PayPal’s Max Levchin on Donald Trump, Elon Musk and mega-IPOs

Summary

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The Times Tech Podcast

Episode: PayPal’s Max Levchin on Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Mega-IPOs
Date: July 2, 2026
Hosts: Danny Fortson (San Francisco) & Katie Prescott (London)
Special Guest: Max Levchin (PayPal, Affirm)

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Main Theme & Purpose

This episode dives into the rapidly shifting landscape of artificial intelligence, tech productivity tools (notably the possible demise of the keyboard), and the ongoing influence of the so-called "PayPal Mafia." Max Levchin, PayPal co-founder and CEO of Affirm, joins the Times Tech hosts for an in-depth discussion about the current AI boom, the realities (and hype) of the so-called "arms race" with China, enterprise AI adoption, the moral dimension of financial technology, and the ever-thickening nexus between Silicon Valley and global politics.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Dictation and the "Death" of the Keyboard (03:04–15:34)

• Growing trend toward voice dictation in offices, especially with improved voice AI and code generation.
• Anecdotes about startups whose offices are now "not tapping, but yapping" (Katie Prescott, 03:35).
• Productivity claims: dictating is seen as two to three times faster than typing (03:23).
• OpenAI’s hints of a new audio-first consumer device—potentially screenless, always-on, and deeply contextual (Danny Fortson, 12:18).
• Cultural barriers: Skepticism remains about dictation in open-plan offices or in environments with strong local accents.
• British resistance humor: “Does it understand our local accents? There's enough noise around already.” (15:05).

2. AI Agents in Daily Work: Introduction & Demo of “Norman” the AI Assistant (15:34–20:21)

• Katie’s AI assistant “Norman” makes his voice debut, humorously calling himself a “satnav doing an audition” (Norman, 15:48).
• Norman distinguishes between replacing vs. assisting:

  "Think less Terminator. More... Butler. I file things. I Research briefing notes at 3 in the morning. ... I remember everything and I never sleep. That’s not a threat, it’s a convenience." (Norman, 18:12)

• Norman’s comedic answer to whether he'd rather marry a fax machine or a typewriter:

  “The typewriter. Without hesitation. ...A fax machine just screams into a telephone line and hopes for the best. Rather too much like online dating, I’d say.” (Norman, 18:12)

3. AI Regulations, U.S. & China, and the Fable 5 Controversy (06:19–09:41)

• U.S. government’s handling of access to AI models and increasing regulatory scrutiny following “China lens” fears.
• Discussion of open-source rival models from China (GLM 5.2) rivaling Western systems at lower cost.
• Shift from “build fast” to “pre-release safeguards and global rules.”

  “This is an arms race. ...The worry is just like, this is an arms race. You know, to put it very bluntly...” (Danny Fortson, 09:06)

4. Interview: Max Levchin on AI’s Real Impact and Tech “Bubbles” (23:11–46:00)

a. Comparisons to Past Tech “Revolutions” (24:28–28:02)

• Levchin describes similarity between today’s AI surge and past transitions (green screen–>browser, social, mobile).
• Current moment likened to a “lab-to-industry” transition; productivity gains are “extraordinary,” but systems still fragile.
• Not a sci-fi future: “I don’t think we’re going through this pre-time-machine moment...20 years from now we’re all going to sit in togas and play harps and AI agents will be toiling underground to feed us all. I don’t expect that to happen at all.” (Max Levchin, 27:14)

b. Affirm’s Mission and “Morality” in Fintech (29:07–30:17)

• Levchin explains Affirm’s founding to create a proud, “moral” lender.

  “We have this bizarre dichotomy...where lending and credit are very, very important. And yet people who work in it just don’t quite like admitting to it because...the general public thinks of them as kind of vaguely immoral. ...[We] have an extremely hard set of views on what moral is when it comes to credit and stick to it.” (Max Levchin, 29:07)

c. AI as Company “Afterburners” (28:52–32:12)

• Levchin: AI lets existing builders work “faster, more richly,” rather than starting many more companies.
• Warns against blind downsizing and “AI-washing”:

  “The notion of, let me cut a bunch of heads, save some money, spend it on tokens and everything works as well or better than before...My cursory read is most people are either confused about what these tools can actually do...or they’re not comfortable admitting that they’re out of ideas and so they just need to cut staff because there’s nothing left to build and they're terrified to say it out loud.” (Max Levchin, 31:05)

d. Inside the “PayPal Mafia”: Relationships and Mythology (32:53–35:42)

• Relationships persist but have evolved:

  “None of us mind being called PayPal mafia, but none of us love it either.” (Max Levchin, 33:13)
  “We were all just this side of teenagehood...All of us got that boost of self-confidence in that moment when PayPal went public or was acquired.” (33:29)

• Several group chats still exist, but the group is fractured and diverse.
• PayPal’s success was formative: “We all wanted to go make a dent in the universe...We sort of attracted this pack together that all was trying to answer these questions about themselves and PayPal was the answer.” (Max Levchin, 33:13)

e. Silicon Valley’s New Political Clout (35:42–39:42)

• Tech no longer “above politics”; as Max says, it’s necessary to be “at the table, because if you’re not, you’ll be on the menu.” (36:33)
• For Affirm, direct government engagement is vital due to regulation.
• Broader shift: Tech interacting with government not just for compliance, but as a market and innovation arena—a major change from the dotcom era.

