Anthropic Readies Over $30 Trillion Revenue Forecast for Investors

Anthropic is preparing to tell investors that it anticipates potential revenues of more than $30 trillion, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday (Aug. 25), citing unnamed sources.

The figure would exceed the $28.5 trillion revenue estimate from SpaceX.

Anthropic did not reply to PYMNTS’ request for comment.

Tech startups and other companies going public often give investors estimates of a total addressable market (TAM) to demonstrate their growth potential. These figures are projections of the annual revenue a company could capture if it achieved 100% market share using inputs such as industry data or bankers’ models, the WSJ report said.

TAM figures have historically involved “a bit of guesswork,” according to the report, but these estimates become even more nebulous when trying to gauge how artificial intelligence adoption will affect entire industries.

For example, SpaceX called its $26.5 trillion TAM “the largest actionable” market in “human history” when it included the figure in a May filing, with most of that number attributed to AI-related opportunities, the report said.

New York University finance professor Aswath Damodaran, known as “the Dean of Valuation,” said that before SpaceX’s initial public offering (IPO) in June, the TAM the company saw in AI was “reaching the end of what’s plausible and pushing beyond,” per the report.

Anthropic is considering the full scope of work that AI models could help complete when quantifying its TAM, the report said. The $30 trillion figure would dwarf the $2.4 trillion in revenue generated last year by the 191 tech companies in the S&P 1500 last year.

Anthropic could aim to raise as much as $100 billion in its IPO, compared to SpaceX’s $86 billion, according to the report. Anthropic is also targeting a valuation of about $2 trillion, versus the $1.77 trillion valuation SpaceX reached.

Meanwhile, it was reported Sunday (Aug. 23) that Anthropic’s customers are using lower-cost alternatives to the company’s most powerful AI model. The development raises questions about Anthropic’s aggressive spending ahead of its IPO. Spending on Anthropic’s Fable 5 model has yet to exceed roughly 11% of overall expenditures on the company’s tools.

For all PYMNTS AI coverage, subscribe to the daily AI Newsletter.