Whale Rock Predicts 500 Million Claude Users, Hails Enterprise AI as Key Growth Area

Huo Xing Cai Jing reports that, on June 5, according to monitoring by Dongcha Beating, at the Sohn Montreal Investment Conference on June 4, Alex Sacerdote, founder and CEO of hedge fund Whale Rock, disclosed that the daily active users (DAU) of Claude, developed by Anthropic, have rapidly surged to 14 million (up from 2 million last year). Sacerdote predicted that its final user base could reach 500 million. He emphasized that the AI industry is still in its very early stages of vertical acceleration, with the past three years merely equivalent to “a search engine on adrenaline,” and that “the enterprise market is the true ultimate prize.” As a major investor, Whale Rock participated in Anthropic’s recent G-round financing earlier this year. In response to claims of an AI bubble, Sacerdote dismissed them, noting that unlike the forward P/E ratios exceeding 100 times seen in the 1999 internet bubble with giants like Cisco, today’s AI leaders have solid profits and far more reasonable valuations. In his view, the industry’s greatest threat is not economic fundamentals but government regulation. “Americans seem wary of AI and exhibit severe NIMBYism (Not In My Backyard), but this technological tide is unstoppable.” This optimistic outlook is mirrored by Anthropic’s rapid capitalization progress. On Monday, June 1, Anthropic secretly submitted a draft registration statement to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), aiming to go public as early as this fall—potentially beating OpenAI to Wall Street. Last month, the company completed a massive H-round financing of $65 billion at a $965 billion valuation.