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Tag: klarna

  • Klarna’s CEO agrees with Dario Amodei. He thinks his white-collar workforce will shrink by a third by 2030 | Fortune

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    As AI spells doom for white-collar jobs, Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski is providing a transparent look at how his company is shrinking its workforce in real time. 

    While about 40% of employers expect to cut their workforces in response to AI automating tasks, how much is an open question. Siemiatkowski expects his workforce to decrease from 3,000 to fewer than 2,000 by 2030, but he doesn’t foresee any layoffs, he recently said on the “20 VC” podcast hosted by venture capitalist Harry Stebbing. 

    Rather, Klarna is relying on “natural attrition” of about 20% each year, he said, adding that employees spend an average of five years at the company before leaving. 

    “The reason for that is because I’ve seen the acceleration of AI, and I know we can ship all these things on the existing organization,” Siemiatkowski said. 

    Klarna launched an OpenAI-powered customer service chatbot in early 2024 that the company claims can do the work equivalent of 800 full-time agents. The “buy now, pay later” platform debuted on the NYSE last September with a $1.37 billion IPO and was valued at $15 billion at the time. The company’s stock price has fallen about 59% since its IPO.  

    Klarna has more than halved its workforce since 2022, going from more than 7,000 employees to less than 3,000. Siemiatkowski previously said that he believes that AI is capable of doing all jobs, including his own. 

    “I am not necessarily super excited about this,” he previously wrote on X. “On the contrary, my work to me is a super important part of who I am, and realizing it might become unnecessary is gloomy.” 

    The future of the workforce

    Siemiatkowski has previously called out other “tech bros” for not being “to the point” about AI disruption because of fear of negative backlash. He says he does not want to be “one of them.” 

    Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has emerged as a vocal advocate for preparing for a large-scale disruption in the workforce. Last year, he warned AI could eliminate 50% of entry-level jobs and lead to an unemployment rate between 10% and 20%. 

    “I’m more in Dario’s camp. I want to be honest about the fact that I do think there’s going to be a very big shift,” Siemiatkowski said. 

    “I think more like Elon that it might lead to a golden age of humanity where you know AI does more of jobs and more people can enjoy themselves and do other things, that we can have a richer society,” Siemiatkowski said, referring to Elon Musk’s prediction that work will be optional in 10 to 20 years due to AI and robots taking over most roles. 

    Siemiatkowski shared one part of Klarna’s business he thinks AI could never replace: employees who work directly with retailers, and where business depends on relationships. 

    “I have people in Portland talking to Nike. I have people in China talking to Shein. I have people in Amsterdam talking to Adyen,” he explained. “I’m still gonna argue that it’s going to be vital to offer a human connection there.” 

    Siemiatkowski said that while the company has shrunk, it has increased employee compensation by nearly 50% due to higher profits, creating a safety net for employees, even as their jobs may disappear due to AI.   

    “I’m an optimist at heart, but I also want to be a realist around what’s going to happen in the shorter term, and it’s going to be a lot of turmoil in this.” 

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    Jacqueline Munis

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  • Klarna’s First Public Earnings Report: Strong US Growth, ‘Neobanking’ and A.I.

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    CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski says Klarna is evolving from BNPL to a full “neobank.” Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

    Today (Nov. 18), Klarna reported its first quarterly earnings as a public company. The fintech giant, which debuted on the New York Stock Exchange in September, is growing quickly as it leans into A.I. and looks to expand beyond its Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) service into more traditional banking offerings.

    Klarna beat Wall Street expectations with $903 million in revenue for the July–September period, a 26 percent increase from a year earlier. In its largest market, the U.S., sales rose 51 percent from a year ago.

    The company also posted gains in gross merchandise volume (GMV), an e-commerce metric measuring the value of goods sold. GMW jumped 23 percent year-over-year to $32.7 billion for the quarter. One gloomy spot was net income, which swung to a $95 million loss compared to a $12 million profit during the same period in 2024. Klarna attributed the decline partially to a change in accounting principles.

    Demand also increased for Klarna’s “Fair Financing” option, which lets customers spread payments for larger purchases over longer periods. U.S. GMV for the offering jumped 244 percent during the quarter, while global GMV rose 139 percent. Fair Financing is now available at 151,000 merchants, or 18 percent of Klarna’s total merchant base.

