Anthropic wants investors to believe its ‘total addressable market’ is worth $30 trillion—nearly the size of the entire US economy

Anthropic, an AI lab, is preparing to disclose an astonishing total addressable market (TAM) estimate of $30 trillion to investors, according to a Wall Street Journal report. This figure is meant to convey the potential market size if the company captured 100% of the work that could be done with AI models. The TAM estimate is based on the possibility of AI models replacing human labor end-to-end in various sectors, including legal, accounting, engineering, and business process outsourcing.

While traditional enterprise software replaces workers but doesn't replace their jobs entirely, AI models could potentially substitute all the human labor in these areas. However, some financial experts are skeptical of Anthropic's claim, pointing out that the U.S. GDP is currently $32.5 trillion, making the proposed TAM larger than the entire GDP of China and equal to the entire GDP of the U.S. Potential investors will likely treat the figure as a mission statement rather than a literal forecast, focusing more on the company's current revenue and future product roadmap.