Affirm CEO Max Levchin on the company's record retailer growth

Watch on YouTube ↗  |  February 06, 2026 at 15:20  |  5:42  |  CNBC
Speakers
Max Levchin — CEO, Affirm
Jim Cramer — Host, Mad Money

Summary

Max Levchin, co-founder and CEO of Affirm, joins Squawk on the Street to discuss the company's latest earnings, record retailer growth, a new Intuit/QuickBooks partnership, AI competition, and BNPL regulation. He argues Affirm's merchant network, proprietary underwriting data, consumer brand, and capital-markets funding make it a durable business that is hard to replicate. The host challenges the stock's negative reaction and asks about AI and White House policy.

  • Affirm reported 42% year-over-year growth in active merchants and record retailer growth.
  • Affirm is launching a partnership with Intuit's QuickBooks platform to reach more merchants.
  • Levchin says Affirm's 0% APR events drove up to 27% sales increases for merchants.
  • Levchin argues Affirm's underwriting data and network are hard for AI entrants to replicate.
  • He supports simple-interest, transparent BNPL regulation and says most Affirm transactions are interest-free.
  • The interview covers AI tools for merchants and the stock's post-earnings reaction.
Ideas
Max Levchin CEO, Affirm 1:48
Record merchant growth expands Affirm's TAM
Affirm's business is durable rather than pure software. Underwriting is a science and math discipline the company has honed for 15 years, supported by proprietary training data from loans made and losses taken. It integrates with hundreds of thousands of merchants, has a trusted no-fee brand with 26 million consumers, and has a large set of capital-markets partners funding loans. That consumer, merchant, and funding infrastructure is much harder for cloud-code or AI entrants like Anthropic to replicate, so Levchin feels secure in Affirm's market position even as AI tools improve.
AFRM HIGH
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This CNBC video, published February 06, 2026, features Max Levchin discussing AFRM. 1 trade idea extracted by AI with direction and confidence scoring.

Speakers: Max Levchin  · Tickers: AFRM