Assertion Supported AI assessment confidence: 95% certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Lemkin: Anthropic reached $30B valuation in five years versus Salesforce's 25 years

Jason Lemkin · OpenAI Buys TBPN & Their Management Team Reboot | Mercor Hack & Why Now is the Time for Cyber · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Apr 9, 2026 · at 1:44

Jason Lemkin, SaaS investor and SaaStr founder, compares Anthropic's rapid revenue trajectory with Salesforce's historical growth.

0:00 / 0:17exact quote · 17.1s

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“Getting to thirty billion up from nine billion at the start of the year. I mean I think it took, I mean, Salesforce is the largest software company, right? Or at least cloud one. And it took them 25 years to get there. Anthropic got there in five, but maybe they really got there in three, depending on how you count.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

The claim, plainly

Anthropic grew its revenue run rate from $9 billion at the start of the year to $30 billion in five years, whereas Salesforce took 25 years to reach $30 billion in revenue.

a quote alone can be ambiguous, so this restates it with the references and context of the conversation around it resolved. AI-written; the tape below the player is the source.

Assessment

The claim accurately reflects the available financial reporting for both companies. Reporting confirms that Anthropic entered 2026 with an annualized revenue run rate of approximately $9 billion and crossed a $30 billion run rate by April 2026, achieving this within five years of its 2021 founding. For Salesforce, SEC filings confirm it reached $31.35 billion in annual GAAP revenue during FY2023 (ending January 2023), which was 23.8 years (commonly rounded to 24–25 years) from its founding in March 1999.

Reporting from Bloomberg, The Information, and SaaStr confirmed Anthropic's run rate was $9 billion at the start of 2026.
Financial reporting in April 2026 confirmed Anthropic reached a $30 billion annualized revenue run rate within five years of its 2021 founding.
Salesforce SEC filings show it achieved $31.35 billion in annual revenue in FY2023, approximately 24 years (commonly referenced as 25 years) after its 1999 founding.

Checked against

[1] sacra.com [2] venturebeat.com [3] youtube.com [4] saastr.com [5] aibusinessweekly.net [6] pymnts.com [7] saastr.com [8] 247wallst.com

assessed as of 2026-07-23

This assessment is an AI reading of a public statement, made against the cited references with the confidence shown. It can be wrong. The quote, the tape and the references are all on this page; if something is off, use report an error below. full disclaimer →

Mentioned

Anthropic Salesforce

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