation, share-based payments and restructuring. Still, Klarna has a perception problem to overcome. In the U.S., the firm has become synonymous with the "buy now, pay later" (BNPL) payment method, which allows consumers to pay off orders over monthly installments — typically interest-free. By contrast, in Europe, consumers recognize they can use Klarna to store their deposits and pay for things in one go as well as via a credit plan, Siemiatkowski noted. He also expressed frustration with "the kind of memes that we get in in the U.S. when it's like, 'Oh, Klarna launched with DoorDash ... it is a sign of the macroeconomic environment," referring to a tie-up the company announced with food delivery app DoorDash earlier this year that was met with backlash online. Siemiakowski said this kind of reaction wouldn't happen in the German or Nordic markets, where Klarna operates more like online payment system PayPal. He sees a future where Klarna works as a more all-encompassing financial ecosystem with add-on services such as features for investments in stocks and cryptocurrencies — which, he adds, is "not that far off." "Offering people the ability to invest in both stock and crypto is is what's becoming a kind of more standard part of a neobank offering," he said, while stressing he doesn't want to compete with popular U.S. stock trading app Robinhood. Klarna paused plans to go public in April, after U.S. President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs on dozens of countries. Siemiatkowski said that Klarna has already achieved what it set out to do in order to be ready for that milestone — namely, building up a brand in the U.S. "The U.S. is now our largest market by number of users. It's a profitable market for us," he said. "Those things have been accomplished." Whether the company does or doesn't go public, the business strategy for Klarna remains the same. "That is just a healthy way to drive liquidity for our shareholders, as well as give the company more ways to fund itself, if it would like to do so, and ... to show that this is a an established company," Siemiatkowski said.
Business Insider
15-06-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
The CEO of British telecom giant BT warns AI could lead to further job cuts at the firm
Executives warning of the potential impact of artificial intelligence on white-collar jobs is becoming an increasingly familiar tale. The latest is Allison Kirkby, the CEO of British telecommunications giant BT. In an interview with the Financial Times published Sunday, Kirkby said that advancements in AI technology could lead to further cuts at the firm. BT announced in 2023 plans to cut up to 55,000 jobs by 2030 as part of a push to reduce its cost base by the end of the decade. But Kirkby told the FT that this plan "did not reflect" AI's "full potential." "Depending on what we learn from AI ... there may be an opportunity for BT to be even smaller by the end of the decade," she said. BT has turned to AI in recent years to reinvent processes in areas like customer service. The company announced in 2024 that it was using generative AI to aid sales and support operations across BT and EE, its mobile network division. In December, the firm said that EE's virtual assistant, dubbed "Aimee," was handling up to 60,000 customer conversations a week. BT is not alone in its attempts to automate such tasks. Swedish payments company Klarna has been open about its efforts to use AI to run its customer service desks. In 2024, Klarna said its OpenAI-powered AI assistant was carrying out the work of 700 full-time customer service agents. The firm's CEO, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, has been a strong advocate of AI but has since softened his position on the tech, saying in May that certain cost-cutting efforts had gone too far and that Klarna was now recruiting for its customer service operation, Bloomberg reported. But Siemiatkowski has remained confident that AI poses a major threat to white-collar jobs going forward. Speaking on The Times Tech podcast earlier this month, Siemiatkowski said that the technology had played a major role in "efficiency gains" at Klarna and that its workforce had reduced from about 5,500 to 3,000 people in the last two years as a result. "My suspicion again is that there will be an implication for white-collar jobs, and when that happens, that usually leads to at least a recession in the short term," he added. "Unfortunately, I don't see how we could avoid that, with what's happening from a technology perspective." AI companies themselves have sounded the alarm that their product could significantly impact the job market. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently warned that AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs within the next five years. "We, as the producers of this technology, have a duty and an obligation to be honest about what is coming," Amodei told Axios in May. "I don't think this is on people's radar.
