Klarna Group plc
Leadership History
2 leaders · 2005 to present
Sebastian Siemiatkowski is the CEO of Klarna, in the role since 2005.
| Name | Role | From | To | Years in role |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sebastian Siemiatkowski | Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer | 2005 | Present | 21 |
| Niklas Adalberth | Co-founder, former Deputy CEO | 2005 | 2015 | 10 |
Klarna is a Swedish-founded fintech, incorporated as Klarna Group plc in the UK and run operationally from Stockholm, that lets shoppers pay in full, split purchases into interest-free installments, or take longer financing. It holds a Swedish banking licence through Klarna Bank AB, trades on the NYSE as KLAR, and in FY2025 handled $127.9 billion of gross merchandise volume. The company is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden.
Klarna earns money on both sides of a purchase. Merchants pay Klarna a fee on each transaction because offering installments tends to lift conversion and basket size; Klarna pays the merchant upfront and carries the repayment risk (its published US standard rate for Pay in 4 has been 3.29% plus $0.30). Consumers pay interest on longer-term Fair Financing loans, late fees in some markets, and subscription fees for Klarna Memberships. The Klarna Card adds interchange income on everyday spend, and the Klarna app sells advertising and affiliate placements to merchants. Funding comes mostly from consumer deposits at Klarna Bank AB, which management said made up about 90% of funding in Q2 2026. Management tracks transaction margin dollars (revenue minus processing, credit-loss and funding costs), which reached $446 million, or 42.8% of revenue, in Q2 2026.
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
2005 – Present
21 years (current)
Took Klarna into the US, oversaw the 2022 cost reset, made AI central to operations and led the September 2025 NYSE listing.
Has led Klarna since its founding, growing it from a Stockholm invoice startup into a $3.5 billion-revenue public company.
Co-founder, former Deputy CEO
2005 – 2015
10 years
Adalberth built the underlying risk assessment algorithms that allowed Klarna to instantly approve credit at checkout without requiring traditional credit checks.
As Co-Founder, he served as Deputy CEO, scaling the company across Europe before resigning in 2015 to found the Norrsken Foundation, a tech-focused philanthropic fund.
These officers report to the chief executive and are not part of the CEO timeline above.
Klarna's main challenges are credit, growth and regulation. Credit-loss provisions rose from $353 million in 2023 to $794 million in 2025 as the company pushed longer-term financing in the US, and that expansion helped drive the FY2025 net loss of $273 million. In August 2026 Klarna cut its 2026 guidance to $149-151 billion of GMV and $4.08-4.16 billion of revenue, citing currency effects and weaker volumes in Germany, its largest market by volume; the shares fell roughly 23% in the following days. BNPL is also moving under formal credit rules, including the UK's planned FCA regime, which raises compliance costs and limits fee flexibility. Klarna's very public AI-first cost strategy, which took headcount to 2,831 at the end of 2025, also drew criticism in 2025 when the company acknowledged customer-service quality issues and brought back some human agents.
Sebastian Siemiatkowski has served as Chief Executive Officer of Klarna since co-founding the company in 2005. Over two decades, Siemiatkowski transformed Klarna from an underdog student venture into a multi-billion-dollar global fintech giant.
Born in Uppsala, Sweden, in 1981 to Polish immigrant parents, Sebastian Siemiatkowski worked at Burger King before studying economics and business at the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE), where he met his co-founders and conceived the concept for Klarna.
Klarna was co-founded in 2005 by Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Niklas Adalberth (who served as Deputy CEO until departing in 2015 to found the Norrsken Foundation), and Victor Jacobsson (who served as CFO until 2012).
In 2023 co-founder Victor Jacobsson publicly clashed with Sequoia's Michael Moritz and the board over governance and the company's direction. The board kept Sebastian Siemiatkowski as CEO.
Niclas Neglén is CFO and helped take Klarna public in 2025. In August 2026 Fortune reported that Klarna planned to base its next CFO in New York.
Sir Michael Moritz, well-known venture capitalist and former partner at Sequoia Capital, led Sequoia's early $9 million investment in Klarna in 2010 and serves as an independent Chairman of the Board of Klarna Group plc.
Sebastian Siemiatkowski is one of global business's most outspoken advocates for enterprise AI integration, mandating company-wide adoption of generative AI tools to freeze non-engineering hiring and automate repetitive customer support and operational tasks.
Siemiatkowski instituted a fast-paced, customer-obsessed corporate culture modeled on Amazon's leadership principles, organizing the company into hundreds of autonomous, startup-like problem-to-pitch product teams.
Sebastian Siemiatkowski, one of the original founders, serves as CEO. He is highly visible and deeply aggressive on social media, constantly attacking traditional credit card companies (like Visa and Mastercard) for trapping poor consumers in massive revolving debt. He is heavily focused on transitioning Klarna from a simple checkout button into a massive AI-driven shopping assistant.
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