Anthropic’s ‘First Lady’ Cami Clark, OpenAI CRO Exit After 8 Months, Lovable’s $13.3B Valuation

23:36And once we do that, we're testing a bunch of different monetization models for it as we speak throughout the next quarter. And we will land on a specific model that basically drives value, but also scales a product responsibly financially at the same time. So then let's talk about then the financials. I mean, the company revenue growth has basically been flat for the last two years. I mean, you drift in and around the flat mark. I think the last quarter you did slip into the positive. But what is the plan to return to growth? Because profitability is not the problem for the company anymore. And we saw the margins slip slightly.

24:17But as you said, you're going to charge for it.

24:19Laura Mandaro:So maybe it takes care of that. But is Dash the thing that is going to carry the company into, I don't know, 5%, 6 % growth in the long run? Yeah, so we see this as a multi-step process. So first one was for us to prove that we can turn the company into growth. And I think one quarter doesn't show sustainability, but we believe everything we've done puts us on a path that shows it is durable. Step two is to constantly do that. And we've been raising guidance and we've been able to show that this growth is durable. And the reason it's durable is because we focus on customer value. We didn't do basic funnel hacks or things that are not valuable to customers.

25:05We did specific changes that unlocked value to customers, which turned the product around, which you see in the results that we announced. Step three is unlock more value. So this is where Dash comes into play, which is enabling more and deeper customer workflows. You'll also see more and more from us enabling additional products that are aimed to give the customers the capabilities that they need to get their job done end-to-end. Like what? What sorts of products should we be expecting? So, for example, we have a lot of customers, our most engaged customers are in the marketing and creative segment.

25:42We have in construction. When you collaborate on a project, you're actually going back and forth with a client. And one of the things that we see that is missing is their ability to go back and forth on a specific file, annotate things, drop in an email and translate that into feedback that ends up changing that file. And so we're building collaboration tools. We have a product called Replay. We're revamping that, launching it again. So these are capabilities that enable what we call deeper workflows to solve customer problems. And these are additional unlocks to enable the company to grow. So we're in a chapter where we're going from stable, durable growth to unlocking additional growth by simply listening to our customers, unlocking deeper value.

26:32And it sounds like you're going back to the collaboration was a key growth driver for you with Dropbox Sign and the Hello Sign play that you guys had. So it sounds like you're not just looking inward. It's still leaning on collaboration in terms of the product roadmap, which is exciting. I want to ask you just a high-level question here. We're in this moment where every company has to decide which models they use, whether or not they build their own models with open weights.

27:01Laura Mandaro:We're in this moment of pushback, I guess figuratively speaking against the big AI labs right now. Where do you stand on that discussion? Do you understand the pushback against them? So ultimately, I believe customers should have a choice. I think having a choice means you may pick something for a specific scenario and you pick another model for a different scenario. And I think that our perspective at Dropbox is, ultimately, customers should have the choice. Our role in enabling that choice is making sure that the choice of models always comes with security, privacy, controls, and always you can carry your context forward.

27:47So we believe that Dropbox can play a huge role because your context stays with Dropbox. You can pick your model, open weight, close weight, and you can use different models for different purposes as long as we are able to provide, which is our priority, security, governance and privacy and transparency as well.

28:08Laura Mandaro:Are you developing your own models using OpenWeights? We're not developing our own models. Our goal is to unlock what the models are able to produce with the customer context that they have. Okay. Why not develop your own models using OpenWeights? Certainly, security is a top priority for you. The one thing that we actually fundamentally believe in is that Dropbox has a role to play to not go in and tweak models and optimize models. Our job is to carry project context forward. And we want to be in a scenario where we are able to give all the choices that exist in the market, again, with the conditions that I mentioned about privacy and control to our customers.

28:55And that the value we can unlock to our customers is not by changing models, it's by enabling options for them to pick. and for them to carry their workflows forward. Great. Well, Ashraf, I want to thank you for coming on and making time for us. That is Ashraf Al-Karmi, the co-CEO, soon to be the only CEO of Dropbox here on TI TV.

29:19Laura Mandaro:Thank you for having me. Coursera is placing a$100 million bet on the future of AI-driven education through a strategic partnership in a new startup. For more on that, I want to bring on Coursera's CEO, Greg Hart. Greg, welcome to the show. It's great to have you here. My pleasure. So I want to get into this investment that you made shortly here. But I mean, look, Coursera has been through many different iterations of the company. You just had the acquisition of Udemy as well. Just tell us a little bit about the shape of the business right now. Where is most of your money coming from? How do you make money?