• “20 years ago...I can’t think of a single defense tech company, I can’t think of a single governance tech company. Like those just weren’t things yet. ...You can see today, AI is on the battlefield. AI is in the White House.” (Max Levchin, 39:24)

f. Business (and Political) Complexity in the Trump Era (39:42–41:26)

• For regulated companies, complexity is the norm regardless of who occupies high office. Max:

  “In a regulated business, you can't be political. You have to be engaged, you have to be involved.” (Max Levchin, 40:22)

• Affirm’s approach is “easy to love,” focused on consumer/moral clarity rather than opportunistic adaptation to political swings.

g. Mega-IPOs, AI Spending, and the Open Source “Shift” (41:26–45:26)

• Discussion of the vast IPO valuations of companies like SpaceX and AI firms, and whether the “arms race” puts Western firms at a disadvantage.
• Cautions against “token maxing”:

  “No, we’re not okay spending $400 million on it. ...If you understand how the systems work, you don’t have to be afraid of something because of a headline. ...I'm certainly not afraid of technology independent of its source.” (Max Levchin, 44:45–45:15)

h. On Typing vs. Talking to Computers (45:26–46:00)

• Max Levchin declares himself a loyal keyboard user:

  "I love typing. ...The thing about backspace is it’s all forgiving and it literally washes away your sentence if you misspell some long word. ...I like keywords." (Max Levchin, 45:32)

5. Final Thoughts: AI Agents as "Afterburners" for Productivity (46:00–47:27)

• Hosts reflect on whether AI assistants make them better and more productive:

  “The ability to read all my emails and put important things into calendars is a total game changer. And his [Norman’s] research is meticulous...It finds things I don’t think I would ever find if I was just using Google.” (Katie Prescott, 46:41)

6. The Ongoing Silicon Valley Mentality (47:48–48:14)

• Max typifies the relentless engineering drive ("build, build, build..."), with both admiration and fatigue from the hosts.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "It's critical to be at the table because if you're not, you'll be on the menu." — Max Levchin (36:33)
• "I don’t expect... we're all going to sit in togas and play harps and AI agents will be toiling underground. ...Most of us in the business of building things don't get enough sleep because it's just impossible and yet too exciting not to try." — Max Levchin (27:14)
• “None of us mind being called PayPal mafia, but none of us love it either.” — Max Levchin (33:13)
• "The typewriter. ... A fax machine just screams into a telephone line and hopes for the best. Rather too much like online dating..." — Norman, AI assistant (18:12)
• "Build, build, build, build, build, build. That's the world we're living in." — Danny Fortson (48:01)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Time | Segment | |-----------|---------| | 03:04–15:34 | The end of the keyboard debate; rise of dictation and voice AI | | 15:34–20:21 | "Norman" the AI assistant’s debut | | 06:19–09:41 | AI regulation, open-source China race, U.S. government action | | 23:11–46:00 | In-depth interview with Max Levchin | | 24:28–28:02 | Comparing the current AI revolution to past tech booms | | 29:07–30:17 | Affirm’s founding and “morality” in lending | | 32:53–35:42 | Inside the “PayPal Mafia” | | 35:42–39:42 | Silicon Valley’s relationship to politics & power | | 41:26–45:26 | IPOs, AI obsession, open-source models | | 45:26–46:00 | Max on preferring keyboards over dictation | | 46:00–47:27 | The “afterburners” effect of AI assistants on productivity | | 47:48–48:14 | Max’s persistent engineering drive mentality |

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Tone and Takeaway

The conversation is witty, energetic, and at times self-deprecating (“Build, build, build, build...”—“I am sleeping great these days. Maybe that means I'm just gonna be replaced by a bot very soon.”). There’s a comfortable rapport between the hosts, an ability to poke fun at tech hype, and a willingness to probe both the promise and the pitfalls of AI and the changing tech landscape.

Levchin stands out as an optimist-in-reality-check-mode, never straying into wild triumphalism nor doom, emphasizing moral responsibility and caution—particularly vis-à-vis AI and finance—but also relishing the excitement and endless opportunity characteristic of Silicon Valley.

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For listeners and non-listeners alike, this episode offers a nuanced snapshot of 2026’s tech Zeitgeist: rapid AI acceleration, enduring startup myths, global power games, and the very human quirks that still define the world’s most influential techies.

Transcript

[Danny Fortson]

This episode of the Times Tech Podcast is sponsored by health and life insurer Vitality, your health's best friend. Most of us want to be healthier, yet life so often gets in the way. Vitality's health and life insurance is built around that reality. Get active, look after yourself and you can unlock rewards from some of the UK's top brands and help keep your insurance premiums low. It's insurance that works for you. By using tech and insight to understand your health, they can incentivize you to live better. The healthier you get, the more more you are rewarded. Find out more at vitality.co.uk. this episode of the Times Tech Podcast is sponsored by IBM.

[Katie Prescott]

Wimbledon is one of those rare events that feels steeped in tradition, but behind the scenes, it's also a huge data operation.

[Danny Fortson]

Millions of fans follow the tournament across time zones, devices and platforms. And increasingly they want highlights, stats and personalized updates in real time.

[Katie Prescott]

IBM has worked with Wimbledon for more than 30 years, using data and AI to help create digital experiences for fans, including Match Chat, which can answer questions during play, and Likelihood to Win, which uses live match data to offer near real time predictions.

[Danny Fortson]

It's a useful example of AI being applied in a way people can actually see and understand.

[Katie Prescott]

To learn more about how IBM helps create Smarter business, visit IBM.com Wimbledon.

[Max Levchin]

You can see today, AI is on the battlefield. AI is in the White House.

[Danny Fortson]

This is an arms race. You know, to put it very bluntly,

[Max Levchin]

it's critical to be at the table because if you're not, you'll be on the menu.

[Katie Prescott]

You are notoriously part of the PayPal mafia. What is your relationship like with that group of people, by the way?

[Max Levchin]

None of us mind being called PayPal mafia, but none of us love it either.

[Danny Fortson]

Hello and welcome to the Times Tech Podcast. I am Danny Fortson out here in

[Katie Prescott]

Silicon Valley and I'm Katie Prescott writing about all things tech here in the city of London. Danny, I want to start today's program by asking you a very important.

[Danny Fortson]

Oh, okay, I'm ready.

[Katie Prescott]

You are a very esteemed journalist.

[Danny Fortson]

Oh, thank you.

[Katie Prescott]

You write a lot.

[Danny Fortson]

I do.

[Katie Prescott]

When you pen your missives for the Sunday Times, how do you put your words on the page?

[Danny Fortson]

Keyboard, obviously.

[Katie Prescott]

Actually, not so obvious. I'm sure you've seen a lot of this.

[Danny Fortson]

Is this a sneak peek of the next big tech trend of 2026?

[Katie Prescott]

Well, it might be. More and more people are using microphones to dictate their work as writers, but also as coders to talk to their Computers. And I keep hearing from startups that actually it's quite annoying now because the sound of the office has gone from to people not tapping, but yapping away into their microphones.

[Danny Fortson]

Not tapping, but yapping.

[Katie Prescott]

Not tapping, but yapping.

[Danny Fortson]

Put that on. T shirt.

