Anthropic's IPO Investor Pitch Projects $30 Trillion Sales, Tops SpaceX

Anthropic's IPO investor pitch is projecting $30 trillion in future sales and a potential initial offering valuation of $2 trillion, both of which surpass what SpaceX claimed and then received for its IPO.

To put this in perspective, the tech industry in total generated $2.4 trillion in revenue last year. While FOMO - and the potential to then flip those shares under the greater fool theory - may, in fact, permit the company to hit its goals initially, the numbers are becoming so fantastical that they defy serious analysis of the actual earth-bound economy. JL

Corrie Driebusch reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Anthropic, the maker of Claude is telling investors its potential revenue opportunities are above $30 trillion, topping SpaceX’s $28.5 trillion estimate. Anthropic more than doubled its revenue to $11.6 billion in the second quarter. To put its more than $30 trillion vision in context, the 191 technology companies in the S&P 1500 brought in $2.4 trillion in revenue last year. SpaceX shares initially jumped in its IPO but have since languished. After falling below $105 a share in early August, shares now trade around their $135 offering price. If investors buy into Anthropic’s potential, it will top SpaceX in other ways, too. Anthropic raise $100 billion compared with SpaceX’s $86 billion. And Anthropic is aiming for a valuation of about $2 trillion, above the $1,77 trillion SpaceX garnered. 

The maker of Claude is likely to tell investors its potential revenue opportunities are above $30 trillion, topping SpaceX’s $28.5 trillion estimate, according to people familiar with the matter.

Tech startups or other growing companies going public often estimate their “total addressable markets,” or TAMs, to show investors they have ample room to grow. Such figures estimate the amount of annual revenue a company could theoretically capture if it achieved 100% market-share using inputs ranging from industry data to bankers’ models.

While they have always involved a bit of guesswork, these estimates are especially squishy when it comes to trying to predict how the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence will upend entire industries.

Elon Musk’s rocket maker called its TAM “the largest actionable” market in “human history” when it revealed the figure in a May filing. Most of the figure, $26.5 trillion, was attributed to opportunities in AI.

The number was astronomic compared with those featured in previous IPOs, prompting some skepticism on Wall Street. When Uber went public in 2019, it described its market opportunity as $6 trillion, citing the mileage value of all personal cars and public transportation services globally. WeWork cited a $3 trillion market opportunity in its ultimately abandoned IPO.

New York University’s Aswath Damodaran, a finance professor known as “the Dean of Valuation,” told The Wall Street Journal ahead of SpaceX’s June offering that the TAM the company saw in AI was “reaching the end of what’s plausible and pushing beyond.”

To quantify its TAM, Anthropic is looking at the full scope of work that could be completed with AI models, the people said.

Anthropic more than doubled its revenue to $11.6 billion in the second quarter. To put its more than $30 trillion vision in context, the 191 technology companies in the S&P 1500 brought in $2.4 trillion in revenue last year, according to FactSet.

SpaceX shares initially jumped in its IPO but have since languished. After falling below $105 a share in intraday trading in early August, shares now trade around their $135 offering price.

If investors buy into Anthropic’s potential, its offering is likely to top that of SpaceX in other ways, too.

Anthropic could aim to raise as much as $100 billion in the offering, people familiar with the matter said, compared with SpaceX’s $86 billion. And Anthropic is aiming for a valuation of about $2 trillion, the Journal has reported, above the $1.77 trillion valuation SpaceX garnered.

Anthropic’s plans are still being discussed and the figures could change. The company is expected to unveil its IPO financial-disclosure documents in the next few weeks. That could set it up to go public as soon as September or early October.