---
title: Voters Turned Against Data Centers, and Anthropic's IPO Could Test Whether Its Bet on AI Rules Pays Off
description: Anthropic's IPO filing warns data center moratoriums could delay its compute. Its early support for AI rules could set it apart, if investors pay for it.
author: Darie Nani (Editor-in-Chief)
date: 2026-11-07T14:59:24.810Z
updated: 2026-11-07T14:59:24.820Z
canonical: https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/anthropic-ipo-data-centers-midterms
image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/anthropic-ipo-dario-daniela-amodei.webp
categories: Artificial Intelligence, Markets, Politics
content_type: Analysis
region: United States
publication: Sovereign Magazine
schema_type: Article
about:
  - type: Organization
    name: Anthropic
---

Anthropic is preparing what could be the largest stock market listing on record, days after Democrats took control of Congress in an election where 56% of voters said AI and data centers were a major factor in their vote.

Reuters reported on Friday that potential investors doubt Anthropic can start its roadshow next week as planned. Some expect the offering to raise as much as $100 billion, more than the record $75 billion SpaceX raised in June. In its own amended prospectus, Anthropic lists $895.4 billion of commitments, substantially all of them for computing and infrastructure, and warns that data center moratoriums could delay the facilities it depends on. Two days after the [midterm vote](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/data-center-moratorium-midterms-ai), US stocks had their worst day since April 2025.

In 2025, as most of the biggest AI companies lined up behind President Donald Trump's hands-off approach to the industry and planned their build-outs around it, Anthropic backed state AI safety laws. In early 2026 it funded a pro-regulation group and [refused the Pentagon's terms for military use of its models](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/pentagon-threatens-to-blacklist-anthropic-over-ai-guardrails). After this week's result, Anthropic may now be better placed than rivals whose leaders stood with Trump, because of that record. It still needs the same scarce data center capacity as those rivals, and investors could get their first chance to put a price on the difference at the roadshow, if it goes ahead.

## Chip and Power Stocks Fell More Than the Wider Market After the Election

On Wednesday, the day after the election, the S&P 500 rose 1.59% while shares in companies that supply power to data centers fell. Texas-based power company Vistra dropped about 13.5% after the governor's race there and was downgraded by KeyBanc, Investing.com reported.

On Thursday the S&P 500 fell 4.4% to 7,353.73, its [biggest one-day fall since April 2025](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/bank-of-england-rate-rise-nasdaq-correction-isa-pension), and the Nasdaq lost 5.5%, closing 11.9% below its October high, the Associated Press reported. Nvidia fell 9.3%, AMD 17.3% and CoreWeave, which rents out computing power for AI, 9.8%.

The AP attributed the fall partly to fears that the election would slow data center construction and partly to interest rates and worries about an AI bubble. Analyst Dan Ives estimated that at least 10% of the 800 to 1,000 data centers planned in the US may now be dropped, according to Fortune.

## Anthropic Warns in Its Prospectus That a Data Center Moratorium Could Delay Its Compute

In the [amended registration statement](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2130357/000162828026068676/anthropicpbc-sx1ax1.htm) it filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on November 2, Anthropic says it has committed to spend about $895.4 billion through purchase commitments and leases, including leases that have not yet started. It expects about $447.5 billion of that to be spent before the end of 2030 and most of the rest between 2031 and 2045, with $69.8 billion due in the 12 months after September 30. At that date it had $95.6 billion of cash and equivalents, $36.3 billion of short-term investments and $14.8 billion available under a credit facility. Anthropic says it intends to pay for the commitments from its revenue and the capital it raises.

Anthropic lists opposition to data centers among the risks to that plan. It points to New York, which has paused state permitting for new large facilities, and to Texas, which can curtail or disconnect large electricity users during grid emergencies. "Such moratoriums, or similar actions, could delay or prevent the construction or expansion of facilities on which we depend for compute," the company says. "Opposition to data center development has also become more organized and coordinated across jurisdictions, and our public profile may draw particular attention to projects associated with us."

When demand runs ahead of the capacity it has contracted, Anthropic buys short-term compute that it says costs significantly more. Its adjusted operating margin, a measure it calculates itself, fell to 15% in the third quarter from 19% in the second, and Anthropic attributes the drop mainly to $5.0 billion of short-term compute. It also says that "in the past, we have significantly underestimated our compute requirements, which left us capacity constrained and impacted both product development and deployment." If the sites it has contracted are delayed, it could have to buy more of the expensive short-term kind.

