Anthropic books staggering $81B loss, warns of data center backlash as Amodei siblings draw modest salaries

Artificial intelligence giant Anthropic booked a staggering $80.7 billion net loss in the first half of 2026 — mostly from accounting charges — as it warned that growing opposition to data centers could threaten its business.The San Francisco-based company, which is preparing for a blockbuster IPO that could value it at as much as $2 trillion, voiced caution about the growing movement of anti-data center and anti-AI voters.Resistance to data centers has “become more organized and coordinated across jurisdictions,” Anthropic said in the filing viewed by the Wall Street Journal.The company, led by CEO Dario Amodei, said its high public profile “may draw particular attention to projects associated with us.”Anthropic said most of its data center capacity is located in the US, although it has signed letters of intent to develop additional facilities overseas.Domestically, recent months have seen public opinion souring on AI and protests opposing data center construction.Lior Prosor, a partner at Deep33 Ventures, downplayed the likelihood that the backlash would derail Anthropic’s IPO or impede its near-term growth.“Risk the IPO? I don’t think so,” Prosor told The Post, explaining that data centers only now entering the permitting process wouldn’t be operational before the second half of 2028.He nevertheless acknowledged that regulatory obstacles could become a more serious problem over the long term.Anthropic said it has sought more computing capacity than its major cloud partners were willing to provide.The company faces more than $600 billion in future cloud computing and chip-leasing costs, with deals under negotiation that could add another $150 billion, the Journal reported.Prosor said Anthropic is “certainly taking meaningful risks” with its enormous computing commitments, even as surging demand for artificial intelligence has rewarded companies that secured capacity early.He argued that Anthropic should “raise as much capital as possib...