Anthropic, the developer of the Claude language model, is entering the active phase of preparations for a possible public offering. According to CNBC, the company is already holding preliminary meetings with bankers and potential investors in San Francisco, and in June it confidentially filed documents to prepare for a public offering. At these meetings, Chief Financial Officer Krishna Rao is being asked about the competitive landscape, pressure from open-source AI models, and the possible slowdown in data center construction — in other words, the very vulnerable points of the business that investors want to understand before entering.

A $2 Trillion Valuation and Dependence on Compute Power

Investors expect Anthropic's valuation on the exchange to reach approximately $2 trillion, which would make this one of the largest offerings in history. This scale is directly tied to the company's business model: Anthropic critically depends on compute infrastructure, since data center capacity determines its ability to develop models and grow revenue. The company has previously reported an annualized revenue run rate of $65 billion, and it is precisely this momentum that sustains investor appetite for a high valuation.

Public Resistance as a Systemic Risk

The key issue that, according to CNBC, Anthropic may flag in its investor prospectus is public attitude toward the expansion of AI infrastructure. According to a Gallup poll, about 70% of Americans oppose the construction of data centers near their homes, with nearly half of them firmly opposed. For a company whose growth is constrained by physical compute capacity, this turns local discontent into a strategic risk: any slowdown or blockage of new sites hits its ability to scale models and revenue.

Political Pressure Amid the Midterm Elections

The situation is compounded by the political context. Against the backdrop of the approaching midterm elections, politicians from both parties are intensifying pressure on the AI industry, which could further complicate the expansion of Anthropic's infrastructure. Thus, the company faces not a one-off protest but growing institutional resistance, which may be codified in regulatory and municipal decisions on data center placement.

Contradictory Data

It is important here to honestly distinguish confirmed facts from forecasts. The confirmed items are the company's actions: the confidential filing of documents in June and the holding of preliminary meetings with investors, as recorded by several sources. At the same time, the $2 trillion valuation is an investor expectation, not a fixed offering amount, and the IPO itself is still in the preparation stage rather than the actual exchange listing stage. Additionally, according to reports, the ownership structure ahead of the IPO provides for strengthening founder rights through super-voting shares, with the company's head, who owns around 2% of the shares, gaining enhanced control over management. This creates a debate about the balance of rights between founders and future public shareholders, but it does not contradict the facts of the offering preparations themselves.

Conclusion

Anthropic stands on the threshold of what could be the largest public offering in the history of the AI industry, but its success is increasingly determined by factors beyond technological metrics. Public resistance to data center construction, as captured in the Gallup poll, and political pressure amid the midterm elections are forming a new class of risks that the company is forced to factor into its prospectus. For investors, this means that the $2 trillion valuation will depend not only on the $65 billion revenue run rate but also on Anthropic's ability to reconcile infrastructure expansion with society and regulators.