    Klarna is still best known for its BNPL services, but the company aims to shift “from payments to full neobank,” CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said during his company’s earnings call. A neobank refers to a fintech firm that offers banking services without a physical branches, such as Chime or Revolut.

    In July, Klarna launched the “Klarna Card,” a payment card that combines BNPL features with a traditional debit card. The product has already gained more than 4 million signups, according to Siemiatkowski, and accounted for 15 percent of Klarna’s global transactions as of October.

    Klarna slows hiring amid A.I. push

    Klarna is also turning to A.I. to move into new areas. As an early adopter, the company has embraced the technology across personal shopping, internal productivity tools and even an A.I. avatar of Siemiatkowski capable of presenting earnings.

    A.I. has transformed customer service as well: an A.I. assistant Klarna introduced last year now performs the work of more than 850 full-time employees and has saved the company $60 million, Siemiatkowski said. In part because of these efficiency gains, Klarna does not “believe that hiring is the right approach at this point in time,” he added.

    That doesn’t mean the CEO is unconcerned about A.I.’s impact on workers. While blue-collar jobs are typically vulnerable during economic downturns, Siemiatkowski warned that A.I. could more heavily affect “high-income households and white-collar jobs.” He said he is closely monitoring unemployment trends to understand how the technology might affect consumers who rely on Klarna.

    Klarna’s First Public Earnings Report: Strong US Growth, ‘Neobanking’ and A.I.

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    Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly

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  • Klarna, Google Cloud develop AI-powered payments experiences

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    Global payments provider Klarna is partnering with Google Cloud to use artificial intelligence to enhance its payment services for more than 114 million consumers worldwide. The AI-first collaboration will leverage Google Cloud’s infrastructure and models to accelerate Klarna’s development of smarter, more personalized payment and shopping tools. Early pilots have already shown a 50% increase […]

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    FinAi News, AI-assisted

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  • Klarna CEO Makes Employees Review His AI-Generated Vibe Coding Projects

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    Perhaps the only thing worse than having a boss who thinks your job can be replaced by artificial intelligence is having a boss who thinks he can do your job for you with AI and wants to show you his work. Unfortunately, depending on your role at the company, Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski is guilty of both.

    Futurism recently highlighted the CEO’s unfortunate insistence on vibe coding prototype features with AI and then making his actual, professional engineers review his work and try to implement it.

    Siemiatkowski recently appeared on the podcast Sourcery, where he revealed his new hobby of cosplaying as an engineer, using AI tools to write code and then bringing those ideas to the desks of the people he pays to do that job. On the episode, the CEO admits he’s never coded before, but he started using the AI-powered code editor Cursor to craft prototypes for new features, which he said takes him about 20 minutes to whip up before he takes them to his engineering team.

    “Rather than disturbing my poor engineers and product people with what is half good ideas and half bad ideas, now I test it myself. I come say, ‘Look, I’ve actually made this work, this is how it works, what do you think, could we do it this way?’” he said.

    To Siemiatkowski’s credit, he has at least a smidgen of self-awareness about the situation. He joked that he occasionally falls for the AI’s sycophancy that tells him all of his ideas are great, and he admitted that playing with code in Cursor has made him think about projects in a new way and forces him to articulate his ideas more clearly when communicating with his team. But does that prevent his engineers from letting out a deep sigh when they see Siemiatkowski coming, ready to make them look at a feature he doesn’t actually understand but claims works? Hard to say.

    The CEO’s vibe coding habit certainly doesn’t suggest he’s learned much from his first attempt to go all-in on AI. Last year, Siemiatkowski cut his workforce nearly in half, dropping from a headcount of 3,800 to 2,000, by shifting to AI alternatives, including replacing large chunks of his customer support team with AI agents—only to hire back humans after finding out that what they do wasn’t quite as replaceable as he thought.

    There might be a similar effect from his interest in code, seeing as the vibe-coding epidemic has been creating opportunities for humans even as others are replaced. NBC and 404 Media both recently ran stories about the new economy of workers and freelancers brought on to correct the messes made by AI-generated code. A survey by cloud computing company Fastly found that 95% of surveyed developers spend extra time fixing AI-generated code, with some saying it takes more time to fix errors than they save by initially generating the code with AI tools. Research firm METR also recently reported finding that using AI tools actually makes developers slower to complete tasks.

    But the CEO feels smarter, and isn’t that what really matters?

