In a novel approach to corporate announcements, Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski utilized a hyperrealistic AI-generated avatar of himself to present the fintech firm’s first-quarter results for 2025. The digital clone appeared in a video, promptly disclosing its artificial nature before detailing the company’s financial performance. It stated, “It’s me, or rather my AI avatar, here to share Klarna’s Q1 2025 highlights,” immediately signaling a new frontier in executive communication.
The move underscored Klarna’s deepening integration of artificial intelligence across its operations, a strategy the company credits for achieving significant growth and its fourth consecutive profitable quarter. The AI-powered payments and commerce network reported a 15% year-over-year revenue increase to $701 million and an adjusted operating profit of $3 million. The use of an AI clone to deliver this news was not just a gimmick but a deliberate demonstration of the company’s core philosophy: deploying AI to fundamentally reshape how it operates, scales, and communicates. Siemiatkowski’s virtual counterpart directly attributed the strong performance to this AI-first strategy, which has permeated everything from customer support to product development.
Financial Performance and Growth Metrics
Klarna’s first quarter of 2025 marked a period of robust expansion and a return to profitability, largely fueled by its performance in the United States. The company’s revenue climbed to $701 million, a 15% rise on a like-for-like basis from the previous year. This growth was significantly bolstered by a 33% revenue increase in the U.S. market, where Klarna has secured high-profile partnerships with major retailers like Walmart, DoorDash, and eBay. The firm also reached a new milestone of 100 million active consumers in April 2025, its most rapid growth in two years.
The company achieved an adjusted operating profit of $3 million, its fourth straight profitable quarter, an improvement from a small loss recorded in the same period a year prior. This financial turnaround occurred alongside a gross merchandise volume (GMV) increase of 13% to $25 billion. While the company posted positive adjusted earnings, it also saw net losses widen to $99 million, up from $47 million the previous year, attributed to higher transaction costs and consumer credit losses. Despite these costs, the company has emphasized efficiency gains, with its AI strategy being a central component of its financial narrative.
An Aggressive AI-First Strategy
The avatar’s presentation was a manifestation of Klarna’s aggressive, company-wide AI deployment. Siemiatkowski has positioned Klarna as an “AI-first” company, integrating the technology to enhance efficiency and productivity across all departments. According to the firm, 96% of its employees use AI in their daily work. This widespread adoption is credited with a 152% increase in revenue per employee since the first quarter of 2023, putting the company on a path toward what it describes as a goal of $1 million in revenue per employee.
This strategy has had a profound impact on the company’s structure. Since 2022, Klarna has streamlined its workforce by approximately 40%, reducing its headcount from over 5,500 to around 3,400 by the end of 2024. Concurrently, it increased the proportion of technology-focused employees from 36% to 52% over the same period. Siemiatkowski has been candid about using AI to automate work, noting that the company is still shrinking by 10 to 15 people per week through natural attrition. In customer-facing roles, the company reports that AI has helped reduce costs per transaction by 40% since Q1 2023 without a decline in customer satisfaction.
CEO’s Philosophy on AI and the Future of Work
Sebastian Siemiatkowski has become one of the business world’s most outspoken proponents of AI, as well as one of its most blunt commentators on the technology’s potential to displace workers. He has publicly stated his belief that AI is capable of doing “all of the jobs that we as humans do,” including his own. He argues that many tech leaders are not being fully transparent about the impending disruption to knowledge-based professions. In private conversations, he claims fellow executives acknowledge that “the jobs are gone,” a reality he feels is dishonestly downplayed in public forums.
Siemiatkowski predicts a “massive change coming to knowledge work” that will affect not just banking but society at large. While he concedes that new jobs will eventually be created, he expresses concern for workers in roles susceptible to automation in the short term. He has also suggested that in the future, access to human customer service may become a premium “VIP thing” for which customers might pay extra. He defends his AI-driven workforce reductions as a necessary step toward efficiency, and notes that savings have been used to increase compensation for remaining employees through cash and equity payouts.
The New Face of Corporate Communication
Klarna’s use of a CEO avatar fits into a broader trend of businesses adopting AI-generated digital personas for corporate communications. This technology allows companies to create scalable, personalized video content without the logistical challenges of scheduling executives or filming in a studio. AI avatars are intelligent, human-like digital characters that can speak, gesture, and interact based on a text script, serving as brand ambassadors that can operate 24/7. Companies are using them for a range of applications, from internal training and onboarding to external marketing and sales outreach.
The primary advantage is the ability to personalize messages at a massive scale, creating tailored videos for thousands of individual customers, partners, or employees. This approach aims to bridge the gap between impersonal text-based communication and resource-intensive live-action video. As the technology becomes more sophisticated and accessible, experts predict AI avatars will become further integrated into business operations, potentially appearing in augmented reality environments or as persistent virtual “employees” that customers can interact with. However, the practice also raises ethical questions regarding the potential for misuse in creating deepfakes and the need for robust security measures to protect personal data and likenesses.
