Stack Overflow’s forum is dead thanks to AI, but the company’s still kicking... thanks to AI

The platform is raking in millions of dollars in revenue, with AI an ironic new source of revenue.

When Elon Musk described Stack Overflow’s plight as “death by LLM” in July 2023, he wasn’t exaggerating.

Having been the go-to resource for developers looking for technical help for a long time, Stack Overflow neared the peak of its powers during the pandemic, with coders seeking the evergreen information on the company’s popular Q&A forum. But amid a wave of powerful code-writing AI assistants like ChatGPT, Cursor, Claude, Google’s Gemini, and Microsoft’s Copilot, traffic to the site has plummeted.

Last month, Stack Overflow recorded just 6,866 questions — roughly equal to the typical volume when the site first launched back in 2008.

But while Stack Overflow the Q&A forum looks dead, Stack Overflow the company looks to be limping along.

Unlike Chegg and other knowledge hubs that have fallen victim to generative AI, Stack Overflow has found a way to monetize its enormous back catalog of content. Indeed, even with engagement falling off a cliff since ChatGPT’s 2022 debut, the company’s annual revenue has roughly doubled to $115 million. Losses have slimmed, too, from $84 million in FY2023 to $22 million as of the last fiscal year, as desperate cost-cutting efforts, including mass layoffs, helped boost the bottom line.

Once dependent on ads across its buzzy forum, Stack Overflow now primarily makes money from enterprise solutions like “Stack Internal,” which provides a generative-AI add-on powered by the millions of questions and answers on the site through the years. Stack Internal is now used by 25,000 companies around the world. It also licenses its data to AI companies, in a Reddit-like model — a platform that made more than $200 million from licensing user-generated content in 2024. 

Put simply, Stack Overflow’s new niche is the trust built by its old community and their expertise. In the words of CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar last December:

“...when we saw the questions decline in early 2023, what we realized is that pretty much all those declines were with very simple questions. The complex questions still get asked on Stack because there’s no other place. If the LLMs are only as good as the data, which is typically human curated, we’re one of the best places for that, if not the best for technology.”

Large language models want data about coding problems and how to solve them. Stack Overflow has a big digital warehouse full of that, but it’s increasingly aging, as queries move into private chat windows with LLM models... which need huge chunks of data to work. Stack Overflow has become a fascinating canary in tech’s new, circular coal mine.

Google DeepMind’s Hassabis: AGI is 3 to 4 years away

Google DeepMind CEO and Nobel Prize winner Demis Hassabis shortened his prediction for when the era of AGI would be upon us.

Meta jumps after announcing paid subscriptions for Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and AI

On Wednesday, Meta announced that it’s rolling out Meta One, a suite of paid versions of its most popular apps that offer extra features like profile customization, super reactions, and story insights. Instagram Plus and Facebook Plus will cost $3.99 a month, while WhatsApp Plus is going for $2.99, according to TechCrunch.

The company is also launching two AI subscription tiers — one for $7.99 and another for $19.99 for more advanced users. People can continue using the Meta AI chatbot for free, but will now run into limits.

Together, these represent Meta’s first large-scale attempt to monetize everyday consumer use of its flagship apps through subscriptions rather than relying solely on advertising.

The stock is up nearly 3% on the news.

Meta’s head of product, Naomi Gleit, said in an Instagram post that the company has “more plans on the way for creators, businesses, and Meta AI power users.”

Meta has struggled to justify its enormous AI capital expenditure to investors since it lacks the recurring cloud revenue of its peers. New subscription revenue streams could help reassure investors that Meta has additional ways to monetize its AI investments beyond advertising.

TechCrunch reported earlier this year that Meta had been testing premium subscriptions.

Together, these represent Meta’s first large-scale attempt to monetize everyday consumer use of its flagship apps through subscriptions rather than relying solely on advertising.

The stock is up nearly 3% on the news.

Meta’s head of product, Naomi Gleit, said in an Instagram post that the company has “more plans on the way for creators, businesses, and Meta AI power users.”

Meta has struggled to justify its enormous AI capital expenditure to investors since it lacks the recurring cloud revenue of its peers. New subscription revenue streams could help reassure investors that Meta has additional ways to monetize its AI investments beyond advertising.

TechCrunch reported earlier this year that Meta had been testing premium subscriptions.

Uber raised its stake in Germany-based Delivery Hero to nearly 37%, up from the 19.5% the companies disclosed earlier this month, according to reporting by the Financial Times. The rapid share accumulation follows a takeover bid Uber extended to the struggling food delivery company over the weekend, offering essentially no premium over where the stock is trading, a move aimed at aggressively countering DoorDash in international markets.

DoorDash is also circling, with reports suggesting it is primarily interested in carving out Delivery Hero’s lucrative Middle Eastern businesses like Talabat and HungerStation.

Anthropic’s revenue continues to surge, shooting past OpenAI

The drip, drip, drip of leaked financials from OpenAI and Anthropic is turning into a steady flow as the two AI giants jockey for position ahead of their planned IPOs later this year.

The companies’ soaring valuations and annualized recurring revenue (ARR) have been running neck and neck for months, and The Information now reports that Anthropic is generating an estimated 35% more revenue than OpenAI.

According to The Information’s reporting, Anthropic is close to a staggering $45 billion ARR, while OpenAI is at an estimated $33 billion ARR.

Last month, Anthropic announced that its ARR had reached $30 billion — tripling since the end of 2025. That put it ahead of OpenAI’s $24 billion ARR, which the ChatGPT maker reported at the end of March.

Then last week it was reported that OpenAI held a $1 billion lead in Q1 revenue over Anthropic.

That $45 billion ARR is a whopping 5x the $9 billion Anthropic reported at the end of 2025.

According to The Information’s reporting, Anthropic is close to a staggering $45 billion ARR, while OpenAI is at an estimated $33 billion ARR.

Last month, Anthropic announced that its ARR had reached $30 billion — tripling since the end of 2025. That put it ahead of OpenAI’s $24 billion ARR, which the ChatGPT maker reported at the end of March.

Then last week it was reported that OpenAI held a $1 billion lead in Q1 revenue over Anthropic.

That $45 billion ARR is a whopping 5x the $9 billion Anthropic reported at the end of 2025.