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski's blunt truths about Klarna's AI-first future
'Sorry if I'm being blunt,' says Sebastian Siemiatkowski as he explains why he delegated Klarna's last financial results announcement to an AI-generated version of himself. But 'I have yet to meet a CEO that's excited about the quarterly earnings reports and calls with investors.' The Swedish payments company's co-founder and CEO doesn't fear his avatar replacing him any time soon, but says even executives may yet find themselves in the robots' path, as 'it is definitely easier to replace the CEO than it is to replace a nurse.' Bluntness comes easily to Siemiatkowski, particularly when he's explaining how artificial intelligence threatens employment in his own business and beyond. Siemiatkowski is a pioneer of the $560 billion 'buy-now-pay-later' industry. He now stands on the cusp of a New York listing that could value his creation at a reported $15 billion and validate his 20 years of proselytizing for its business model. He has also become a standard-bearer for the notion of 'AI-first' companies, after saying last year that the technology could replace 700 customer service agents. Klarna reduced staffing by 39% over two years to cut losses Siemiatkowski blames in part on his own overhiring. It is still shrinking by 10 to 15 people a week through natural attrition, he says, adding that he uses LinkedIn to track his fellow CEOs' headcount as a 'bullsh*t detector' of how serious they are about automating work. AI's disruptions to workforces could cause a recession, Siemiatkowski posited this week, but he thinks companies are not leveling with employees about that prospect. Some Silicon Valley CEOs reassure audiences that new jobs will replace the ones being lost, he says: 'And then I talk to them in private rooms and it's like, 'Oh my God, the jobs are gone'... I feel that is dishonest.' Several 'AI-first' executives have faced pushback, with Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn having to reassure users that the language-learning app would still hire humans after a social media backlash. Siemiatkowski, too, has tempered his plans and is rehiring some flesh-and-blood customer service agents. 'Obviously, AI today can pretend to be empathetic and express emotions and stuff, but at the core, people crave human connection,' he says, predicting that offering a real person at the end of the line will become 'a VIP thing' for which customers pay a premium. Transparent, not top-down The risk of branding your company 'AI-first' is that staff hear 'employees second.' Siemiatkowski says Klarna has used savings from shrinking its payroll to increase compensation for the 3,422 employees it has retained. But he thinks managers are too often afraid to tell their people how much change they see coming. 'We think we're protecting them,' he says. 'But over time, you realize that it generally leads to bad outcomes and lack of trust. I've learned that it's better to be honest and transparent, and trust my employees to be grown-ups who can deal with complex, threatening information.' Siemiatkowski is a fan of Toyota's ethos of enlisting employees to improve processes, and Klarna has been gathering 200 staff at a time on video calls to ask where technology could eliminate inefficiencies. Managers are not imposing recommendations from on high, he says. 'The team members saw it themselves.' The process can leave dozens of employees out of a role at a time, he says, but normal churn means the company usually has other positions to fill. Klarna puts sidelined staff 'on the bench' to be able to fill jobs as people resign, he says, adding that 80% of them find a new position within days. The hands-on path to growth It's a misconception that executives can't scale up a company by being hands-on, Siemiatkowski says, pointing to in-the-details executives from Walmart's Sam Walton to Apple's Steve Jobs. 'The truth is that hands-on is the only thing that truly scales.' He has regulators and credit committees to worry about, he notes, 'but I can't let that eat the whole agenda. I need to have two or three days a week where I can go deeper in specific areas and accept that, maybe for a few months, this is where I'm going to spend more of my time.' That was the approach Siemiatkowski took early in the pandemic, when Klarna realized that it was at risk of ceding the US market to Afterpay, an Australian competitor. Unable to travel, he and his team began furiously tapping their networks — anyone from investors and employees to LinkedIn contacts — to arrange virtual meetings with US retailers. It soon concluded that 'nothing beats the CEO sales pitch.' Siemiatkowski made 1,000 sales calls to US retail executives in 2020. 