29:54Laura Mandaro:Let's start there. Well, the combination with Udemy that you just referenced really creates a very balanced business. And so previously, Coursera had been two-thirds consumer, one-third enterprise. Udemy was the inverse of that. They were roughly the same size. So now we have a company that is 50-50 consumer and enterprise in terms of the revenue, a little bit more than$1.5 billion in revenue across the two companies last year. We just reported our Q2 results, had a solid quarter, raised revenue guidance, raised EBITDA guidance. And we believe that the investment and learn vector really builds on top of what we're trying to do as we bring the companies together.

30:31And just remind us for those of us who, so Udemy selling to enterprises, what exactly were they selling to enterprises? Well, both companies are selling, you know, the same thing effectively to enterprise, which is assistance in enterprises upskilling and reskilling their workforce for their business needs, typically around how they better leverage technology, specifically AI today, but around whatever that might be for any given business. Okay. So, I mean, I want to talk about the investment that$100 million into LearnVector. This is a company that was co-founded by Andrew Eng, who, of course, is one of the co-founders of Coursera as well.

31:12Laura Mandaro:Talk to me about the decision here to invest and what you're ultimately going for here. Well, the combination of Coursera and Udemy was about bringing two similar companies together to have more firepower to invest in a platform that can really reinvent learning. The investment in LearnVector builds on that. So Andrew, as you mentioned, one of our co-founders, one of the world's leading experts on AI, also incredibly passionate about education and about how you can use technology and AI specifically to really transform learning from one-to-many to one-to-one. And so we're focused at Coursera on building out an AI native platform that enables exactly that.

31:57The investment in LearnVector is an opportunity to have a real force multiplier on those efforts. What do they actually do, the one-to-one? I mean, what does that mean? It's like personalized chatbots for education? Is that the idea? Not a chatbot. Anybody can talk to a chatbot and get an answer. But no, a learning experience and journey that is much more personalized to where you start, but it's still structured. And so Coursera's founding came out of Stanford. We have content from the best universities in the world, Stanford, Yale, Michigan, Penn, Oxford, Cambridge, etc., and the best technology companies in the world, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Anthropic.

32:34And what we really want to do is take that journey, which right now is very similar for most learners, and really make it much more personalized and adaptive to the skills that you have and exactly what you need to advance your skills in your given career. The investment in LearnVector is meant to be an accelerant for all of that.

32:53Laura Mandaro:So the thing that I was trying to figure out this morning is, I mean, Andrew, why wouldn't he just have built LearnVector inside of Corsair? I mean, co-founder of both companies, you made the$100 million investment. I mean, why not just build what LearnVector is building in-house yourself? Well, to me, this is really very much an and, not an or. So we're going to be building a number of things that progress the platform and make it more personalized and more adaptive. But we're also highly confident that Andrew is going to come up with ideas that we won't because of his background, because of his experience.

33:31And, you know, your audience may not know this, but Andrew is the only person that both Sam Altman and Dario Amadei have worked for. And so he is one of the world's foremost experts.

33:40Laura Mandaro:Where did they work for him? Back in one of his earlier chapters, not at the same time. Right. Yeah, I didn't know. Yeah, I learned that actually as we were doing this investment. I didn't know about that either. What company were they working at? I don't remember actually the name of the company that they were working for. And I think it was two separate ones actually, not the same one. Got it, got it, got it. Okay. So you're going to – so, yes, back to – I mean, I guess why wouldn't Andrew just have built it inside Coursera? I mean, he's still – I think he's – Well, he's no longer part of Coursera.

34:17He's the chairman, and he's on our board, of course, and he's our co-founder. But he's no longer part of the company itself. And so this was an opportunity for him to create a separate company and an opportunity because, obviously, he is somebody that people really want to work for to attract employees to that startup. And we think that'll help them go faster. Right.

34:36Laura Mandaro:So let's talk a little bit about AI broadly with education here. I mean, as it relates to teaching, teaching students, teaching employees at companies, how to upskill them, stuff like that. What type of learning is AI good for in education and what type of learning is it bad for? Well, I think AI can be a force that can make any educational experience better. Obviously, the thing that you would say is, well, AI is going to be less good at something you have to do, you know, with physical labor or manually, right? But, of course, there are a lot of companies working on robotics. What we believe is that AI can really expand the market for online learning and do a better job of actually delivering that learning by making that experience much more personalized and adaptive and doing a better job of delivering the skills that you need in your profession and proof of those skills.

