Klarna CEO joins Sundar Pichai, embraces AI vibe coding to speed up product development

Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski has revealed how he is using artificial intelligence tools to speed up product development and cut down on reliance on engineering teams. Speaking on the Sourcery podcast, Siemiatkowski said AI coding assistants such as Cursor have allowed him to create working prototypes in minutes, a process that previously took his engineers weeks.

“I was a business person, and then I just started exploring Cursor,” he said, highlighting his non-technical background. “The only difference is now I’m sitting with a computer and I’m doing it with AI, and it’s coming back with the prototype in 20 minutes.”

The Klarna chief described this approach as “vibe coding”, a term popularised by OpenAI cofounder Andrej Karpathy to describe the use of large language models to generate code. According to Siemiatkowski, the practice not only saves him time but also frees up his staff from testing ideas that may not be worth pursuing. “Rather than disturbing my poor engineers and product people with what is half good ideas and half bad ideas, now I test it myself,” he said.

Siemiatkowski has been experimenting with vibe coding for years, but said the pace and efficiency have accelerated significantly with the latest AI tools. The trend has also gained traction more widely in the tech industry, with Google CEO Sundar Pichai recently describing his experience vibe coding a webpage as “delightful”, while Amazon has reportedly explored adopting Cursor following employee interest.

While the Klarna CEO has spoken openly about AI’s potential to disrupt white-collar jobs, his company has not abandoned human customer service altogether. Despite AI handling 2.3 million customer queries for Klarna in 2024, the firm is developing an app-based support model that ensures users can still connect with human representatives when needed. Siemiatkowski has even suggested that human interaction could eventually become a “VIP” service.