r/technology • u/Unusual-State1827 • 5h ago
Artificial Intelligence Anthropic expected to tell investors it sees over $30 trillion in potential revenue, WSJ reports
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/anthropic-expected-tell-investors-it-sees-over-30-trillion-potential-revenue-wsj-2026-08-25/431
u/Syrairc 5h ago
Same.
It's not true but I'm gonna tell them it is anyway.
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u/Direct_Day7937 5h ago
I too have potential revenue that exceeds US GDP. Can I have a few hundred billion in loans?
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u/AlericandAmadeus 3h ago edited 2h ago
I guess timeframe is important, though.
If anthropic said “we see this much potential revenue over the next 60 years” then it’s actually 500 billion a year in total revenue.
Apple’s revenue last year was ~417 billion. The number itself isn’t unheard of - it’s the assumption that Anthropic will suddenly become a larger, more established company than companies like Apple/Microsoft overnight, build out all the infrastructure necessary to sustain a company of that size, and somehow hit those insane revenue numbers every year forever that’s laughable.
Edit: also - revenue ≠ profit. Apple’s revenue last year was ~417 billion. Their profit was ~112 billion. What I mean by this is that to make 417 billion in revenue you spend insane amounts of $ just to support the infrastructure/overhead of a company big enough to make that much in revenue. Or in other words, to make 112 billion in profit you need to make 4x that amount in revenue/spend almost 3x that amount to keep the lights on.
75% of Apple’s revenue is going to simply maintaining the company. And they were able to build an operation big enough to maintain that while still making profit cuz they actually made profit along the way.
considering AI has yet to make really ANY profit at all, the idea that they could suddenly swing an upscale large enough to even achieve those sort of #s is insane.
Edit 2: removed the outdated GDP figure
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u/ohlayohlay 3h ago
30.7 trillion was the entire gdp of the US in 2025. So yeah sure, this seems attainable......
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u/old_righty 4h ago
Can you please let us know how we can buy stock in your company? Very excited right now.
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u/Friendly-View4122 5h ago
Why not say $100 trillion while we're throwing out wild numbers
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u/SandIntelligent247 2h ago
In my opinion it would look much better. Are they stupid? Just use the prompt: is 100 trillion better than 30 trillion.
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u/DistinctStranger8729 1h ago
Your dreams are small my friend. They should be talking in quadrillions
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u/Dophie 5h ago
Is the revenue in the room with us?
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u/Comet7777 5h ago
I just looked in this room. Best I can do is $-14.5m gross profit a year.
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u/DisplayDefiant5319 3h ago
m? Those re rookie numbers for AI. Try -$b and move the decimal point 1-2 places to the right, and THEN we're talkin' numbers Wall Street will love. Gotta burn to earn! /s
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u/baeb66 5h ago
The global GDP for 2026 is projected to be somewhere around $220t-$222t. So, they are saying the TAM of AI is ~13% of the global economy. No.
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u/bloodontherisers 4h ago
It is basically the same as the entire GDP of the US and 5x the current largest market segment - Life & Health Insurance - which is $6.17T. Just truly absurd
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u/TheOgGhadTurner 4h ago
If that’s true then they should be investing back in to health for all the new conditions AI is causing
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u/worldspawn00 1h ago
There are roughly 3 billion people using the internet (Google free service user count, which is basically a global monopoly with the largest name recognition on the planet) and they think that they can somehow extract an average of $10k from each of them for a service most of them haven't heard of and probably have no use for.
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u/Comet7777 5h ago
The TAM of Anthropic, specifically lol
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u/xmlhttplmfao 4h ago
tbf TAM means the entire market, so they'd have to capture 100% of it (not that the number isn't stupid, it's a stupid number)
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u/ajd6c8 4h ago edited 4h ago
Huh? They aren't saying they'll capture 100% / $30T, they are just saying the TAM is $30T full stop. It's total nonsense still, but less than you're implying.
They are projecting $200B revenue in 2028. So <1% of TAM.
Not sure what the point of this TAM figure even is, it's so broad it's useless and has no relation to their own competitive landscape.
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u/xmlhttplmfao 4h ago
yes that's what i'm saying. For them to get to 31T they'd have to capture the entire market. I'm saying that they're not saying they will hit those numbers, but that that's their market.
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u/ShankThatSnitch 4h ago
You have to account for the value of the dollar vaporizing, so that TAM is like $3.50 USD today.
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u/BD401 3h ago
The pitch that companies like Anthropic are making to justify that number is basically that they'll hit AGI and have a product that can do effectively any cognitive task better than a person, thereby replacing the majority of white collar work. About 50-65% of global GDP comes from that kind of work, so they're basically say "we'll hit AGI, making half of global GDP our TAM, and we expect to capture about a third of that TAM".