35:30that you can take out to the workforce and demonstrate your capability? How, though, is my question, because I hear you on the personalized curriculum. I mean, you can certainly mix and match things

35:44Laura Mandaro:depending on students' interests, depending on their level of aptitude in a certain topic, stuff like that. But, you know, then you get into this whole debate of it. Well, if AI is going to do everything for you, then how are you going to learn how to do anything yourself? what's the answer to that? Well, I think if you have the right educational experience, regardless for a second, whether that's online or offline, a few of the characteristics about that experience are probably pretty common. Number one, it is causing you to think critically. So you're not just like going through rote learning, but you're actually gaining the ability to think critically.

36:23We see the desire for that reflected in demand on our platform for skills and communication, critical thinking, leadership. And we believe that AI can really help that. Obviously, the learner has a role to play in that too. They have to bring the right mindset to it. But we believe that AI can be really good in helping create that mindset, creating that environment and really not just nudging, but bringing the learner along through that journey in a way that's suited to their learning style. And so we think that AI can really be a much more effective way to deliver online learning. so i'm thinking back to the teachers that i had uh in middle school high school university you know one of the things that i kept hearing is that oh you kids are so much better at multitasking

37:09Laura Mandaro:than than we were growing up you know and this is not uh this is everything right i mean you've got the devices stuff like that so multitasking is a skill i guess that we've become better at right Right. And, you know, we can have a debate whether or not AI is going to make it better or worse for learning hard skills, whether or not AI is going to do the writing and stuff for you. But I'm wondering, you know, what types of skill, what types of things do you think we will be better at in the AI era? I mean, is it we'll be better at doing research? We'll be better at will we become more or less technical?

37:49Laura Mandaro:What do you think are the structural changes here we're going to see with young people entering the workforce with this technology? Well, I think one of the things, there's a lot that is written about and talked about, about the disruptive impact of AI. And I think that's certainly true, that AI is disrupting a number of industries and obviously potentially having a disruptive impact on individuals' lives. I think that AI over the long run will be an incredibly diffusive force for creativity and for unlocking things that are not possible today. And as one example, if you think about what it takes to create a new startup idea and a new website, it is much easier to do that now than it was 20 years ago.

38:34And so if you roll back the clock 20 years ago, if you wanted to create a startup, you had an idea, you had to go find somebody with the technical skill to create the website for that, create the system for that. Then you had to buy the hardware pre-cloud. You had to go buy the hardware, provision it, manage all of that. It is now far easier to do all that. The cloud stuff is taken care of, obviously, through AWS and Google Cloud and Azure. And then you've got AI, which makes it so that anybody with an idea can create that idea. I think that same type of phenomenon is going to play out over multiple different industries and different domains.

39:13I think that's going to be an incredibly positive impact for humanity. Our role at Coursera is to help prepare people for that, to give them the tools that they need. Great. Well, Greg, I want to thank you for coming on. That is Greg Hart, the CEO of Coursera here on TI TV. Thank you.

39:32Laura Mandaro:Our weekend big read this week is a profile of Kami Clark, Anthropic CEO, Dario Amode's wife. My colleagues, Corey Weinberg, Jemima McAvoy, Stephanie Palazzolo, and our editor-in-chief, Jessica Lesson, did a ton of great reporting for this story. It is a must-read. I want to bring on Jemima and Corey to share more with us about what they found. Welcome back to the show, both of you. It's great to have you here. Hey, Kyle. Okay, Corey, so I'm going to start with you. So why did you decide to profile Cammie Clark? Yeah, Cammie has become kind of a really essential and influential figure in Daria Amadei's circle.

40:12And we knew absolutely nothing about her. And so when you have...

40:17Laura Mandaro:Good reason to write a story about her, I guess. I think that's not like, that's what editors say is like not a tough, tough call in terms of greenlighting. But also, obviously, the other factor here is that Anthropix sort of rise to the stratosphere that it's in now in business and tech, where it's talking about$1 trillion,$2 trillion valuation IPO. That has sort of catapulted in a very short amount of time into sort of the elite of the elite of the elite. And there hasn't been time for us as journalists and reporters to catch up necessarily and figure out who are the players, who are the people around the table.

