More or Less

Meta and Microsoft, two of Anthropic's biggest enterprise customers, have roughly halved their Claude usage, and both are running their own models instead. Dave's diagnosis is the one nobody else is making: Claude was over-tuned for parasocial relationships, people got into something unhealthy with it, and organizations are now quietly backing away. Sam is blunter about the business. He runs Claude as infrastructure, but switching off would be a one line change he'd never think about twice. Then it gets strange: a dinner where only the lab researchers raised their hands when asked if one company will be left standing, a lab that believes the machine god will go back in time and simulate hell for anyone who didn't build it, and Sam's case that Silicon Valley caught zero-and-infinity thinking from crypto and broke its own spreadsheets. Plus Hilton's website trapping Sam's agent in a doom loop, and Dave and Sam inventing the Agent Treaty Framework on air. Jess is at an offsite, so it's three VCs and no journalist.

In this episode:
- Why two of Anthropic's largest customers cut their Claude usage in half, weeks before the IPO
- Dave on parasocial tuning as the thing that actually burned Claude, and how you can spot Claude slop on Twitter
- Zero, infinity, and what crypto taught the Valley about putting infinity in a spreadsheet
- The dinner question about one company being left standing, and who raised their hand
- The personal agent protocol from Meta, Walmart, Shopify, Stripe and Sierra, and why Dave says it's about commerce, not protection
- Hilton, Cloudflare and Amazon blocking agents, and whether holding the line counts as collusion
- Dave on building agents versus building agency, and whose potential we're underwriting
- The Agent Treaty Framework: why pairwise deals replace standards when negotiation is free
- Megalith buying unexercised pro rata from seed funds, and Sam's war story about the fund that quashed his

Chapters:
00:00 Trailer
00:51 Brit Moderates: Three VCs and No Journalist
03:43 Peptide Protocols, the Wolverine Stack, and a Dexa Scan
07:42 Sam on the Nathan Fielder Movie
09:30 Meta and Microsoft Halve Their Claude Usage
10:13 Dave: Claude Was Over-Tuned for Parasocial Relationships
11:19 Sam: Switching Off Claude Is a One Line Change
13:46 Zero, Infinity, and What Crypto Taught the Valley
17:53 The Dinner Where Only the Lab People Raised Their Hands
19:41 The Lab That Believes in the Machine God
20:01 Lab Leaks, Infinite Liability, and What a Real Framework Looks Like
21:56 The Personal Agent Protocol: Meta, Walmart, Shopify, Stripe
23:01 Sam: Nobody Should Care About MCP
24:03 Hilton Traps Sam's Agent in a Doom Loop
26:30 If You Ran Hilton, Would You Let the Bots In?
27:15 Facebook Connect, Open Graph, and the Missing Value Trade
29:41 Dave: Building Agents vs Building Agency
33:53 The Social Media Era Already Ran This Experiment
37:02 The Agent Treaty Framework Is Born
38:16 Why Standards Are Over and Treaties Are Next
41:28 Megalith and the Market for Unexercised Pro Rata
42:32 Sam's Pro Rata War Story
45:53 64% of LPs Now Want Co-Invest Rights
48:03 What Hedge Fund Letters Say That VCs Don't
49:20 Main Street Says It Hates AI, Then Uses It
53:27 Plug of the Week: The Mill

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Connect with us here:
1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin
2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin
3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin
4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit

About More or Less: For 15 years, the Morins and the Lessins have debated the future of Silicon Valley as the closest of friends. Every Friday, they break down technology, capital, and media. From The Information, Offline Ventures, and Slow Ventures.

