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WW Wayland Wong On The Indicator (Planet Money)

“So you pay for AI like it's Netflix, companies pay for AI like it's steak.”

The Indicator (Planet Money) · Money & Markets · November 2026

“So you pay for AI like it's Netflix, companies pay for AI like it's steak.” — Wayland Wong, The Indicator (Planet Money)

Context

Ricky Mulvey had just said businesses pay for AI by the pound, based on how much work the models do. Wayland Wong contrasts that with consumers' flat monthly subscriptions, which helps explain how fast Anthropic's revenue has grown ahead of its IPO.

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Transcript

The Indicator (Planet Money) Around 03:21 into the episode
Speaker 2

But Anthropic's Claude became one of the most popular large language models in the world. Consumers started using it, and so did businesses. Claude is really good at coding, and that's a strong sell for an AI platform.

Speaker 3

You may pay for AI with a monthly subscription, or your job pays for it, but businesses pay by the pound how much stuff the AI programs are doing for them.

Speaker 2

So you pay for AI like it's Netflix, companies pay for AI like it's steak.

Speaker 3

And using Claude to code complex problems takes a lot of juice or protein or steak juice.

Speaker 2

Sure, steak juice. Either way, it's one reason why revenue for the company has exploded.

Speaker 3

Anthropic made $41 million in 2023. Over the last nine months, it made over $33 billion. That's just three years. Kevin says this kind of growth hasn't been done before. I

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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