Anthropic says a significant portion of its commitments relates to Anthropic Direct, under which it leases chips and has them hosted in dedicated facilities run on its behalf. The first site is reportedly in Effingham County, Georgia, a 1-gigawatt project under a deal with Georgia Power. On Tuesday Georgia elected Keisha Lance Bottoms as governor. She had pledged a temporary pause on new data center approvals, and Democrats who backed a moratorium won enough seats to give the party a 3-2 majority on the Public Service Commission, which regulates Georgia Power, from January 1, 2027, the Augusta TV station WRDW reported.

## The Anthropic IPO Date Could Slip as Investors Push for a Lower Valuation

The roadshow, when a company and its banks market the shares to investors, had been expected to begin in the week of November 9, with pricing the following week. According to Friday's report, which cited four people familiar with investor discussions, some potential investors see the recently discussed valuation of $1.5 trillion as the high end of expectations and are pushing for a better price. Anthropic may need to offer a bigger discount, and if AI stocks stay under pressure it could delay the listing, the people said. Earlier this year investors had expected a listing in October at a valuation as high as $2 trillion, and Anthropic's last private funding round reportedly valued it at $965 billion. Anthropic declined to comment on the investor doubts.

Before Thursday's selloff, Fortune reported that only 14 of the 4,110 IPOs in data kept by IPO researcher Jay Ritter had priced at more than 40 times trailing revenue, and that New York University finance professor Aswath Damodaran valued Anthropic's equity at about $1.475 trillion. Anthropic's compute and infrastructure expenses reached $9.9 billion in the third quarter, when [its revenue was $17.0 billion](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/anthropic-q3-revenue-amended-ipo-filing), and the company expects those expenses to keep rising as more of its committed compute comes online.

## Anthropic Backed State AI Laws the White House Set Out to Challenge

Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai were seated directly behind Trump at his inauguration on January 20, 2025. The next day Trump appeared at the White House with OpenAI's Sam Altman, Oracle's Larry Ellison and SoftBank's Masayoshi Son to announce Stargate, an AI infrastructure venture that was to invest $100 billion immediately and up to $500 billion over four years. In December 2025, Trump signed an executive order on a national framework for AI policy that set up a Justice Department task force to challenge state AI laws.

Anthropic went the other way, endorsing California's Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act, known as SB 53, in September 2025 and backing New York's RAISE Act, which was signed into law in December. In February 2026 it gave [$20 million to Public First Action](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/ai-firms-fund-opposing-sides-of-us-regulation-fight), a group that campaigns for AI safety rules, and said the money could not be used to influence federal elections.

Later that month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth designated Anthropic a supply-chain risk after it refused to drop its limits on the use of its models for mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. Trump said at the same time that he had directed federal agencies to stop using Anthropic's technology. [A federal judge blocked the designation in March](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/judge-blocks-pentagon-anthropic-ban).

On August 27, Judge Rita Lin of the federal court in San Francisco largely granted summary judgment for Anthropic, ruling that the government had retaliated against the company for speech protected by the First Amendment, violated its right to due process and exceeded its authority under the Administrative Procedure Act. On September 25, a panel of the federal appeals court in Washington ruled 2-1 that a separate designation under the Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Security Act was proper. Anthropic has asked the full appeals court to rehear the case, and no decision has been reported. In its prospectus, Anthropic says it cannot predict the outcome or be sure that the lawsuits will not hurt its sales to government agencies and to companies that sell to the government.

## AI Super PACs Had Mixed Results as Democrats Won Congress

[Democrats won control of the House and the Senate](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/us-midterms-2026-democrats-win-house-senate) on Tuesday, with at least 54 Senate seats and the races in Mississippi and Alaska still undecided on Friday. In an NBC News exit poll reported by TIME, 56% of voters said AI and data centers were a crucial or major factor in their vote for Congress. Democrats have pledged to tighten oversight of AI, TechCrunch reported, and Senator Bernie Sanders posted "National data center moratorium now." The new Congress takes its seats in January, and Trump keeps his veto until his term ends in January 2029, so federal law may change slowly.

Leading the Future, the super PAC backed by the founders of Andreessen Horowitz and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman, spent more than $8 million against Alex Bores, the New York Assembly member who co-wrote the RAISE Act, before he lost his House primary in June. On Tuesday two super PACs linked to Leading the Future lost a $4.8 million bet on Republican Darline Graham in South Carolina's Senate race, which Democrat Annie Andrews won, according to The Next Web. Public First's results were mixed, with wins for candidates backed by its Democratic arm and defeats for the Republican candidates its Republican arm backed in Texas and Alabama.

Brad Carson, a co-founder of Public First, called the results "a crushing blow to the AI industry's anti-regulatory efforts." A month earlier, Altman had told Politico that "something's clearly not working" with the industry's political money. Lawmakers who want tighter oversight of AI may find Anthropic easier to work with than OpenAI, whose co-founder helped fund the campaign against Bores.

