Finance
Klarna CEO outlines plan to become super app with AI
Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO of Klarna, speaking at a fintech event in London on Monday, April 4, 2022.
Chris Ratcliffe | Bloomberg via Getty Images
Klarna’s CEO is so bullish about artificial intelligence that he sees it changing the way the fintech’s 100 million users bank every day as he sets out to diversify the company’s services.
On Wednesday, Klarna — a pioneer of the popular “buy now, pay later” payment method — is announcing the launch of mobile phone plans in the U.S. via a partnership with telecom services startup Gigs. The plans come with unlimited data, calls and texts and will cost $40 a month.
The new phone offering aligns with CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski’s vision to make Klarna more of an all-encompassing personalized financial “super app” that can offer services outside the realms of traditional finance.
It isn’t the company’s first attempt. Previously, Klarna tried to make itself more akin to a “super app” — similar to Ant Group’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat Pay — offering additional services through multiple different buttons. This ended up being “confusing for the customer,” Siemiatkowski told CNBC in an interview.
But the Klarna boss stressed the part AI can play in Klarna’s fresh attempt.
“I think in this new AI world, there’s a better opportunity to serve customers with different services and then adopt the kind of level of articulation and visualization of those services than there was historically,” he said.
“With AI, you can abstract and adopt the experience much more to the specific user you’re dealing with,” Siemiatkowski said in an interview.
Super apps are popular in China and in other parts of Asia. They’re meant to serve as a one-stop shop for all your mobile needs — for example, having taxi-hailing and food ordering in the same place as payment and messaging services.
While super apps have flourished in Asia, adoption in Western markets has nonetheless been slower due to a number of reasons.
‘Tremendous opportunity’
Siemiatkowski says he’s spending a lot of his time focusing on AI.
“There’s a tremendous opportunity for that — but it’s just getting it to work,” he said. “Everyone who has used it knows it can spit out some exciting stuff but then you need to make sure that it works every time.”
Going forward, Klarna’s chief sees the platform becoming more of a “digital financial assistant” for users’ every-day banking needs.
“If we have some information that suggests that you are overpaying for your carrier subscription or your data or whatever, we can now offer you both a suggestion of a better price model, but also with a click, implement that and make it a reality,” Siemiatkowski said.
Acknowledging issues with Klarna’s previous attempt to become a super app, Siemiatkowski says the technology just wasn’t “mature” enough at the time.
Klarna reported a $99 million loss for the quarter that ended in March, citing one-off costs relating to depreciation, share-based payments and restructuring.
Perception problem
Still, Klarna has a perception problem to overcome. In the U.S., the firm has become synonymous with the “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) payment method, which allows consumers to pay off orders over monthly installments — typically interest-free.
By contrast, in Europe, consumers recognize they can use Klarna to store their deposits and pay for things in one go as well as via a credit plan, Siemiatkowski noted.
He also expressed frustration with “the kind of memes that we get in in the U.S. when it’s like, ‘Oh, Klarna launched with DoorDash … it is a sign of the macroeconomic environment,” referring to a tie-up the company announced with food delivery app DoorDash earlier this year that was met with backlash online.
Siemiakowski said this kind of reaction wouldn’t happen in the German or Nordic markets, where Klarna operates more like online payment system PayPal.
He sees a future where Klarna works as a more all-encompassing financial ecosystem with add-on services such as features for investments in stocks and cryptocurrencies — which, he adds, is “not that far off.”
“Offering people the ability to invest in both stock and crypto is is what’s becoming a kind of more standard part of a neobank offering,” he said, while stressing he doesn’t want to compete with popular U.S. stock trading app Robinhood.
When will Klarna IPO?
Klarna paused plans to go public in April, after U.S. President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs on dozens of countries.
Siemiatkowski said that Klarna has already achieved what it set out to do in order to be ready for that milestone — namely, building up a brand in the U.S.
“The U.S. is now our largest market by number of users. It’s a profitable market for us,” he said. “Those things have been accomplished.”
Whether the company does or doesn’t go public, the business strategy for Klarna remains the same.
“That is just a healthy way to drive liquidity for our shareholders, as well as give the company more ways to fund itself, if it would like to do so, and … to show that this is a an established company,” Siemiatkowski said.
Cybersecurity and enterprise software stocks have been market dogs in 2026, with fears that AI will wipe out a wide range of companies in the enterprise space dominating the narrative. But they snapped a brutal losing streak this past week, joining in the broader market rally that saw all losses from the U.S.-Iran war regained by the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500.
Cybersecurity has been “a victim of some of the AI-related headlines,” Christian Magoon, Amplify ETFs CEO, said on this week’s “ETF Edge.”
It wasn’t just niche cybersecurity names. Take Microsoft, for example, which was recently down close to 20% for the year. Its shares surged last week by 13%.
A big driver of the pummeling in software stocks was a rotation within tech by investors to AI infrastructure and semiconductors and some other names in large-cap tech, Magoon said, and since cybersecurity stocks and ETFs are heavily weighted towards software companies, they were left behind even as those businesses continue to grow on a fundamental basis.
But Wall Street now has become more bullish with the stocks at lower levels. Brent Thill, Jefferies tech analyst, said last week that the worst may be over for software stocks. “I think that this concept that software is dead, and then Anthropic and OpenAI are going to kill the entire industry, is just over-exaggerated,” he said on CNBC’s “Money Movers” on Wednesday.