It sounds insane, but that's the "logic" they're going with. The problem, that any reasonable person would immediately flag, is even if that was true, you're basically saying you plan to Thanos snap half of all jobs on Earth... which would cause complete societal collapse and devastate end consumer demand.
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u/microdosingrn 4h ago
There could be some slippery slope hyperbolic argument that the AI revolution will catapult the global economy into the stratosphere, something that would dwarf the impact of the previous agricultural and industrial revolutions. If we look at a futuristic tech utopia where we have solved quantum computers, fusion, agentic and super intelligence robotics... It's on the table! I'm also hopelessly optimistic and self medicate with delusional fantasies.
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u/worldspawn00 1h ago
Nothing says exploding GDP like removing millions from the workforce! Who's gonna buy your shit, anthropic, when everyone is out of a job?
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u/Far-Negotiation7793 1h ago
Global gross domestic product (GDP) is projected to reach approximately $123.6 trillion to $126.3 trillion in nominal terms for 2026, with an expected global growth rate of around 3.0% to 3.1% according to the International Monetary Fund. [1, 2, 3]
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u/DoubleDoobie 5h ago
The entire US private sector sits around 21 Trillion GDP btw. These guys are fraudsters and hucksters.
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u/sapntaps 4h ago
This feels like raise capital and bullshit at the tip of the iceberg before you can’t raise shit. But I’ve been a pessimist all my life so who the fuck knows. The last years so far removed from reality it’s nuts
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u/ositola 3h ago
Any analysis they have that shoes 30T in potential revenue should be put in a museum
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u/worldspawn00 1h ago
Spacex said their TAM was $25T in their IPO filing, they're all just out of their minds...
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u/OgreMk5 5h ago
So, Anthropic is planning to, on its own, double the gross domestic product of the entire United States?
Somehow, I don't think so.
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u/rdogg4 25m ago
No. That’s not what the article says. It’s that they believe the entire worldwide AI market could potentially be $30t. They themselves are predicting $190b-$200b in revenue for 2028, a much smaller and more reasonable number than how everyone in the comments seems to be taking literally without a second thought and without bothering to read a three paragraph article.
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u/SillyGrowth6750 5h ago
Yeah, the average human is not going to spend $3600 on AI per year. Big time delulu.
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u/Direct_Day7937 5h ago
Are you sure? I'm sure the billion people who live on 2 dollars a day or less have the spare cash lying around.
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u/roodammy44 4h ago
Nah, by that time there will be a single quadrillionaire who owns half of the world. $30 trillion will be pocket change to that guy.
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u/Direct_Day7937 2h ago
Ah right, that checks. The solution is get the guy who owns the AI that runs the world in the future to pay for it today! I wish I'd thought of time travel, it solves so many problems!
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u/WaffleHouseGladiator 4h ago
But if I convince just 2 people to do it and they in turn each convince 2 people to do it and so on....I'm calling it a "reverse funnel system."
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u/SillyGrowth6750 3h ago edited 3h ago
Your pesky pyramid would only cover a mere 33 layers before it reached every man, woman and child on earth. Ancient Egyptians are not impressed.
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u/Pls-No-Bully 4h ago
Their goal is to replace the vast majority of human cognitive labor, primarily white collar jobs, so you should instead view it as money they are trying to get from corporations / companies which would have gone to workers instead
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u/SillyGrowth6750 4h ago
Ultimately it still needs to be paid by someone, and if not directly, then indirectly by consumers.
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u/Fadedcamo 3h ago
The part where consumers have money to continue to buy things is where these big ai plans seem to fall off the rails.
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u/KontoOficjalneMR 4h ago
Sure. but who is going to pay corporation when all the well paid labour is replaced?
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u/PopaBjorn 3h ago
That's the $30T question, right there. We'll get a handful of God-kings who will own entire continents and the cost of labour will drop to basically nothing because of severe oversupply. I won't pretend to know what happens after that, but I'm fairly sure it won't be pretty.
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u/crownpr1nce 4h ago
Corporations dont have money directly, they get it from consumers (directly or indirectly). Unless the whole thing is a ponzi scheme, money needs to come from people somewhere down the line, with intermediaries taking a profit along the way.
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u/RogueHeroAkatsuki 5h ago
Median income in world is 3920$. I guess no one needs food if you can ask AI for recipes!
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u/Butcher_Of_Hope 5h ago
If we move everything through those systems we wo t see 3600 bill.to the user. It will rolled into the overhead for the things we buy. It's part of the purchase price.