'I would go to the office in the morning, do my job in Swedish [working hours], come back, eat dinner with the kids, and then log in,' he recalls. By the end of that year, Klarna had deals with roughly half of the country's 100 largest chains. It took until this year for him to secure an exclusive deal with Walmart, after giving it warrants over Klarna shares. The world's largest retailer is a great negotiator, he says, so 'any deal you make with them is going to be a tough deal.' A disrupter meets its skeptics From the start, Siemiatkowski was driven by an urge to disrupt the finance industry's incumbents. 'I dreamt, since I was a kid, about going after the banks,' he says. The debt collectors' letters he recalls his parents receiving fueled his 'crazy obsession,' he says. Regardless of personal grudges, he also saw that 'banks digitally sucked' 20 years ago, creating lucrative opportunities for new entrants. 'We weren't like, 'Oh, we're going to start this corporate social responsibility bank,'' he says: 'It was: 'We're going to make a lot of profit.'' Two decades later, Klarna has just reported a fourth consecutive quarter of profitability, albeit on an adjusted basis. But Siemiatkowski still routinely has to reassure commentators and authorities that Klarna's 'pay in four' model is not leading consumers to spend money they don't have. He blames some of that on the lobbying and messaging power of the industry he set out to disrupt. Klarna's core product generates lower profit margins than credit cards, he notes, 'so this model is threatening a very, very large profit pool of incumbents.' Klarna has yet to find a report on its industry that it thinks is entirely unbiased, he says. Last month, the Federal Reserve reported that late payments by BNPL borrowers had increased sharply in 2024. While the Trump administration has said it will not regulate industry members like credit card lenders, Democrats and UK regulators want more oversight. When Klarna struck a partnership deal with food delivery group DoorDash in March, journalists seized on the notion of consumers paying for pizzas in installments as evidence of BNPL lenders tempting customers to overextend in a fragile economy. 'It lends itself to amazing headlines and a lot of clicks,' Siemiatkowski says, but 'it has nothing to do with reality.' Klarna's average BNPL user has outstanding debt of under $100 and can think for themself, he says. He is not arguing for no regulation, he insists, saying: 'I love capitalism — as long as democracy puts some limits to its most shameless actions.' A country cousin crosses the Atlantic Klarna is a rare European startup to crack the US, and Siemiatkowski jokes that he feels like 'the cousin from the countryside' in Silicon Valley, even with venture capitalist Michael Moritz chairing his board. 'When I go to San Francisco, I always feel like I'm — 'Hello, I'm from Sweden!'' he says in an exaggerated accent. Building a global business from Stockholm has been hard, he says. 'We grew very successfully, but in a very small market, so the success in Sweden could never support the success in Germany. And the success in Germany could never support the success in the UK. And the UK couldn't support the US.' He sees Europe's higher tax rates on the kind of people who make enough money from one startup to invest in others as holding back future Klarnas. Entrepreneurs need early-stage backers, he notes. 'Who are these angel investors? Well, they are rich people. Where do you get rich people? Well, people who don't get taxed too much.' Sweden's prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, has been among those urging Europe to make its capital markets more competitive with New York. But Siemiatkowski seems unswayed. The US is Klarna's largest market, he says, and more than half of its investors are there. 'How are we Swedish?' he asks bluntly. 'Because I happen to live here?' A New York initial public offering would put Klarna head-to-head with Affirm, the payments rival led by PayPal alumnus Max Levchin. Affirm's stock has been on a wild ride this year, halving between mid-February and early April, then staging a strong enough rally to rise above January's level, in bouts of market volatility that have deterred many companies from listing. Siemiatkowski says he and Moritz decided early on that Klarna would have to be well-known — and profitable — in the US for it to list there. It met those conditions in 2023, he says: 'Now it's just a question of when you feel the market conditions are right.' Klarna has already weathered extreme swings in the private markets, with its valuation spiking as high as $46.5 billion before coming down to earth to $6.7 billion after a funding round. 'I've been very gifted to get a very rocky ride,' Siemiatkowski says, reasoning that he has learned from failure and is now enjoying applying those lessons. On one particularly frustrating day, he remembers jumping in his car, cranking up the volume to , by Queen and David Bowie, and realizing that he had chosen this challenge. 'If you're Zlatan [Ibrahimović], the biggest Swedish soccer player, you want to play in the Champions League finals,' he remarks. You may not win the finals, but you have to appreciate the experience regardless of the pressure, he says. 'I mean, this is what I signed up for, right?'
