As Anthropic’s IPO Looms, The Company Faces A Significant Risk From A Surprising Place, Midterm State And Local Elections
Anthropic filed for its IPO days before a midterm election, and an Oxford economist says the biggest threat to its trillion-dollar ambitions sits not in Washington but in county zoning boards and town halls across Ohio, Texas, and Georgia.
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Anthropic filed publicly for its IPO on Oct. 26, 2026, and Election Day comes on Nov. 3. Michael Pearce, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, says the biggest risk to the AI data center expansion sits in state capitals and town halls, with Washington a smaller factor.
He told Fortune that local officials present “more immediate threats via moratoriums, environmental reviews, and bottlenecks in connecting new data centers to the power grid”. Few companies need new data centers more than Anthropic does.
What Anthropic Filed
Anthropic filed a Form S-1 to list Class A shares on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the ticker “ANT”. The share count and price range have not been set. Reuters reports first-half 2026 revenue of $16.3 billion. TradingKey and Reuters report a net loss of $80.7 billion, driven mainly by a rise in the fair value of convertible bonds.
Reuters says Anthropic was valued at $965 billion in May. Some investors now put it near $1.5 trillion, according to Reuters, down from about $2 trillion a week earlier. Reuters says the listing could come as early as late October. Earlier reports pointed to November.
A Massive Compute Bill Runs Through Local Zoning Boards
The S-1 says Anthropic plans to secure compute beyond its existing commitments and expand its own data center presence. It also warns that delays in securing energy, water and other critical services for dedicated data centers could slow new compute. investingLive, citing the WSJ, puts compute commitments above $600 billion. Per investingLive, that includes about $450 billion in mostly non-cancellable cloud agreements: roughly $111 billion with Google parent Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL | GOOGL Price Prediction), $110 billion with Amazon Web Services, a unit of Amazon, and $31 billion with Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT). TradingKey reported a figure of $750 billion, so the totals vary by source. CNBC reports Anthropic plans to invest $50 billion in U.S. data centers.
CNBC reported on Aug. 21, citing sources, that Anthropic told bankers and investors that opposition to AI and data centers would be a key risk factor. The WSJ-based account says the risk factors cite growing organized opposition to data center construction that could target projects linked to Anthropic.
Local Opposition Is Already Widespread
A May Gallup poll found 71% of Americans oppose data center construction near them, compared with 53% who oppose a nearby nuclear plant. According to Route Fifty, the National League of Cities tracker shows at least 76 localities have tried halts or bans, including three permanent bans, and Route Fifty counts almost 40 Georgia local governments with some form of halts. Yahoo Tech reports that more than 100 Ohio communities have halts and that 18 will vote on local measures this year.
How Elections Enter the Picture
The link to elections comes from economists, campaign memos and industry filings, separate from Anthropic’s own risk language. Pearce notes that the Trump administration has eased construction through regulations and executive orders, and Route Fifty reports the President has pressed state and local officials to accept developers’ demands. That leaves local officials as the main point of control. Pearce names Texas, the Carolinas, Ohio, Illinois and Wisconsin as the key races.
Macquarie’s Thierry Wizman wrote that state-level governance may matter more to the economy than control of Congress. An Aug. 18 National Republican Senatorial Committee memo called data centers an “anchor” for Sen. Jon Husted in Ohio. Nscale’s own S-1 warns that candidates may run against data center development, which could lead to more halts and stricter permitting.
Digital Realty Shows What Is at Stake on the Ground
Digital Realty (NYSE:DLR) shows how much this expansion depends on land. In its first-quarter filing, revenue reached $1.64B (+16.2% YoY), helped by a 200-megawatt AI inference lease, the largest in the company’s history. It has about 1.2 GW under construction and bought an 873-acre parcel near Atlanta, in Georgia, where halts are spreading. The stock traded at $173.30, up 14.29% year to date but down 4.49% over the past month.
Limits on the Election Case
Sitting councils pass most halts, so elections matter mainly through who wins office and through ballot measures. Energy, water and grid limits can slow projects whoever wins. Local budgets also depend on data centers: Yahoo Tech reports Loudoun County, Virginia, collected $1.2 billion in data center property taxes, about 40% of its budget. Anthropic faces other risks too. It relies on a few suppliers, including Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO). Two customers made up about a fifth of its first-half revenue, and the filing also lists AI safety risks.
What to Watch
Key dates and events include the IPO pricing date, state and local results on Nov. 3, Ohio’s local data center votes and any new halts.
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AJ spent 10 years writing about financial markets at The Motley Fool. His coverage centers on technology stocks and the broader macroeconomic trends, from interest rates to geopolitics, that shape where markets are headed next. AJ is drawn to the stories where big-picture economics and individual companies collide.
