“My wife taught me something,” Krana CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski told the crowd in the London SXSW crowd. He is talking about the headlines of the company's desire to hire human workers, after saying Krana uses artificial intelligence to do the equivalent of 700 workers. "Two things can be correct at the same time," he said.

Siemiatkowski said the company does hope to stop hiring human workers a few years ago and launch AI agents to help reduce customer support costs and increase company revenue. He said the company had 5,500 workers two years ago, and now that number is about 3,000, adding that as the company's salary costs drop, Krana is now trying to invest much of that money into employee cash and equity compensation.

However, he insists that this does not mean that humans don't have the opportunity to work in his company. "We think providing human customer service will always be a VIP thing," he said, comparing it to how people sew hand-made clothes instead of machines sewn. "So we think we can do two things at the same time. We can use AI to automatically take away boring work, which is a manual work thing, but we will also ensure that our customers have relationships."

He talked about how the company plans to balance employees with AI workers. Currently, the company's engineering position is not as much as other departments' engineering reductions, but he noted that this could change.

“What I’m seeing internally is the rise of businessmen who are coding themselves,” he said, adding that the challenge many engineers face today is that they are not smart about business. "I think people will become more valuable," Siemiatkowski continued, especially because they can use AI and take full advantage of their business understanding.

He himself is using chatgpt to help him learn coding and help him understand more aspects of Krana's data. He said doing so helps Krana become a better company. Previously, he thought he would never catch up on what he needed to play a more existing role in the company’s database conversation.

“I’ll relax a little, I’ll throw it into chatgpt and say, ‘It makes sense, right?” he said, adding that he uses chatgpt like a private teacher.

But he also knows that AI is not only related to employees. He talked about the increase in scams and how it affected a society like his native Sweden. The Financial Times recently reported on the rise of fintech scams, for example, how susceptible residents in Singapore naturally trust various institutions for them.

"AI is clearly accelerating this," Siemiatkowski said.

Siemiatkowski also addressed again why the company stopped using Salesforce and Workday, because Klarna wanted to consolidate its data in a way that it would be easier to eat AI. He said, for example, if Krana wants to collect information about one of its customers, it will have to go through Google Suite, Slack, Workday, Salesforce, etc.

“We realized that the only way forward is to consolidate (the data),” he said, adding that the company stopped using about 1,200 small software services.

About the IPO that it is in the air? He noted that Krana could move on soon, but otherwise it would not be promised. He smiled and said, "I can say I'm glad the turmoil in the market has decreased."

If he had a wand, could one change? He will once again make Britain a part of the EU. Then, the crowd burst into applause.