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    AJ Dellinger

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  • Klarna’s IPO gives fintechs a boost

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    Buy now, pay later service provider Klarna made its debut on the public market today, which could encourage other fintechs to do the same.   The IPO could boost the fintech sector at a time when many mature companies are sitting on the sidelines waiting for the macroeconomic environment to calm, Abdul Abdirahman, a principal […]

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    Vaidik Trivedi

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  • Klarna goes public as 3 in 4 Americans rely on buy-now, pay-later. Experts worry it’s snowballing ‘quickly into a serious financial burden’ | Fortune

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    Swedish fintech firm Klarna just made its highly anticipated debut on the New York Stock Exchange, raising $1.37 billion and locking in a $15 billion valuation. But finance and legal experts are becoming wary of the growing risks associated with the ballooning buy-now, pay later (BNPL) industry. 

    Klarna, known for its short-term, interest-free financing solutions for consumers, has rapidly expanded its user base to more than 100 million globally, partnering with more than 720,000 retailers. The Wednesday IPO is a signal of how large and influential BNPL options have become. According to a survey published Wednesday by LegalShield of more than 2,000 U.S. adults aged 18 to 80, a whopping three-fourths of people rely on BNPL services, which also include products like Affirm, Afterpay, and Sezzle. Even PayPal has a BNPL option.

    Although Klarna and other BNPL services are growing increasingly popular—often replacing credit cards for some younger generations—that doesn’t mean they’re without risks. While the service can allow for consumers to break up large purchases into more digestible payments, if they have too many of these in place, the costs can easily rack up.

    “We’re hearing story after story of people overextending themselves, juggling payments from various loan companies and banks,” Rebecca A. Carter, a LegalShield provider lawyer with Friedman, Framme & Thrush, said in a statement. “What many don’t realize is that if you aren’t disciplined about managing the payment schedules and budgeting, it can snowball quickly into a serious financial burden.”

    Analysts have coined this shift from flexible financing to a “bandage for basics” ahead of the FICO pilot, according to Storyful Intelligence. 

    And what many people—nearly 40% of consumers, according to LegalShield—also don’t realize is that BNPL will soon impact credit scores for people who use it to buy things like clothing, furniture, concert tickets, takeout food, or even an Airbnb stay. Starting this fall, FICO scores will include BNPL data from consumers.

    “Buy Now, Pay Later loans are playing an increasingly important role in consumers’ financial lives,” Julie May, vice president and general manager of B2B Scores at FICO, said in a statement. “We’re enabling lenders to more accurately evaluate credit readiness, especially for consumers whose first credit experience is through BNPL products.”

    Complex financial tool

    LegalShield also warns 45% of BNPL users have faced legal or contractual disputes from using the financing service, with 62% of those reporting billing errors and 60% forced to pay even after returning items. But many of these customers just give up, LegalShield found, and just pay incorrect charges or don’t know they have the legal right to dispute them.

    “BNPL has evolved from a simple payment option into a complex financial tool that, without proper understanding and legal guidance, can gradually become overwhelming for families,” Carter said. 

    To be sure, not all aspects of BNPL services are bad. They’ve given consumers more purchasing power, an interest-free option for paying off major purchases, and instant gratification for customers who would otherwise have to save up for a long time to make a high-ticket purchase. It’s also been positive for merchants in that they can have increased sales volume and expand to new customer demographics. 

    Personal finance experts have also offered advice to consumers for not getting overwhelmed by BNPL payments—chiefly not spending more than you make. 

    “Credit card debt is a terrible place to be. Interest rates are unbelievable, and if you find yourself in that trap, it can be so hard to get out of,” Allyson Kiel, a private wealth advisor at Synovus Bank, previously told Fortune’s Preston Fore. “If it’s a want and not a need, you should wait.”

    Consumers can also expect more BNPL innovations in the future—particularly in light of Klarna’s IPO.

    “This isn’t the finish line. It’s fuel,” Klarna CEO and cofounder Sebastian Siemiatkowski said in a statement about the IPO. “Fuel for us to keep disrupting, keep innovating, and keep making life easier for millions of people out there.

    Fortune Global Forum returns Oct. 26–27, 2025 in Riyadh. CEOs and global leaders will gather for a dynamic, invitation-only event shaping the future of business. Apply for an invitation.

