Anthropic is preparing for the public market with an unusually political risk on the table: public resistance to artificial intelligence infrastructure and anxiety over AI’s effect on jobs. CNBC reports, citing people familiar with the matter, that backlash against AI and data-center development is expected to appear as a key risk factor in the Claude maker’s IPO prospectus. The report says Anthropic has been holding preliminary “test-the-water” meetings with bankers and investors in San Francisco. Those sessions are confidential, according to CNBC’s sources. Chief Financial Officer Krishna Rao has reportedly faced questions about competition, margin pressure from open-source models, and what would happen if data-center construction slows. The timing matters because Anthropic’s growth model is tied to compute capacity. CNBC reports that AI labs such as Anthropic depend on data-center capacity to support advanced models and new services, and that hyperscale technology companies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars this year on capital expenditures for data-center development and graphics processing units. A slowdown in that buildout, CNBC says, could pressure the growth rate of a company it previously reported had reached a $65 billion annual revenue run rate. CNBC reports that Anthropic confidentially filed to go public in June, in what is expected to be one of the largest initial public offerings on record. Investors expect the company may surpass SpaceX’s recent offering, according to the report. CNBC says SpaceX, which competes with Anthropic through its AI division, raised $85.7 billion including the underwriter option two months ago, making it the largest offering to date. The valuation expectations are correspondingly large. CNBC says investors project Anthropic could float at a valuation of about $2 trillion. The report also states that Anthropic is valued at close to $1 trillion in the private market. The risk disclosure would reflect a shift in the operating environment for AI companies. CNBC cites a Gallup survey published in May that found seven in 10 Americans opposed AI data-center construction in their area, with close to half of respondents strongly opposed. Roughly a quarter of people surveyed supported local AI data-center construction, according to Gallup figures cited by CNBC. The issue has also moved into state politics, CNBC reports. With midterm elections less than three months away, politicians in both parties have pushed back on data-center development. CNBC says data centers were an issue in Florida’s Republican gubernatorial primary, won Tuesday by Rep. Byron Donalds, who has proposed restrictions on data centers in Florida. The same day, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro signed an executive order imposing strict standards on data-center development in the state, according to the report. Risk factors are a standard part of IPO prospectuses, both for investor disclosure and legal protection. The notable point in CNBC’s report is not that Anthropic would include risk language, but that the company’s expected disclosure may directly acknowledge a broader backlash against the infrastructure required to run large AI systems. For a company selling access to compute-intensive models, permitting, power, local opposition and political scrutiny are becoming investor questions rather than background issues. Who benefits: Bankers and investors get an early view into how Anthropic plans to explain infrastructure risk before a potential listing. Policymakers and communities opposing data-center buildouts may also gain leverage as those risks become part of public-company disclosures. Who's exposed: Anthropic is most exposed if compute expansion slows, because CNBC reports compute capacity is directly correlated with revenue for AI labs. Infrastructure partners and hyperscalers funding data-center and GPU buildouts are also exposed to political and permitting friction described in the report.