Protesters hold a “Block the IPO” banner in New York City as they call on Anthropic to cancel its initial public offering. Photo via Instagram, as published by Trending Topics.
A leftist campaign that says billionaires capture the gains from companies like Anthropic is trying to block the initial public offering (IPO) that would let ordinary Americans buy shares in the company.
Five activists were arrested on Monday, Nov. 9, after blocking an employee security entrance at Anthropic’s Manhattan offices. The protesters demanded that the maker of the Claude chatbot cancel its IPO. The next day, Anthropic launched its roadshow for an offering of 825 million shares at an expected price of $70 to $78 each. The company has applied to list on Nasdaq under the ticker “ANT.”
The protesters came from Climate Defenders, New York Communities for Change and Planet Over Profit. Climate Defenders is a sponsor of Stop Funding Billionaires, a coalition of labor, student and community organizations that held #BlockTheIPO rallies outside Anthropic’s New York and San Francisco offices on Oct. 14.
In a press release, the coalition called on pension funds, university endowments and other institutional investors to stay out of billionaire-owned corporations. Its petition sponsors include the Action Center on Race and the Economy, Americans for Financial Reform, the American Association of University Professors and #TeslaTakedown.
The petition calls on banks, pension funds and asset managers to “boycott the Anthropic IPO,” pause all investment in AI and data centers, and pledge never to use taxpayer or retirement money to bail out AI companies. It names JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Morgan Stanley CEO Ted Pick, Goldman Sachs CEO David M. Solomon, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and Vanguard CEO Salim Ramji.
It also names New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli, New York City Comptroller Mark Levine and California State Treasurer Fiona Ma. Elizabeth Parisian of the American Association of University Professors said pension managers have a duty to shield the public from the “disastrous and fiscally irresponsible risks that Anthropic’s IPO threatens,” according to The Armchair Trader.
As a private company, Anthropic has been owned by a limited group that includes its founders and employees, venture capital funds, and corporate investors such as Google and Amazon. Once its shares begin trading on Nasdaq, individual investors can buy them through brokerage accounts, and retirement savers can gain exposure through funds that hold the stock.
The campaign’s petition claims that IPOs let “pre-IPO investors and insiders” cash out and get rich. About 801 million of the 825 million shares in Anthropic’s offering are new shares that the company is selling to raise money for itself, according to its roadshow announcement. Existing stockholders are selling the remaining 24 million shares and will keep the proceeds from those sales. Anthropic plans to use its proceeds to fund continued growth, including computing capacity, infrastructure and hiring, according to coverage of its S-1 filing.
In Gallup’s April survey, 58 percent of U.S. adults said they owned stock, either directly or through mutual funds and retirement accounts. Families can also invest in stock funds through college savings plans. The Trump Accounts program, which launched July 4, provides a $1,000 federal contribution for eligible children born from 2025 through 2028, with the money invested in stock index funds.
The campaign also complains that changes to index rules could put Anthropic shares into retirement portfolios within weeks of the listing. Under rules Nasdaq adopted in May, a newly listed company large enough to rank among the 40 biggest in the Nasdaq-100 can join that index after 15 trading days. The index tracked by Vanguard’s Total Stock Market fund can add a qualifying IPO after five trading days. If Anthropic is added to either index, workers whose retirement accounts hold funds that track it could gain an indirect stake in the company within weeks.
A public listing would also give public pension funds the opportunity to buy Anthropic shares. Protecting workers’ retirement is one of the left’s stated priorities, and allowing the IPO would give pension managers the chance to decide whether Anthropic belongs in their portfolios. Public pension plans rely on investment returns to pay benefits promised to teachers, firefighters and other public employees.
U.S. state and local pension plans are 85 percent funded and remain $1.13 trillion short. Employer contributions, which taxpayers fund, have reached 31.83 percent of payroll. The campaign is asking managers of these underfunded plans to pass up one of the largest stock offerings in history.
Several public pension plans already have indirect stakes in Anthropic. Plans in Los Angeles, Orange County, Massachusetts and South Carolina invest in funds managed by Spark Capital, Anthropic’s first venture capital backer. Spark invested about $777 million in the company, and The Information estimated, based on an analysis of filings, that the stake could be worth $9 billion or more at the IPO price. A public listing would give Spark Capital a way to sell shares and realize gains for the pension plans and other investors in its funds.
New York City’s pension funds have about $7 million invested in Anthropic through private equity, according to the comptroller’s office. Levine, a Democrat who oversees the city’s pension funds with more than $325 billion in assets, urged Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to pause the IPO over safety and governance concerns in an Oct. 14 letter. “Instead of proceeding headlong with its IPO, the company should focus its energies on addressing these unprecedented risks,” the letter states. Anthropic opened talks with Levine after receiving the letter.
Anthropic’s expansion has also increased its headcount and spending. The company had about 5,300 employees as of Sept. 30, 2026, up from about 940 at the end of 2024, according to reporting on its SEC filing. Anthropic reported more than $1.7 billion in third-quarter personnel expenses, including salaries, bonuses, benefits and employer payroll taxes.
Its amended filing showed a $417 million provision for income taxes for the first nine months of 2026. The company spent $9.86 billion on computing and infrastructure in the third quarter and reported about $895.4 billion in future purchase and lease commitments.
Blocking the IPO would keep Anthropic shares off the public market. Its existing private investors, including public pension funds with indirect stakes, would retain their holdings. Individual investors would lose the opportunity to buy shares on Nasdaq.
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