Trump Orders US Agencies to Drop Anthropic After Pentagon Feud - podcast episode cover

Trump Orders US Agencies to Drop Anthropic After Pentagon Feud

Feb 27, 202642 min
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The people, companies and trends shaping the global economy.

Watch Carol and Tim LIVE every day on YouTube: http://bit.ly/3vTiACF.
President Donald Trump directed US government agencies to stop using Anthropic PBC’s products, capping a feud between the artificial intelligence giant and the Pentagon over safeguards on its technology.

Trump said Friday that there would be a six-month “phase out period” for agencies including the Defense Department that are using Anthropic’s products.
“The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution,” the president posted on social media. “Therefore, I am directing EVERY Federal Agency in the United States Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology.”
Spokespeople for Anthropic didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Hegseth had given Anthropic until 5 p.m. on Friday to allow the Pentagon to use the Claude chatbot for any means necessary, within legal limits. The company had insisted that Claude not be used for mass surveillance against Americans or in fully autonomous weapons operations.

Trump’s decision will send a shockwave through Silicon Valley, where tech firms have invested billions of dollars on artificial intelligence and are weighing how best to handle federal government contracting. The move takes aim at a company that’s leading development of AI, a centerpiece of Trump’s economic agenda.

Today's show features:

  • Bloomberg News Reporter covering technology and national security Katrina Manson, on President Donald Trump directing US government agencies to stop using Anthropic's products due to a feud over safeguards on its technology
  • Robert Reffkin, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Compass International Holdings, and Varun Krishna, President and CEO of Rocket Companies, on a three-year strategic alliance aimed at expanding home listing inventory to create an enhanced affordable home buying and selling experience for American families
  • Luis von Ahn, Co-Founder, Chairman, President & CEO of Duolingo, on earnings and the struggles of the language learning platform in the era of AI-related disruption
  • Bloomberg News Senior Editor, Equities Americas Eric Weiner, recapping the worst trading month since March 2025

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Speaker 1

Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. This is Bloomberg business Weekdaily reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead with insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy, plus global business finance and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast with Carol Masser and Tim Stenebeck on Bloomberg Radio.

Speaker 2

President Trump directed US government agencies to stop using Anthropics products, capping a feud between the AI Giant and the Pentagon over safeguards on its technology. The President said before four o'clock today, right, there would be a six month quote phase out period for agencies, including the Defense Department, that are using Anthropics products. I thought, and we're going to bring up his tweet in a second. Here is the

left true social not a tweet. I'm sorry. The left wing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a disaster mistake trying to strong arm the Department of War and force them to obey their terms of service instead of our constitution. Their selfishness is putting American lives at risk.

Speaker 3

Meantime, we've also seen, according to Axios, saying that Anthropic and the Pentagon are still negotiating a deal is still That was after the president's post on Social Access reporter citing a source on Anthropic and Pentagon in an ex post, So I don't know clock ticking though here.

Speaker 2

Well, fortunately we got Katrina Manson back with US's Bloomberg News reporter who covers tech in national security. She's also the author of the forthcoming book Project Maven, a Marine Colonel his Team in the Dawn of AI Warfare. The book comes out next month, but you can pre order it now. She joins us from New York. Katrina, congratulations

on the book. I'm looking forward to reading it. I know it's been a long project, but it's totally related to exactly what you have been reporting on in recent weeks and sharing with us on our program, the back and forth that Carol and I just had. Where is this Anthropic Pentagon relationship right now?

Speaker 4

Well, it's very significant that the President's weighed in and called this directive. But of course you're quite right to say that, to indicate this is the man who knows the art of the deal, and things are going to keep going unraveling. Anthropic over the course of six months will be extremely complicated. They're in the tech stack, they're in the intelligence community, they are used in combat operations

on Maven's smart system, which is a Palenteer system. It's not impossible to replace them, and of course the President is suggesting a six month phase out, and even Anthropic when they gave their very strong statement yesterday said we will help if the choice is to remove us, we

will make sure that transition is smooth. And then you've got now Warner calling in from the Senate Intelligence Committee suggesting this is a politicized attack, and of course the president they'd call them left wing nutjobs, so he is concerned that this is not really a debate about the future of war, but a jostling for position over which company gets what. And if the Axios report is correct, I don't have separate reporting to that, then this could

be still part of that process, Haig Seth. Of course, the Secretary.

Speaker 5

Of War or Defense had given.

Speaker 4

Us until five oh one, so we'll also still be waiting to see if the Defense Department wants to weigh in.

Speaker 3

You know, I think about national security with all of this stuff AI, you name it, you know, raw materials, everything, and I just think about if this comes undone is that a loss for national security for the United States.

