Anthropic tries to shore up investor confidence ahead of its blockbuster IPO in the fall and has fielded tough investor questions regarding Chinese rivals, Trump-era tensions and the AI infrastructure boom, according to WSJ

Pre-IPO roadshow pushback of this kind is standard late-stage sequence: issuers and bookrunners test the narrative against institutional accounts well before filing or pricing, and the questions surfacing now tend to define the risk factors section and the anchor book. The specific line of questioning is notable for its breadth, spanning competitive threat from lower-cost Chinese model developers, regulatory and trade exposure to US-China tension, and scepticism about whether AI infrastructure spending sustains the revenue assumptions behind frontier-lab valuations. Comparable high-profile tech listings have historically seen this phase resolve one of two ways: either the issuer concedes on pricing or structure to secure cornerstone demand, or it leans on scarcity value and a narrow float to carry the deal through. The questions themselves, rather than the answers, are the tell; what buysiders press on in September is what drives first-day and aftermarket performance. Watch for signals on valuation expectations relative to the last private round, the size and composition of the syndicate, and any disclosure on compute commitments, which have been the pressure point in recent AI-linked offerings. As a report of investor sentiment rather than a filed event, the signal is directional on demand conditions for the AI complex more broadly.