“Big Short” investor Michael Burry wrote in a Substack post on Wednesday that he is becoming bullish about software stocks after the recent selloff. “Software stocks remain interesting because of accelerated extreme declines last week arising from a reflexive positive feedback loop between falling software stocks and changes in the market for their bank debt,” he wrote.
The Global X Cybersecurity ETF (BUG), is down about 12% since the beginning of the year, with top holdings including Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, Akamai Technologies and CrowdStrike. But BUG was up 12% last week. The First Trust NASDAQ Cybersecurity ETF (CIBR) is down 6% for the year, but up 9% in the past week.
Piper Sandler analyst Rob Owens reiterated an “overweight” rating on Palo Alto Networks which helped the stock pop 7% — it is now down roughly 6% on the year. Its peers saw similar moves, including CrowdStrike.
Performance of Global X cybersecurity ETF versus S&P 500 over past one-year period.
Magoon said expectations may have become too high in cybersecurity, and with a crowding effect among investors, solid results were not enough to to push stocks higher. But the down-and-then-back-up 2026 for the sector is also a reminder that when stocks fall sharply in a short period of time, opportunity may knock.
“Once you’re down over 10% in some of these subsectors, you start to see the contrarians start to say, ‘well, maybe I’ll take a look at this,'” Magoon said.
He said AI does add both opportunity and uncertainty to the cybersecurity equation, increasing demand but also introducing new competition. But he added, “I think the dip is good to buy in an AI-driven world,” specifically because the risks to companies may lead to more M&A in cyber names that benefits the stocks.
For now, investors may look for opportunity on the margins rather than rush back into beaten-up tech names. “I think investors are still going to remain underweight software,” Thill said.
But Magoon advises investors to at least take the reminder to keep an eye on niches in the market during pronounced downturns. “The best-performing are often the least bought and do the best over the next 12 months versus late-in-the-game piling on,” he said.
While that may have been a mindset that worked against the last investors into cybersecurity and enterprise software in mid-2025 when the negative sentiment started building, at least for now, it’s started working for the stocks in the sector again.
Meanwhile, this year’s biggest winner is also a good example of what can be an extended trade in either a bullish or bearish direction. Last year, institutional ownership of energy was at multi-year lows, Magoon said, referencing Bank of America data. “Reverse sentiment can be a great indicator,” he said.
But he cautioned that any selective buying of stocks that have dipped does have to contend with the risk that there is a potentially bigger drawdown in the market yet to come in 2026. That is because midterm election years historically have been marked by large drawdowns. “If you think it is bad right now, it could get a lot worse,” Magoon said. But he added that there’s a silver-lining in that data, too, for the patient investor. The market has posted very strong 12-month returns after midterm election drawdowns end. So, for investors with a longer-term time horizon and no need for short-term liquidity, Magoon said, “stick in there.”
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New innovation in the exchange-traded fund industry could come at a cost to investors during extreme conditions.
According to MFS Investment Management’s Jamie Harrison, ETFs involved in increasingly complex derivatives and less transparent markets may be in uncharted territory when it comes to violent downturns.
“Those would be something that you’d want to keep an eye on as volatility ramps up,” the firm’s head of ETF capital markets told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” this week. “As innovation continues to increase at a rapid pace within the ETF wrapper, [it’s] definitely something that we advise our clients to be really front-footed about… Lack of transparency could absolutely be an issue if we’re going to start seeing some deep sell-offs.”
His firm has been around since 1924 and is known for inventing the open-end mutual fund. Last year, ETF.com named MFS Investment Management as the best new ETF issuer.
“It’s important to do due diligence on the portfolio,” he said. “Having a firm that has deep partnerships, deep bench of subject matter experts that plays with the A-team in terms of the Street and liquidity providers available [are] super important.”
Liquidity as the real issue?
Harrison suggested the real issue is liquidity, particularly during a steep sell-off.
“We’ve all seen the news and the headlines around potential private credit ETFs. That picture becomes much more murky,” he added. “It’s up to advisors, to investors [and] to clients to really dig in and look under the hood and engage with their issuers.”
He noted investors will have to ask some tough questions.
“What does this look like in a 20% drawdown? How does this liquidity facility work? Am I going to be able to get in? Am I going to be able to get out? And if I’m able to get out, am I able to get out at a price that’s tight to NAV [net asset value], and what’s the infrastructure at your shop in terms of managing that consideration for me,” said Harrison.
Amplify ETFs’ Christian Magoon is also concerned about these newer ETF strategies could weather a monster drawdown. He listed private credit as a red flag.
“If your ETF owns private credit, I think it’s worth taking a look at, kind of what the standards are around liquidity and how that ETF is trading, because that should be a bit of a mismatch between the trading pace of ETFs and the underlying asset,” the firm’s CEO said in the same interview.
Magoon also highlighted potential issues surrounding equity-linked notes. The notes provide fixed income security while offering potentially higher returns linked to stocks or equity indexes.
“Those could potentially be in stress due to redemptions and the underlying credit risk. That’s another kind of unique derivative,” Magoon said. “I would very closely look at any ETF that has equity-linked notes should we get into a major drawdown or there be a contagion in private credit or something related to the banking system.”
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