Checkout.com defies AI job fears with hiring spree
Checkout.com has defied fears of a slowdown in tech company recruitment after one of Britain’s most valuable private tech firms ramped up hiring despite widespread implementation of new AI tools.
Top tech companies have reportedly pared back hiring of junior staff, which much of the work of junior recruits becoming automated by artificial intelligence. New graduates now comprise as little as 7 per cent of new hires at major tech businesses, down from 25 per cent in 2023 and over 50 per cent before the pandemic, according to a recent analysis of LinkedIn data.
But Checkout chief operating officer Jenny Hadlow said the trend was “not something I’ve observed at Checkout, no.”
“We are seeing AI’s use cases at every level of the organisation helping every role profile and I would say the way Checkout is growing as an organisation hasn’t seen any major shifts,” she told City AM.
Checkout today unveiled that it hired hundreds of new staff across 2025, raising employee headcount at the payments business by 15 per cent to top 2,000 globally during the year, including opening new hubs in San Francisco, Atlanta, and Sao Paulo.
That has come alongside embedding AI into every layer of its core operations to remove frictions, with AI-driven policy reviews cutting due diligence time by 83 per cent and AI automating 100 per cent of rejected transaction distribution, previously a manual task.
Beyond operational efficiency, the company’s technical output has accelerated through the generation of 2.7 million lines of AI-generated code monthly.
The fintech said it saw a return to profitability in 2025, after a 64 per cent jump in total payment volume to $300bn (£222bn).
“The rate at which we’re having to invest in things like our headcount is less than the growth at which the business is growing, and so that’s what creates the profitability for us,” Hadlow said.
Guillaume Pousaz, chief executive and founder of Checkout.com, commented: “Our return to profitability and the record-breaking performance of our enterprise clients validate the long-term architectural bet we made from day one: that a single, unified infrastructure would ultimately outmatch patched-together legacy systems.”
Valuation fluctuations
Checkout.com last year said its valuation had hit $12bn (£9bn), a boost on the reported $9.4bn it had been valued at in 2023 but remains well down on the $40bn figure it attracted in a funding round in 2022.
The $12bn figure, which Checkout.com said was calculated using US 409A accounting rules to determine the fair market value of shares, was used to price the buyback programme to “recognise the significant contributions of its employees and provide them with a path to liquidity.”
Earlier this year, Checkout’s billionaire founder quit the UK for Monaco, becoming the latest super-rich foreigner to flee the government’s crackdown on non-doms.
Guillaume Pousaz, who started the payments firm in 2012, changed his country of residence to the France-adjacent tax haven in April, according to Companies House filings, to avoid the changes the Chancellor made to the non-dom regime.
The departure puts Pousaz, who is worth an estimated £6bn, joins the growing ranks of ultra-high net worth individuals leaving Britain in favour of more tax-friendly jurisdictions.