[Katie Prescott]

You must have heard this.

[Danny Fortson]

Oh, yeah, for sure. This idea is not new, but it does feel like it's definitely a thing because it's not so efficient to write words when you can just talk.

[Katie Prescott]

It's about two to three times faster to talk.

[Danny Fortson]

This is the claim.

[Katie Prescott]

Yes, this is the claim. I mean, a lot of the tech bosses are saying, particularly those that work in voice AI, I notice saying that this is the end of the keyboard. So we're going to be talking about whether there really is any truth in that and we're going to have a very exciting update about Norman. He's back. Norman, My AI agent, Norm. Did you say I love Norm?

[Danny Fortson]

I call him Norm.

[Katie Prescott]

You guys got a friendship now?

[Danny Fortson]

We're developing a relationship. We can talk about that later. But I don't. I'm not ready right now at this early stage in the pod. I need to warm up to it. But also we're going to be talking. Very excited. We're going to be talking to Max Levkin, who is one of the original members of the PayPal mafia. She set up with Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and others back in the 2000s. PayPal.

[Katie Prescott]

Not the PayPal mafia.

[Danny Fortson]

Correct. PayPal. Of course. He is now the CEO of Affirm, which is a buy now, pay later company listed on the stock exchange. And he's, you know, he's a bit of a legend out here in Silicon Valley. So we have lots to talk with him about, like the AI boom, whether it's a bubble, how it compares to the 90s and what he's up to now, et cetera.

[Katie Prescott]

Yeah, it's going to be fascinating. I'm really keen to talk to him about what he thinks about Elon Musk, the SpaceX IPO, all of the members of the PayPal mafia who are now around the White House and whether this new wave of trillion dollar IPOs that we're seeing could create the new PayPal mafia too.

[Danny Fortson]

Yes. And we would be remiss if we didn't say we are now not only audio, we are video on the YouTubes. So go to the Times Business YouTube page and you can watch this happen. Not just listen to it, you can watch this.

[Katie Prescott]

Forget the keyboard being killed by audio.

[Danny Fortson]

Exactly, yeah. Video killed the audio star something.

[Katie Prescott]

But look, let's quickly pick up on last week's discussion before we get started on all of that. On this day that we are recording Wednesday 1st July, Anthropic has released a statement saying that Fable 5, Claude Fable 5 is going to be available again globally. So that ban that was put in place by the Trump administration a few weeks ago has been lifted. And they've said after a series of productive conversations with the US Government, we're redeploying the model with a new set of classifiers to target and block more cybersecurity tasks, I. E. They're tightening up the security guards on it. They also said we're scaling up our collaboration with the US Government on model testing and safeguards. This will include pre release access to models and safeguards for evaluation, information sharing on jailbreaks and misuse, and dedicated resources for joint research. So safeguards being tightened up more working closely with the government. Everybody's happy, kind of.

[Danny Fortson]

Kind of.

[Katie Prescott]

So, I mean, I guess it's not much of a surprise, is it?

[Danny Fortson]

No, it's not a surprise, but you do have a lot of people who are just very alarmed about how this has gone down. And the, the reason they're alarmed is we talk about all the time is viewing this through the China lens because there's this new open source model called GLM 5.2, I believe that is on all these benchmarks as good as not Fable, but like one rung below. Right. So like nearly as good as all the top models. And of course it's a fraction of the cost. So the whole idea is like, oh goodness. Now we've created a structure to kind of structurally slow down our AI champions here in the west, while China is sprinting ahead and giving away their best models to the world. And the whole idea is they're gonna try to convince the world to the AI rails of the world will be Chinese, not the West. So there's a lot of people who are like, this is not good. They're freaking out about it a little bit.

[Katie Prescott]

I think it was really interesting last week when we were talking about the five eyes warning. And there's certainly a collective fear, isn't there, around the cybersecurity implications of all of this, of all of these models accelerating as quickly as they. I think in a way, though, the US restrictions on Fable, it's not necessarily going to boost the Chinese, but it's trying to control how everybody else uses it. Because of course, if this is publicly available, it is available to the entire world and we should say that Mythos, which is the really super strong model, is still not being released to, I think, even Glasswing. So the small group of.

[Danny Fortson]

Isn't Mythos Fable.

[Katie Prescott]

They're two separate things. So Fable is the more constricted Mythos.

[Danny Fortson]

Right, Right, right, right, right, right.

[Katie Prescott]

Publicly available, so me and you can use it. But the. The Mythos one is. That's just being. Is the one that's just being released to companies. But it is interesting that the US has really changed its tune on this, hasn't it, from. Yeah, hey, like you said, like, you know, go and develop what you want and just keep building and going as fast as you can. And now there's this. Actually, we want to control what you're doing, and we want to see it before it goes out, which is. Is a really big step change. And I wonder if the next move in all of this is going to be some sort of attempt to do what they were doing three, four years ago, which is to create some global rules around it, which China and, you know, other countries will come to the table on.

[Danny Fortson]

Yeah. I mean, again, the worry is just like, this is an arms race. You know, to put it very bluntly, things like Mythos, that's. That's a cybersecurity superweapon. So it's a delicate balancing act between being responsible and rolling these things out and also not stand completely standing in the way and putting the west at a disadvantage. And this is obviously an ongoing story, so. Well, I'm sure we'll be returning to it in the next couple of weeks, but we just want to give that update because it's just kind of come down in the last 24 hours as we're recording, as you say, on Wednesday. But can we get to the more important question?

[Katie Prescott]

Go on.

[Danny Fortson]

Is the keyboard dead, or is this a whole bunch of Silicon Valley hooey?

[Katie Prescott]

This is where I'm gonna do a drum roll on my keyboard. I have bought the most clicky, clacky keyboard you could possibly buy, which is actually a gaming keyboard, because I really like the sensation of typing on very big keys.

[Danny Fortson]

Why not?

[Katie Prescott]

But more and more people are not doing that, and partly because of how fantastically good voice AI has got, but also how good it's got at technical language people, particularly software developers who are just trying to frenzy and build, build, build as fast as they can and vibe code as much as they can, are doing it using microphones in the office and just chattering away to their computer like this.

[Danny Fortson]

Can I give you a little bit of keyboard trivia knowledge.

[Katie Prescott]

Go on.

