Good morning. One way or another, Anthropic’s looming IPO stands to reframe the market’s understanding of AI. It could aim to raise as much as $100 billion with a valuation of $2 trillion, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The discussion of the company’s total addressable market sets new precedent, too. “The maker of Claude is likely to tell investors its potential revenue opportunities are above $30 trillion, topping SpaceX’s $28.5 trillion estimate,” the Journal says, citing people familiar with the matter.

As the Journal explains, total addressable market, or TAM, is used to estimate the amount of annual revenue a company could theoretically capture if it achieved 100% market share. It puts the discussion of Anthropic’s TAM in perspective by noting that tech companies in the S&P 1500 brought in $2.4 trillion in revenue last year.

Timing is everything. “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,” the Journal reports.

Those documents are bound to include historic benchmarks, which reflect the idea that AI should be understood as a history-defining industrial revolution. That theory is going to be put to the test as Anthropic approaches an IPO. 

How do you think Anthropic’s IPO could reframe the market’s understanding of AI? Send your feedback to me at steven.rosenbush@wsj.com (if you’re reading this in your inbox, you can just hit reply).

Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates issued a stark warning about AI’s risks to employment and the human condition, saying that companies were barreling ahead with the technology with no larger plan for the massive upheaval it would cause, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The message is more sober than Gates’s 2023 essay on AI, when he wrote he was as excited about this revolution as the internet and PC rollouts. Though Wednesday’s missive highlighted AI’s immense potential for good—citing developments in energy, medical care and agriculture—he stressed how badly things could go if the transition is mismanaged. 

Here is what stood out to us:

• AI will hit both white- and blue-collar jobs quickly. Much of his essay focused on jobs, noting that entry- and mid-level jobs are most at risk of being eliminated. He argued that AI will soon affect blue-collar work, and the breadth and speed make it different from other workplace transitions.

• Critical thinking is more important than ever—and at risk. Gates stressed the risk of cyberattacks on the grid, hospitals and banks. Fraud and surveillance will be widespread. AI will also enable governments to use deadly force without a human’s input, Gates wrote.

• Taxes are part of the solution. Gates called for taxes on AI tokens and bots. This could delay companies’ rush away from human labor. Those taxes could also fund a social safety net for retraining people whose jobs won’t exist. He noted that the funding could offset income tax revenue—which will shrink if fewer people work—so that governments can provide services.

• A key executive overseeing OpenAI’s data-center build-out, Chris Malone, left the company last week, joining a wave of leadership departures ahead of a planned public offering, The Wall Street Journal reports. Malone joined OpenAI as head of data centers in March 2025, shortly after the company announced Stargate, an ambitious effort with Oracle and SoftBank to build data centers to meet its rapidly growing computing needs.

• Hedge-fund investor Stanley Druckenmiller criticized Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s bond-market intervention in a Wall Street Journal opinion article on Monday. Druckenmiller confirmed he used AI to help write the opinion piece, stating he wasn’t ashamed of using the technology, WSJ reports.

• Apple is releasing new models of its AI-friendly desktop machines—the Mac Mini and Studio—after the previous generations became sleeper hits, and vanished from shelves. While the next-generation hardware looks identical to previous models, it packs faster, pricier chips, not to mention higher price tags. But it is unclear if Apple can build enough to meet demand, WSJ reports.

• Amazon is soon pulling the plug on its 21-year-old crowdsourced work platform, called Mechanical Turk, CNBC reports. Launched in 2005, Mechanical Turk matches legions of workers with simple digital jobs, or “Human Intelligence Tasks,” that typically pay out a few cents per task. They include labeling data, transcribing audio or video, or answering surveys.

The WSJ Tech Council brings together CIOs, CTOs and CISOs advancing innovation and shaping the future. Join this trusted community where tech executives connect with peers to explore emerging trends and gain the perspective they need to stay ahead of disruption.

Request an Invitation

Follow Isabelle Bousquette on LinkedIn, Instagram, X, and TikTok for more behind the scenes on her tech and AI coverage, and lately, her contributions to the WSJ Leadership Institute’s new Executive Resilience series, where she’s profiling America’s top execs about their fitness and wellness habits.

Follow Belle Lin on LinkedIn and X for her latest reporting on enterprise technology and AI.

Steven Rosenbush is chief of the enterprise technology bureau at the WSJ Leadership Institute. He also has a column. You can follow him on LinkedIn.

Tom Loftus is the editor of The Morning Download. He suggests following Isabelle, Belle and Steve on their various social channels. But if you insist, here’s his LinkedIn.