--- title: "Company Replaces Customer Support With AI, Then Panics and Forces Engineers to Work the Phones as the AI Fails" description: "Months after reversing course on its AI automation scheme, personal finance company Klarna is struggling to re-fill its ranks." date: "2025-09-04" modified: "2025-09-04" authors: - name: "Joe Wilkins" job_title: "Correspondent" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/jwilkins" url: "https://futurism.com/klarna-ai-automation-engineers" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" tags: - "ai agents" - "bnpl" - "klarna" --- # Company Replaces Customer Support With AI, Then Panics and Forces Engineers to Work the Phones as the AI Fails ![Months after reversing course on its AI automation scheme, personal finance company Klarna is struggling to re-fill its ranks.]() *\Image: Getty / Futurism\* Of all the startups that have come and gone, the personal finance company Klarna might be one of the best bellwethers for the finance industry overall. Specializing in "buy now pay later" microloans — tiny cash advances for purchases that don't need to go through a bank — Klarna hit app stores at a time when US consumer debt was climbing toward a [record high](). Now a giant of the personal finance landscape, the billion-dollar company recently reported a jaw dropping [17 percent default rate]() on its loans, a number which [finance experts warn]() is a bad omen for consumer debt more broadly. And beyond revolutionizing the [consumer debt trap](), Klarna is now also offering a cautionary tale in AI automation. The Swedish company was an early adopter of "AI agents," a broad term for machine learning software that's supposedly capable of handling complex computer tasks on its own. There's just one wrinkle**:** even the best AI agents remain [horribly inefficient](), and Klarna has all but [bet the farm]() on their success. That's not an exaggeration — after [rolling out AI]() to replace his customer service department in 2024, Klarna CEO and founder Sebastian Siemiatkowski bragged that he hadn't hired a human in a year, because AI was doing the work of "[700 full-time agents]()." Perhaps unsurprisingly, that quickly backfired. In May of 2025, Klarna [started scrambling]() to hire back the full-time workers and contractors it had confidently axed. But as it turns out, hiring a whole department's worth of staff is a lot harder than firing them. In order to refill its ranks, the company has started forcing software engineers and marketers over from their highly specialized roles into call centers, [according to *Business Insider*](). After falling flat on his face with the AI gamble, Siemiatkowski is once again trying to set his company apart — this time by becoming the "best at offering a human to speak to." It's a particularly telling sign for AI agents and the prospect of AI in business more broadly. A recent survey found that nearly [95 percent]() of corporate AI rollouts are failing to deliver expected financial returns. Meanwhile, a study of American executives and CEOs found that [less than half]() felt confident in their company's ability to successfully navigate an AI rollout. It remains unclear whether Klarna can persuade its engineering and marketing teams to make a career pivot to customer wrangling. Either way, investors are likely to be watching the company’s operationalities ahead of its long-anticipated [stock market debut](), which is targeting a hefty $14 billion valuation. **More on AI:** [*CEO Brags That He Gets "Extremely Excited" Firing People and Replacing Them With AI*]() ## Author At Futurism, I focus on the intersection of technology and power — examining the economics, history, and politics behind today’s dystopian headlines. As a writer, I’m interested in topics ranging from AI’s impact on labor to startups nobody asked for. My prior work includes bylines in Jacobin, Verso, and Blue Labyrinths. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Forbes, The Guardian, MIT Technology Review, Time, The Nation, Mother Jones, The Verge, and Wired. I grew up in Michigan, attending Central Michigan University as well as Ball State University, where I earned a master of music. I now live in Brooklyn with my girlfriend and our cat Ziti. On weekends, you can find me hunched over a cold pint arguing geopolitics with the other transplants. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()