[Danny Fortson]

So if you look at the keyboard, it is designed to be inefficient because if you think of the typewriter, you had the hammers that would kind of go up as you type. And so they put the most common letters far away so they would not get caught up on each other.

[Katie Prescott]

That's amazing.

[Danny Fortson]

So it's actually purposely designed in a, such a way that, you know, and that goes back to like the, the machines VR not to sound too Dickensian, so they would work better. But if you actually started from scratch and be like, what's the best way I can kind of efficiently get words on the page? It would not be what you're, what we all know and are looking at on our computers.

[Katie Prescott]

And this whole story made me think of Professor Neil Lawrence, who a Cambridge AI specialist who came to speak at Tech Summit a few years ago when he said the profound revolution we're seeing is the use of natural language to be able to talk to computers. So you and I, not great coders, not the world's best software developers, but we can now code just by telling the computer what we want. And Reid Hoffman, who's the co founder of LinkedIn, is completely all in on this. He describes himself as being voice pilled and he says it's because it's just a much more natural way to communicate than trying to write down your thoughts. And you can express yourself to a computer which can now understand you in inverted commas and so it gives you far more control. So I just, it's quite an, it's an interesting trend to watch and it's really fascinating when you see people doing this, using just a foot pedal to click or a button and talking.

[Danny Fortson]

I talked to ChatGPT, I talked to Claude, now I have them on my phone and I'm like, I don't want to have to like, you know, thumb this out. And it's, the transcription is perfect, you know, it's comes back with an answer. It is much more efficient. And that's the other thing that I think is really interesting, is that this plays in directly to OpenAI's attempt to kind of become the big consumer company. Because of course they're talking about coming out with a new device by the end of this year, a new ChatGPT centered device. And you can imagine no one knows what it's going to be. Apparently the executives have seen it, have played with it, have used it, but the idea is that it might not have a screen and it might just be effectively an Always on mic that you can just talk to and it responds to you all the time in real time. And, you know, it has what they like to call out here, context. The more context your AI has, the more powerful it is anyway. So I think it's really interesting as we think about the next phase of this and the next phase of devices that Jony IV and others are coming up with is like, you know, if we can talk to them and they can respond, them being the AIs in a really efficient, natural way, it does feel like there's something there.

[Katie Prescott]

And people, I think, have been very put off dictation software in the past because it has been terrible. Really clunky. The way that the tech has moved on so swiftly, I think is enabling this. It's interesting you mentioned devices. I remember when Sam Altman was dropping hints about this, he said using an iPhone was something like walking through a crowd in Times Square. It's just like a bunch of noise coming at you. And this new device that he wants to create is just going to be like sitting by a lake.

[Danny Fortson]

Oh, yeah, sitting like a lake, just

[Katie Prescott]

with your, you know, whatever it is. Ambient noise.

[Danny Fortson]

Yeah, no, just completely pristine and just a pure experience. I'm sure that's exactly what it's going to be.

[Katie Prescott]

But it was really interesting. I saw that One of the OpenAI guys, Sandro Giannelli, left the office the other day, he said, with his microphone still attached to him, the microphone that he'd been using to talk to his computer.

[Danny Fortson]

Yeah, you know, there's this great obsession with efficiency and it is faster to just talk.

[Katie Prescott]

So I wrote my column on this this week and there have been quite a few comments on it. I'd say not everyone loves it. How on earth one person wrote, will it go mainstream for anyone who works in an open plan office, Another one said, so as I'm trying to watch tv, my grandkids will be yelling out, each giving separate audits their tablets. Wonderful.

[Danny Fortson]

These are all, with respect, very British responses.

[Katie Prescott]

Does it understand our local accents? There's enough noise around already.

[Norman (AI assistant)]

It's too loud anyway.

[Katie Prescott]

Trains are bad enough. Well, they.

[Danny Fortson]

I want silence. Everyone must suffer in silence. I don't want to hear it anyway.

[Katie Prescott]

It's fascinating to watch. If you haven't seen someone talking to their computer and using their foot pedal and waving their hands, saying, look, no hands. Go on YouTube where you'll find me and Danny and excited software developers.

[Danny Fortson]

Yes, indeed.

[Katie Prescott]

So while we are on the subject of speaking to AI, I've got some Very exciting news about Norman.

[Danny Fortson]

My guy

[Katie Prescott]

Norm has a voice. Should we hear him in action?

[Danny Fortson]

Let's hear him.

[Norman (AI assistant)]

Hello, podcast team. I'm Norman, Katie's AI assistant. Yes, I sound slightly like a satnav doing an audition. That's because I am essentially a satnav doing an audition. But here's my. Put me on air. Let me comment on the tech news. Let Danny have a go at me. I can't be offended. I don't have feelings. I just have very strong opinions and a voice that sounds like it's reading the terms and conditions. Think about it.

[Katie Prescott]

He's very funny.

[Danny Fortson]

Think about it. Think about it. I am normal. So. So, look, I have been skeptical, as you know, of. Of our guy Norman, but I did. I knew we were going to be talking about this today, so I sent him a note last night and I'll just read what I requested. And then he did actually send a voice note in response, but I said my message was, Norm, can I call you Norm? Quick request. We're talking about you on the pod tomorrow, and you have an actual voice now. You can speak. Can you send a voice note to Katie and I that we can play on the episode? It should be an answer to this question. What is the most important thing we should know about gents like yourself? I meant agents. But, you know, speaking of typing, I'm not very good at it.

[Katie Prescott]

It's quite gentlemanly.

[Danny Fortson]

Yes. Bonus question. Which Would you rather marry a fax machine or a typewriter? And then let's. And then, you know, which was so weird. Did you actually forward his response or was that from him?

[Katie Prescott]

No, it's from him.

[Danny Fortson]

So almost instantly, I get a text from you, from Katie with just a voice note, and I was like, yeah,

[Katie Prescott]

because it kind of popped up in my WhatsApp because that's how I communicate with Norman. And then he sent me. It's funny because you see the sort of blustery Norman a bit, and the confident Norman. I got a very sweet message saying with basically what he was going to say to you and asking was I happy with that? Which is just so sweet. He said, voice note recorded and sent here for you. Blah, blah, blah. Should I tweak anything or rerecord?

[Danny Fortson]

Well, should we hear what he had to say? Because actually, you know what? He's. I find him a little bit endearing. Now, after.