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    Sydney Lake

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  • Klarna CEO Aims to Cut Half of Workforce, Give AI the Work | Entrepreneur

    Klarna CEO Aims to Cut Half of Workforce, Give AI the Work | Entrepreneur

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    Nearly half of the employees currently working at “buy now, pay later” startup Klarna could be replaced by AI in the next few years.

    Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski told The Financial Times last week that the company aims to almost halve its workforce within the next few years, from 3,800 people to 2,000. Instead of layoffs, the company will continue its hiring freeze that started in September and not hire replacements for people who leave the company.

    “By simply not hiring, which we haven’t done since September … the company is kind of becoming smaller and smaller,” Siemiatkowski stated. He pointed out that the average revenue per Klarna employee had increased by 73% year-over-year.

    The remaining employees will have AI to help with tasks, Siemiatkowski said.

    Related: There Are New Rules for ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ Programs — Here’s What to Know

    “Not only can we do more with less, but we can do much more with less,” he told the Financial Times.

    Klarna’s employees numbered 5,000 one year ago, but departing employees and the AI-induced hiring freeze have cut the company down to its current size.

    Sebastian Siemiatkowski. Photo by David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images for Klarna

    Klarna claimed in February that its AI assistant did work equivalent to 700 full-time, human customer service agents. The AI assistant brought down customer inquiries to two minutes, compared to the previous 11-minute average conversation needed with human agents.

    Related: Klarna Says Its AI Assistant Does the Work of 700 People. The Company Laid Off the Same Number of Employees 2 Years Ago.

    Siemiatkowski wrote in a now-deleted post on X in May that Klarna’s in-house marketing team was half the size it was last year, but was producing more with AI and spent $6 million less.

    Klarna’s second-quarter earnings report for 2024 showed its third consecutive quarter of growth in the U.S., with revenue and operating income up 17% and 21% year-over-year respectively.

    Klarna is reportedly exploring a U.S. IPO at a valuation of $20 billion.

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    Sherin Shibu

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  • From Plaid to Figma, here are the startups that are likely — or definitely — not having IPOs this year | TechCrunch

    From Plaid to Figma, here are the startups that are likely — or definitely — not having IPOs this year | TechCrunch

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    Last year’s investor dreams of a strong 2024 IPO pipeline have faded, if not fully disappeared, as we approach the halfway point of the year.

    2024 delivered four venture-backed tech IPOs, Reddit, Astera Labs, Ibotta and Rubrik, in March and April, which made it seem like this year could spur the momentum investors had hoped for in 2023. But secondary investors and IPO lawyers recently told TechCrunch that despite these four successes, macro conditions like the upcoming presidential election and elevated interest rates, means the IPO market won’t fully reopen until 2025.

    This year is still on track to be better than 2023, and we’ll likely see a few more public filings throughout the year Companies including Klarna and Shein have engaged with bankers and seem close the line, but their IPO timelines are still murky.

    For the most part, it may be easier to decipher who isn’t going public this year rather than who is. Some CEOs of late-stage startups have directly stated they won’t IPO in 2024 while other companies have made financial moves that imply a public listing isn’t imminent. Here are some of the venture-backed tech companies we don’t expect to hit the public market this year.

    • Plaid’s CEO Zach Perret said the B2B fintech had no plans to IPO in 2024 at an Axios event in March. This echos what TechCrunch’s own Mary Ann Azevedo reported last October after the company hired a new CFO. Plaid was valued at $13.4 billion in 2021, its most recent valuation.
    • While design unicorn Figma hasn’t directly said it won’t IPO this year, its actions point in that direction. In May, the company held a tender offer to allow existing investors and employees to sell their Figma shares, if they please, on the secondary market. This type of liquidity event does not generally come right before the larger liquidity event of an IPO. The tender offer did value the startup at $12.5 billion which is lower than the $20 billion Adobe was willing to pay, but also higher than the last primary round valuation Figma received, $10 billion.
    • Stripe also held a tender offer for its current and former employees earlier this year. In February, the fintech unicorn announced a secondary sale that valued the company at a whopping $65 billion valuation. While this is lower than the $95 billion valuation the company garnered in 2021, the company is building its valuation back up. This is a sign that Stripe will likely look to build that valuation back up a bit more before hitting the public market.
    • AI cloud platform Databricks isn’t likely on the docket for 2024 either — perhaps to the dismay of the VC investors who last year predicted it as the first company to go public. The company raised a fresh $500 million in capital last fall in a Series I round that valued the startup at $43 billion. While companies don’t generally raise funding right before a public listing — that is part of the IPO process after all — the investors they did raise from this round from were crossover investors like T.Rowe Price. Those are not the kind of investors that tend to object to IPOs when market conditions improve are in good shape to be one of the first listings of 2025, if they choose.
    • Canva isn’t likely to go public until at least next year and the design startup may very well likely wait until 2026. Co-founder Cliff Obrecht, the husband of Canva CEO Melanie Perkins told Startup Daily, an Australian and New Zealand tech publication, in March that an IPO would be at least 12 months away, if not some time in 2026. Lucky for U.S. investors though, Obrecht also confirmed that when the startup does look to go public it will do so in the U.S.

