Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot, is reportedly building the financial case for going public — and the number at the center of it is enormous.
According to a Wall Street Journal report relayed by CNBC TV18, Anthropic's total addressable market, or TAM, could exceed $30 trillion. The company arrived at that figure by looking not at software budgets but at the sheer amount of work that could potentially be performed by AI models. CNBC TV18 reports the estimate could play a key role in shaping how investors value the business.
Firstpost reports that Anthropic is preparing to pitch that $30 trillion-plus opportunity as it moves closer to a potential IPO targeting a $2 trillion valuation.
Some context on what TAM means: it is a company's estimate of the entire revenue pool it could theoretically capture, not money it expects to earn. Defining the market as "all human labor AI might touch" produces a far bigger headline number than defining it as "enterprise software spending." That choice of framing is itself the argument being made to investors.
Separately, Dealroom reports that Anthropic is putting $5 million into research on how AI affects user wellbeing — a much smaller sum, but one that speaks to a question regulators and customers keep raising as chatbots become part of daily life.
Why it matters: if Anthropic goes public at anything near a $2 trillion valuation, ordinary investors and pension funds will be buying into a bet that AI replaces a meaningful slice of paid work — making the credibility of that $30 trillion figure everyone's business, not just Silicon Valley's.