So exaggerated!
$30 trillion. This is the number Anthropic is preparing to write into its prospectus.
30,000,000,000,000 dollars.
Just yesterday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the creator of Claude will tell investors it faces a potential revenue opportunity exceeding $30 trillion.
Anthropic secretly submitted its draft IPO filing to the SEC on June 1st, with a public version expected to be released as early as the end of this month.
The US annual GDP is about $32.4 trillion. In other words, a five-year-old company with fewer than 4,000 employees has painted its revenue ceiling as large as the entire United States.
Three months ago, Musk's SpaceX wrote $28.5 trillion in its prospectus, calling it "the largest addressable market in human history." That record hasn't even had time to cool before being trampled underfoot.
Anthropic added an extra $1.5 trillion to SpaceX's number.
It's like two people competing to see whose mouth is bigger. One says, "I can swallow the entire sun." The other says, "I can swallow the sun, plus Mars."
The Yardstick Called TAM is Broken
This number is called TAM — total addressable market. In plain English, it means: Assuming you achieve a 100% monopoly in this business, what's the maximum amount of money you could make in a year?
TAM is a standard item for tech IPOs and has always been the one with the least accountability.
Uber quoted $6 trillion in 2019, based on the mileage value of all private cars globally plus public transport services. WeWork quoted $3 trillion in its ultimately aborted IPO. Both numbers were ridiculed at the time.
In the AI era, this yardstick has been stretched to the breaking point.
Among the S&P 1500, 191 tech companies had combined revenues of $2.4 trillion last year. The market Anthropic painted is 12 times the sum of them all.
Aswath Damodaran, a finance professor at NYU nicknamed the "Dean of Valuation." Before SpaceX's IPO, he told The Wall Street Journal that SpaceX's AI-related TAM "was already at the edge of reasonable and then pushed past it."
He said that looking at a figure of $28.5 trillion. If he saw $30 trillion, his glasses would probably shatter on the spot.
The tech media Gizmodo was even less polite: The dialogue between companies and investors has always been an art of making things look as good as possible. A number like $30 trillion basically dares someone to call your bluff.
The question arises: How exactly was this number calculated?
The answer: Include all work that can be done by AI models.
Note, at this point, this is no longer about estimating the market size for a specific industry.
This is about putting a price tag on all the work humanity can outsource. Programming, writing, customer service, law, financial analysis, medical diagnosis... Everything done by humans, as long as AI could potentially take it over, is bundled together, priced, and presented to Wall Street.
Anthropic, please don't.
The number feels "unreal" because no one knows the speed at which AI will penetrate various industries, nor how much work it will ultimately take over.
Looking at Anthropic's current business, the gap becomes apparent.
In Q2 of this year, its revenue more than doubled to $11.6 billion, with an annualized run rate of about $47 billion. According to a Reuters report on August 15th, the company expects its 2028 revenue to be between $190 and $200 billion, and the IPO valuation is based on these projections.
Dividing the most optimistic $200 billion by $30 trillion equals 0.67%.
Thus, the story Anthropic is pitching to investors becomes: This market is so vast that even if I capture just six-thousandths of it, I can support a $2 trillion valuation.
This doesn't resemble a business plan; it's more like a math problem. See, as long as the denominator is big enough, I only need a tiny slice.
Anthropic's target valuation is $2 trillion, while its post-money valuation after raising $65 billion in May is $96.5 billion. From its last private round to the moment of the bell, capital is expected to more than double its worth in a few months.
SpaceX's stock price is a ready reference. It rose initially after listing, dropped below $105 in early August, and has now returned to around the $135 offering price.
A Person Worth $15.5 Billion
Begins Worrying Employees Are Too Focused on Money
A $2 trillion IPO would instantly turn many Anthropic employees into millionaires.
SpaceX has already demonstrated this once.
The scale at Anthropic will only be larger.
But just as everyone is salivating over this number, the company is using another number to screen candidates internally.
According to an Axios exclusive on August 24th, Anthropic now directly asks candidates in its cultural interview: If the company one day abandons its AI ambitions for safety reasons, and the stock price consequently drops to zero, how would you feel?
A candidate posted his honest answer on the anonymous workplace forum Blind: "I answered honestly with a 'no' — I wouldn't be happy if the stock went to $0. I want to do the most good, stay ethical, and also build a sustainable business."
According to this candidate, the interviewer didn't seem satisfied with that answer.
Anthropic offers base salaries between $320,000 and $405,000 for software engineer positions.
This is where the company's greatest contradiction lies.
Dario Amodei's personal net worth is approximately $15.5 billion — a number that doubled after the May funding round.
In January of this year, he published a 20,000-word essay titled "The Adolescence of Technology," which included a line: The real worry is a level of wealth concentration that could tear society apart. He also specifically criticized wealthy tech figures who view philanthropy as inherently a scam, saying, "It is sadly the case that many rich people... have recently adopted a cynical and nihilistic attitude."
He, along with the other six co-founders including his sister Daniela, pledged to donate 80% of their respective wealth. At current valuations, this sum exceeds $86 billion.
Simultaneously, he worries that new hires are joining not for the mission, but for the potential windfall.
Anthropic is a Public Benefit Corporation, and its charter stipulates it cannot operate solely to maximize shareholder profit.
The company's values statement reads: Ultimately, the mission is why we're all here.
This statement was once just on the careers page, costing no one anything. Now, it is to be written into the prospectus, right next to $30 trillion.
After going public, it will face quarterly earnings calls, analysts questioning gross margins, and shareholders demanding returns.
A Public Benefit Corporation that declares its mission supersedes profit is leveraging the largest TAM in human history to drive one of the largest IPOs in human history.
There is a hint of irony.
A CEO, personal worth $15.5 billion, pledges to donate 80%, yet worries employees are only in it for the money. Then asks in interviews: Will you stay if the stock goes to zero?
This contradiction is the unique distortion of AI companies in this era —
On one side, it packages all work humanity can hand over to AI into a $30 trillion pie and presents it to Wall Street.
On the other side, it turns the very same IPO into an interview question for every potential hire: If all of this goes to zero, will you still stay?
References: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anthropic-expected-to-tell-investors-it-sees-over-30-trillion-in-potential-revenue-a611efea
This article is from the WeChat public account "新智元" (New Wisdom Source), author: ASI启示录, editor: Solomon
