Intro
Affirm co-founder and CEO Max Levchin explains why he thinks buy now, pay later works in every economy, on an episode that also covers the San Francisco ruling for Anthropic against the Pentagon, Meta's child-safety settlement with state attorneys general, and The Information's Jessica Lessin on when Anthropic and OpenAI come to market.
Guest: Max Levchin, CEO of Affirm and a co-founder of PayPal
Hosts: Andrew Ross Sorkin and Joe Kernen
Also on: Jessica Lessin, founder, CEO and editor-in-chief of The Information; Julia Boorstin of CNBC; Cameron Costa, CNBC producer
Published: 28 August 2026 on Squawk Pod (CNBC) | 34 min
Key Takeaways
Affirm claims a product that works in every economy
"we've grown for 30-plus% for the last 11 straight quarters and show no signs of slowing down. I think we'll be here for all economies"
Inflation brings budgeting customers, faster growth brings discretionary ones
Rising rates barely move Affirm's results
Not a depository; long-term staggered funding contracts, and the last hiking cycle is the evidence
Merchants pay Affirm rather than discount, because the price should be the price
The margin they hand over funds 0% loans and costs them less than a 10% or 20% markdown
Every single transaction is underwritten separately, in real time
No late fees exist to align incentives — if the models say you will be late, Affirm declines
The Affirm consumer is paying on time, but prices are the thing Levchin will not ignore
A San Francisco federal judge found the Pentagon violated Anthropic's First Amendment rights
The designation followed Anthropic asking for assurances against domestic mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons
Meta's hardest compliance job is age assurance, and it says that could take a year
$5 billion of the up to $18 billion settlement is payable only if TikTok and YouTube adopt similar teen limits
Needham's analyst expects the remedies to push under-18s off Meta and onto platforms without them
Anthropic's prospectus is expected right after Labor Day, with Lessin looking at October
Early liquidity for employees would be paired with a lockup longer than the typical 180 days
OpenAI's route to market is messier than Anthropic's
A thicket of related-party relationships, plus a consumer business that Lessin says has not replaced Google
The AI labs are leaking numbers selectively to shape the story
"So we don't know the full picture" — Jessica Lessin
A Summer Friday With Warsh Ahead, and a Court Win for Anthropic
Sorkin opened from the Nasdaq MarketSite with Becky Quick off, saying this was not just a summer Friday because of what the market would hear from Kevin Warsh, and that they would see how equities moved on the back of it
Kernen teased him about central banking, offering him an out on the data before asking anyway: "Would you raise in September?"
A San Francisco federal judge ruled for Anthropic in its fight against the Pentagon, finding the Defense Department violated the First Amendment by designating the company a supply chain risk "based on a desire to make a public example out of the company"
The designation came in March, after Anthropic asked the government for assurances its technology would not be used for domestic mass surveillance or for fully autonomous weapons
A similar case is still running in Washington, DC, and Sorkin flagged the venue difference — "there's a view that there was a friendlier judge in California. There may be a less friendly judge in Washington"
The government could appeal, or wait for the second decision before deciding how to play it
Sorkin's argument is that the government kept using Anthropic while attacking it in public — the judge made the same point about continued interaction — and that the public criticism was the mistake: "it is possible that maybe they would have had a stronger case if they had not made these public comments about their views about Anthropic's politics"
"once you start criticizing people's politics and their public statements, it becomes a First Amendment story right there"
Kernen put the ruling down to politics on the other side, citing comments Dario Amodei had made and a perception of former Biden administration people inside the company: "So it looks like it was just it looks like it was political."
Kernen also declined to treat the venue as vindication: "just because a San Francisco judge agrees with you doesn't mean you're going to be right"
Sorkin said a Supreme Court loss would not shock him either, then went further — "there's only nine judges and we're going to change all that"
Stacking the Court, Socialism, and the Oura Ring That Ended It
Kernen ran with the court-expansion line, asking whether the number is 13 judges or 24, and comparing the logic to the film gag about "seven-minute abs"
He then jumped tracks entirely, asking how many companies the government should invest in "before we consider ourselves true socialist"
Sorkin refused the pivot: "That is such a non sequitur!"