    TechCrunch is monitoring the late-stage startup and exit markets and will continue to update this article. If you have any tips or callouts to bring to our attention, contact me here: rebecca.szkutak@techcrunch.com.

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    Rebecca Szkutak

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  • Transactions: CommerzBank, Global Payments enter joint venture for payments solutions | Bank Automation News

    Transactions: CommerzBank, Global Payments enter joint venture for payments solutions | Bank Automation News

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    Global Payments has received EU regulatory approval and is launching a joint venture with CommerzBank — Commerz Global Pay — this month.  CommerzBank, based in Frankfurt, Germany, will use Global Payments’ point-of-sale and digital payment solutions for its commercial clients across the EU , Cameron Bready, chief executive of Global Payments, said during Global Payments’ […]

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    Vaidik Trivedi

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  • When startups fail, these startups clean up | TechCrunch

    When startups fail, these startups clean up | TechCrunch

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    Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech (formerly The Interchange)! Apologies for being out last week — a cold got the best of me, but I’m back and here to talk about the fact that shutting down startups is big business, Stripe’s new valuation, Klarna’s latest AI update and more.

    To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important fintech stories delivered to your inbox every Sunday at 7:30 a.m. PT, subscribe here.

    The big story

    Last week, I wrote about two startups — Sunset and SimpleClosure — that help other startups shut down raising capital. It was a deep dive into how and why this business has become one that is so sought after by investors. I also covered Stripe’s tender offer that resulted in a 30% higher bump in valuation — to $65 billion — for the payments giant. This means that the company likely won’t go public this year after all. You can hear Alex Wilhelm and I discuss both topics on Friday’s Equity Podcast episode. You can also hear me talk to Nubank CEO David Vélez about a variety of interesting topics.

    Analysis of the week

    Klarna has been in the news a lot lately. Last week, a failed coup on the part of one investor, Sequoia Capital’s Matthew Miller, made headlines and resulted in his ousting. This week, the Swedish BNPL giant posted a narrower year loss ahead of its potential IPO. Then the company stirred up a bit of controversy when it said its new AI assistant is doing “the equivalent work of 700 full-time agents.” A spokesperson for the company told me via email that since launching globally just a month ago, the AI assistant had 2.3 million conversations, managing two-thirds of Klarna’s customer service chats. She emphasized, though, that the company had not made any cuts as a consequence of launching this AI assistant. She added: “Klarna’s customer service is supported by 4-5 large global partners who collectively have over 650,000 employees and work with thousands of different companies around the world. When one of the companies, like Klarna, requires less support, these agents are assigned to new tasks at another company … With the AI assistant, our customer service can operate with fewer people and require significantly less resources. However, there still is a need for more experienced and senior staff, for example, with specialized training in complex or sensitive cases.”

    Dollars and cents

    Nearly two years after securing $20 million in Series A capital, Colombian B2B financial solutions startup Simetrik is back with additional investment to the tune of $55 million in a Goldman Sachs-led Series B funding.

    Embat, a Spanish fintech which does what they call “real-time treasury management,” closed a financing round of $16 million Series A led by Creandum.

    Deel — the $12 billion HR business — said it is scooping up Zavvy, a Munich-based AI-based “people development” startup building tools for personalized career progression, training, and performance management.

    FairMoney, a digital bank based in Lagos and headquartered in Paris, is in discussions to acquire Umba, a credit-led digital bank providing payroll and financial services to customers in Nigeria and Kenya, in a $20 million all-stock deal, sources tell TechCrunch.

