Show Notes
SHOW NOTES
TIME magazine this week called Anthropic "the most disruptive company in the world." This episode explores the paradox at the heart of that description: the company founded on AI safety has become the biggest wrecking ball in technology. Two trillion dollars wiped from software stocks. IBM's worst day in twenty-six years — over a blog post. Revenue compounding faster than any enterprise company in history. And an Anthropic employee saying out loud what the numbers already show.
**In this episode:** - The six-week trail of destruction: Cowork plugins, Opus 4.6, COBOL modernisation, Claude Code Security, and the $2 trillion software drawdown - Deep Ganguli's admission: "It feels like we might be speaking out of both sides of our mouths" - Revenue from $1B to $19B in fifteen months — no enterprise company has ever grown this fast - Recursive self-improvement: 70-90% of future Claude's code is written by current Claude - The founding thesis vs. the lived reality: when meaning it isn't enough
**Links:** - TIME — "How Anthropic Became the Most Disruptive Company in the World": https://time.com/article/2026/03/11/anthropic-claude-disruptive-company-pentagon/ - Quartz — "Anthropic is having a huge 2026. It's only March": https://qz.com/anthropic-claude-ai-business-revenue-pentagon-openai-chatgpt - CNBC — IBM shares plunge 13% on Anthropic COBOL threat: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/23/ibm-is-the-latest-ai-casualty-shares-are-tanking-on-anthropic-cobol-threat.html - Bloomberg — IBM shares plunge as Anthropic touts COBOL modernisation: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-23/ibm-shares-plunge-as-anthropic-touts-cobol-modernization-efforts - Bloomberg — Anthropic's run-rate revenue nears $20B: https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/anthropic-doubles-revenue-to-nearly-20b-in-mere-months/503170 - Anthropic — Series G announcement ($30B at $380B valuation): https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-raises-30-billion-series-g-funding-380-billion-post-money-valuation
**Referenced in this episode:** - EP025: The SaaSpocalypse — the $2T software drawdown and seat compression - EP034: When Your Competitors Defend You — the lawsuits and industry solidarity
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