Klarna CEO says he was ‘Tremendously Embarrassed’ when Marc Benioff was asked about Salesforce Exit

Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said he was “tremendously embarrassed” after the company’s decision to move away from Salesforce and other SaaS providers became widely discussed, leading to speculation about the future of enterprise software.

“Benioff was asked on stage why Klarna was leaving Salesforce. I was tremendously embarrassed,” he said in a post on X 

Siemiatkowski confirmed Klarna had shut down Salesforce a year ago and removed around 1,200 SaaS applications. However, he clarified, “No, I don't think it is the end of Salesforce; might be the opposite.”

He explained that Klarna’s decision stemmed from a broader internal effort to consolidate its knowledge and reduce fragmentation in data storage. “We decided early to explore the potential of AI and LLMs—mostly ChatGPT—while being open to testing all things that seemed to be trending,” he said. This led to a realisation that corporate data was often fragmented across multiple platforms, making it difficult to extract value.

Klarna leveraged technology from Neo4j and other tools to structure and unify its data. The company’s internal AI system was then able to use this knowledge, driving productivity gains. “We started bringing data=knowledge together,” Siemiatkowski said, adding that Klarna also used Cursor AI to deploy new interfaces.

The decision to discontinue Salesforce was not originally intended to be public. However, Siemiatkowski said that during a routine investor call, he mentioned Klarna had removed some SaaS, including Salesforce. This was later picked up by Seeking Alpha, leading to widespread speculation.

Despite shutting down SaaS applications, Siemiatkowski suggested that the future could see a consolidation of enterprise software providers rather than their decline. “It is very likely that Salesforce will be one of those companies,” he said. “They do so much more than CRM today and hence have the opportunity to become that hub of knowledge that modern companies will seek.”

He also noted a challenge for large SaaS providers, stating that some had lost their original vision in an effort to cater to multiple enterprise demands. “They started as companies with a clear opinion of how to do things, but over time, as they try to satisfy every whim of any random person working at any large enterprise, they become somewhat of a glorified database.”

Siemiatkowski concluded that all SaaS providers would need to evolve in an AI-first world. “If they do, there is tremendous opportunity ahead.”