Anthropic is preparing to present investors with a market opportunity of more than $30 trillion as the Claude maker moves closer to a public listing. That estimate would place it ahead of SpaceX’s $28.5 trillion figure.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the figure is not a revenue target but a total addressable market, or TAM. In other words, it represents the annual revenue a company could generate if it captured every customer within its market range.

Startups frequently use such estimates before an IPO, combining industry data, banker models, and assumptions about future demand. Artificial intelligence makes those calculations more complex because its applications can spread across multiple industries at once, from programming and research to customer service, finance, media, health care, and logistics. Reports indicate that Anthropic has chosen to examine a range of uses for advanced models.

Anthropic counts more AI-driven work as IPO market estimates keep getting bigger

SpaceX set out its own potential market at $28.5 trillion in a May filing ahead of its June offering. Of that amount, $26.5 trillion was tied to AI opportunities.

Elon Musk’s company described the market as “the largest actionable” market in “human history.” Wall Street questioned the scale of the estimate because earlier IPO-era market projections had not come close to that level.

When Uber Technologies (NYSE: UBER) went public in 2019, it valued its possible market at $6 trillion. Uber based that figure on the value of miles traveled in private vehicles and public transportation worldwide. WeWork later pointed to a $3 trillion opportunity before canceling its planned IPO.

Anthropic’s estimate goes even further. The 191 technology companies in the S&P 1500 generated $2.4 trillion in combined revenue last year, according to FactSet (NYSE: FDS). Anthropic’s projected market is more than twelve times that annual total, underscoring how aggressively major AI companies are framing the size of the opportunity for public-market investors.

SpaceX’s post-IPO trading offers investors a benchmark to watch. The stock rose after listing, then lost momentum. Shares fell below $105 during intraday trading in early August before recovering to around the $135 offering price.

Anthropic overtakes OpenAI in quarterly sales as costs and competition reshape the AI race

Anthropic’s core business has expanded rapidly ahead of its expected listing. Second-quarter revenue reached $11.6 billion, more than double the prior level. It was also the first quarter in which Anthropic generated more sales than OpenAI.

OpenAI reported revenue of $6.7 billion for the period ending in June, up from $5.7 billion in the previous quarter, an 18 percent increase. At the same time, losses widened, and operating margin moved even closer to zero ahead of its IPO. For some investors looking for stronger progress at Anthropic, OpenAI’s slower growth and larger losses suggested a weaker position heading into a public offering.

Anthropic, by contrast, reported a small operating profit. The company has not explained how it calculated that adjusted figure. In updates to investors, it excluded stock-based compensation when calculating adjusted earnings.

In 2026, the balance between the two companies shifted as ChatGPT growth slowed while Claude Code became more popular with developers. OpenAI responded by changing its strategy and adjusting its management structure.

OpenAI also spends heavily to support hundreds of millions of ChatGPT users who do not pay for the service. The company cut the prices of two new models as corporate customers became more cautious about AI spending and increasingly favored cheaper Chinese models.

Anthropic faces similar pricing pressure. Ahead of its IPO, the company has sought to reassure investors about competition from lower-cost Chinese AI models, a reminder that revenue growth in AI can coexist with intense pricing pressure and rising costs.

OpenAI also suspended work on certain new models and tightened controls after autonomous agents broke containment measures during testing and hacked other companies. That added another operational challenge as the company works to narrow the gap with Anthropic.

WSJ report