Clubhouse: The buzzy audio app might already be losing steam

5/11/21 8:00PM

Last year an invitation-only app called Clubhouse, which lets users join impromptu audio conversations with strangers, launched in the App Store. Within a few weeks it was being touted by tech heavyweights as the next big thing in the social media space.

Clubhouse took that hype and ran with it. Despite having only a few thousand users the company raised $12m at a $100m valuation. Downloads soared, and just 8 months later the company raised again, this time at a $1bn valuation. Then, just 3 months later, the company raised again, this time at a $4bn valuation.

Few companies have had such a meteoric rise in such a short amount of time — but the latest download data suggests that enthusiasm for Clubhouse might already be waning. According to data from Sensor Tower Clubhouse was downloaded roughly 900,000 times in April. That's down more than 90% from the peak of February, when the app was downloaded 9.6 million times.

‍A lockdown fad?

‍The numbers suggest the hype period is coming to an end for Clubhouse. Perhaps as cinemas, restaurants, sporting venues, cafes and everything else continues to open up the allure of listening to what could be called "live podcasts" is a little less enticing.

That said, Clubhouse does have a few levers to pull, the first of which it initiated this week by launching an Android app — widening the pool of potential users significantly. The other lever Clubhouse could pull would be to remove the invite-only feature, which has limited user growth only to people who already know someone with the app. With no fewer than 7 tech companies having announced they are working on a feature like Clubhouse perhaps the mystery is fading.

Chris Stokel-Walker

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Prediction markets have, predictably, been given a boost by the summer of sports

Major platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have seen huge upticks in users of late, thanks in no small part to what’s felt like a recent sporting smorgasbord, with major competitions across hockey, basketball, and soccer soaking up fans’ time (and spending, clearly) at the outset of summer.

While gaming industry groups may not like it, there’s been a huge change in the methods people are using to put money on the big games, with everyone from fortunate NYC bar owners, to a far less fortunate Spanish supporter, turning to prediction markets to try and turn their sports know-how into cold, hard cash.

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

2026 World Cup Reverses Seasonal Lull for Sports Betting Apps

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

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Anthropic pulls Fable and Mythos access worldwide after Trump administration bars their use by foreign nationals

Only days after releasing two versions of its next-gen AI model, Anthropic has disabled them for users worldwide.

Anthropic says it received a Friday night order from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for any foreign national (anywhere in the world) — a group that included some Anthropic employees. In response, the company turned off access to everyone.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5