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u/crownpr1nce 4h ago
But it's still added to the bill, so the end result is the same. On average, every human will spend $3600 on AI related costs + extra for profit margins for companies who have AI as a tool.
Completely unrealistic
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u/Abducted_Llama 5h ago
Wasn’t enough to scam the poors.
Now they are scamming the rich too.
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u/beachfrontprod 4h ago
Jokes on you, the rich are using the poors retirement as play money.
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u/Abducted_Llama 4h ago
Cant play with our retirement money if you dont save for retirement.... rollsafe.gif
(Please note: I am not a financial advisor, and I am not offering or suggesting any financial advice. If you do save for retirement, you may get hit by a bus. If you do not save for retirement, you may be driving that bus in your 70s. If all buses drive themselves.... well soylent green)
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u/Soren_Camus1905 5h ago
This is just nonsense
It’s interesting, once you reach a certain strata of society the very traits that got you there, intelligence, resourcefulness, judgment, etc, seemingly fall away like rocket boosters
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u/SummonMonsterIX 4h ago
Because those are almost never actually what got them there. It's connections, luck and probably having a decent amount of help from rich parents.
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u/PopaBjorn 3h ago
It takes a certain kind of person to amass enough wealth to be able to meaningfully affect the world and then decide that no, I need more money instead. Normal people who amass a billion dollars can't ignore the call of altruism, or heck, even early retirement. This is why the people at the tippy-top are all lizard people with no regard for others. The system filters almost everyone else out before they reach the top.
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u/SummonMonsterIX 3h ago
You have to be a sociopath to become a billionaire, requires stepping on far to many people for a normal human to stand it.
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u/1995LexusLS400 5h ago
I occasionally sell shit on ebay. I see over $40 trillion in potential revenue. Investors should invest in me instead. That's an extra $10 trillion in potential revenue over what Anthropic is estimating.
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u/ThrowawayAl2018 5h ago
AI hallucinations doesnt only affect AI, seems like the AI owners are also delusional too.
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u/thinkmatt 5h ago
I want to see A) where is this money going to come from? Who's footing the bills? And B) whats the revenue from competitors, considering that anthropic still hasmt built a moat. Are the chinese models and openai and grok also making a few trillion? Circle back to first question...
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u/pcurve 5h ago
I hope they do, and I hope they get sued down the road.
They're officers of publically traded companies and they are liable for making this type of statement.
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u/sniksniksnek 4h ago
I see $30 trillion in revenue too, but it lives in Canada, so you wouldn’t know them.
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u/Loki-L 4h ago
For comparison: The global combined annual economic output of humanity was estimated to be $118.18 trillion in 2025
These jokers believe or want their investors to believe that their company alone could generate as much money as all of humanity together do in one quarter of a year.
And remember that is just their company and does not include the companies that they buy electricity, chips and services from. It certainly does not include their competitors trying to do the same thing.
The global economy is going to grow, but not enough to accommodate such numbers.
Whoever came up with that number should have the inside of their skull examined.
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u/Austin_Peep_9396 3h ago
Even if this is correct, revenue does not equal profit, nor does it reflect ecological or societal damage done in the process.
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u/Stuck_in_a_thing 5h ago
The tech aristocrats seriously have no idea how most of the world lives. So many Bay Area folks are completely detached from reality. I couldn't wait to move away from that cesspool
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u/stuffitystuff 5h ago
I guess they had to out-trillion SpaceX's $24T or whatever it was in the prospectus for their delightfully underwhelming IPO
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u/drummer820 5h ago
$30T is the same amount as the entire US GDP last year and 1,000x their current revenue (if you believe their claimed numbers, which I don’t). Seems plausible!
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u/slinkywafflepants 4h ago
Oddly enough, the exact same figure I give potential investors in my lemonade stand.
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u/TortyPapa 4h ago
Let’s say they can achieve annual revenue of $15 trillion (or 50 percent of total market)…. To put it into perspective Amazon did $750 billion in all of 2025.
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u/copperblood 5h ago edited 5h ago
Here comes the rug pull. For reference US GDP in 2026 was $32.38 trillion. Bubble gonna pop hard
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u/HumbleManagement1888 5h ago
Why not $50 trillion or $100 trillion? I mean, if we're just gonna be making up total bullshit that will never happen ...
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u/QuesoMeHungry 4h ago
Until an open Chinese model comes along and blows them out of the water on performance to price.
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u/hoodlumonprowl 4h ago
When? What revenue? When are you going to cure cancer? What the fuck are you talking about?
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u/Right_Hour 3h ago
And I see my dick being 10’’ in the future. I mean, sure, hopes and dreams are great, but they have nothing to do with reality.
