Anthropic Lost $80.7 Billion in Six Months, and Its IPO Filing Says the Data Center Backlash Is Coming for It

Anthropic posted a net loss of $80.7 billion in the first six months of 2026, according to a draft IPO prospectus reviewed by the Wall Street Journal. Revenue grew nearly fifteenfold over the same stretch. And tucked into the risk factors is a warning investors should read twice: the local fight over data centers is getting organized, and Anthropic thinks it could become a target.

The company is heading toward a listing that could value it at as much as $2 trillion. It declined to comment to the Journal.

A loss that is mostly on paper

The headline number looks catastrophic, but most of it never left the bank. Roughly $72 billion of the loss came from noncash accounting charges, changes in the value of convertible notes and other instruments Anthropic used to raise money. A year earlier, the first half loss was $13 billion.

The operating story is growth. Revenue reached $16.3 billion in the first half, up from $1.1 billion a year before. Reuters reported last week that an investor at a pre-IPO meeting put third quarter revenue at $16.8 billion, up 45% from the prior quarter.

The cost of running the models is climbing just as fast. Computing and infrastructure expenses hit nearly $9 billion in the half, up from $2.3 billion, which is already more than Anthropic spent on infrastructure in all of 2025. Sales are also concentrated: two customers accounted for roughly one fifth of first half revenue, and the company expects a "significant portion" to keep coming from a "limited number of customers for the foreseeable future."

$600 billion in commitments, and not enough capacity

Anthropic is locked into more than $600 billion in future cloud computing and chip leasing costs, and it is negotiating deals that could add about $150 billion more, which would bring the total to as much as $750 billion. Even that has not been enough. The filing says Anthropic has sought more computing capacity than its major cloud partners were willing to provide.

That is where the backlash comes in. Resistance to data centers has "become more organized and coordinated across jurisdictions," the company warns in the filing, and its high public profile "may draw particular attention to projects associated with us." Most of its data center capacity sits in the US, though it has signed letters of intent for facilities overseas.

The warning lands the same week President Trump told data center builders to pay towns a "dividend" to win local support, as opposition turns into a midterm issue. One side is trying to buy the backlash off. The company that needs the buildings most is telling investors the backlash is a business risk.

Not every investor is worried

Lior Prosor, a partner at Deep33 Ventures, does not see it derailing the listing. "Risk the IPO? I don't think so," he told the Post, arguing that data centers entering permitting now would not be operational before the second half of 2028 anyway. He acknowledged that regulatory obstacles could become more serious over the long term.

He was less relaxed about the spending. Anthropic is "certainly taking meaningful risks" with its compute commitments, he said, and should "raise as much capital as possible," because in his words "this is not going to be straight up and to the right forever."

Modest salaries, big stakes

The founders, for their part, are not drawing huge cash pay. Dario and Daniela Amodei each took a base salary of roughly $655,000 in 2025, with total compensation of about $18 million and $16.5 million once stock and options are counted. The co-founders have pledged 80% of their stakes to philanthropy, and the company plans to commit 5% of its shares to a public benefit fund announced Sunday.

None of that changes the math in the prospectus. Anthropic's revenue is up nearly fifteenfold, it has promised to spend hundreds of billions on compute, and it is telling the market that the towns where that compute has to live may push back.

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