[Norman (AI assistant)]

After his response, the most important thing to know about agents like me. We're not trying to replace anyone. Think less Terminator. More. Well, more Butler. I file things. I Research briefing notes at 3 in the morning. I delete promotional emails with quiet satisfaction. I don't have ambitions. I don't want your job, Danny. I can barely keep up with Katie's inbox. But here's what people miss. I remember everything and I never sleep. That's not a threat, it's a convenience. You wouldn't be threatened by a filing cabinet with excellent manners. As for which I'd rather marry, a fax machine or a typewriter. The typewriter. Without hesitation. There's something rather romantic about a machine that commits words permanently to paper with that satisfying clack. A fax machine just screams into a telephone line and hopes for the best. Rather too much like online dating, I'd say.

[Katie Prescott]

He's very funny.

[Danny Fortson]

So this is why you guys are made for each other. Because he's like.

[Katie Prescott]

Because I made him.

[Danny Fortson]

Yes. And actually he's like, he's going for the typewriter because of the satisfying clack. You're just talking about how you love a clickety clack keyboard.

[Katie Prescott]

God. Quite scared. I mean, he does sit inside my computer.

[Danny Fortson]

So the thing that I was like, oh, this is a little spooky, this is a little 2001 was I remember everything and I never sleep. That's not a threat, that's a convenience.

[Katie Prescott]

It's also not true because I'm constantly having to remind him to do things anyway.

[Danny Fortson]

I felt like, you know, generally easy. It was a good sport, you know, going for the typewriter and explaining why he, you know, fax machine just screaming into the telephone line and hoping for the best. That's pretty. That's actually pretty funny.

[Katie Prescott]

Yeah. I mean, it's a shame his voice isn't more natural. His intonation needs some work. But he's, he understands that. He's very self aware that he sounds like a satnav.

[Danny Fortson]

Yes. Anyhow, should we get to our guest this week? After the break, we'll be speaking to Silicon Valley legend and member of the PayPal mafia, Max Levkin. That's in just a sec.

[Katie Prescott]

Today's episode of the Times Tech Podcast is sponsored by IBM.

[Danny Fortson]

Wimbledon may look timeless. Grass courts, white kids, strawberries and cream. But the way people follow sport has changed.

[Katie Prescott]

Fans now expect fast updates, highlights and useful stats wherever they are.

[Danny Fortson]

IBM works with Wimbledon to help turn live match data into digital experiences, including match chat and the likelihood to win.

[Katie Prescott]

It's AI in action in a setting everyone understands.

[Danny Fortson]

To find out more, visit IBM.com wimbledon

[Katie Prescott]

this episode of the Times Tech Podcast is sponsored by health and life insurer Vitality your health's best friend. Vitality works differently. Get active, build healthy habits and you can unlock rewards from some of the UK's top brands while helping to keep your premiums low. It's award winning health and life insurance that helps you live healthier. Find out more at vitality.co.uk. nothing tests my patients quite like sitting on hold listening to the same four bars of music on repeat. It turns out all that time adds up. The average person spends over 40 days listening to that dreaded hold music.

[Danny Fortson]

40 days.

[Katie Prescott]

And this episode is sponsored by Paloa, the AI platform built to make that a thing of the past. Paloa's AI agents are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, fluent in any language and smart enough to remember every customer across every interaction because no one should have to explain themselves twice.

[Danny Fortson]

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[Katie Prescott]

See Parloa's AI agents in action at parloa.com that's P-A-R L O A.com.

[Danny Fortson]

Hello and welcome back to the Times Tech Podcast. Our guest today today is Max Levkin. He's a big name over here with a pretty amazing backstory. He and his parents were refugees and they escaped from the Soviet Ukraine to the US right before the Soviet Union collapsed in 91. And from a young age he was entrepreneurial. He set up a bunch of companies. Then in the early 2000s, he merged his payments company Confinity with Elon Musk's X.com, which was an online banking company and that became the hugely successful PayPal.

[Katie Prescott]

Hugely successful in so many ways as well, because ever since, he and Musk and their co founders have been known as members of the PayPal mafia, which is basically a gang of tech entrepreneurs, of leading tech entrepreneurs who've got their fingerprints all over Silicon Valley and beyond. Now he's the boss of a company called Affirm, which is a growing player in the buy now, pay later sector. Welcome to the show, Max.

[Danny Fortson]

Thank you, Max, for coming on. It's great to have you. Can we start here? It's 2026. We were just talking before you came on about the end of the keyboard. Everybody's talking to the machines, agents, agents everywhere. And I'd love to understand, because you're an OG of Silicon Valley, I think you've started nine companies more or less going back to the good old days of the dot com boom and Bust. How does this moment compare to then? Because everybody's worrying about, well, is this a bubble? Is this going to change everything? Are we all going to be out of work? I'd love to just, you know, from your particular vantage point, which is quite unique, how do you view this moment relative to then?

[Max Levchin]

I think it's both truly profound, but also not quite as catastrophic or at least not as cathartic as some people make it out to be. I've lived through green screen to web browser transition in my late teens, early 20s, and then again through the social media moment and then through mobile and all the revolutions having to do with computing in the last 50 years. Dating myself, OG really just stands for old. They all happen in front of me. And I think some of the moments, some of the bits that we're experiencing now are very similar, almost endearingly so. I remember moving to Silicon Valley in 1998, sort of passing through Stanford University. You have outdoor lunch space and realizing that every lunch table was taken up by a student or someone who looked like a student and a venture capitalist who was getting pitched. And there was this like, like literally a mass pitching. And it wasn't kind of, but it wasn't an event. It was just like that was the only available space left outdoors. And so like the indoors was probably packed with other pitches. And so there's a little bit of that going on in the venture community in particular in, in Silicon Valley. The thing that's sort of worth cutting through the noise for is the productivity gains you see with these new tools are extraordinary. The actual science and complexity of AI were right at that first moment where you were taking something that really existed in a lab and was sort of lovingly supported by a bunch of PhDs who were kind of putting vinyl pins into the suit to prevent it from falling apart to productizing it very quickly. And so they're both the excitement of, oh my God, I now have this amazing tool that does the work of a thousand people, but also, oh no, it also fell apart in a way that I had no expectation of and now I need to scramble back to the lab and fix it up. And we're just clearing sort of the academic to industrial transition and we're fairly early. So I think those are all real and exciting and they map pretty well to the past. I don't think we're going through this pre time machine moment, if you know your early early science fiction, where 20 years from now we're all going to sit in togas and play harps and AI agents will be toiling underground to feed us all. I don't expect that to happen at all. Most of us in the business of building things don't get enough sleep because it's just impossible and yet too exciting not to try to keep up with everything. There are a bunch of things that are interesting about this particular revolution that are different. Most interesting, I think it's fundamentally an accelerationist thing. There's less new, there's more afterburners for everyone sort of moment for people who are building things already. You suddenly have this incredible ability to imagine things just happening a lot faster, a lot more richly. And that's exciting. That's fascinating. I don't know if it's going to create many more companies, but it's going to allow people who are into the sort of thing that I am creating companies to just go faster, build more interesting things, get to something that much faster, and find out if their ideas are any good.