Kernen's charge was that the underlying position is indefensible — "You cannot defend stacking the Supreme Court" — and that Sorkin had reached for the whataboutism he usually accuses Kernen of
Sorkin conceded the point twice, then changed the subject to Kernen's Oura Ring and what time he had gone to bed; Kernen had not checked his score
The tangent ended on a thunderstorm — Kernen heard it, Sorkin did not, but his dog did: "He was mad at the thunder."
What The Information Is Reporting About the Anthropic IPO
Anthropic is reportedly considering allowing existing shareholders to sell some of their stock when the company goes public
The same report says Anthropic stockholders could face a lockup period longer than the typical 180 days after an IPO
The prospectus is said to be planned for after Labor Day, with a public offering potentially in late September or early October
Kernen spotted the obvious shortcut, given who was booked later in the show: "Don't we have the founder and CEO and everything of The Information on today?"
Grand Theft Auto 6 Gets 27 Minutes on Netflix
Netflix aired 27 minutes of gameplay the night before, the biggest reveal yet from Take-Two, and the stock moved higher on the morning
Sorkin noted CEO Strauss Zelnik had told the show earlier in the month the game was on track to exceed expectations
The release date is November 19
Sorkin's son had told him about a possible leak: "there's some leak that people were talking about online. And it has been a big problem."
Kernen could not accept the gap since the last installment — "Has it been 13 years?" — and Sorkin would not confirm the number, only that it had been a long time
Trump Takes Aim at the Four Meat Processors
Sorkin read out a Truth Social post from President Trump about ranchers and farmers and the big meat processors, which the post says many describe as "a nasty monopoly"
The post counts "essentially four of them, a very non-competitive number" and says the President is authorizing legal documents to be drawn "in order to allow farmers and ranchers to be given the right to process their own food"
Kernen's reaction was that more competition is usually better but that the premise is odd: "four sounds like a lot or at least four sounds more like more than two or three"
Sorkin's question was what happens to food safety if ranchers process their own animals, which he called the biggest issue in the proposal right away
He has never visited a plant and does not want to: "put all the data centers you want near me, but you know, don't put a hog processing plant"
Kernen closed it with a two-word forecast: "Cheese will be next."
Affirm as a Product for All Seasons
Costa framed the segment on huge aftermarket moves, with the buy now, pay later company — which now also has credit cards — beating on its fourth-quarter results; Kernen noted the shares were surging
Kernen opened by admitting he was "late to the party" on understanding the business, and asked whether Affirm sits in a sweet spot in what people call a K-shaped or affordability-crisis economy
Levchin's answer was that the environment does not matter: "I'd like to believe we are a product for all seasons"
The pitch is transparency — a plan that shows when payments start and stop and when the customer is out of debt, "whether that's six weeks or six months or, you know, longer", with costs that never move: "Whatever it is you agree up front to you will pay us or less."
Affirm rewards prepayment "because we love when our consumers are financially responsible"
In inflation the company sees more demand because people are budgeting; when growth is faster and people feel abundance, they come for discretionary purchases
"we've grown for 30-plus% for the last 11 straight quarters and show no signs of slowing down. I think we'll be here for all economies"
Why Merchants Hand Over Margin
Kernen said he was surprised merchants find it worth sharing what are often slim margins
Levchin agreed and described a network effect: "Merchants do love us and we are a network" — consumers ask merchants for Affirm, merchants sign up, and more points of sale mean more consumers discover it
"And so the flywheel keeps going. And that's where the growth comes from really."