Speaker 4

It's quite hard to work out the ways in which the US military machine is dependent on AI at the moment. Well, that's what I've been trying to do in this book, honestly, and it has threaded through of course LLMS and gentic AI. This is something that is being rapidly adopted but also

really really unknown and unreliable in many cases. So the military and the intelligence community, both of them in terms of national security, have been experimenting from pretty early on after that first moment when chat GPT was launched back in when it was at November twenty twenty three, and they have started really trying to develop their own systems. Obviously, Anthropic is the interesting one because they're on the classified cloud.

They found a way to do it, and they were threaded through a number of systems, mostly helping things run faster if you imagine an enterprise service, but just happening in a classified way, really trying to draw on data points and make things go swifter, quicker, connect things smatter through bureocracy in that sense, that could slow national security down.

Speaker 5

But of course, the.

Speaker 4

Thing they said that they were worried about wasn't politics, it was autonomy. They didn't want their tools being involved in autonomous warfare because they're not ready. And we were increasingly beginning to hear from military leaders, not just the campaigners who you would expect to have a problem with this, like stop killer robots, but actually the former leader, the former director of Project maeven Jack Shanahan, who's a retired three star general, said look, lms are not ready for

prime time. He put that post out yesterday and just said this technology isn't ready yet, which is very much in line with what Anthropic had been saying.

Speaker 3

I want to go back to the Axios. We have a little bit of a follow read through on this. Anthropic and the Pentagon still negotiating ahead of the Pentagon's five oh one pm ET deadline, are reached deal. Citing a source familiar, Axios goes on to say, if no deal has reached, Defense Secretary Pete Hexath's plans to declare Anthropic a supply chain risk, there's five oh one deadline, Might it, Katrina be extended? What where did this deadline?

You can talk deadline in the past, you know deadlines can move.

Speaker 4

I mean, so much of this is performative, as we've seen a lot of very loud public statements, as we actually have learned the disagreement on paper comes down to the term as appropriate. There have been letters going backwards and forwards, so we've been told that are about whether human judgment will be used over the use of force in an autonomous situation. And we had Emil Michael talking to Bloomberg TV much more cool headed than he was last night. Last night he was calling dari Amadee a

liar and saying he had a god complex. This morning with Bloomberg, he was saying, look, talks are carrying on. So I think, of course this is a negotiation. They've acknowledged. I think in multiple ways that they're really dependent on Claude and that thought is really good and they want

to keep using it. Claud doesn't want to be involved in autonomy, and I was learning, of course that if the department pushes ahead but autonomy in the way it wants to do, it could be quite hard to have one system that allows autonomy and another that doesn't touch autonomy that Claude would be on.

Speaker 6

So they do need to work out.

Speaker 4

Exactly what their red lines are. Even if they're coming to a much softer accommodation behind closed doors now. But you know, with the President weighing in and with heg Seth maintaining this position, there's no reason to think they will reach a deal at five oh one.

Speaker 2

So, Katrina, just in the last twenty seconds that we have with you, when I was on my way home yesterday, this crossed. It was just minutes after you were on our program talking about it, but it said it was this post from anthropics Dario Amiday saying that the company cannot accede to the Department of Defense. Did you learn anything just in thirty seconds. Did you learn anything new in that post last night?

Speaker 5

Yeah? Here, I've got it right in front of me.

Speaker 4

Actually, I thought there was a very interesting part of it, a detail to pick out, which is we've offered to work directly with the Department of War on R and D to improve the riability of these systems that they have not accepted this offer. I thought that was very interesting.

Speaker 5

They are saying, we want.

Speaker 4

To help you use this while technology in a reliable way, and you help us help.

Speaker 3

You, which is similar to what the Undersecretary of Defense at earlier this morning.

Speaker 5

You go to a dinner party.

Speaker 3

You want to sit to somebody, you want to sit next to somebody like Katrina.

Speaker 5

I'm just gonna put that out there.

Speaker 2

Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Business Week Daily coming up after this.

Speaker 1

You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily podcast. Catch US Live weekday afternoons from two to five eas during listen on Applecarplay and Android Otto with the Bloomberg Business app, or watch US Live on YouTube.

Speaker 3

All right, that's the latest on the US economic picture. Let's get to two companies looking at our economy and the issue of affordability, especially when it comes to housing and really the ability to own a home. As we know home ownership in the US, it offers stability, it's an offer, a way to create wealth.

Speaker 7

And this is a really big part of the American dream.

Speaker 3

I laugh, but it's not funny because a lot of people between US home prices outpacing wages. It's made it really difficult for many to afford a home in the United States.

Speaker 2

Well, two companies are looking to address that. We're talking about Compass and Rocket Companies. The two announced to a three year strategic alliance aimed at expanding home listing inventory to create a significantly enhanced and affordable home buying and selling experience for American family.

