Anthropic wants to go public – and with one of the largest IPOs ever, at a valuation near a trillion dollars. Of all moments, this is when the backlash against AI hits full force. CNBC reports that the growing skepticism toward AI and data centers will show up in the IPO prospectus as a risk factor. A company about to raise billions is putting it in writing that the mood against its own industry could become a problem.
How bad the mood is comes through in a CNBC Generation Lab survey of 18- to 34-year-olds. More than 75 percent said they wouldn’t trust Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to act responsibly. For OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg the numbers sat around 70 percent. These aren’t fringe figures. This is a whole generation openly distrusting the faces behind the AI wave.
And it isn’t just the younger crowd. A March NBC News survey found that 57 percent of registered voters think AI’s risks outweigh its benefits. In a Quinnipiac poll, 55 percent expected AI to do more harm than good in their daily lives. Behind that sit concrete worries: jobs that might disappear, and huge data centers suddenly rising up in the neighborhood.
Amodei himself doesn’t dodge it. In a post on X, he acknowledged that the public views AI negatively – and said Anthropic and the others will have to keep their promises and genuinely improve people’s lives. Two weeks ago he’d already called the backlash “fundamentally a crisis of trust.”
I find that framing more honest than the usual hype talk. Because trust is, in the end, the harder currency than any benchmark. A model can be as good as you like – if people don’t trust the company behind it, that only gets you so far. For Anthropic it’s a double game: raise the value on the outside, stay credible on the inside. And the interesting question is whether an IPO, of all things – built on growth and returns – helps win that trust back. I have my doubts.
Sources: Tech backlash reaches fever pitch as AI angst collides with social media fears (CNBC) · Anthropic IPO filing will show AI backlash as a risk factor (CNBC) · Anthropic CEO says AI backlash is a crisis of trust (TechCrunch)