Merchants prefer paying Affirm to discounting — "merchants love the idea of not discounting because the price should be the price" rather than telling a customer the price will be 10 or 20% off over time
The incremental margin the merchant pays funds a 0% loan, and most of that money reaches the consumer as no interest or reduced interest, which Levchin argues costs the merchant less than a straight markdown
The terms he keeps returning to are no late fees, no deferred interest and no compounding interest
Affirm ran a promotion called the Big Nothing, where large numbers of merchants pitched in on 0% offers, and Levchin said it "went off really well"
What Happens to Affirm When Rates Rise
Kernen pushed on the rate question, arguing Affirm could be making more money in a higher-rate world and asking whether rising rates are actually worse for the business
Levchin's structural answer: "We're not a depository." Affirm funds its book through relationships with many funding sources, on long-term contracts with deliberately staggered timelines
The last hiking cycle is the evidence he points to — "as the rates went up, our results didn't really change very much"
Fed moves in either direction do not affect the ability to operate much in the short term, and he says the long term is well planned
On profitability he puts Affirm ahead of its peer set and of fintech generally, and describes the last couple of years as "this sustained profitable growth"
"We're not just growing at 30%-plus year-over-year."
Underwriting Every Transaction
Kernen asked, crediting "my mentor Sorkin" for the question, how Affirm avoids lending to people who will not pay
Sorkin's framing of what Affirm did: they "done a masterful job of sort of rewriting the idea of a FICO score even"
Levchin said the company rests on two ideas — underwriting each consumer better by gathering a little more data, including from merchants, and being smarter about how it is used
"And we've been at it for 15 years. We were an AI company when AI was kind of a what does that even mean?"
The second idea is that every transaction is underwritten separately, in real time — at each point of sale the company asks "Wait a second. Is this still a good idea for you financially?"
Charging no late fees is an alignment device rather than a marketing one: "If you are going to be late, if our models tell us you're going to be late, we should not be lending to you."
Affirm says no politely but firmly when it does not believe it will be repaid, and will revisit: "we'll take more data and we'll reverse our decision if we suddenly realize that we're— we've made a mistake"
What Affirm Sees in Its Consumer
Kernen asked whether Affirm is seeing stress among its customers
"So the Affirm consumer is healthy" — though Levchin added the company is "still a sliver of the U.S. economy"
Because Affirm underwrites every transaction, it has a direct read on the borrowers it approves, and what it sees is a consumer absorbing higher costs: "US consumer undoubtedly sees the higher gas prices"
They are coming to Affirm to help manage those prices, and paying on schedule: "Affirm consumer is paying us back on time every time"
On the pandemic-era surge in the business, Sorkin's theory was "Everyone's buying Pelotons"; Levchin said it was more than that
"It's more than that it's the temporary shift of offline commerce to online" — Affirm is far more prominent online, and has been growing offline quickly in the years since
The Family Fight Levchin Walked Into
Sorkin told Levchin that he and Kernen had held a whole conversation about the interview beforehand because Kernen wanted to understand the business properly
Kernen said he would keep coming back for this kind of help — "I go to Max for things" — which prompted Sorkin to ask "Why don't you come to me for political things?"
Levchin declined to take a side: "I appreciate the compliment. But I feel like I'm sitting in the middle of a family fight here."
Sorkin wants the off-air version broadcast: "We got to get a camera going."
Levchin's Read on the Economy, With Warsh About to Speak
With Warsh dominating the day, Sorkin asked Levchin to take himself out of the results and say what he is actually seeing in the consumer
"I think there's still strong demand— there's, you know, there's nothing profoundly wrong."
The one thing he will not wave away is prices: "I do think that sustained pressure on prices isn't great in the long term and so can't ignore that either."
There is still demand for many goods and services, and Affirm's role as he describes it is making sure people can pay for what they need "without being worried about late fees and weird gimmicks"
He would not front-run the day's main event: "I'm going to listen to Kevin's speech like everybody else."
