Klarna's CEO Called AI the Future of Work. Then He Quietly Started Rehiring.

Klarna's CEO spent 2024 on a media tour telling anyone who would listen that AI had done the work of 700 full-time employees. By December of that year, headcount had dropped from 4,500 to 3,500, and he was on Bloomberg saying AI can already do every job humans do. In May 2025, he went back on Bloomberg and said the whole thing produced "lower quality." Now Klarna is rehiring.

The catch: those jobs aren't coming back the same way. The roles are gig contracts, 400 Swedish krona an hour (about $41), no benefits, no guaranteed hours. Juan and Kate walk through the full timeline of the reversal, a Gartner study of 350 executives that found no correlation between AI-driven headcount cuts and higher ROI, and the counterexample nobody expects: IKEA, which faced the same pressure, retrained its call center workers as interior designers, and made $1.4 billion from it.

Who decided a thousand jobs was acceptable math?

ABOUT SLOP WORLD

AI news with receipts. Juan Faisal and Kate Cook fact-check the claims Big Tech is making about AI, follow the money, and break down what it actually means for your job, your data, and your daily life. From leaked data and corporate cover-ups to AI schools, stolen identities, and layoff headlines that don't add up, we cover the AI stories that everyone's hyping but nobody's verifying. New episodes every Thursday.

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All content is commentary and opinion based on publicly available documents, interviews, and verifiable sources. References to "scams," "grifts," or related terms reflect our editorial opinion, not legal conclusions. Anyone featured who believes a statement is inaccurate may contact us.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Did AI Really Replace 700 Workers — or Just the Story?

0:44 Meet Klarna: The Buy Now Pay Later Company That Bet on AI

1:17 The Brag: AI Handles Two-Thirds of All Customer Service

2:11 The Media Tour: He Wanted to Be OpenAI's Guinea Pig

4:31 The Bloomberg Reversal: "Lower Quality"

6:04 Is AI Actually Paying Off? What 350 Executives Found

8:15 Still Calling Itself "AI First" While Quietly Rehiring

9:15 The Catch: Gig Contracts, $41/Hour, No Benefits

11:01 What IKEA Did Instead — And Made $1.4 Billion

13:35 Who Decided 1,000 Jobs Was Acceptable Math?