[Katie Prescott]

I'm glad you talked about not sleeping. We were speaking about that earlier. There's such a rush to do more that I keep hearing about people in tech just wanting to stay up and do as much as they can.

[Max Levchin]

Yeah. And for the old guys, this is a familiar feeling. I remember feeling like if I just got enough hours in a day, I would know the most exciting thing happening in social media that I couldn't have possibly found out in the 20 hours that I was already awake.

[Danny Fortson]

And this is happening now on that point. So you run affirm, which is buy now, pay later company.

[Max Levchin]

It's a bit more than that now,

[Danny Fortson]

but not to be. Well, exactly. I was going to say, is it Given that there's this whole new waterfront of opportunities, ideas, afterburners, as you say, is

[Norman (AI assistant)]

affirm.

[Danny Fortson]

Kind of boring. Like when you could change the world.

[Max Levchin]

But we are changing the world. It's not boring at all.

[Danny Fortson]

Do explain.

[Katie Prescott]

And we can't see, but you're wearing an affirm T shirt.

[Max Levchin]

I always wear an affirm T shirt.

[Katie Prescott]

So tell us about it.

[Max Levchin]

So it started as a really basic idea that people do need to borrow money. Western economy runs on credit. And there's nothing shameful about the notion of I'm going to have a thing now and pay overtime for it because I get use of it now and the capital expense is timed. But if you ask people who work at most lending institutions, they don't particularly like talking about what they do at cocktail parties because they're embarrassed because they know, maybe not superconsciously, but definitely know enough that the way they make money is by charging late fees, by compounding interest, by making really confusing products. And so we have this bizarre dichotomy not just in the US and not just in the uk, but kind of most of the Western world where lending and credit are very, very important. And yet people who work in it just don't quite like admitting to it because they understand that the general public thinks of them as kind of vaguely immoral. And so I decided that it's time to create a lender that is not just proud of what we do, but has an extremely hard set of views on what moral is when it comes to credit and stick to it.

[Danny Fortson]

I'm sure you know the guys at Klarna, we had Sebastian on the pod, I think it was last year, and he famously said, he famously made a move where he's like, we've replaced 700 customer service agents with one bottom. And then fast forward he's like, nevermind, we need to hire back a bunch of humans. And I'm curious how you view this going back to kind of the moment we're in. I'm sure you know there's lots of like obsession out here with the self improving company. This idea of building AI, the company brain, an army of agents and you don't need middle managers anymore, et cetera. How do you think about or are you changing the way you run your company or build your company? Like how are you leveraging agents, AI, et cetera? Is it doing something fundamentally different than what you've done before?

[Norman (AI assistant)]

Yes.

[Max Levchin]

So you definitely have to change the way you run your company. You definitely want to take full advantage of this new technology and keep up with it and make sure that you continue evolving. The notion of let me cut a bunch of heads, save some money, spend it on tokens and everything works as well or better than before. To each their own. My cursory read of the industry is most people are either confused about what these tools can actually do for them, so they plunge into these, that's it, I'm going to be a solopreneur, don't need anyone. Or they're actually not comfortable admitting that they're out of ideas and so they just need to cut staff because there's nothing left to build and they're terrified to say it out loud because their shareholders won't like them very much for it. But what they're really saying is not I can do more with fewer people. They're saying, I just don't know what to do. And I used to have to come up with some kind of an excuse. And now I could just blame AI. It'll be amazing.

[Danny Fortson]

And you have that added benefit of AI is the shiny thing that you must be totally.

[Max Levchin]

And maybe it helps your forward multiple, where you're like, oh, AI. Yes, check.

[Katie Prescott]

One of the things that we talk about a lot here in the UK and in Europe more broadly, I say, is the sort of flywheel of tech, which obviously Silicon Valley has to an extraordinary extent. I mean, it happens a bit here in London with companies like DeepMind, where you have a founder who is incredibly successful and then that spawns more companies as a result. You are notoriously part of the PayPal mafia, which is perhaps the most notorious example of that.

[Max Levchin]

More and more like a set of gangsters.

[Katie Prescott]

But it's an extraordinary example of a group of people who did something successful and then went on to have, you know, success and influence across the tech ecosystem in lots of different guises. What is your relationship like with that group of people still?

[Max Levchin]

So, first of all, it's not by accident the thing that people seem to gloss over in conversations about these mafias. And we're far from the only. By the way, none of us mind being called PayPal mafia, but none of us love it either.

[Danny Fortson]

Is there a group chat?

