The Swedish payments provider Klarna once sought the likes of entrepreneur and heiress Paris Hilton and rapper A$AP Rocky for flashy campaigns to grab consumer attention. The newly public company these days makes a far more understated pitch, trying to position itself as a utility.

At the same time, it is embracing artificial intelligence to lower its marketing and sales costs by making tasks such as creating images and translating copy more efficient. Klarna said last year that it had cut sales and marketing spending by 11% in the first quarter of 2024 while increasing the number of campaigns and updating its collateral marketing materials more frequently. It attributed 37% of that reduction to AI.