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski's blunt truths about Klarna's AI-first future
'Sorry if I'm being blunt,' says Sebastian Siemiatkowski as he explains why he delegated Klarna's last financial results announcement to an AI-generated version of himself. But 'I have yet to meet a CEO that's excited about the quarterly earnings reports and calls with investors.' The Swedish payments company's co-founder and CEO doesn't fear his avatar replacing him any time soon, but says even executives may yet find themselves in the robots' path, as 'it is definitely easier to replace the CEO than it is to replace a nurse.' Bluntness comes easily to Siemiatkowski, particularly when he's explaining how artificial intelligence threatens employment in his own business and beyond. Siemiatkowski is a pioneer of the $560 billion 'buy-now-pay-later' industry. He now stands on the cusp of a New York listing that could value his creation at a reported $15 billion and validate his 20 years of proselytizing for its business model. He has also become a standard-bearer for the notion of 'AI-first' companies, after saying last year that the technology could replace 700 customer service agents. Klarna reduced staffing by 39% over two years to cut losses Siemiatkowski blames in part on his own overhiring. It is still shrinking by 10 to 15 people a week through natural attrition, he says, adding that he uses LinkedIn to track his fellow CEOs' headcount as a 'bullsh*t detector' of how serious they are about automating work. AI's disruptions to workforces could cause a recession, Siemiatkowski posited this week, but he thinks companies are not leveling with employees about that prospect. Some Silicon Valley CEOs reassure audiences that new jobs will replace the ones being lost, he says: 'And then I talk to them in private rooms and it's like, 'Oh my God, the jobs are gone'... I feel that is dishonest.' Several 'AI-first' executives have faced pushback, with Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn having to reassure users that the language-learning app would still hire humans after a social media backlash. Siemiatkowski, too, has tempered his plans and is rehiring some flesh-and-blood customer service agents. 'Obviously, AI today can pretend to be empathetic and express emotions and stuff, but at the core, people crave human connection,' he says, predicting that offering a real person at the end of the line will become 'a VIP thing' for which customers pay a premium. Transparent, not top-down The risk of branding your company 'AI-first' is that staff hear 'employees second.' Siemiatkowski says Klarna has used savings from shrinking its payroll to increase compensation for the 3,422 employees it has retained. But he thinks managers are too often afraid to tell their people how much change they see coming. 'We think we're protecting them,' he says. 'But over time, you realize that it generally leads to bad outcomes and lack of trust. I've learned that it's better to be honest and transparent, and trust my employees to be grown-ups who can deal with complex, threatening information.' Siemiatkowski is a fan of Toyota's ethos of enlisting employees to improve processes, and Klarna has been gathering 200 staff at a time on video calls to ask where technology could eliminate inefficiencies. Managers are not imposing recommendations from on high, he says. 'The team members saw it themselves.' The process can leave dozens of employees out of a role at a time, he says, but normal churn means the company usually has other positions to fill. Klarna puts sidelined staff 'on the bench' to be able to fill jobs as people resign, he says, adding that 80% of them find a new position within days. The hands-on path to growth It's a misconception that executives can't scale up a company by being hands-on, Siemiatkowski says, pointing to in-the-details executives from Walmart's Sam Walton to Apple's Steve Jobs. 'The truth is that hands-on is the only thing that truly scales.' He has regulators and credit committees to worry about, he notes, 'but I can't let that eat the whole agenda. I need to have two or three days a week where I can go deeper in specific areas and accept that, maybe for a few months, this is where I'm going to spend more of my time.' That was the approach Siemiatkowski took early in the pandemic, when Klarna realized that it was at risk of ceding the US market to Afterpay, an Australian competitor. Unable to travel, he and his team began furiously tapping their networks — anyone from investors and employees to LinkedIn contacts — to arrange virtual meetings with US retailers. It soon concluded that 'nothing beats the CEO sales pitch.' Siemiatkowski made 1,000 sales calls to US retail executives in 2020. 'I would go to the office in the morning, do my job in Swedish [working hours], come back, eat dinner with the kids, and then log in,' he recalls. By the end of that year, Klarna had deals with roughly half of the country's 100 largest chains. It took until this year for him to secure an exclusive deal with Walmart, after giving it warrants over Klarna shares. The world's largest retailer is a great negotiator, he says, so 'any deal you make with them is going to be a tough deal.' A disrupter meets its skeptics From the start, Siemiatkowski was driven by an urge to disrupt the finance industry's incumbents. 