Klarna

Klarna provides digital payments, short-term consumer credit, cards and banking services to shoppers and merchants, and is best known for buy now, pay later products. Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Niklas Adalberth and Victor Jacobsson founded it in Stockholm in 2005 as Kreditor, supported by the Stockholm School of Economics incubator, and renamed it Klarna in 2009. Klarna Bank AB holds a Swedish banking license granted in 2017, and the listed parent, Klarna Group plc, is incorporated in England and Wales.

Angel investor Jane Walerud offered SEK 600,000 for 10 percent, and Investment AB Öresund invested in 2007. Sequoia Capital led a $9 million round in 2010, with Michael Moritz joining the board. In December 2011 General Atlantic and DST Global led a $155 million round. Dragoneer Investment Group led a $460 million round in August 2019 at a $5.5 billion post-money valuation, with Commonwealth Bank of Australia, HMI Capital and Merian Chrysalis. Ant Financial took a minority stake in 2020. In June 2021 a round led by SoftBank's Vision Fund 2 valued Klarna at about $46 billion, and in July 2022 it raised $800 million at $6.7 billion, about 85 percent lower.

Klarna completed its US IPO on September 11, 2025, after shares began trading on the New York Stock Exchange as KLAR on September 10. It sold 34,311,274 shares at $40.00, of which 5,000,000 were new shares raising $200 million for the company and the rest were sold by existing holders. Before the offering, Sequoia entities held 21.17 percent of ordinary shares, Heartland 9.96 percent, co-founder Victor Jacobsson 8.42 percent and Commonwealth Bank of Australia 5.20 percent, with Silver Lake, GIC, HMI Capital, Mubadala, Atomico, Ant Group and Institutional Venture Partners among selling shareholders. For 2025 Klarna reported $3.5 billion of revenue, $127.9 billion of GMV, 118 million active consumers and 966,000 merchants, with adjusted operating profit of $65 million and a net loss.

Klarna shows a long hold for an early-stage venture investor. Sequoia entered in 2010 and was still the largest shareholder at listing 15 years later. The 2021 to 2022 repricing from about $46 billion to $6.7 billion shows the risk taken by investors who entered at the peak, while 2010 and 2011 investors held across the full cycle. The company raised little primary capital in the IPO, so the listing mainly served as a liquidity event for existing holders.