Speaker 3

All right, we wanted to know more. Also, we should point out our next two guests. Both of them had earnings last night. Compast shares are a little bit lower the company forecast first quarter revenue, the top analyscet testaments, and shares of Rocket rallying after the mortgage finance company posted revenue and adjusted profit for the fourth quarter that beat the average analyst estimate, which.

Speaker 7

Means we're going to get to the macro as well.

Speaker 3

With us in studio, Robert Refkin, he's founder, chairman and CEO of Compass International Holdings, and Varun Krishna, President and CEO Rocket Companies, both joining us here in studio. Welcome, like you are the perfect guests to have right now with so much going on, I want to talk about the partnership though, and how it gets to the affordability issue.

Speaker 7

Let's go right there. Robert, who whatever wants to kick it.

Speaker 5

Off, please go ahead. So let's get it.

Speaker 8

Well.

Speaker 9

Look what this represents is the number one largest brokerage in the world, Compass three hundred and forty thousand agents, nine brands Compass, Corcoran, So the Best, Caldel Banker, Beterhomes and Garden e A Central twenty one, Christie's and ad Properties partnering with the largest mortgage company in the world to help sellers by giving them something they've never had before, which the ability to market their homes to sixty million

buyers without days on market and price drop history. Ultimately, there's a risk to listing negative insights that are on listings that we are taking off the listing so for the first time so that they can market without risks. There should not be these artificial barriers.

Speaker 2

Yeah, come on in here, because if we think about affordability, you know what we hear over and over again from economists is, yeah, mortgage rates matters matter. You know, it matters how much people are are thinking about buying and their salaries and how they think about affordability. But it really has to do with supply and if we're not building more homes in places where people want to live, we're just not going to make a dent. How do you do it if you're not a builder.

Speaker 10

I think it's a very complicated problem, and I think it's really important that industry participates and does its part, and the purpose of this partnership is really to attack affordability in two ways. The first one is inventory. As Robert shared, we plan to bring as a result of this partnership, five hundred thousand to a million listings to the market that are not accessible and.

Speaker 5

So why aren't they accessible Because part.

Speaker 10

Of the issue is that certain sites provide access to these private exclusives and coming soon listings, and these are inventory that really comes down to a more flexible way for sellers to be able to advertise their home. And what we think is that everyone is really focused on the buyer. That's obviously a very important side of the equation, but in some ways the entire world is forgotten about the other side of the equation, and that's the seller.

And so this partnership first is focused on the seller. It's about lowering the barrier to entry so that more listings can be advertised online on redfin and on Compass. That's one side of the equation. The second side of this is a mortgage partnership, and that's where we are building a more integrated platform for buyers so that buyers that use Rocket Mortgage, that use Compass can actually save money. They can get up to six thousand dollars in closing

costs coverage. They can save up to one percent on payments for the first year. And so it's a very multifaceted challenge to fix affordability. But what's great about this partnership is it fixes things for both buyers and sellers on both sides of the ecosystem.

Speaker 3

But I got to ask, you know, one of the things that Tim and I we've covered this a lot in terms of affordability, and yes, it's some of it is buying homes, affordable homes where they are needed.

Speaker 7

It's not just buying homes.

Speaker 3

But the other thing is a lot of folks have said we need to pay people more, that it's an income thing, So like, are you guys going to give mortgages? Are you changing your metrics in terms of income and so and so forth? Qualifies yeah, because that gets to the affordability issue too.

Speaker 10

Yeah, I mean, I think, look, the reality is affordability, as you said, is much more than just supply and demand, although supplying demand are probably the major ways to.

Speaker 8

Attack the problem.

Speaker 10

But a part of this is you have to have more ways to qualify people you have alternative ways to look at things like credit. You have to think about reform, you have to think about wage.

Speaker 2

What do you think about self employed?

Speaker 10

We have diversified the way that we look at our population. I mean, you look at things like the creator economy, you look at the self employed economy. So you have different ways that people make income, have credit, and it's really important I think to acknowledge that and to diversify the way you qualify folks.

Speaker 2

So the idea big picture is you increase supply, you get more homes listed out there, it frees up inventory for people to buy that first home.

Speaker 9

Robert, But yeah, go ahead, So you mentioned developers and holders. Look, unfortunately that will just take too long. If we attack the builder side, that will take two years to have even the most modest impact. The bigger impact is not really where you play. The bigger impact exactly what we

play on both. But the bigger impact is on existing home sales, and that's where there's there's been less inventory because so many homeowners locked into low mortgage rates and they don't want to lose that low mortgage rate to transfer to a six.

Speaker 11

Percent mortgage rate.