Anthropic's S-1 leaked and the numbers are not what the narrative promised: revenue flatlining as token prices drop, and SaaS investors posting memes welcoming Anthropic to the no-growth table. Jess still puts it at 60% they get out in November, which looks optimistic in a week when Oura pulled its IPO and blamed market conditions. Sam's problem with the core business is simpler than any of it: he runs Claude as the center of his infrastructure, and if it vanished tomorrow he'd care for about one second. Dave spots the strategy mishap nobody is naming, where forward deployed teams built software to burn luxury tokens right as open models had CFOs asking why they're paying premium prices. Then Adrian drops into the pod uninvited to argue there's no moat left unless you own the infrastructure, the data, or the algorithms.In this episode:- The leaked S-1: flatlining revenue, half a trillion in mostly non-cancellable contracts, and why the cloud providers are the ones making money- Oura pulling its IPO, LPs stuck in a quiet period, and the barbell strategy that sent World Labs out at $8B- Sam on Wall Street and Silicon Valley splitting over what AI is worth, and why staying private may beat going public- Jess on companies priced for a growth rate larger than the entire US economy- Dave on the forward deployed bet and open models undercutting luxury tokens- Jess announces her bot AGI challenge: update three kids' after-school plans and sync them to Google Calendar- Adrian on the moat question: no lock-in without BD deals, so the business teams get overpaid next- Brit's instinct talking to Dave's instinct, and what happens when you stop texting the people you love- Whether this is the end of times or the beginning of them, and why offline is the new luxuryChapters:00:00 Trailer 01:04 Live From X HQ, and a 39 Degree Cold Plunge02:57 Dunbar's Number, but for Bots05:48 Anthropic's Leaked S-1 and the Flatlining Revenue07:37 Oura Pulls Its IPO and the LPs Get Stuck09:36 What's Actually Happening in the Markets10:41 Wall Street and Silicon Valley Split on AI's Price Tag12:45 World Labs Sells for $8B: The Barbell Strategy14:11 Half a Trillion in Contracts, and Who's Really Making Money14:54 What Happens If OpenAI and Anthropic Don't Work Out?16:11 Priced for a Growth Rate Bigger Than the US Economy18:04 Open Models Pass Closed Models on the Charts18:51 Sam: If Claude Vanished Tomorrow, I'd Care for One Second19:43 The Forward Deployed Bet and the Luxury Token Problem22:16 Adrian Drops In: 300 Startups, 40 Unicorns, and a Plane24:39 Jess Goes Full Muse26:28 The Bot AGI Challenge: After-School Plans and the Mom Index28:23 OpenAI Rebrands Codex as Dots30:30 Adrian on the Moat: Winner Take Some31:38 Brit's Agent Starts Talking to Dave's Agent33:51 No Switching Costs, So BD Deals Are the Only Lock-In36:13 Dave: Instinct Is the New Kayak38:47 Adrian's Opposite Thesis: We Go Further Into the Screens43:39 Who Has Agency, You or the Technology?44:22 Offline Is the New Luxury46:31 Everyone Is Building Personal Apps Now47:54 Book Rec: Ari Emanuel's Roll the Calls50:44 Adrian's Parting Shot: Infrastructure, Data, or Algorithms53:02 Sam's Middle Ages 2.0: Castles, Moats, and HoardingWe're also onX: https://twitter.com/moreorlesspodInstagram: https://instagram.com/moreorlessSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2CJdt6HhJ8ioNkbqqVKckCApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/more-or-less-from-the-morins-and-the-lessins/id1692234179Connect with us here:1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/britAbout More or Less: For 15 years, the Morins and the Lessins have debated the future of Silicon Valley as the closest of friends. Every Friday, they break down technology, capital, and media. From The Information, Offline Ventures, and Slow Ventures.

Andreessen Horowitz puts $35 million into a new school and the pod nearly falls apart over it. Sam says he'd rather send his kids to the military, Jess is all for fixing higher ed but not with two venture capitalists writing the curriculum, and guest Matt Mazzeo (NoHo Labs founder, former CAA agent, prolific angel) spends ten minutes asking why the four of them can't be more optimistic about anything. Then Claude runs 10,000 agents for 21 hours and discovers a new enzyme system, which Brit points out is the beginning of two solid months of Claude catnip before the IPO. Sam's bigger worry: you can't take a company public when your top risk factor isn't the New York Times lawsuit, it's setting off nukes. Dave thinks the question nobody is asking is whether your agent represents you or the lab, because your Muse agent works for Meta. Plus Amazon blocking Muse, the Saint Petersburg paradox, and Matt going from 250 pounds to single digit body fat on peptides.

