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including  their  highest-value  work.  In  addition,  we  believe  that  each  successive  expansion  of  the  frontier  will 
unlock  new  categories  of  work  that,  in  turn,  will  generate  the  majority  of  incremental  industry  demand.  We 
expect the industry to continue increasing investment in compute, research talent, and engineering resources to 
advance the frontier of AI. Within this framework, research labs with proprietary training methods, strong data 
quality, and differentiated research talent are well-positioned to outpace what scale alone would predict. 

A Near-Term Opportunity to Transform Cognitive Work

Frontier AI is transforming cognitive work—the application of knowledge, reasoning, and judgment to produce 
economic value. We believe it will make humans far more capable and expand the world’s overall capacity for 
that work, including accelerating scientific discovery and helping businesses grow. Knowledge workers are the 
leading  edge  of  this  opportunity.  As  frontier  AI  advances,  more  capable  models  can  unlock  entirely  new  use 
cases  while  also  efficiently  serving  a  wide  range  of  cognitive  work  at  scale  across  the  capability-cost-speed 
curve.  We  believe  the  work  that  knowledge  workers  perform  represented  more  than  $40  trillion  in  economic 
value globally in 2025,6 and with frontier AI’s potential to make them meaningfully more productive, our near-
term  opportunity  is  to  expand  this  value  and  accelerate  economic  growth.  While  it  is  still  early  to  forecast 
frontier  AI’s  full  impact  across  the  economy,  IDC  estimates  that  investment  in  AI  solutions  and  services  will 
yield  a  cumulative  global  economic  impact  of  $22.5 trillion  by  2031.7  We  believe  the  impact  could  be  even 
greater.

History  suggests  that  transformative  technologies  expand  the  markets  they  enter.  For  example,  information 
technology  spend  grew  from  approximately $1.2  trillion  in  2006  to  $4.3  trillion  in  2025,  a  CAGR  of 
approximately 7%, as cloud computing spend grew from zero to $1.9 trillion over the same period and expanded 
information  technology  budgets.8  We  have  seen  other  technologies,  including  the  personal  computer,  the 
internet, and the smartphone, grow their markets as well. The companies that built these technologies grew at a 
far faster rate than the economy as a whole. Global GDP grew from approximately $34 trillion in 2000 to more 
than  $118  trillion  in  2025  according  to  the  World  Bank,  more  than  tripling. Over  that  same  period,  the  ten 
largest  publicly  traded  technology  companies  by  market  capitalization  as  of  September  30,  2026  grew  their 
aggregate  revenue  from  $68  billion  to  more  than  $2.5  trillion,  an  increase  of  approximately  38  times, or 
approximately 11 times the rate of global GDP growth.

Frontier AI May Reshape Entire Sectors and Accelerate Novel Discoveries

We believe frontier AI represents a larger opportunity than any prior technology cycle, and Claude is already 
demonstrating  this  potential.  Claude  can  now  execute  complex  projects  autonomously  over  hours  and  days, 
coordinating thousands of agents in parallel to carry out sophisticated planning, long-form research, and self-
correcting analysis. Claude also turns open-ended tasks into finished, high-quality deliverables—work that was 
beyond the reach of frontier AI only a short time ago. These capabilities position Claude to transform the largest 
sectors  of  the  global  economy,  including  software  development,  business  and  professional  services, 
cybersecurity, financial services, and healthcare and life sciences, driving meaningful gains in productivity and 
output for the organizations that deploy it.

Cybersecurity  represents  one  of  our  most  important  near-term  opportunities.  As  each  new  generation  of  AI 
models  grows  more  capable  of  finding  and  exploiting  vulnerabilities,  we  expect  that  defending  enterprise 
networks and critical infrastructure will increasingly require frontier AI. At the same time, the diffusion of AI is 
expanding  the  threat  surface,  as  organizations  deploy  agents  and  autonomous  capabilities  at  an  accelerating 
pace. Our leadership in coding has allowed us to advance Claude’s cybersecurity capabilities and build products 
that  help  enterprises  secure  their  most  critical  infrastructure.  For  example,  Claude  Security  can  continuously 
scan  customers’  codebases,  triage  vulnerabilities,  and  write  fixes.  We  also  recently  launched  OSS  Scanner, 
which  extends  some  of  these  capabilities  to  the  open-source  projects  that  enterprise  software  is  built  on. 
Through our trusted-access programs, vetted cyberdefenders can also use our most capable models for security 

6 See the section titled “Industry, Market, and Other Data” for a description of how we calculate annual economic value attributable 

to knowledge workers globally.

7  IDC,  The  Economic  Impact  of  AI:  2026  Edition,  doc  #  US54452226,  April  2026.  Reflects  the  annual  value  created  across  AI 
solutions  and  services,  investments  in  the  AI  infrastructure  supply  chain,  and  enhancements  in  enterprise  productivity  and 
efficiency unlocked by AI.

8 IDC, Worldwide Black Book: Live Edition V2 2026 Forecast, July 2026.

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