Speaker 9

So the way to expand the existing home sale market is to reduce the bearers to entry. And so let me give you some examples. Yeah, why do sellers say when's the right time to list? There shouldn't. There shouldn't be a right time to list. But they're worried about days on market? Why is there a fear of what price should we go at? Well, there shouldn't be a

price drop history. That shouldn't be a conversation. You know, my wife would never want to sell her home, but do you ask her is there a price you'd sell your home?

Speaker 11

Yes, there's a price, there's always a price.

Speaker 2

But don't those histories inform the potential seller? Doesn't that data show and help inform a buyer? Doesn't that provide more information to the market.

Speaker 9

So look, if I were buying your company, I would love your investment banker told me how long you've been trying to sell your company and how many times you drop the price. But that's not what I'm buying. That's a negotiating point for leverage. If buyers deserve to know price, job history and days and market sellers to deserve to know how long has that buyer been searching, how many times they put in office that fell through and fell out a contract. And so we believe if you the buyer,

what you need is you need more inventory. So to help you the buyer, the best thing that we can do is just let the seller sell however they want.

Speaker 11

And if we do that, they'll be more inventory.

Speaker 3

So then wait a minute, So then now does the seller have more information or you're just getting rid of it and it's just kind of a through.

Speaker 11

We're just getting rid of it for the first time.

Speaker 5

So you just listed and you go.

Speaker 9

If you go to Australia, the word days on marketing and price job history are not on the sites. They don't exist. The reason why is that system was built for sellers here. It was built because everyone's forced to put in the MLS. It was built for buyers. And so we're just trying to bring the pendulum back and give individual homeowners the same advantages as the builders. Builders market without days on marketing, price jop history. So we should give homeowners the same opportunity.

Speaker 3

What makes you so sure this is going to work in terms of the affordability, because I also wonder if you remove some of that information. To Tim's point, if there have been price drops that ultimately brings down the cost of the price of housing.

Speaker 7

But if you don't have that and it.

Speaker 3

Just kind of stays and maybe doesn't really indicate what's happening at the broader market, Doesn't that lead to price appreciation, and that doesn't get to the affordability.

Speaker 10

I think there's two things to point out. I think the first thing is I think no one can disagree that today there is no inventory right Like, we have an issue with the way the system works today, which is that we looked at some redfinn data and so half of the homes that are listed right now have been on the market for sixty days plus. So we have a lot of stale inventory. You don't have a lot of new inventory.

Speaker 3

So I spend my neighborhood because I like to check and keep an eye inter there's.

Speaker 10

There's not much inventory is coming on market. And so to me, it's less about some of these metrics. It's more just like, how do you create more inventory? More inventory it creates more competition, it reduces scarcity, and that creates pricing advantage. So the bigger picture for us is just how do you attack the supply problem? Because without sellers, you're not going to have buyers and every seller ends up being a buyer. And that's really what we're focused on here.

Speaker 2

Robert, you're a data driven guy. How do you measure if this actually works? Like, what's the metric?

Speaker 11

We will see more inventory come to the market.

Speaker 2

How much more inventory?

Speaker 9

Before restrictions came into the industry through something called clear Cooperation, which forced every individual American homeowner to put their listening in MLS after twenty four hours, ninety percent of our listing started off outside of the MLS system. And when that rule came into effect, we saw less inventory. And so I can't give you the exact number, but we will. We will see how much more inventory we will bring to the market and we'll share that.

Speaker 11

With the public.

Speaker 7

Will this work in any rate environment?

Speaker 11

Absolutely?

Speaker 9

Just there should be no fear to list, There should be no downside to list, There should be no barrier to list. You should be able to list however you want. Do you want to not disclose the price sin say price spawn request? Do you want to have how many photos you want? You want to have no photos? Do you want to have an address that just this fifth Avenue luxury penouse without seeing the exact unit? Number whatever you want. If you take away all those bears, you will have more inventory.

Speaker 3

Help me understand too, What does this do to the selling process the real estate agents who are selling properties, who often sometimes I would say, covet certain properties.

Speaker 7

Does that change any of them?

Speaker 9

Well, obviously, I believe deeply in real estate ags. My mom is a real estate agent, all my clients are agents.

Speaker 7

Is well calling you and say what my.

Speaker 9

Mom supports this idea, okay, as he supports the partnership, but no agents are at the center of this. And you know we both are companies with loan officers and real estate agents. We are empowering the real estate professionals that are required to make the transaction happen.

Speaker 10

The other thing I would add around the rate environment to that question.

Speaker 3

You guys did kind of smile when I said, what was going on with the ten year and how we some rates moved down?

Speaker 5

So it does impact Well, it's great.

Speaker 10

To see rates moving in a good direction. We think that gets more buyers off the sideline. But I think what's unique.