Matt is giving More or Less listeners 50% off their first month at NoHo Labs. Use code: MOREORLESSVIP on https://noholabs.com/

In this episode:
- Why the a16z school turned into the most heated argument this pod has had, and where each of them landed on Alpha School
- Claude discovering a new enzyme system with 10,000 agents in 21 hours, and the timing of that announcement
- Sam on why infinite liability may keep Anthropic from going public at all
- Matt's maximalist case: long frontier labs, long open source, long all of it
- The Saint Petersburg paradox, and why there's no way to price a company pitched as an infinite payout
- Greg Brockman redefining AGI as a gradual series of events, three years after it was sold as a winner-take-all moment
- Amazon blocking Muse, and whether every agent ends up in business development talks
- Does your agent faithfully represent you, or the lab that built it?
- Peptides 101 with Matt: what they are, the FDA moving them back into compounding pharmacies, and what a protocol actually costs

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Full transcripts: https://moreorlesspod.com/episodes/

Connect with our guest:
Matt Mazzeo: https://x.com/Mazzeo
NoHo Labs: 50% off your first month with code MOREORLESSVIP

Connect with us here:
1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin
2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin
3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin
4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit

About More or Less: For 15 years, the Morins and the Lessins have debated the future of Silicon Valley as the closest of friends. Every Friday, they break down technology, capital, and media. From The Information, Offline Ventures, and Slow Ventures.

Finally, a full house week where Sam is back from New York and the squad is back for a full dive into this week’s AI drama. Anthropic's Dario wrote a long essay calling for the AI race to slow down, weeks before a multi-trillion dollar IPO. Dave's read: Anthropic must be losing. Sam's read: the labs are bad businesses with no compounding advantage, so regulatory capture is the only move left. 
Also this week: Sam's theory that OpenAI and Anthropic only become valuable as defense companies holding unreleased models in reserve, the poly-agent debate over whether normal people want one agent or ten, Instinct raising at $10 billion two weeks after $2.5 billion, and why everyone in the Valley is trading instead of investing.
In this episode:
- Why Dave thinks Dario’s slowdown essay is a sign Anthropic is falling behind, and what OpenRouter's data shows
- Sam on why there's no return on being first, and why that pushes the labs toward regulatory capture
- Brit on what's real in the safety debate, and the damned-if-you-do problem of racing China
- What DeepMind's new boss and Satya Nadella think about building safety alongside the product
- Sam's three eras of tech policy, from Bill Gates to embrace and extend
- The defense company thesis: zero-day models held back like nuclear weapons in silos
- Alignment's next frontier: is your agent working for you, or for the lab that made it?
- Instinct's $10B round, OpenRouter's exit, and why Sam says he's "currently wrong" as a seed investor

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:02 Not Dead Yet From the AGI
03:31 Jacob Coxon Quits Anthropic and Goes on a Media Tour
04:47 Dario's Slowdown Essay: Is Anthropic Just Losing?
06:13 Astra, OpenRouter, and DeepSeek Closing the Gap
06:45 Why the AI Labs Have No Compounding Advantage
07:29 Independent Assessors, Bioweapons, and Racing China
09:07 You Don't Need Superintelligence to Break the Banks
10:23 What DeepMind's New Boss and Satya Think About Safety
12:32 OpenAI's $1.5T Raise and the IPO That Keeps Slipping
13:03 Three Eras of Tech Policy: Gates, Google, Embrace and Extend
15:02 What DC Really Thinks About Anthropic
15:42 Should the Labs Red Team Each Other's Models?
18:42 Sam's Take: The AI Labs End Up as Defense Companies
20:54 10,000 Superintelligences in Silos
21:38 Alignment: Does Your Agent Work for You or the Lab?
23:44 The Poly-Agent Future: Muse, Grok, and Claude
24:47 Brit Pushes Back: Normal People Only Want One Agent
26:38 Oura's Agent Explains Jess's Sleep Data
28:40 Instinct Raising at $10B: Are These Numbers Fake?
30:40 Everyone's Trading, Nobody's Investing
33:27 Sam Built a Torah and Talmud App With Claude
35:28 Apple Eyes the Server Business Again
35:58 Sleep Age Wars: 8 Sleep, Oura, and Made-Up Scores
37:22 Entertaining Ourselves to Death
41:01 Building the Things Nobody Else Will Build
43:07 Tech's Democrat Problem: Jay Carney and Ron Conway
48:25 Doctor Strangelove and Not Looking at the Big Board
49:53 Pop Culture: Emmys, Taylor Swift, Silo, and Rogue Heroes
52:15 The WTF Lineup and the One-Name Theory
54:20 The Information's Most Influential People in Tech