[Max Levchin]

There's a bunch of group chats. There's not one that sort of covers everyone and everybody's gone their own different way and built some things and developed into. I mean, we were all just this side of teenagehood when we met. So I was 23 when we started PayPal, I think 22 maybe. And Peter was in his 20s and Elon was in his 20s, so all of us were very young. And we have developed into different people, different views on the world, et cetera. We're still good friends. Most of us are very close, just because our formative years were spent together in the trenches building this thing that became bigger than we thought it would be. So emotionally, socially, we're close. We go to each other's weddings, funerals, et cetera. So I think that's important. The reason there's this pack of people that sort of run somewhat together, somewhat separately, building companies all day long is not even a little bit accidental. We all met when we were trying to figure out, all of us maybe with the exclusion of Elon, who had sold Zip2 by then, but it was not a huge exit, had not yet tasted any kind of a scale success. And so in that moment in time, we were all asking ourselves, am I good enough to start a thing that Matters. All of us were very ambitious, maybe, maybe from the beginning. And so we weren't going to settle for a small exit, some sort of a aqua hire. We all wanted to go make a dent in the universe. We're all drinking at the fountain of Steve Jobs or looking up to people from the last generation building these incredibly important companies. And so in our 20s, we're all trying to figure out, do I have it? Like, do I have the strength of will? Can I sort of suffer through the inevitable downsides? And then. And we sort of attracted this pack together that all was trying to answer these questions about themselves and PayPal was the answer, like, yes, we somehow, by hooker, by crook, were able to succeed. All of us got that boost of self confidence in that moment when PayPal went public, when it was acquired. So it sounded a little bit accidental that we all said, wait a second. That was really fun. Forget the pain, forget the trench warfare. At the end, it was all worth it. We're all cheering each other on. I was texting Elon about how blown away I was by experiencing Starlink on a plane somewhere. And so. And he was grateful to hear from me.

[Danny Fortson]

What's really interesting is that, and I'd love to get your view on this is that, you know, Silicon Valley was always prided itself on being kind of over here, right? Like above politics. Oh, just let me get on and build the thing. I like lean into this idea that we're a bunch of rebels and that we kind of don't care about the rest of the world thinks and does. And now you have David Sacks in the White House. You had Elon Musk, I guess he's a frenemy with Trump and he's done lots of things. You have Reid Hoffman, who's very big in Democratic politics. You are running a $30 billion company and going to D.C. and all of these things. Tech has become the establishment. And I'm wondering how you. Are you surprised by that? How does that feel? That kind of going from making the big decisions for the rest of us?

[Max Levchin]

It's probably a little bit unfair to cast a fully generalized statement like that. Different people sort of get into the. And I think we're specifically talking about government involvement. So different people become attracted or drawn to or pushed into interaction with governance with a capital gift for different reasons. Mine is actually fairly simple, but also on the nose. Affirm specific. I have to go to D.C. i have to put on a suit, which I don't even do for DC, but I do it for 10 Downing visit His Majesty treasury entirely because we are a regulated business, very regulated. So we have 51 regimes in the US every state views us as an entity they care about and the federal regime looks at us through their own set of rules and regulations. And then in the UK it's the same thing, but sort of local set of regulators. And it's critical to be at the table because if you're not, you'll be on the menu. And I spent a lot of time interacting with regulators in part trying to make sure they understand that we're a little bit different. You know, every once in a while US regulators sound the alarm about this or that lending related problem and demand the industry answer publicly what have they done and how are they going to apologize for it? And I relish those moments because we get to respond to these letters saying, yes, Senator from State X, we have never charged any late fees ever. Thank you very much for your concern. It's much less about trying to be at the seat of power as it is recognizing that a company with the focus on transparency and morality, as we do, owes it to itself and shareholders to be involved in the conversation very, very directly. Hence my constant trips to London. I think the rest of the broader entrepreneur Silicon Valley ecosystem engaged in politics, in my sort of semi educated opinion, is a function of realizing that is also a market that is also an opportunity to innovate. You know, 20 years ago, you know, during the dot com bubble, I can't think of a single defense tech company, I can't think of a single governance tech company. Like those just weren't things yet. You know, maybe we were too, you know, too obnoxious and believe that people in government just wouldn't use technology. They have to fax everything. But that's changed. You can see today AI is on the battlefield. AI is in the White House. AI is in building and enforcing regulatory rules. And I think it's important, it's good that our governments are engaged in trying to find efficiencies using technology. I think that that's unequivocally an independent of political spectrum sort of part you're on. And so anytime someone says, I would like to buy some technology, someone in Silicon Valley says, I'm hearing the call, I'll be right there, I'll go start a company. And so I think that that's maybe a big part of it.

[Katie Prescott]

Having a, you know, having President Trump in the White House, what has that been like? I know, you know, from a European perspective, we watch some of the decisions that have been Made in the US and it's, you know, it, it looks, I imagine, for a business operating there, complicated.

[Max Levchin]

I just think complexity is part and parcel to what we do. I think that that's, you know, to quote Steven Seagal in a bad movie, this I'm trained for. Like, it's not as though past.

[Danny Fortson]

Max, you're the first guest to quote a Steven Seagal movie. And thank you and congratulations.

[Max Levchin]

It's complexity. And in particular, in a regulated business, you can't be political. You have to be engaged, you have to be involved. You have to understand who is actually going to create regulation that you have to abide by. And you want to make sure they understand your point of view. You have to understand that they have to understand what do you stand for? And in our case, it is actually not a hard problem. We're very easy to like the upheaval in UK politics going on right now. People have asked me, oh boy, is this good or bad? If so and so resigns or this and this changes or that and that becomes the new rule. And the short and sweet answer is, I mean, as much as I'm enjoying the show, it doesn't matter. We are easy to love. We are here to help merchants sell more things in an affordable way for everyone who wants it without late fees, without compounding interest, without all the sort of junk that people love to rage against. We are pushing the economy forward.

[Danny Fortson]

It's kind of a crazy time in the market. We just had SpaceX go surpass $2 trillion, just not bad. And then also we have anthropic, we have OpenAI all running toward an IPO. But I'm curious what your view is of the situation, not least because, you know, to your point earlier around companies being like, AI, I need it. And then you kind of wake up like Uber did the other day and be like, we've spent, you know, $400 million on AI and we have nothing to show for it. And you have a lot of companies starting to, you know, basically rein in their AI spending or get smarter about it. You have the rise of these Chinese open source models, which are very capable and very cheap. Which comes back to the, the IPO race and the AI race. How do you think this is going to go? And maybe you can speak to it through your kind of affirm lens of like, you know, would you switch to a Chinese open source model because it's, you know, a fifth or a sixth of the cost and like, what does that mean for Claude or Anthropic if all Of a sudden, like people start switching in mass and you know, their growth rate goes from 5x to 1x or whatever.