'I dreamt, since I was a kid, about going after the banks,' he says. The debt collectors' letters he recalls his parents receiving fueled his 'crazy obsession,' he says. Regardless of personal grudges, he also saw that 'banks digitally sucked' 20 years ago, creating lucrative opportunities for new entrants. 'We weren't like, 'Oh, we're going to start this corporate social responsibility bank,'' he says: 'It was: 'We're going to make a lot of profit.'' Two decades later, Klarna has just reported a fourth consecutive quarter of profitability, albeit on an adjusted basis. But Siemiatkowski still routinely has to reassure commentators and authorities that Klarna's 'pay in four' model is not leading consumers to spend money they don't have. He blames some of that on the lobbying and messaging power of the industry he set out to disrupt. Klarna's core product generates lower profit margins than credit cards, he notes, 'so this model is threatening a very, very large profit pool of incumbents.' Klarna has yet to find a report on its industry that it thinks is entirely unbiased, he says. Last month, the Federal Reserve reported that late payments by BNPL borrowers had increased sharply in 2024. While the Trump administration has said it will not regulate industry members like credit card lenders, Democrats and UK regulators want more oversight. When Klarna struck a partnership deal with food delivery group DoorDash in March, journalists seized on the notion of consumers paying for pizzas in installments as evidence of BNPL lenders tempting customers to overextend in a fragile economy. 'It lends itself to amazing headlines and a lot of clicks,' Siemiatkowski says, but 'it has nothing to do with reality.' Klarna's average BNPL user has outstanding debt of under $100 and can think for themself, he says. He is not arguing for no regulation, he insists, saying: 'I love capitalism — as long as democracy puts some limits to its most shameless actions.' A country cousin crosses the Atlantic Klarna is a rare European startup to crack the US, and Siemiatkowski jokes that he feels like 'the cousin from the countryside' in Silicon Valley, even with venture capitalist Michael Moritz chairing his board. 'When I go to San Francisco, I always feel like I'm — 'Hello, I'm from Sweden!'' he says in an exaggerated accent. Building a global business from Stockholm has been hard, he says. 'We grew very successfully, but in a very small market, so the success in Sweden could never support the success in Germany. And the success in Germany could never support the success in the UK. And the UK couldn't support the US.' He sees Europe's higher tax rates on the kind of people who make enough money from one startup to invest in others as holding back future Klarnas. Entrepreneurs need early-stage backers, he notes. 'Who are these angel investors? Well, they are rich people. Where do you get rich people? Well, people who don't get taxed too much.' Sweden's prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, has been among those urging Europe to make its capital markets more competitive with New York. But Siemiatkowski seems unswayed. The US is Klarna's largest market, he says, and more than half of its investors are there. 'How are we Swedish?' he asks bluntly. 'Because I happen to live here?' A New York initial public offering would put Klarna head-to-head with Affirm, the payments rival led by PayPal alumnus Max Levchin. Affirm's stock has been on a wild ride this year, halving between mid-February and early April, then staging a strong enough rally to rise above January's level, in bouts of market volatility that have deterred many companies from listing. Siemiatkowski says he and Moritz decided early on that Klarna would have to be well-known — and profitable — in the US for it to list there. It met those conditions in 2023, he says: 'Now it's just a question of when you feel the market conditions are right.' Klarna has already weathered extreme swings in the private markets, with its valuation spiking as high as $46.5 billion before coming down to earth to $6.7 billion after a funding round. 'I've been very gifted to get a very rocky ride,' Siemiatkowski says, reasoning that he has learned from failure and is now enjoying applying those lessons. On one particularly frustrating day, he remembers jumping in his car, cranking up the volume to , by Queen and David Bowie, and realizing that he had chosen this challenge. 'If you're Zlatan [Ibrahimović], the biggest Swedish soccer player, you want to play in the Champions League finals,' he remarks. You may not win the finals, but you have to appreciate the experience regardless of the pressure, he says. 'I mean, this is what I signed up for, right?' Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
