Americans were unequivocally at the polls this week expressing their disdain for tech billionaires and their distrust of artificial intelligence. In this context, Anthropic is about to try to go public.
The AI company is gearing up for a potentially historic IPO, likely targeting mid-November for its Nasdaq debut. CNBC reported Friday that Anthropic investors see the company targeting a valuation of between $1 trillion and $1.5 trillion, down from the $2 trillion target that had been floated in recent months.
From Wall Street to Main Street, the environment is becoming increasingly challenging for Anthropic. The Nasdaq suffered its biggest decline in 19 months on Thursday, and is down since November after October was its worst month since March 2025. Hardest hit are chipmakers and neoclouds, the companies most closely tied to the development of AI.
Voters rebuked AI in Tuesday’s midterm elections, while sending Democrats to resounding congressional victories across the country. Candidates advocating for stricter regulation of AI won handily in states like Michigan, Ohio, Texas, and Georgia, all of which will now have Democratic governors, and local communities opposed data center-related ballot measures in 40 out of 41 cases.
More than half of voters said AI data centers were a “crucial” or “major” factor in their support for Congress, according to an NBC News exit poll.
“People don’t want a data center anywhere near them if it’s just going to host an AI that’s going to help a big tech company make a profit,” Maura Austin, a behavioral scientist at the University of Virginia, told CNBC. “What Anthropic is doing when they go public with such a high valuation is they’re really relying on this big tech billionaire caricature. I think that’s not going to sit well with the public.”
Anthropic has long tried to position itself as a company that cares about security and takes the risks and potential benefits of AI seriously. CEO Dario Amodei co-founded the company alongside a handful of defected researchers. OpenAInow its main rival. Anthropic is best known for developing a family of AI models called Claude, and primarily sells its products and services to other companies.
The company’s enterprise focus has helped it avoid becoming the public face of AI, leaving that distinction to OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman. But with Anthropic poised to become the first purely AI company to enter the public market, creating a number of new billionaires and many more millionaires, a heightened level of scrutiny looms.
“Being a public company, that in itself is what puts you in the spotlight,” Reena Aggarwal, a finance professor at Georgetown University, said in an interview. “And then AI is such a hot topic that Anthropic will be in the spotlight even more.”
Matt Kennedy, senior IPO market strategist at Renaissance Capital, said that’s not necessarily a bad thing for Anthropic.
Public procurement requires greater transparency, he said, and the company could attract new users early on. And since AI has become a widespread topic of conversation, several private companies are already known.
“I would argue that a public company deserves no more criticism than a comparable private company,” Kennedy said. “Anthropic should therefore not be thrust into the public spotlight any harsher than OpenAI simply because it is public.”
Anthropic declined to comment.
Backlash in the data center
Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei watches as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Mike Johnson speaks to the press after a meeting with technology leaders on artificial intelligence at the White House in Washington, DC, September 29, 2026.
Kent Nishimura | AFP | Getty Images
The AI response accelerated over the summer after a series of high-profile safety and security incidents shook the public. As concerns grew, the data center debate intensified, while tech sector hyperscalers simultaneously increased their capital spending forecasts, each reaching hundreds of billions of dollars.
Anthropic and OpenAI rely on cutting-edge data centers to train models and serve their customers, and they are trying to build capacity as quickly as possible to meet demand. Anthropic said in an amended IPO prospectus this week that it has entered into purchase commitments and lease agreements for a total committed amount of approximately $895.4 billion, “the bulk of which is compute and infrastructure related.”
Americans, grappling with inflation and stubbornly high gas prices, are increasingly concerned that the facilities could worsen environmental damage, increase utility bills and contribute to job losses. For many, the data center project in their backyard has become the physical manifestation of widespread antipathy toward AI.
In the risk factors section of its prospectus, Anthropic said opposition to data center development has become more organized across jurisdictions and the company’s public profile could attract special scrutiny of projects associated with it.
Nicole Greene, an analyst at Gartner, said she expects Anthropic executives have long been prepared to deal with AI backlash, especially given the disruptive nature of the technology.
“There are going to be big emotions,” Greene told CNBC. “With big emotions and feelings – fear and excitement – come increased scrutiny.”
Amodei acknowledged the bitter sentiment around AI in an article on X in August. He said it was the result of a “crisis of confidence” and that people believed that business, government and the tech industry were “always plotting new ways to screw them over.”
Rebuilding public trust will be an uphill battle as the company begins providing quarterly financial updates.
The University of Southern California released a survey Monday that found 71 percent of respondents don’t trust big tech companies to act in society’s best interests “at all” when it comes to data center development.
“Once you lose trust, it’s hard to regain it,” Wändi Bruine de Bruin, a professor at the Schaeffer Institute at the University of Southern California, said in an interview. “The numbers are not good.”
WATCH: Alex Kantrowitz: Anthropic doesn’t have much flexibility on the timing of its IPO
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