Anthropic is preparing to enter the public stock market just as a growing number of Americans push back against the construction of AI data centers in their communities — a tension expected to surface as a serious risk factor in the company's IPO papers.

The company behind the Claude AI assistant quietly filed to go public in June, in an offering that could rank among the biggest stock listings ever seen anywhere in the world. Investors now believe Anthropic could be valued at around $2 trillion.

At the same time, communities are questioning how much electricity, land, and infrastructure these facilities need to keep advanced AI systems running. Those concerns have already become part of the broader debate around AI expansion, and they are now showing up in the same discussions that will shape Anthropic's listing.

So far, Anthropic has conducted its preliminary meetings in private in San Francisco. The gatherings are taking place behind closed doors, and the names of the participants have not been disclosed. Meanwhile, Anthropic's CFO, Krishna Rao, has been fielding questions about competition, margin pressures from open source models, and slowdowns in data center build-outs.

Elon Musk's SpaceX (SPCX), which competes against Anthropic through its AI division, received $85.7 billion in funding from its listing last month — the biggest IPO ever conducted. Anthropic is expected to raise more than that if the current valuations hold.

Anthropic needs more computing power while Americans resist new AI data centers

Anthropic needs far more computing power to meet demand for Claude and its newer AI products, and like OpenAI, it is pressing its infrastructure partners to build faster. Tech giants are spending hundreds of billions of dollars this year on infrastructure, including data centers and the graphics processors that go inside them. Those sites train advanced models and run new AI services at scale, which makes access to power and server capacity a central operational issue rather than just a behind-the-scenes cost.

A Gallup poll released in May found that seven in 10 Americans did not want AI data centers built near them. Almost half said they were "strongly opposed," while only about one-quarter supported local projects.

Securing enough computing power is already a major IPO question for Anthropic. The company needs data centers, chips, and electricity to keep up with demand for its services, and that dependence could become more visible to public-market investors than it has been in private fundraisings.

Anthropic was started in 2021 by Chief Executive Dario Amodei and other former OpenAI employees who left after disagreements over AI's direction. For years, the startup was seen as trailing OpenAI. Amodei and his team spent years building AI systems that could write code, handle long conversations, and automate business work. Then Claude Code gained ground, and as the coding product improved, Anthropic's revenue climbed quickly.

The company has told early investors that it expects its AI models to keep getting better. Executives believe stronger models will allow Anthropic to keep charging higher prices even while rivals offer cheaper products. Investors want to know how Anthropic plans to sustain those prices as open-weight models become more common — models that make the calculations behind their systems public and can cost less than Anthropic's offerings.

Fast revenue growth anchors the pitch as investors weigh a $2 trillion valuation

Anthropic's investors believe the market for its AI services could eventually be worth several trillion dollars, with AI expected to move into huge parts of white-collar work. As the IPO draws closer, revenue growth is expected to become a major part of the pitch, alongside questions about how quickly the company can scale the infrastructure needed to support that growth.

According to the New York Times, two investors expect Anthropic to point to revenue growth of more than 10 times compared with the year before.

The company has already shared updated financial numbers with investors ahead of the listing. Last month, Anthropic moved above $65 billion in annualized revenue — a figure that takes the company's monthly revenue and projects it across a full year. At the end of last year, the same figure was $9 billion. Anthropic also made $11.6 billion in revenue during the second quarter.

Investors also want to know whether Anthropic can obtain enough computing power to keep pace with those sales. The company needs sufficient server space, GPUs, and electricity while its infrastructure partners continue building, making data center expansion and power availability part of the practical backdrop to the IPO.

Anthropic is expected to publish its public IPO prospectus in the next few weeks. Its shares are then expected to start trading in the months after that.