Artificial intelligence giant Anthropic booked a staggering $80.7 billion net loss in the first half of 2026 — mostly from accounting charges — as it warned that growing opposition to data centers could threaten its business.
The San Francisco-based company, which is preparing for a blockbuster IPO that could value it at as much as $2 trillion, voiced caution about the growing movement of anti-data center and anti-AI voters.
Resistance to data centers has “become more organized and coordinated across jurisdictions,” Anthropic said in the filing viewed by the Wall Street Journal.
The company, led by CEO Dario Amodei, said its high public profile “may draw particular attention to projects associated with us.”
Anthropic said most of its data center capacity is located in the US, although it has signed letters of intent to develop additional facilities overseas. Domestically, recent months have seen public opinion souring on AI and protests opposing data center construction.
Lior Prosor, a partner at Deep33 Ventures, downplayed the likelihood that the backlash would derail Anthropic’s IPO or impede its near-term growth.
“Risk the IPO? I don’t think so,” Prosor told The Post, explaining that data centers only now entering the permitting process wouldn’t be operational before the second half of 2028.
He nevertheless acknowledged that regulatory obstacles could become a more serious problem over the long term.
Anthropic said it has sought more computing capacity than its major cloud partners were willing to provide.
The company faces more than $600 billion in future cloud computing and chip-leasing costs, with deals under negotiation that could add another $150 billion, the Journal reported.
Prosor said Anthropic is “certainly taking meaningful risks” with its enormous computing commitments, even as surging demand for artificial intelligence has rewarded companies that secured capacity early.
He argued that Anthropic should “raise as much capital as possible” to weather potential setbacks as the market matures.
“This is not going to be straight up and to the right forever,” Prosor warned.
The first-half loss, up from $13 billion a year earlier, included roughly $72 billion in accounting charges tied to changes in the value of convertible notes and other financing instruments, according to the report.
The $72 billion reflected changes in the value of convertible notes and other fundraising instruments.
Meanwhile, the siblings running Anthropic earned less in total compensation last year than the median CEO of an S&P 500 technology company, according to pay data cited by the Journal.
Dario Amodei and his sister, company president Daniela Amodei, each drew a base salary of roughly $655,000 in 2025.
But the siblings aren’t exactly struggling.
Stock and option awards boosted Dario’s total compensation to about $18 million last year, while Daniela’s pay package was valued at roughly $16.5 million, according to the filing.
Their pay packages were roughly in line with median CEO compensation across the S&P 500, but fell short of the median for the index’s technology companies, according to MyLogIQ data cited by the Journal.
The siblings could also receive more equity if certain milestones are reached, the draft prospectus shows.
Anthropic’s co-founders have each pledged 80% of their stakes to philanthropy, while the company separately plans to commit 5% of its shares to a public benefit fund announced Sunday.
Meanwhile, revenue surged to $16.3 billion in the first half of 2026, up from $1.1 billion a year earlier.
Over the same stretch, computing and infrastructure expenses jumped to nearly $9 billion from $2.3 billion.
Anthropic also warned that its business remains heavily dependent on a handful of large clients, with just two customers accounting for roughly one-fifth of its first-half revenue.
The company expects a “significant portion” of sales to continue coming from a “limited number of customers for the foreseeable future,” according to the prospectus.
Anthropic declined to comment to the Journal on the disclosures, which come as the AI giant prepares to tap public investors to help finance its ambitious expansion.
The Post has sought comment from Anthropic.