Anthropic expected to reveal $30T in potential revenue to investors: report

Anthropic is set to disclose to investors that it anticipates potential revenues exceeding $30 trillion, according to The Wall Street Journal report (Aug. 25), based on unnamed sources. This figure surpasses SpaceX's estimated $28.5 trillion revenue. Companies going public often provide investors with total addressable market (TAM) estimates to illustrate growth potential.

These figures represent projections of annual revenue a company could attain if it captured 100% market share, using industry data or bankers' models. TAM estimates, while typically based on solid data, can become increasingly speculative when attempting to gauge the impact of AI adoption across industries. SpaceX, for instance, labeled its $26.5 trillion TAM as "the largest actionable" market in "human history," with a significant portion attributed to AI-related opportunities.

Aswath Damodaran, a finance professor at New York University, noted that SpaceX's AI-related TAM was nearing the limits of what's plausible and even pushing beyond it before the company's IPO in June. Anthropic is taking into account the entire scope of work that AI models could assist with when determining its TAM. This $30 trillion figure would vastly exceed the $2.4 trillion in revenue generated last year by the 191 tech companies in the S&P 1500.

The company could potentially raise up to $100 billion in its IPO, compared to SpaceX's $86 billion, according to the report. Additionally, it was reported on Aug. 23 that Anthropic's customers are increasingly turning to lower-cost alternatives to the company's most powerful AI model, raising questions about Anthropic's aggressive spending ahead of its IPO.

Currently, spending on Anthropic's Fable 5 model amounts to just over 11% of the company's overall expenditures on tools.