Meta's Settlement and the Age-Verification Build
Meta reached an $18 billion settlement with state attorneys general over child-safety claims in the social media addiction case, and now has to work out how to comply with the product changes it agreed to
Boorstin said some features already exist, such as muting likes and notifications, but Meta says it is building tools from the ground up to let teens turn off autoplay video and to give users algorithmic feed control, rolling out "in the next 6 months"
The hardest piece technically is age assurance, and the company says that could take up to a year — stricter verification to keep under-13s off the platforms, and accurate identification of 13- to 17-year-olds who lie about their age
To do it, Meta says it will build an algorithm pulling in who users are connected to, who they follow and who follows them, plus signals as indirect as "what kind of comments they get when people wish them happy birthday"
Adults who get misclassified as teens can appeal by uploading IDs or scanning their faces, a process Boorstin said risks frustrating some of the 20-somethings caught by it
Needham's Laura Martin warned the remedies will "likely drive under-18-year-olds in the US to leave Meta for a different social media platform that doesn't have these limitations", and that this could hurt Meta's ability to lock in users before they become adults, which would be bad for long-term value
48 states plus DC joined the suit, leaving two states outstanding alongside personal injury claims and suits from school districts: "So I would say this resolves one of the major legal overhangs but certainly not all of it."
Internationally the pressure is separate — one ban has already gone into effect in Australia, and Boorstin expects similar rules to roll out across Europe, where enforcement will also be hard
The $5 Billion That Depends on TikTok and YouTube
Sorkin asked whether TikTok and YouTube will settle in a similar way, and what technology it would take for them to administer what Meta has agreed to
Boorstin: $5 billion of the up to $18 billion Meta will pay is contingent on TikTok and YouTube complying with similar time limits for teens
CNBC has approached both companies and had no answer yet
What her reporting over the past few days established is that the engineering is not the obstacle — "It is technically possible for Meta and these other companies to comply" — leaving the open question of whether Meta ends up doing it alone or paying the extra $5 billion
Lessin: A Win for Anthropic, and an IPO You Cannot Escape Out West
Lessin called the Pentagon ruling important because it "alleviates some of the risk that is out there" after what she described as "an epic blow up with the government and Anthropic"
The relationship has moved on since, and people were already seeing a path for Anthropic's technology to be used more widely inside government: "But it's a win for them."
Asked about IPO fever, she put it geographically: "Especially out here, Andrew, I've got to say, you can't go anywhere without hearing about it."
Sorkin asked what she made of the idea that the company would put in its prospectus that it "could have revenue of $30 trillion"; Lessin's reply was that "it seems like Dario and Elon have been comparing some notes"
The Information's reporting is a prospectus right after Labor Day, and Lessin's own read is "I think we're looking at October"
She says "the revenue growth of Anthropic has not stopped and it's not slowed down" despite the open-source threat and competition
"what happens two years from now? I couldn't tell you, but all signs point to a very strong IPO"
Why Anthropic Might Let Shareholders Sell at the IPO
Sorkin noted that letting people sell out at the IPO has not been typical, and asked what he made of her own team's reporting
Lessin found it notable too, and traced it to how tight Anthropic has been with employee liquidity — the company "has been stingy on secondaries to employees much more so than OpenAI"
The trade she reads into it is earlier liquidity paired with a longer-than-expected lockup
She cautioned that nothing is settled — "the terms of these IPOs can change quite a bit" — while noting the company is not old, so the wait has been about scale of valuation more than years served
Why OpenAI's Route to Market Is Messier
Sorkin tied the Anthropic listing to a potential OpenAI listing, and to the circular financing among companies that depend on these valuations
Lessin drew the contrast on related parties: "Anthropic's business is a little more straightforward in that regard", while OpenAI "has a thicket of them"
The work for OpenAI is unpacking those relationships and making them regulatory sound while questions run over the consumer business
She still takes the company's own timetable at face value: "Sarah Friar, the CFO, is saying we'll be a public company next year. That makes sense to me."
Her caveat is on visibility, not viability: "the revenue growth picture there and the pace of growth is a little less clear than Anthropic"
Selective Leaks and the OpenAI Growth Picture
Sorkin laid out the two competing versions in recent reporting — growth slower than the company anticipated, or "it's like a hockey stick and it's just started to ramp"
Lessin's read is that the confusion is manufactured: "these companies are selectively leaking numbers to try and counter the narrative", feeding investors specific pieces of information "probably exactly to do this to muddy the picture"
"So we don't know the full picture."
