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Max Levchin said AI raises the bar of software quality.
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Affirm’s CEO says companies with poor software are at risk of being replaced by AI solutions.
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He rejected the idea that AI tools could easily replace companies like DoorDash.
One type of company is entering the AI era, says Affirm’s CEO.
In an episode of the “Sourcery” podcast released Monday, Max Levchin said companies without quality software are the most vulnerable to vibe coding disruption.
“It is already far too late to eliminate bad software,” he said.
Levchin, who co-founded PayPal and now leads the buy-now, pay-later company Affirm, said companies that make software without proprietary data or added value will be replaced.
“The bar for software quality is rising rapidly,” he said. “It kind of sucks, it has a bad interface, but it actually serves an important function, and I can’t be bothered to hire engineers or build the same thing myself. Like that excuse is gone.”
Still, it’s not disruption across the board: He said AI coding tools won’t put companies like DoorDash out of business so easily, and called the idea that DoorDash could be built on OpenClaw the “dumbest” thing.
“To have a great app, it’s important that it integrates with all your favorite restaurants,” says Levchin.
He added, “So until OpenClaw can also do things like call every restaurant and negotiate with the owner and install the right kind of tablet and software and take the menus out and all the things that DoorDash did, I think DoorDash is actually pretty safe in their business.”
Levchin’s comments follow a debate over the future of software following a brutal sell-off in technology stocks, dubbed the “software apocalypse.”
The sell-off began in early February, when already wary investors panicked about Anthropic’s new AI tool, which can perform a range of administrative tasks for people working in the legal sector.
Shares of companies like Salesforce, Snowflake and Microsoft are down between 18% and 38% so far this year on concerns that companies can now use AI to build their own tools.
Read the original article on Business Insider