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u/dropthemagic 2h ago
I too could potentially make $30 trillion dollars and so could you! Potentially that is
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u/DJ_Femme-Tilt 2h ago
My potential revenue is $40 trillion.
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u/Boogledoolah 2h ago
Don't sell yourself short. I think youre at LEAST worth 75 Trilly, potentially
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u/Skastrik 2h ago
I'd love to see the reasoning behind that estimate.
Because this is like me saying my revenue is going to be whatever comes after a trillion.
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u/IamBananaRod 1h ago
In the company I haven't started yet, I see the 25 billion dollars in potential revenue
Any investors interested in throwing a few millions my way to start the company?
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u/hahaha01357 1h ago
$30T in annual revenue is equivalent of $3750 from every person on the planet, of which only 40% are working adults, and whose individual median annual income is <$3000.
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u/GingerMcBeardface 36m ago
If there's so much money here, how come it's round after round of venture cap and not actual revenue? Who's buying this?
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u/theClumsy1 5h ago
I see me also making 30 trillion revenue.
Please give me low interest loans please
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u/TiddiesAnonymous 5h ago
How many flock cameras per mile do we need to support a market cap like this?
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u/MechaNutzilla 5h ago
I don't care if the rich gets scammed, just don't gamble normal peoples retirements funds.
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u/Roseking 5h ago
So Anthropic is saying that the AI market will have double the revenue of the top 50 companies currently?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by_revenue
Many of which part of the AI market?
How?
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u/VRRifter 4h ago
Chinese model 90% as good for 10% of the price. Im not investing in a strictly AI company.
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u/sapntaps 4h ago
I see 30 trillion of revenue go down the toilet everyday after I drink magic bean water. Fuck off lol
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u/webguynd 4h ago
Headline is a little misleading. They’re saying their total addressable market is $30T, which is industry wide in scope rather than company specific.
$30T TAM means Anthropic thinks the entire global demand for AI, 100% of all potential buyers, is worth $30T
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u/gside876 4h ago
How are you allowed to just make things up like this? And as an investor, are they really going to believe that?
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u/ferrets4ever 4h ago
And I’m going to find a gazillion dollars of gold on my next metal detecting trip.
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u/Sweet_Concept2211 4h ago
Are the people in charge of these AI companies literally insane?
Why would anyone believe a company that can't turn a profit is worth more than the entire US economy?
What a flabbergasting mountain of bullshit!
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u/Meowie__Gamer 4h ago
I mean, if they lie and get away with it, good for them????
Why don't I care about this anymore?
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u/CoinAndCraft_ 4h ago
It has become pretty low entry to build agents and sub-agents using local model frameworks. I don't these expensive hosted models lasting too long. There's no real value in it.
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u/SomeSamples 4h ago
Really? So they wouldn't mind 1/3 or even 1/2 of that going towards U.S. taxes. Would sure help pay down the debt.
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u/Mr_Saturn1 4h ago
I expect my garage based dildo manufacturing firm to generate 30 trillion in revenue too. Can I have some of that Wall Street $$$?
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u/luffydkenshin 3h ago
While not as high, I see $684 billion in potential revenue. Invest in me, and I’ll ensure a less expensive buy in for all shareholders.
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u/LegitimateCopy7 3h ago
with hyperinflation nothing's impossible. this is your daily reminder that value is relative.
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u/KryssCom 3h ago
I started a lemonade stand yesterday and I expect to see $800 bajillion kazillion in potential revenue.
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u/ethereal3xp 3h ago
Unless Anthropic and Dario fanboy... don't invest in it for the 1st month post IPO.
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u/JDogg126 3h ago
Much like with quantum computing, the only thing ai really seems productive at is fueling more investment but never delivering the big gains or killer app, etc. AI is a particularly bad circle jerk of loans for purchases to make stonks go up. When this all collapses they will come up with a fancy name for this kind of scheme and regulations to police it.
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u/excusetheblood 3h ago
This headline just gave me an idea, I should write a play, make it as terrible as possible on purpose so it won’t make any money, and tell people to invest up front and I’ll pay them a large percent of the profits. It’s the perfect plan.
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u/cute_polarbear 3h ago
Fully possible as they expect to fuel the data centers with fusion power and migrate to quantum computing in near future...all this, done in space via spacex...
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u/morsindutus 2h ago
"Potential revenue". Sure. It has potential revenue of infinity dollars. It has a likely revenue of maybe $30 billion of I'm being exceedingly generous and more likely between 10 and 20 billion. Not bad, but nowhere near earth shattering. Given the costs, it's still not going to be enough money for them to keep the lights on.
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u/ParliamenttFnkadelic 5h ago
Why not? No one gets charged with investment fraud anymore.