Speaker 7

It's the economy slowing down. Andy's going to be working, that's right.

Speaker 10

What's unique about Rocket in particular is that Rocket has the home search experience. We have a servicing book and because of that, we can acquire clients at a lower cost. And when you can acquire clients that are lower cost, you can help save them money on the overall transaction, and so you eliminate a lot of the friction. You become more efficient by using technology, and that turns into real savings in terms of lower rates and lower fees,

and that happens in any rate environment. That's what's unique about business.

Speaker 3

Some of the mortgage origination costs, some of these things will go away or be reduced.

Speaker 10

Or what that's right, and that's because that's because many of the clients are buying they're already homeowners that we service, and then they're buying their next home, and so the cost to acquire that client becomes significantly lower. And because we do a good job servicing them, we can then provide them with their next purchase, a cash out refinance home equity loan, can do all of that more efficiently because that cost of acquisition has come down significantly.

Speaker 2

Well, we have a couple of minutes left and we want to talk a little bit about the macro environment and the individual companies as Carol mentioned both of you guys reported earnings late yesterday. Compass shares down about one point five percent. The company forecasts first quarter revenue that topped analyst estimates. When you look out at the landscape right now, where are you seeing signals of strength and where you see signals of weakness?

Speaker 9

Robert, So, overall, we have more inventory, which has been the key bottleneck over the last five years, which has not been enough inventory. So we have nine per cent more inventory than we did this time last year, but still less than pre pandemic levels. Prices are basically flat to up one percent. We have four percent more pending contracts than we did this time last year, so things

are okay. We're not out of the woods yet. Mortgage rates being at three year lows at just under six percent, I think the key is, can we see sub six percent mortgage rates not for a day, not for three days, but for a season. If we do, then I think we will start will be out. We will see strength in the market for Roon.

Speaker 3

Same question to you, what do you see when it comes to the macro, how does it compare from last year, a year ago, six months ago, and your visibility on the outlook.

Speaker 8

Yeah.

Speaker 10

I mean generally, when you look at all the different industry forecasts, we expect the mortgage market to be bigger in twenty twenty six than twenty twenty five. I think the question is just how much bigger and how far up into the right.

Speaker 5

So a lot so more activity, more.

Speaker 10

Activity, more purchase behavior, more refinance behavior. Obviously, as Roberts said, we see inventory starting to creep up a little bit, which is good. We're starting to see rates cooperate, which is good. And I think that for the first time you're starting to see a five handle on the raid environment and that's going to bring a lot of buyers off the sideline. And so we do expect twenty six

to be better than twenty five. But a big part of this is just some companies have built a business model to be able to thrive in any rate environment, and that's kind of what our focus is.

Speaker 2

We know the President is so focused on affordability. He's focused on making sure that people can get into homes. Have either of you guys had conversations with the administration.

Speaker 8

We have.

Speaker 10

I mean, we have great relationships with everyone at the administrative world, and we support reform. We support affordability. We support new programs, new initiatives. Anything we can do to create more buyers and sellers and improve the supply challenge that we have in this country we support.

Speaker 3

Was there anything in terms of a specific program that you would like or policy that you'd like to see the administration support?

Speaker 8

Yeah?

Speaker 11

I would. I'd very much like to see them.

Speaker 9

Eliminate the National Association Real It is clear cooperation rule that forces homeowners to put their listings in mls. It's not NAR's home, it's the homeowner's home, and they should have the freedom to market their home when, where and how they want.

Speaker 5

Great stuff.

Speaker 3

Please come back, let us know how this partnership's going and the impact that you guys are seeing.

Speaker 7

Really appreciate it.

Speaker 3

Robert Refkin, Founder, chairman and CEO Compass International Holdings and Varun Krishna, President and CEO Rocket Companies.

Speaker 7

Joining us right here in studio. Gentlemen, Thank you again.

Speaker 2

Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Busines This Week Daily coming up after this.

Speaker 1

You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five yeas during Listen on Applecarplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app or watch us live on YouTube.

Speaker 3

Shares of due A Lingo are tanking today. The stock in fact right now down about seventeen percent.

Speaker 7

It did though, hit.

Speaker 3

Its lowest intra day since February of twenty twenty three, now down more than eighty percent since May of twenty twenty five, and about twenty two percent of the float is short, so there's some real negative sentiment on the name. Shares sliding after the companies said it's drive to gain subscribers would mean slower earnings growth and narrower profit margins in the short term. Tim, you keep reminding us that there's a lot going on with the company, some transformations here.

Speaker 8

Yeah.

