In San Francisco, meetings have reportedly been happening in which Anthropic Chief Financial Officer Krishna Rao is taking questions from would-be investors ahead of the public release of the company’s IPO prospectus.
Remarkably, that prospectus is expected to include verbiage spelling out the fact that the public is fearful upset about what AI companies are doing, according to CNBC.
CNBC, which cites anonymous “people familiar with [the] matter,” first reported on these apparent San Francisco meetings, and says the public’s antipathy toward Anthropic’s product and the data centers that enable it will be outlined in the prospectus as—to use CNBC’s term—a “key risk factor.”
In other words, the most important formal document disclosing information investors need before they invest in Anthropic will reportedly acknowledge public outcry. That outcry isn’t just a lot of grumbling. Politicians on both sides of the aisle increasingly campaign against AI during elections. Depending how deep the prospectus goes, it might have to acknowledge disruptive protests against AI and data centers, reportedly including multiple incidents involving gunshots, and at least one molotov cocktail.
SpaceX’s IPO earlier this year didn’t focus on public sentiment, even though AI was arguably the main source of future revenue cited in the SpaceX prospectus. That document mentioned a reliance on natural gas, for instance, but in the part about regulatory considerations, not in any section on, say, public outcry over pollution. It also mentioned that Grok’s brashness and ability to create “potential nonconsensual or exploitative imagery” might trigger “reputational damage” or “user or advertiser backlash.” But philosophical opposition to AI itself doesn’t appear to be in there.
Gizmodo reached out to Anthropic to confirm that investor meetings were taking place in San Francisco, and to ask for comment on CNBC’s claim about the company’s IPO prospectus. We did not immediately hear back.