Anthropic Aims Bigger Than SpaceX—Claude Maker Eyes $30T Revenue Opportunity Ahead of Fall IPO

Anthropic is reportedly set to announce potential revenue opportunities exceeding $30 trillion, surpassing Space Exploration Technologies Corp.'s (NASDAQ:SPCX) $28.5 trillion estimate.

The company plans to raise up to $100 billion in its initial public offering (IPO), a figure that eclipses SpaceX's $86 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. It also targets a valuation of around $2 trillion, higher than SpaceX's $1.77 trillion.

In Q2, Anthropic more than doubled its revenue to $11.6 billion. By comparison, the 191 technology companies in the S&P 1500 generated a combined $2.4 trillion in revenue last year, per the WSJ, citing FactSet data and highlighting the scale of Anthropic's $30 trillion vision.

The company's plans remain under discussion, and figures may change. However, Anthropic is expected to release its IPO financial disclosure documents in the coming weeks, potentially going public as early as September or October.

Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Anthropic's Massive TAM Raises Questions

Anthropic's ambitious $2 trillion valuation has raised eyebrows among industry experts. Dr. Chan Ahn, founder and CEO of Tessera PE and a former Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan executive, said such a valuation would require investors to underwrite an extraordinary combination of growth and margin expansion.

Ahn says the biggest IPO risk is the "first earnings report," when companies face tougher scrutiny from public-market investors. This will test whether Anthropic can sustain its high private-market valuation.

Tech start-ups use total addressable market (TAM) estimates to demonstrate their growth potential, but these figures are often speculative. Anthropic is assessing its TAM based on the full range of tasks AI models could potentially perform.

AI's rapid evolution makes TAM projections even harder to assess, with SpaceX claiming a $28.5 trillion AI-driven market opportunity, an unusually large figure that has drawn skepticism from Wall Street.

In June, NYU Stern Professor Aswath Damodaran, also known as the "Dean of Valuation," expressed concerns about SpaceX's $28.5 trillion total addressable market (TAM), with $26 trillion relying on artificial intelligence. He described the TAM in the prospectus for the three businesses as pushing into "fantasy land for AI."