41:01And so that's what this effort was all about. And so we're going to go through sort of her whole backstory because she has a very interesting journey here. But Corey, I mean, give us the highlight here in terms of why has she become so important to Dario right now?

41:22Laura Mandaro:other than the fact that she's his wife and everyone's just leading up their wife. We all are with our spouses and partners. No, I mean, Cammy has been near Dario's side as he has been going, kind of crisscrossing the globe to the AI Summit with Modi in India earlier this year, to business and investment conferences in Davos and in Sun Valley. She is there. She is just off, like almost always like out of frame. You don't see her on stage. She doesn't get asked about in interviews. And so she is sort of this person off to the side who is omnipresent. She's become her role at Anthropic, essentially.

42:12She has no formal role. But in Dario's life, she's been involved in things like, obviously, emotional support, as he has had a pretty intense year, but also more logistical and tactical support. He's getting involved in his security, his public image. She has like a kind of broad, sprawling influence, I would say, that I think a lot of people around in the topic are trying to figure out. So, Jemima, let's go back a little bit in time here. I mean, tell us a little bit about where Cammie got her start professionally, the different ventures that she worked on, how she ultimately got to the, well, she met Dario at some point, but how did she get to where she is now?

42:55Yeah, so as we describe in the story, it's definitely a long and winding path that has a lot of interesting turns. So we know that she is from Reno, Nevada, and she grew up in, you know, kind of a blue-collar environment. She had her first job working for a local pipe fitters union where a few of her family members worked. She then moved to the Bay Area for college where she studied architecture at a design school here. And she got a job working at Herman Miller and that's a furniture company. And that's really where she had this interesting window into Silicon Valley at the time. And so she has this first interaction with Silicon Valley.

43:35She later ends up working for Leap Motion, which is a, you know, a buzzy startup that was here. But before that, she did try to launch a couple of her own companies, the first of which was a high-end porn company called Adis. We believe it's pronounced. And so that was around 2009 with a friend of hers. She launches this company. They're kind of trying to, they see this gap in the porn market where there's just not really good options for women and they want to create this more luxury woman focused product. They try to pitch it around Silicon Valley. They don't really have much luck and that brings them into contact with Jeffrey Epstein.

44:18This is in 2011. They pitch him to, Kami pitches him to invest in the company. He turns it down and they have a few more communications. So that's obviously an interesting element of the story. That company doesn't end up working out. She launches another company called Female Algorithm Technologies in which she is intending to build these high-tech health spas around the country, which she ends up getting investment from Eric Schmidt, who that's another entrance point to her, to the Silicon Valley world. she casually dates Eric Schmidt for a period. And then Eric introduces her to Dario, am I right?

45:04We don't know how she met. Oh, maybe not. Okay, maybe, I'm sorry. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think we ever managed to figure that one out. They met at some point when Dario was a postdoc. Okay, okay. But they both dated. Maybe that's... Yeah, she introduced him. She introduced Eric Schmidt to Dario. She introduced, okay, okay, got it. So. For an introduction.

45:33Laura Mandaro:And so, I mean, Corey, all these ventures that she had, I mean, I don't know what the common thread here is in terms of her interests or what type of entrepreneur she was hoping to become. I mean, what did we learn about, you know, what type of person she is, you know, her own ambitions with all this. I mean, I think there is a thread of women's health, women's sexuality, how technology and AI can sort of play a market role in that. We obtained a pitch deck that she had created to try to get investment into female algorithm technologies, this kind of failed startup that was focused on women's health.

46:19We've also the emails of her trying to pitch Jeffrey Epstein on potentially investing in her previous company. Edis is the sort of high end pornographic company. Those emails are public thanks to the DOJ sort of email dump on Epstein. And so we do see these little glimmers of how she at least, you know, 10, 15 years ago was operating. She's fairly commercial. She's hustling. She's trying to raise money. um it's a very like silicon valley story um in a way uh it was also this very specific era in silicon valley where someone you know sort of was dialing for dollars for uh investment and this was right around the dawn of the iphone right around the dawn of social media it was it kind of feels like a whole generation ago compared to where we are with with ai today where she sits near the center of it.

47:18Right. And Jemima, one of the interesting things that you guys pointed to in your story was sort of the differences in personality between Dario and Kami and how they complement each other personally, professionally. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah. So, I mean, Cory, and he wrote this great profile of Dario, which published last week, and there's this quote from an anonymous anthropologist, investor who's talking about how Dario really needs to stop being so doomer-y on AI as Anthropics, you know, hurtling towards their IPO. And I think that, you know, Kami, she is very commercially minded.