Speaker 2

The company said it would step up investment in AI and sacrifice some degree of monetization in order to accelerate user growth and engagement. The goal double the current number of daily active users to one hundred million in twenty twenty eight. Great to be talking again with a member of the Duelingo c suite. Back with Luis von Ahn, co founder, chairman, president and CEO of Duelingo. He joins us from New York. Louis always good to see you.

We're going to talk about the quarter and the outlook in a minute, but I want to start big picture with AI because I mean, you've been thinking and researching AI for decades. At this point, you're a recipient of a MacArthur Genius Foundation grant back in the year two thousand and six. We're working on AI. This is nothing, nothing new to you, what's happening right now. But answer the question for investors, is AI a threat to your business?

Speaker 6

Well, first of all, thank you for having me.

Speaker 12

You know, I think that we're in a unique point in time where because of AI.

Speaker 6

We're going to be able to teach significantly better.

Speaker 12

And you know, Dueling was is by a wide margin, the largest app in education in the world, and I think because of that, we're going to be able to really take advantage of this, you know, AI boon to be able to teach significantly better. And our sense is that within the next few years, we're going to have an app that teaches us well as a one on one tutor, but also is as fun as a mobile game. And if we're really able to do that, I think

there's just so much more that we canencapture. So that's what that's what we're doing, we're really shooting for that.

Speaker 3

So jumping on the AI bandwagon, I mean, I guess what I guess what investors want to know is what is dual Lingo's advantage over potential new AI learning apps.

Speaker 12

Well, uh, you know, at the moment, we're not we're not particularly concerned with competition in terms of you know, other other education apps.

Speaker 8

We have.

Speaker 6

For example, for.

Speaker 12

Language learning, we have about eighty five percent of the market share of all daily active vities of people who are learning a language.

Speaker 6

So we have huge scale.

Speaker 12

And what differentiates us is that, because of that scale, we just have more data into how people learn than anybody else and we can use that to train our own specific models. So we just have the advantage of scale, of being able to watch literally billions of exercises every day by people who are learning different things.

Speaker 3

But as you know, this is going and this is moving pretty quickly the AI impact it seems, and to be fair, you are right, like we'll see may say this is you know, we're kind of early in on this process and the impact. But what does dual lingo offer that can't easily be replicated by a large language model, And how do you kind of view that competitive landscape evolving.

Speaker 6

Yeah, I mean there's a there's a there's a number of things.

Speaker 12

I mean, for one, with doual lingual, what we do is we try to build a habit of learning. I mean, for example, fifteen million of our daily active users have a streak of longer than three hundred and sixty five days, meaning they have been using dualingo for a year or longer and haven't missed the day. So we're really trying to build a habit for that. And this is why do a linguist part game, part education, And that's you know,

I think that's just the right thing. It just turns out the hardest thing about learning something by yourself is staying motivated. The actually the content to learn has been there for a long time. So for example, it's you know, you've been able to learn a language by just reading a book for hundreds of years.

Speaker 6

That has been there.

Speaker 12

It's just what we do differently is we motivate people to continue doing it.

Speaker 6

And that's hard to get right.

Speaker 2

So what are what our investor is not getting right? In your view, Carol? Carol mentioned some of the stock moves and now you know, down at a point that you haven't seen since February of twenty twenty three. What are investors missing here?

Speaker 6

I think it's a matter of timing.

Speaker 12

You know, on our end, we are trying to build a company for the very long term. We're trying to do something that you know, for example, in our in our shareholder letter, we said that we were shooting to have a double the daily active uses.

Speaker 6

That we have now.

Speaker 12

I mean, at the moment we have a little north of fifty million daily active users worldwide.

Speaker 6

We're trying to have more than one hundred million.

Speaker 12

But we're saying that that's going to take some time, and so we'rekins concentrated in the long term.

Speaker 6

And you know what we're doing is we're trading off.

Speaker 12

This year's you know, financial metrics for a much larger thing in.

Speaker 6

The long term.

Speaker 3

Right, yeah, go ahead, Well I get that right. You know, companies have to invest in order to provide growth going forward. And I think it's fair to say that we understand why investors, I mean, they're not loving your forecast for first quarter adjusted EBITA that's missing the mark from what the street was expecting twenty twenty six revenue. Also that forecast missing same story for twenty twenty six adjusted EBITA overall.

So you talk about building this to double your daily active users to one hundred million, how much will how long will that build actually take and what kind of visibility do you have on that to kind of maybe reassure investors at this isn't something that takes longer while the AI world continues to challenge established players.

Speaker 12

Yeah, I mean, we're the way we're seeing it is We're going to spend this year really working on three things, really teaching better, improving the free user experience, and also expanding to other subjects. I mean, by now we are we already teach math, music, and chess, and you know, we've been growing quite a bit. About fifteen percent of our active users are learning things that are you know, other than languages. Our chess courtse has grown quite significantly.

