Klarna bet big on AI to replace its customer service team. Now it’s learning that chatbots, however impressive, still can’t replicate the patience of an actual human being explaining why a payment didn’t go through.

The buy-now-pay-later giant launched an AI chatbot in partnership with OpenAI in early 2024, automating work equivalent to roughly 800 full-time customer service agents and handling approximately 1.3 million customer inquiries per month. The result was a 40% reduction in customer service costs per transaction.

The AI experiment hits a wall

Klarna’s workforce shrank dramatically, falling by somewhere between 39% and 60% since 2022/2023. The company went from roughly 5,500 employees to a target of around 3,400 by late 2024 or early 2025. CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski has floated the idea of eventually dropping below 2,000 employees by 2030, with 96% of remaining staff using AI tools daily.

But by May 2025, Siemiatkowski acknowledged what customers had been saying for months. The AI-only approach was degrading service quality.

Klarna’s solution isn’t to rehire all those full-time employees, though. Instead, the company is piloting a hybrid model that brings human agents back through gig-style contracting. AI still handles roughly two-thirds of customer inquiries. The remaining third gets routed to human contractors.

The gig economy play and what it means

The model lets Klarna scale human support up or down based on demand without carrying the overhead of full-time salaries, benefits, and office space. Customer service roles that were once full-time positions with benefits are being reconstituted as flexible gig work.

Satisfaction scores in the new hybrid model have reportedly remained stable.

Klarna’s crypto ambitions add another layer

Klarna announced KlarnaUSD, its own stablecoin, on November 25, 2025, with a public mainnet launch planned for 2026. The stablecoin push also aligns with active partnerships Klarna is pursuing for crypto wallet integration and funding services.

For investors evaluating Klarna, the key question isn’t whether AI or humans win the customer service debate. It’s whether Klarna can execute on a hybrid model that keeps costs low without sacrificing the customer experience that drives retention in a fiercely competitive BNPL market.