She hears continued momentum in enterprise alongside difficulty getting customers to switch off Anthropic on contracts
On consumer, OpenAI is "banking on this device as part of a long-term bet in consumer"
"I still use ChatGPT every day but it has not replaced Google."
The Revolving Door at OpenAI
Sorkin credited The Information's personnel reporting and asked what investors should make of the turnover
Lessin reads the recent business-side exits as one management change rather than a crisis — in two cases the outlet reported, sales leaders went back to Salesforce
The cause she gives is Greg Brockman taking the business back: "he is firmly back in charge of running the business"
The departures are "not a function of anything deeply broken other than it's a new guy with the reins who wants to change the strategy"
Talent is boomeranging across the whole industry — "we are seeing talent flow just back and forth and boomerang across the industry right now in AI"
That makes it "additional challenge for these companies to hang on to people and quite a big management distraction"
Lessin: Meta Cannot Bully YouTube and TikTok Into Settling
Sorkin argued a settlement would be more painful for TikTok and YouTube, whose users "truly are addicted at you know multiple hours a day" in a way he suspects Meta envies
Lessin's answer on the read-across: "so far it's been crickets from them." Meta has been goading them publicly, even offering to change its own terms further if they follow
"I don't think YouTube is going to be, for a lack of a better word, bullied by Meta. I certainly don't think TikTok is."
She expects them to chart their own course "through the courts, and through the deals" rather than move because "Meta is taking out ads and newspapers telling them to"
The issue itself is not going away — Meta "has been sort of the tip of the spear, but YouTube in particular faces a tremendous amount of pressure to do something"
She would not predict a near-term deal, since "these issues take years to unfold", but expects settlements eventually, with no indication one is close on YouTube
Levchin's bottom line is that nothing is profoundly wrong with the consumer and sustained pressure on prices is the one thing he would not ignore, because Affirm grows either way — budgeting customers in inflation, discretionary ones in abundance.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
Affirm (Buy now, pay later, and now credit cards too; Levchin says it has grown 30-plus% for 11 straight quarters, underwrites every transaction separately in real time, and charges no late fees so its incentives match the borrower's)
Anthropic (Won a First Amendment ruling against the Pentagon over its supply chain risk designation, and is preparing a prospectus after Labor Day that may let existing holders sell into the IPO)
Meta (Settled child-safety claims with 48 states and DC; now has to build autoplay controls, feed controls and age assurance, the last of which it says could take a year)
TikTok and YouTube ($5 billion of Meta's settlement hinges on them adopting similar teen limits; both have stayed silent, and Lessin does not expect either to be pushed into a deal by Meta)
OpenAI (A thicket of related-party relationships to unpack before listing; CFO Sarah Friar has said it will be public next year, with Greg Brockman back running the business)
The Information (Broke the Anthropic IPO terms this week — the possible shareholder sales and the longer-than-typical lockup)
Take-Two Interactive and Grand Theft Auto 6 (27 minutes of gameplay aired on Netflix, the biggest reveal yet, with the game due 19 November and a possible leak circulating)
Netflix (The venue for the Grand Theft Auto 6 gameplay reveal)
Salesforce (Where two OpenAI sales leaders went back to, per The Information's reporting)
Needham (Laura Martin's warning that Meta's remedies push under-18s toward platforms without the limitations)
FICO (Sorkin's shorthand for what Affirm changed — the company underwrites on its own data rather than on a single score)
ChatGPT and Google (Lessin uses ChatGPT daily and says it still has not replaced Google, which is her measure of the consumer question)
Oura Ring (Sorkin's running bit at Kernen's expense, and the reason the court-packing argument stopped)
Peloton (Sorkin's shorthand for the pandemic buying spree; Levchin says the real driver was commerce moving online)
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