So these are the three things that we're working on, and we're going to be working on that for the rest of the year, and we're expecting that towards the end of the year we're going to see some improvements in our year over year growth rate. We're still growing, I mean, we've had five years of really phenomenal growth. We iPod in twenty twenty one, and since then we've more than five x our active users, so you know, we expect that will continue growing pretty strongly.

Speaker 2

Luis, is the idea in making changes to the free tier is it to get more people who don't use dulingo now to use the free tier, or is to get those free free tier users to upgrade to a paid tier.

Speaker 12

Historically, what we have done is we have try to you know, the way we generate value on duolingo is there's two parts of it. One is how many active uses we have. That's kind of like the size of the pie that has grown quite significantly. And then there's how many of these people are paying us because we have this freemium model, that's you know, like the fraction of the pie that our payers.

Speaker 6

Historically we have worked on both.

Speaker 12

We have worked on growing the pie and also growing the fraction of the pie that is paying, which is why our bookings have grown really significantly over the last five years. This year, we're mainly concentrating on just growing the pie, that is the number of people that are actively using dual Lingo. Because it is our belief that

because of the moment that we're in. We really want to have as many people as possible actually learning something meaningful and dual Lingo and once we're able to do that, I mean, one of the main advantages that we have, certainly against new entrance is scale. They're just there's there's no other education app that has the scale that we have.

Speaker 3

Well, great to always get a check on what you guys are up to and really appreciate it. Love to hear more too as we go out throughout the year, how things are going.

Speaker 2

I'm the three fifty five, I think my lingo I'm almost at a year.

Speaker 3

I think I think Sebastian actually said he's on his streak is about seven hundred and seventy. That's one of our producers. Hey, Louise, thank you so much. Luis fan On, co founder, chairman, president, CEO of due Lingo. When we come back and check on trading and stocks on the move.

Speaker 5

This is Bloomberg Business Week Daily.

Speaker 2

Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Business Week Daily coming up after this.

Speaker 1

You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five eas during listen on Apple, Karplay and Android Otto with the Bloomberg Business app or watch live on YouTube.

Speaker 2

Well, the President posting about Anthropic and federal agencies. He's telling all agencies, the President that is to stop using Anthropic Federal agencies cease use of Anthropics technology. Anthropic made a mistake to strong arm the Pentagon. This is now a redhead cross in the Bloomberg terminal. The President posting on true Social about anthropic and federal agencies. The latest the President telling all agencies to stop use of anthropics technology.

We're gonna have Katrina Manson on the program in the four o'clock hour. There was a four five pm Eastern time deadline yesterday. Anthropics Starrio Amidae came out just after our program ended and essentially said we are not we're not wavering from our position about our technology not being used for these two things, mass surveillance of Americans correct and fully autonomous drones drone fully autonomous weapons.

Speaker 11

Right.

Speaker 3

Yeah, but talking a lot about in terms of mass drones being used, and I understand was that the Pentagon was going to be talking with Anthropics. So we're kind of counting down to the wire on that as well. In the meantime, we want to get to our own Eric Wiener, talk a little bit about the trade today, the week, the month, Ready to start a new one. Eric Wener, Senior Editor Equities America's here at Bloomberg News in our interactive Brokers studio never dul date. Interesting trade,

interesting trade? Where should we begin here as we are wrapping up February.

Speaker 2

Yeah, that's interesting is one word to use.

Speaker 7

I just the market stocks are down for the week overall.

Speaker 2

I am we start with banks? Well yeah, because yeah.

Speaker 5

Well yes, but I am also.

Speaker 3

Confused about hot inflation print. But yields are down and I'm trying to understand. That doesn't make sense to me. Is it just that we are so worried about the outlook here? The private credit worries, the private market worries, leading to yes, what you said? So homage to you, Tim in terms of.

Speaker 8

Banks, did you did you say that? Because that's actually what's what appears to be going on. I mean, you can't get a straight answer directly from like the bond market, but but that does appear to be what's going on, which is I mean the keyword would be uncertainty. There's so much up in the air. It's because it's not just you know, private credit. It's basically the whole lending landscape possibly being you know, under in risk at risk, and so you're looking at.

Speaker 3

You're talking about corporate, regional, individual, everything.

Speaker 8

Well or what. So there's risk that there's rising the rising problems in credit cards, there is you know, rising delinquencies across the lending spectrum. And then you have all of this private funding which is less regulated and has been financing a lot of the technology growth that's been going on. So you have this big mishmash of risks that are flowing in ways that we can't really predict right now. What we do know though, is that the last time there was a blow up, it got really ugly.

