Klarna CEO on how OpenAI partnership has allowed the company to stay ahead of the curve
Sebastian Siemiatkowski knew GenAI was going to be a big deal, so he rushed to get on Sam Altman’s calendar when OpenAI began getting some recognition. Now, according to Siemiatkowski, the companies have a productive partnership—and even share a Slack channel.
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00:00At Klana, we were like as many other, I think, entrepreneurs and founders and founder-led companies.
00:06You know, when you start a business, you're all about building a product,
00:09but then you start thinking about how do you organize yourself and all that.
00:12And then you look around and you read these books, like management books,
00:16like Good to Great or, you know, all these different books.
00:18You're like, what do we do from that?
00:20And then you read in the newspaper, it says, Google just launched 20% of creative time,
00:24which used to be a big thing, you know, back in the days.
00:26And like, we have to do 20% of creative time for everyone.
00:28And we did that and nothing happened.
00:30And, you know, we put Coca-Cola in the rooms, free Coca-Cola, ping-pong tables,
00:34and, you know, Lego in the conference rooms.
00:36Like, we did it all, right?
00:38We were trying and testing all of the things that, like, you read in the press.
00:41You're reading too many management books, I think.
00:43Exactly. That was my conclusion as well, eventually.
00:46But it took some time to reach that, you know, reach that realization.
00:49Welcome to Leadership Next, the podcast about the changing rules of business leadership.
00:56And I'm Diane Brady.
00:58When I think about Klarna, I'm hard-pressed to think of a bigger fan of generative AI
01:04to the point where you actually put out a press release, I think, in your first month,
01:08talking about how, you know, I think it was the equivalent of 700 full-time agents through chat GPT.
01:15Talk about how transformative that has been for you.
01:18I mean, I think it's amazing.
01:20First and foremost, I would like to say something,
01:22which is that I'm actually one of the people who are kind of skeptical about new technologies.
01:26And, like, people have been asking me about crypto, obviously, for a lot of years.
01:29And I always said, like, if I can't convince my mom to use it, I don't understand the value of it.
01:34And so, like, I never got my mom to understand why she would have a Bitcoin.
01:38And I still haven't convinced her.
01:40But she does use Klarna.
01:41But she does use Klarna.
01:42Okay, there you go.
01:43And so I think when Gen AI came out, it was very clear from day one
01:46that this actually has practical application.
01:48We can use it.
01:49But it's difficult to get it to practical application because it's a new technology.
01:52You have to figure it out.
01:53And as much as you will see a lot of noise currently about people doing press releases
01:57about this and that, product launches,
01:59few things we have seen have actually come to, like, serious, you know, results
02:04that have business impact.
02:06And so when we achieved that with the customer service experience
02:09where actually the AI chat has a similar and many times higher customer satisfaction
02:16than people interacting with human agents,
02:19we felt that that was quite an interesting data point.
02:22And we wanted to share that because at the same point of time,
02:24we feel a little bit that society is not necessarily,
02:27and politicians are not necessarily taking enough consideration
02:30to the implications it will have on jobs,
02:33which is why obviously sharing that 700 number,
02:35we knew it was somewhat controversial and it will create some, like,
02:38people would, you know, open, you know, react to it.
02:42But at the same point of time, we said, look, in the short term,
02:45we hire big customer service companies.
02:48They have hundreds of thousands of employees.
02:49They're just going to, when we have less errands,
02:51they're going to send errands as well.
02:52These people will still have jobs.
02:53But in the longer term, in the few coming years,
02:56this will have severe and, you know, big implications for society.
03:00And we think it's time to think about that more proactively.
03:03We understand you allowed Sam Altman from OpenAI
03:08to basically use Klarna like an AI sandbox.
03:13So I'm just curious to hear how that relationship started.
03:16Obviously, we're seeing OpenAI spark some really interesting partnerships.
03:19This is definitely one of them.
03:21So tell us about it.
03:22When I tried it myself first in November,
03:25a little bit more than a year ago now, I was like, wow,
03:27this was like a Google experience back 20 years ago
03:29when I tried Google first time.
03:31But even better, I would say to some degree.
03:33And, like, it became very obvious to me that Sam and OpenAI
03:37would be a company that would be very hard to reach very soon
03:40and create relationships.
03:41So I was like, I better move fast before it's too late.
03:44So I made sure to get on the calendar.
03:46Yeah, exactly. Get on the calendar.
03:48I took a trip to San Francisco basically only to see Sam
03:51and I managed to still.
03:52It was kind of funny because I think initially the meeting was two hours
03:54and by the time I arrived, it was only 30 minutes.
03:56So just kind of a good impression of like how fast OpenAI's calendar
04:00were shrinking due to the interest in the company.
04:03But I think the point, we had a meeting and I said,
04:06look, I want to be a great partner.
04:08And I know afterwards I heard a little bit, they were like,
04:10really? A European bank?
04:12Are they going to be one of our most forward-leaning partners?
04:15But since then, we created a joint Slack channel
04:17and we've had a lot of good interactions and just testing
04:20and saying, we want to try that, we want to try that
04:22and provided a lot of good, meaningful feedback to them
04:24about how the APIs work and what could be working better.
04:27And I think it's helped establish us as a good partner.
04:31There's such a mix in maturity of application
04:34and utilization of AI across companies.
04:36So you'll have everything from people like Klona
04:38very much leaning in to people that are still like,
04:40oh, I'm not sure how this is going to work.
04:42And what about data? What about hallucinations?
04:45What about this and that?
04:47But for the people leaning in, there's a capacity issue.
04:50There's a clear capacity issue where there's not enough electricity.
04:53There's not a lot of processing power.
04:57And so leaning in and making sure to be a customer that's actually,
05:01we just want to buy and we want to make sure we're easy to work with
05:03actually benefits us in that case because it becomes easier
05:05to get access to the processing power that we need.
05:08And so it's been very helpful for us.
05:10And I think it just allows us to stay slightly ahead of the curve,
05:13which is what we're trying to do.
05:15You're the first person I know who's used the Toyota way
05:18applied to something that's not manufacturing.
05:21I think of tape on the floor and very kind of distinct,
05:25modular management practices to apply it to the financial services sector
05:30is really interesting.
05:31Well, and I think it's very fun that you say that
05:33because I'm not going to say which company this was,
05:35but I talked to one of the largest banks in the world
05:37and their chairman is from the manufacturing industry.
05:40And he was quite disappointed that the bank that he was a chairman of
05:44wasn't more applying these practices.
05:47I think to some degree, the thing with banking, which is interesting,
05:50and I think there was a research that showed that banking
05:53is the only industry in the last 150 years
05:57that basically has zero productivity gains in the last 150 years.
06:00So as opposed to manufacturing, a lot of it has a huge price.
06:03And I think the reason for that is because we regulated banks so much,
06:07there's actually a very limited competition, to be fair.
06:10Once you reach that size, the competition is actually quite limited.
06:13And so as a consequence, the excess wealth that is created
06:16has been distributed to the employees of the banks and the shareholders,
06:20which is why we also used to have these tremendously high compensation.
06:23Now, after 2007, it's come down a little bit.
06:25And so there hasn't been that strong incentive.
06:27And as much as officially banks are so well regulated
06:30with policies and instructions,
06:32in a lot of banks, those compliance parts
06:35live a parallel life to reality,
06:38which is also why we're still seeing things happening
06:41and things blowing up now and then.
06:43So I think that really applying them in practice
06:46is actually an interesting challenge
06:49and has a lot of opportunity in itself.
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