    What else we’re writing

    Google is sunsetting the Google Pay app in the US later this year

    Paytm wallet and FASTag products will cease to exist, Bernstein says

    Grifin’s new model can automatically invest your money as you shop

    Cash App takes on Apple with a 4.5% APY for savings accounts (with direct deposit)

    High-interest headlines

    Finix launches integrated payments offering in Canada

    Robinhood launches a retirement plan for gig workers

    Flourish Ventures promotes Narváez and Gupta to Principal

    Embedded payments fintech Monite just raised $6M in a round co-led by Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures

    Marqeta ‘still on track’ despite post-earnings stock dip: CEO

    Cheese, a neobank for Asian-Americans that pivoted to credit-building, calls it quits (TC first reported on Cheese here)

    Morgan Stanley-backed TomoCredit isn’t paying its bills, faces mounting legal challenges

    Knock opens funding to individuals through Wefunder

    KPMG’s Pulse of Fintech H2’23

    CB Insights’ State of Fintech 2023 Recap & Emerging Trends in 2024

    PitchBook’s Fintech’s M&A landscape unveiled

    Follow me on X @bayareawriter for breaking fintech news, posts about coffee and more.

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    Mary Ann Azevedo

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  • Fintech Klarna CEO signals IPO in U.S. may happen ‘quite soon’ | Bank Automation News

    Fintech Klarna CEO signals IPO in U.S. may happen ‘quite soon’ | Bank Automation News

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    Klarna Bank AB, the Swedish fintech that was once Europe’s most valuable startup, may soon launch a stock market listing in the US, according to Chief Executive Officer Sebastian Siemiatkowski. “It’s very likely that this is going to happen quite soon, but there are no official dates,” he said in a video interview with BNN Bloomberg in […]

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    Bloomberg News

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  • Santander moves CIB to Google Cloud | Bank Automation News

    Santander moves CIB to Google Cloud | Bank Automation News

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    Santander Bank has successfully moved its corporate investment banking business to the cloud as part of its effort to migrate all of its operations.  The $1.9 trillion, Madrid-based bank created its cloud-native digital banking platform, Gravity, last year on Google Cloud’s platform, and plans to move more operations to the platform next year, a Santander […]

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    Vaidik Trivedi

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  • OpenAI’s DevDay, reinventing the REIT and good actors in crypto | TechCrunch

    OpenAI’s DevDay, reinventing the REIT and good actors in crypto | TechCrunch

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    Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.

    Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.

    This is our Friday show, and we’re talking about the week’s biggest startup and tech news. This time ’round we had Kirsten Korosec, Mary Ann Azevedo, and Alex Wilhelm on the job to chat through a massive pile of news:

    And with that, we’re going to go rest for the weekend and come back Monday at full steam!

    For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.

    Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!

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    Theresa Loconsolo

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  • It’s been a long time since we’ve seen such positive signals in fintech | TechCrunch

    It’s been a long time since we’ve seen such positive signals in fintech | TechCrunch

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    Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.

    Hello, and welcome back to Equity, the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.

    This is our Wednesday show, where we sit down with a key topic and dive deep into it. Mary Ann and Alex today looked at nascent but encouraging signs from the fintech startup market. Here’s what they got into:

    • Solid results from Klarna are on top of Alex’s mind. The company’s ability to continue growing while staying profitable is a reminder that one down-round does not a company kill.
    • Fintech fundraising results were on Mary Ann’s mind as we wait for venture capitalists to re-accelerate their investments in the space. Sure, no one wants to return to 2021-era insanity, but after so long in the valuation doghouse, perhaps fintech has reached its nadir?
    • And we leaned on data. Here’s the American consumer debt information Alex referenced, Affirm results will drop here, and the CB Insights venture data we cited is here.

    More to come in our Friday news roundup! Talk to you then!

    For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.

    Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!

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    Alex Wilhelm

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  • Klarna shrinks losses with sales growth and cost-cutting | Bank Automation News

    Klarna shrinks losses with sales growth and cost-cutting | Bank Automation News

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    Klarna Bank AB’s losses narrowed in the first half of the year as its growing customer base continued to pay back their buy-now-pay-later debts in the face of inflation pressures. The Stockholm-based fintech reported an adjusted operating loss of about 2 billion Swedish kronor ($185 million) for the six months through June, down from 6.2 […]

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    Bloomberg News

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