Anthropic Presents 30 Trillion Dollar TAM, Surpassing SpaceX

AI startup's IPO targets $100B raise, $2T valuation citing vast market potential

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), citing sources, reported on the 25th (local time) that Anthropic is expected to present a total addressable market (TAM) of over 30 trillion dollars (approximately 4 quadrillion 1,500 trillion Korean won) in its investment prospectus for its initial public offering (IPO). This exceeds the 28.5 trillion dollars proposed by Elon Musk's SpaceX in June. At the time, SpaceX's TAM included 26.5 trillion dollars allocated to its AI sector. SpaceX categorizes xAI, the AI model 'Grok,' and the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) under its AI business.

TAM estimates the theoretical annual revenue a company could generate if it captured 100% of a market. As a metric for gauging future market size, some level of estimation is inevitable. This uncertainty is amplified in the AI industry, where growth speed and scope of application are difficult to predict.

SpaceX's TAM announcement also drew skepticism on Wall Street due to its unusually large scale compared to existing cases. The combined revenue of 191 technology companies in the S&P 1500 Index last year amounted to only 2.4 trillion dollars.

Aswath Damodaran, a finance professor at New York University known as a "valuation guru," told the WSJ that SpaceX's AI sector TAM figure was "beyond the bounds of plausibility."

According to sources, Anthropic is currently reviewing all tasks that AI models could complete to calculate its TAM.

Meanwhile, Anthropic is reportedly aiming to raise up to 100 billion dollars in its IPO, surpassing SpaceX's 86 billion dollars. Anthropic targets a corporate valuation of 2 trillion dollars, which would also exceed SpaceX's 1.77 trillion dollars based on its IPO price.

Anthropic's IPO is expected to take place as early as September or early October.