So that's really what like the first Brands thing, you know, all of the stuff that happened a couple of years ago is really scaring people right now. And if you look at who's exposed to it, it's much bigger companies and much more important in central companies because you're talking about open AI, you're talking about anthropic you're talking about companies that are driving the technological growth that we need

and that we're counting on. And if they can't get the funding that they are anticipating then that spending that is ricocheting across the market could be pulled back. And that's really the underlying fear of everything going on with AI right now. So it sort of spills over into a whole bunch of different places. And we haven't even talked about Iran yet.

Speaker 2

You have any we're going to talk about Iran, But you've got me on the underlying fears about AI, and that's certainly one of them, is the idea that maybe we won't see the results of all this spend. Another one is what happened with Block slash Square last night and a forty percent reduction in force, and it has

people thinking and we've I'm sorry to beat a dead horse. Well, we've been doing this all day today because I think there are a lot of yeah, I think there are a lot of questions still about you know, is this idiosyncratic to Jack Dorsey and to Square or is this something that is actually going to happen at many different companies with white collar jobs, because it does raise market questions. And yes, the stock reaction for Square today is up.

But then when you start thinking about this, Okay, if all these companies can do more with half the number of employees, where do those employees go? And then what mean for their spending power?

Speaker 5

So crin right, well.

Speaker 8

Yeah, in other words, and we did all. I mean, look, I made my bones on that this week. But you're you're on the tip of the whole concern, which is that if you look at all of the technological innovation that has happened, you know, over the last one hundred years or so, mostly it's involved things that may kill a job here or there, but will ultimately increase jobs.

Speaker 2

The horseless carriage, for example.

Speaker 8

Yes, exactly, the the the automobile, which you know put buggy whips out of business but then created a whole transportation industry. So this specific technology is designed to make things more efficient in a very specific way, which is to eliminate the need for you and I to be intermediaries. And that's white collar jobs. So the concern is very real,

and Dorsey kind of got after it. I mean, he's running a successful business, they're making a lot of money, and he can and if he can make things that much more efficient, then great for him. However, what we're hearing is that we are very very far away from this. It's interesting, you know, the Pentagon attacking anthropic. Nobody would say that right now you need automated weapons. You know,

we're just not there yet. And the idea that we shouldn't have guardrails on this seems like very much being out in front, and the same kind of way that like thinking that everybody is going to be replaced tomorrow, is being way out in front. However, the longer term

risk is, yes, that high earning job. This is coming after high earning jobs which are really underpinning the economic growth, not just through production but through consumption, and this could actually go right after those people that we need to be spending, which is scary.

Speaker 2

Fortunately, between now and Monday, if we don't get replaced, AI, I think I can say this that you're going to join me for a special live conversation on Monday morning. I'll send out the details of it, but it's at eleven am Eastern time, and we're going to talk about this exact thing. Carol.

Speaker 5

Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 3

I do worry about this circular financing. That's confusing. And you know, I don't want to say Ponzi scheme or anything because I think that that but this idea of right, did you.

Speaker 8

Look at the open ai ideal today.

Speaker 5

Yeah, oh yeah. So what I'm saying like, so, yeah.

Speaker 7

I want to be careful. I don't want to accuse. No, that's smart, but I.

Speaker 8

This is the risk. This is the risk. So and I realized that, and then figure take one step back and realize that it's coming from private credit. So like, if you look at open ai today, Okay, Amazon is going to spend fifty billion dollars and then open ai is going to spend one hundred billion more on AWS and all of this is coming from well, Amazon has cash, but well they're free. Cash flow actually is going to be negative next year. But the idea is that they don't really need.

Speaker 5

The private Yeah, but it's okay, it's okay.

Speaker 8

But they don't really need the private market, but open ai does. So if all of that gets pulled back and they can't honor the one hundred billion dollars that they promised, that unwindes a whole bunch of expectations, including a Amazon's expected revenues. So like, how do you value the stock? And that's really the question.

Speaker 3

When I go to our AI expert, Rachel Mett's brilliant smart on this AI and We say to her, I want to understand open AI is balance sheet and she's.

Speaker 5

Like me too.

Speaker 7

And so that to me is we talk about.

Speaker 3

The importance of transparency and understanding value and yet we don't quite have it, and I feel like we're going to have to do this.

Speaker 5

Yeah five seconds, Well.

Speaker 8

That is really that's really it. That's the danger of the private Now they're going to go public so they will have the stock.

Speaker 2

But this is the danger of private companies about down to Eric Wiener. We do it because he is the best.

Speaker 3

So killer I'm Eric Wiener, Thank you so much, senior editor here at Bloomberg News.

Speaker 1

This is the Bloomberg Business Weekdaily podcast, available on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com, the iHeartRadio app, tune In, and the Bloomberg Business App. You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg terminal.

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