## Anthropic Faces the Same Local Opposition to Data Centers as Its Rivals

Voters sided against data center projects in nearly all of about 41 local ballot contests on Tuesday. Opponents usually point to power bills, water and land, and to the limited say residents have over where the sites go. Anthropic's support for AI safety laws may count for little on those questions, and it needs as much data center capacity as any rival. In August, Anthropic said it agreed with Governor Greg Abbott "that data centers should be developed responsibly and Texans shouldn't bear the costs of that growth." Abbott lost on Tuesday to Gina Hinojosa, who campaigned for a moratorium on new data center construction until lawmakers set requirements, according to Investing.com. She takes office in January.

> "You have to work with the government that the American people elect."
> — Dina Powell McCormick

Powell McCormick, Meta's president, said this at the Wall Street Journal's tech conference this week, where she also said building data centers in the US would get harder after the vote. Meta and other tech companies that grew close to the Trump administration are now working to rebuild ties with Democrats, TechCrunch reported. If rivals can change position that quickly, any advantage Anthropic has from its earlier stance may not last, and it will still be bidding against them for the same sites and power.

## Part of the Data Center Backlash Is Over Costs the Industry Can Fix

Some of the industry's trouble with voters is of its own making. Only [after the vote](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/data-centre-protests-europe-moratorium) did OpenAI renew its pledge to cover the full grid costs of its data centers and promise to stop using non-disclosure agreements with local officials. Powell McCormick said at the same conference that the industry had "not done as good a job as we needed to explain the benefits of these investments."

In PJM, which runs the grid across much of the eastern US, the December 2025 auction for power capacity in 2027-28 cleared at the maximum price allowed, $333.44 per megawatt-day, and PJM said data centers accounted for nearly all of the rise in forecast peak demand. Households and businesses pay capacity costs through their electricity bills.

The cost problem is fixable, and some states already make data centers carry more of their own grid costs. Ohio regulators approved a tariff in July 2025 under which AEP Ohio's data center customers pay for at least 85% of the power they subscribe to for up to 12 years, even if they use less. [California and Florida have passed laws](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/political-risk-of-ai-data-center-buildout) putting grid costs on operators, and in September the House voted 417-3 for a bill that would push other states the same way.

Anthropic [pledged on February 11](https://www.anthropic.com/news/covering-electricity-price-increases), nearly nine months before the election, to pay for all the grid upgrades needed to connect its data centers and, where new generation is not yet online, to estimate and cover the price increases its data centers cause for consumers. The pledge applies in full where Anthropic develops data centers with partners for its own use. Where it leases capacity in existing data centers, it says it is "exploring further ways" to address the effect on prices. According to Investing.com, Hinojosa also campaigned for developers to cover infrastructure costs, the kind of cost Anthropic has pledged to pay.

Pledges like these have so far won few supporters among voters, TIME reported. Whether investors will pay anything for Anthropic's earlier positioning is still open, and the roadshow, if it goes ahead, would be the first test. Anthropic says in its prospectus that its commitments to ratepayers have increased its operating costs, and that similar obligations may become standard or required across the industry, which could raise its costs further.

## FAQ

**Q: What are the odds of Anthropic's IPO?**
No one can give reliable odds. Anthropic has made its registration statement public and amended it, and it intends to list on Nasdaq as ANT, but the filing still has no price range or share count, and trading cannot start until the SEC declares the filing effective. According to people familiar with investor discussions, some potential investors doubt the roadshow can start in the week of November 9 as expected, and the company could delay the offering if AI stocks stay under pressure.

**Q: Why are data centers getting canceled?**
Many are blocked or delayed by local opposition. Data Center Watch, which tracks that opposition, counted at least 75 projects worth about $130 billion blocked or delayed in the first quarter of 2026 and at least 45 worth nearly $68 billion in the second. Opponents usually point to higher electricity bills, water use and lost land, and to having little say over projects near them. After this week's election, the governors-elect of Texas and Georgia have promised pauses on new projects, and analyst Dan Ives estimated that at least 10% of the 800 to 1,000 data centers planned in the US may be dropped.

**Q: Why did the Pentagon get rid of Anthropic?**
Anthropic would not remove two limits on how the military could use its models, covering mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. On February 27, 2026, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth designated it a supply-chain risk, and Trump said he had told federal agencies to stop using its technology. A federal judge in San Francisco later ruled largely in Anthropic's favor, finding the government had retaliated against it for protected speech. In September an appeals court panel in Washington upheld a separate designation by 2-1, and Anthropic has asked the full court to look at the case again. Its prospectus says it cannot predict how the lawsuits will end.