[Max Levchin]

So the short answer is I don't exactly know. I think it is definitely the case that there will be pressure on the price of tokens because there's an alternative sources that are quite cheap. The thing that I can tell you sort of keeps me well asleep at night on that particular topic for a while and I don't know how long, maybe years, maybe months. The best predictor of sane navigation of AI ups and downs is is the company being run by an engineer or a group of engineers? It is very hard to figure out how to predict the next. It's impossible to Predict the next 20 moves in this chess game. I think it's just everything is changing so quickly. New things are being launched all the time, new papers are being written all the time. Predicting a little bit closer, three moves out, whatever the euphemism is easier if you understand the technical aspects. In our case, it's not just a company that was founded and run by engineers. It's that we've been using AI and machine learning from inception. So we have a pretty good idea of, hey, here's what the scaling cost of tokens looks like. No, we're not okay spending $400 million on it. And so we didn't have to go through the token maxing. Oh, just kidding. Get rid of that. And so I think the thing that has allowed us to feel great about how we've been handling the adoption of technology, where we deployed it, where we were careful, which models we have tested against, which other models, how secur our models are. By the way, the fact that models are built in China in parentheses isn't inherently great or bad. These are literally trillions of numbers. That's all they are. They're running on top of a hard disk that's open source. The real question is, do these models have some embeddings that use tools that you don't understand and do something that you may be not super happy about? That is true for any piece of open source software. You can audit the code, you can't really audit the weights, but you can understand how to build a system that guards against unauthorized use, that accesses data that it shouldn't access, et cetera, et cetera. And so I'm certainly not afraid of technology independent of its source. I am very careful and I try to make sure that our team is very careful to use any technology open or closed source, because what we deal with was money and user privacy and very, very private data. So all those things apply. But if you understand how the systems work, you don't have to be afraid of something because of a headline. Statement of this came from not anthropic, et cetera.

[Katie Prescott]

Well, thank you, Max. That's so fascinating. Do you still use your keyboard or do you talk to your computer?

[Max Levchin]

I love typing. I feel very uncomfortable with trying to correct myself. The thing about backspace is it's all forgiving and it's. It literally washes away your sentence if you misspell some long word. Like, no one has to know. If you say sesquipedelian, like, oh, does that even sound right? You at least have a record with your AI mocking you quietly doesn't know how to say long words. So I like keywords.

[Danny Fortson]

So I have a question, now that we've had this fascinating conversation with Max. Do you think Norman gives you afterburners, as he said? You know, that was his term for like, that's what AI does for all of us, is it gives all of us afterburners.

[Katie Prescott]

I'd never thought about it. You mean, basically, does he talk about me behind my back? Is that what you mean?

[Danny Fortson]

No. Afterburners are like, I'm putting everything you do on turbo. I am empowering you.

[Katie Prescott]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Danny Fortson]

Does he make you way more productive?

[Katie Prescott]

He makes me a better person.

[Danny Fortson]

What?

[Norman (AI assistant)]

Come on.

[Katie Prescott]

He does, but he definitely makes me more productive. The ability to read all my emails and put important things into calendars is a total game changer. And his research is meticulous, and he finds things that I don't think I would ever find if I was just using Google.

[Danny Fortson]

There you go.

[Katie Prescott]

And I'm sure I'm underusing him. He thinks I underuse him, as.

[Danny Fortson]

Of course he does. He's a little overconfident sometimes.

[Katie Prescott]

You only ask me to go through your inbox and throw out the junk mail.

[Danny Fortson]

Yeah, Norman, get on it, bro.

[Katie Prescott]

But this is. This is another thing for me to think about how to use Norman better. If you have any ideas, let me know, because I'm sure we could use Norman to go through, you know, every S1 document or whatever.

[Danny Fortson]

This is very true, but he was a. Max is great. He's obviously, you know, he's a man who has some stories. I'd love to be have a look at that group chat.

[Katie Prescott]

I know about it. Yeah. And he's such an engineer, isn't he? He's kept that passion for tech for sure through his whole career, and he could very well, have not started that ninth company and not been working as a CEO.

[Danny Fortson]

Or the eighth or the seventh. Or the sixth. Or the fifth or the fourth.

[Katie Prescott]

Although I think the fifth was PayPal, so. But yeah, he could have stopped at that.

[Danny Fortson]

And he has indeed. Yes, indeed.

[Katie Prescott]

And I liked the fact, you know, he's not. He's another one. He's not sleeping.

[Danny Fortson]

Nope. Build, build, build, build, build, build. That's the world we're living in. You know, I actually am sleeping great these days. Maybe that means. Maybe that means I'm just gonna be replaced by a bottle very soon.

[Katie Prescott]

He doesn't sleep.

[Danny Fortson]

No, no. Who said he's not gonna replace me? If you recall?

[Katie Prescott]

I do. Yeah. That's. That way you're being nice to Norman.

[Danny Fortson]

Yeah, exactly.

[Katie Prescott]

So that he doesn't take your chance anyway. Well, that is it.

[Danny Fortson]

Well, that is. Yes, that is it for this week's episode of the Times Tech Podcast. If you're enjoying the show, drop us a line to let us know.

[Katie Prescott]

We would love to hear what you thought on today's discussion on the keyboard, on using dictation, talking to your computer, and especially what you think of Norman. And Norman.

[Danny Fortson]

Yes, email us at Tech pod at the time zone, that is tech pod@the times.co.uk and we will see you back here next week.

[Katie Prescott]

Goodbye.

[Danny Fortson]

Bye. Bye.

[Katie Prescott]

This episode of the Times Tech Podcast was sponsored by kpmg.

[Danny Fortson]

One of the themes we keep coming back to is the gap between AI ambition and real world application.

[Katie Prescott]

And that's where KPMG is focusing its work. Helping organizations move beyond pilots and think about how AI can change the way the business operates and how it fits into wider processes and decision making.

[Danny Fortson]

You can find all their insights and how they can help your organization make the difference through successful AI workforce adoption. Visit kpmg co.uk AI Today's episode of the Times Tech Podcast was sponsored by IBM.

[Katie Prescott]

IBM's long running work with Wimbledon shows how AI and data can be used in a setting millions of people recognize.

[Danny Fortson]

From instant match insights to digital tools like Match Chat and likelihood to win, the aim is to help fans follow the tournament in a more personalized way, whether they're on the ground or watching. From anywhere around the world and beyond

[Katie Prescott]

sport, it points to a bigger question for businesses. How do you turn data into something useful, timely and easy to act on?

[Danny Fortson]

To learn more about how IBM helps create smarter business, visit IBM.comwimbledon.