We're also on:
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Instagram: https://instagram.com/moreorless
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2CJdt6HhJ8ioNkbqqVKckC
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/more-or-less-from-the-morins-and-the-lessins/id1692234179

Connect with us here:
1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin
2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin
3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin
4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit
About More or Less: For 15 years, the Morins and the Lessins have debated the future of Silicon Valley as the closest of friends. Every Friday, they break down technology, capital, and media. From The Information, Offline Ventures, and Slow Ventures.

Dave Morin goes hands-on with Apple's iPhone Duo, the crew tests Meta's new Muse agent and asks whether it can hold up once Google ships its own, and Dave explains why OpenAI's Astra is the first AI model in a long time that felt scary to use. Dave, Brit, and Jess break down the week (Sam's at the US Open).

Also this week: a former Anthropic researcher's AI doom media tour, weeks before Anthropic's IPO, and whether it's a real warning or a play for regulatory capture. Plus the Apple Watch feature that transcribes your conversations all day, Jeffrey Katzenberg's new Hollywood AI venture, and the forgotten story of Venmo's viral billboards.

In this episode:
- Dave's hands-on take on the iPhone Duo, its $2,000 price, and why Apple is going foldable now
- The Apple Watch feature that listens all day, and what it means for Granola
- Meta's Muse agent: why it knew almost nothing when asked "what do you know about me?"
- Why Google hasn't shipped its agent yet, and how trust vs. distribution shapes the agent wars
- Why OpenAI's Astra felt scary to Dave, and what happens when you run millions of them at once
- Dave's two takes on the AI doom media tour, including whether it's a play for regulatory capture
- Why the AI labs can't slow down, and OpenAI's merge clause if someone else reaches AGI
- The Venmo documentary and the "Lucas" billboards that went viral with almost no budget

Chapters:
00:00 Trailer
01:26 Can AI Agents Win Your Fantasy Football League?
02:39 Jess vs. the Bots: School Sign-Ups and Indian Wells Tickets
05:28 Apple's Big Hardware Event Under Its New CEO
06:07 iPhone Duo Hands-On: Size, Screen, and Camera
09:35 Folded Modes, Kid Cam, and the $2,000 Price Tag
11:41 Why Apple Is Going Foldable Now (Hint: China)
12:13 Apple Watch Takes On Oura and Whoop
13:12 Audio Intelligence: The Apple Watch That Listens All Day
15:25 Always-On AI and Apple's Shot at OpenAI and Meta
16:59 Meta's Muse Agent: What Does It Know About You?
20:30 The Agent Wars: Muse, Instinct, Hermes, and OpenClaw
22:26 Why Google Hasn't Shipped Its Agent Yet
23:31 Trust vs. Distribution: Meta, Google, and OpenAI
25:02 Harness Wars: Why Agents Are Still in 1982
27:13 Jeffrey Katzenberg's Hollywood AI Venture
29:35 Anthropic's IPO and the AI Doom Media Tour
30:56 If It Bleeds, It Leads: Why AI Fear Sells
32:04 Take One: A Psyop for Regulatory Capture?
33:43 Take Two: Why OpenAI's Astra Felt Scary
36:49 Why the AI Labs Can't Slow Down
38:14 OpenAI's AGI Merge Clause
40:12 The Venmo Documentary and the Ace Hotel Origin Story
45:02 How Venmo's "Lucas" Billboards Went Viral
46:31 Coming Soon: Altman, Musk, and Facebook Movies
47:41 US Open Picks and the 4 AM Match Problem

We're also on:
X: https://twitter.com/moreorlesspod
Instagram: https://instagram.com/moreorless
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2CJdt6HhJ8ioNkbqqVKckC
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/more-or-less-from-the-morins-and-the-lessins/id1692234179
Full transcripts: https://moreorlesspod.com/episodes/

Connect with us here:
Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin
Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin
Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin
Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit

About More or Less: For 15 years, the Morins and the Lessins have debated the future of Silicon Valley as the closest of friends. Every Friday, they break down technology, capital, and media. From The Information, Offline Ventures, and Slow Ventures.