Hedge Fund Predicts Claude's End-User Scale Will Reach $500 Million, Enterprise Market Holds the Greatest AI Dividend

According to Dynamic Beating's monitoring, at the Sohn Montreal Investment Conference on June 4th, hedge fund Whale Rock's founder and CEO Alex Sacerdote revealed that the daily active users (DAU) of Anthropic's Claude have rapidly surged to 14 million (from 2 million last year). Sacerdote predicted that its ultimate user base is expected to reach 500 million. He emphasized that the current AI industry is in the very early stages of vertical ascent, with the past three years being equivalent to a "search engine on steroids," and that the "enterprise market is the real ultimate prize." As a major investor, Whale Rock participated in its earlier Series G funding round this year.

Addressing the AI bubble theory, Sacerdote refuted it. He pointed out that compared to the over 100x forward P/E ratios of giants like Cisco during the 1999 Internet bubble era, today's AI leaders have solid profits and much more reasonable valuations. In his view, the biggest threat the industry currently faces is not economic fundamentals but government regulation. "Americans seem to have reservations about AI, with a serious 'Not in my backyard' effect, but this tech trend is unstoppable."

In line with this optimistic outlook is Anthropic's rapid capitalization process. This Monday (June 1st), Anthropic secretly submitted a draft registration statement to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), planning to go public as early as this fall, potentially beating OpenAI to Wall Street. Just last month, the company, at a valuation of $965 billion, completed a massive $65 billion Series H funding round.