Anthropic, TAM inflation, and a $2 trillion valuation

In my previous post I wrote about the current TAM inflation around AI. Anthropic is now a very good example of what exactly worries me.

The company reportedly wants to go public at around a $2 trillion valuation and present a potential market above $30 trillion. I think this is already not a healthy way to talk about valuation. It is an attempt to replace the normal logic of market size with the idea that almost every part of the economy can somehow become AI revenue.

But the bigger problem comes later: a valuation itself will not create the crisis. The pressure to justify it can as we live in capitalism – hello, “uncle” Sam.

If a company raises enormous amounts of public money on the promise that AI will take over a huge part of economic activity, then after the IPO it will have to fulfill that promise to investors. That means pushing automation deeper, replacing more labour, cutting more costs and entering more industries forcibly, not organically simply because all of this was already counted into the valuation. Investors want paychecks for New Year's Eve.

This can become very destructive. For all of us: capitalization historically rests on very basic human needs and on trust: what we eat, what we wear, how we heat our homes, how we move, what we actually consume. Money is trust. And trust in AI is still low, sorry, Antrophic, even everyday interface change does not help that. (hire some more ethic brains and humans to the team please)

I do not think a company with a few thousand employees and data centres should be valued as if it already controls a meaningful part of the world economy. That is not healthy for the market. For the planet.

I generally do not support unnecessary restrictions on business. But in this case I think the SEC has something very concrete to look at: how these TAM numbers are calculated, how they are presented to public investors, and what assumptions are being sold together with the valuation. And how it all would be executed. As there will be a moment when somebody needs to push the brakes, and to add HUMAN VANIDATION to the process. Not just for greed and paychecks, but for sanity.

Because if public markets start financing the destruction of existing industries just to make previously promised TAM numbers come true, the problem will be much bigger than one overpriced IPO.

Do you share my fear, colleagues?