47:58She seems to be a very strong networker. She's much more social and outgoing than Dario, and Dario, you know, seems to be a little more reserved. So I think she's been this really, helpful counterweight to Dario. And we've seen these examples of her sending around his research to people. And she makes the introduction to Eric Schmidt, who's one of the early Anthropic investors. So she's definitely playing this significant role and seems to be a strong personality complement to Dario.

48:32Laura Mandaro:Corey, what did you learn about Anthropic over the course of your reporting here, learning about her. I mean... I think I learned it always more than meets the eye is my short answer to that. No, look, I think in some ways it was fascinating to report the story because I think, yes, there's like some nuggets about Kami's background that jump off the page, that stick out, you know? uh dating eric schmidt sort of the the porn company which included raising money from epstein like of course those are those are historic those are biographical details that are just like whoa what um but she's a real person and she has had a um you know she has given a full effort to trying to make it in the tech world she's been with dario for 13 12 years now they got married in 22 but they've been together since 2014 so she's really seen his rise over the years um but she had a complete lack of a public profile until last week with my dario story and then this week with our story and uh there's i'm sure some combination of you know she is a very social person but she didn't want much of a social media presence she had no linkedin profile her she didn't really post on instagram which was set to private there's really no trace of her online um but also i think people just weren't asking the question of who who is dario close to who is in you know when people get a chance to talk to Dario on podcasts or in interviews or whatever, they're going to ask about the very kind of interesting questions around the future of AI and the future of technology and anthropics business.

50:38There isn't time to ask about personal life. And Dario himself is a very cautious sharer. He writes essays. He doesn't tweet. And so we don't know. Although he seems to share everything with his own company, you know, in his own company. He's pretty liberal. No, but that's a distinction. It's an outsider versus insider. Yeah, yeah. But it's a dynamic, yeah. Right. So, I mean, for the both of you, if you did have an interview with her, and as we do with all of our profiles, I mean, you ask many times, can we speak to the person? If you did, if you were granted an interview with her, I wonder what questions you would ask her.

51:21Jemima, any thoughts? Yeah, a couple. I mean, the first one is, as we mentioned earlier, we don't know exactly how Cami and Dario met. It's not the biggest point in the world, but it would be interesting to hear that. And then the second part is she's a very ambitious person, you know, that's definitely borne out through the reporting. And she is in this important position, but it is kind of a bit of a sideline role um i'm curious to hear like what are her ambitions right now i'm sure she's thinking of something she has some some big dreams i'd be curious to hear more about what they are cory what about you yeah just bouncing off that point i think like one thing to to really think about with this person in this story and all the people around anthropic is um these are going to be very influential people in the world, not only due to the technology they're building and the ideas they're around, but how much wealth they are accumulating.

52:24And Anthropic has been, you know, Anthropic leaders, including Dario, have been uniquely open about wanting to be more philanthropically minded than a lot of other previous tech leaders. It almost seems counter narrative right now that tech executives are talking about philanthropy. Um, but, uh, you know, sort of Dario and his co-founders are, they've made a lot of pledges related to that. So it's going to be influential, I think, to where a lot of money goes. And so, uh, I'd be curious sort of what she's thinking about, um, on that front. And yeah, I don't know. I think that there's also just sort of, she has such an interesting front row seat to the kind of head of state sort of aspect of being a leader in AI right now.

53:17We liken her to the first lady of Anthropic. But she's really, she's a political spouse at the end of the day right now, you know, and sort of getting her perspective on what it's like to be in these rooms with presidents, prime ministers, Jensen Huang, Sam Altman, you know, like it would be super interesting. Great. Well, it was a great story. I encourage everyone to read it. That is Corey Weinberg, our senior reporter covering Anthropic, and Jemima McAvoy, our weekend reporter, here at The Information. That does it for today's show. A reminder, we are on this stream Monday

53:57Laura Mandaro:through Friday at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern. If you can't make it then, episodes are available on theinformation.com, on our YouTube channel, or wherever you get your podcasts. Make sure to follow us on social media, on X, on Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn. I am already excited for our next show on Monday. Have a great Friday. Have a great weekend. We'll see you soon. Bye-bye for now.