Anthropic IPO meets AI backlash after midterms show stinging rebuke of data centers

Americans were unequivocal at the ballot box this week as they expressed disdain for tech billionaires and mistrust of artificial intelligence. With that backdrop, 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 on Friday that Anthropic investors see the company aiming for a valuation of $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion, down from a target of $2 trillion that had been floated in recent months.

From Wall Street to Main Street, it's becoming a tougher environment for Anthropic. The Nasdaq on Thursday suffered its steepest drop in 19 months, and it's down to start November after October marked its worst month since March 2025. Chipmakers and neoclouds, the companies most closely tied to the AI buildout, are getting hit the hardest.

Voters rebuked AI in Tuesday's midterm elections, while sending Democrats to sweeping congressional victories across the country. Candidates who advocated for more stringent AI regulation won handily in states like Michigan, Ohio, Texas and Georgia, which will all 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 who they supported for Congress, according to an exit poll from NBC News.

"People don't want a data center going near them if it's just going to house AI that's going to help a big tech company profit," Maura Austin, a behavioral scientist at the University of Virginia, told CNBC. "What Anthropic is doing when they're going public with such a high valuation is they're really leaning into that big tech, billionaire kind of caricature. I expect that's not going to go well with the public."

Anthropic has long tried to position itself as a safety-conscious company that takes AI's potential risks and benefits seriously. CEO Dario Amodei co-founded the company alongside a handful of researchers who defected from OpenAI , now its chief rival. Anthropic is best known for developing a family of AI models called Claude , and it primarily sells its products and services to other businesses.

The company's enterprise focus has helped it avoid becoming the public face of AI, leaving that distinction to OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman . But with Anthropic poised to become the first pure-play AI company to hit the public market, minting a number of new billionaires and many more millionaires in the process, a heightened level of scrutiny is coming.