Rival AI company Anthropic has accelerated its IPO timeline, with public filing potentially as early as the end of August 2026, according to people familiar with the matter as reported by Bloomberg. The company expects its IPO to match or beat SpaceX's record $75 billion raise, which would force Anthropic to sell tens of billions in stock and would represent the largest US listing to date. However, as the company prepares for its potential $2 trillion public-market debut, it faces a significant challenge: growing opposition to artificial intelligence and the data centres needed to power it. According to CNBC, Anthropic is preparing to list negative sentiment towards AI and data centre construction as a risk factor in its IPO prospectus, putting the company in an unusual position where the same AI boom driving expectations for a record-breaking valuation is also creating one of the risks it will have to disclose to potential shareholders.
SpaceX set the benchmark for largest US listings when it sold 555.56 million shares at $135 each in June, raising $75 billion and valuing the company near $1.77 trillion. The stock closed its first Nasdaq session at $161. Matching this raise would require Anthropic to sell tens of billions in stock, demonstrating the scale of ambition in the AI sector. The company has already adopted the SpaceX blueprint by planning supervoting shares for founders, indicating careful preparation for the public offering. However, the final SpaceX figure reached $86.2 billion including the overallotment option, which is typically exercised if shares rise in early trading.
Anthropic's financial trajectory has been remarkable, with annualized revenue run rate reaching $65 billion in July, up from more than $47 billion earlier in the year and roughly $10 billion across all of 2025. A May funding round valued the firm at $965 billion, ahead of OpenAI's $852 billion valuation. The company saw preliminary second-quarter revenue of more than $11.5 billion, compared to $787 million in the corresponding period in 2025. According to Reuters, Anthropic is forecasting annual revenue of $190 billion-$200 billion by 2028. However, the company had a net loss of almost $42 billion in 2025, a roughly fivefold increase from about $8.3 billion the year before. The company is also grappling with very high costs of building advanced AI systems, with training frontier models requiring huge computing power. In just one agreement with data center owners, Anthropic agreed to a deal with SpaceX for computing resources that could be worth tens of billions of dollars over the next three years.
The potential record comes with significant infrastructure challenges that could impact Anthropic's growth trajectory. A Gallup survey conducted in March found that 7 in 10 Americans oppose a local AI data center, with 48% strongly opposed, with opposition since deepening. A Heatmap Pro poll of 2,045 registered voters conducted August 8-13 by Embold Research put opposition at 75%, up from 42% a year earlier. Job anxiety runs alongside this opposition, with Pew Research finding that 71% of adults expect AI to cut US jobs over the next two decades, up from 64% in 2024. Opposition to data centres is also moving into politics, with officials from both sides of the US political aisle pushing back against new developments. In Florida, data-center restrictions became an issue in the Republican gubernatorial primary, while Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro signed an executive order imposing stricter standards on data-center development. In New York, Governor Kathy Hochul has also ordered a pause on permits for large new data centers. According to CNBC, Anthropic's Chief Financial Officer Krishna Rao is fielding questions about competition, pressure on margins from open-source AI models and what would happen if construction of data centres slows, as compute capacity tracks directly with revenue at AI labs.
Ahead of its public filing, Anthropic is set to finalize a revolving credit facility that will raise more than its roughly $10 billion target, people familiar with the matter have said. The company is working with Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. on the IPO, with other banks potentially being added. Anthropic is considering adopting super-voting shares that would give Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei, who owns about a 2% stake, and his fellow co-founders greater control over the company. The company has been holding preliminary 'test-the-water' meetings with bankers and investors in San Francisco as it prepares for its public debut. Reuters reported this week that Anthropic is arranging a revolving credit facility that could exceed $10 billion, with major banks competing for positions ahead of the IPO. Anthropic confidentially filed to go public in June 2026, giving it the option to proceed with a listing once regulatory review is completed and market conditions allow.
