Stop Funding Billionaires, which Trending Topics reported organized this week’s protest at Anthropic’s New York office, is asking the money behind the listing to walk away. In a petition, the campaign calls on bank executives, public financial officers and asset managers “to boycott the Anthropic IPO, place a moratorium on investments in AI and data centers, and to pledge that none of our hard-earned money be used in a future AI bailout”.
By our count of the reports we read, it was the eighth protest action at an AI lab’s offices in 2026, and one of two with arrests: 13 people at OpenAI’s Washington lobbying office in August and five in New York, 18 in all, by our arithmetic. OpenAI’s offices were a target in seven of the eight.
Business Pill · IPO Float
A short explainer on IPO float, the share of a company sold in its listing. It teaches the general idea and does not discuss the protests.
The key insight: As we read the year, the target moved from the labs’ research to their money. Seven of the eight actions in our count went to OpenAI’s offices and asked mostly for a pause or protested a contract; the campaign against Anthropic’s listing addresses banks, public pension officers and asset managers instead.
The petition is addressed to “Bank executives underwriting or facilitating the Anthropic IPO, state/local financial officers who are stewards of public employees’ retirement savings, major asset managers who manage workers’ retirement assets and all institutional investors”.
It argues that “Index providers changed their rules to fast track SpaceX into retirement funds”, and says “You have a fiduciary responsibility to make the right choice”. The People’s Lobby’s October advisory describes the campaign as working people “demanding that pension funds, university endowments, and other institutional investors not invest in billionaire and trillionaire-owned corporations that undermine workers’ rights, public services, and democratic institutions”.
Protest actions at AI labs’ offices in 2026 in the reports we read, with crowd sizes as reported; red marks the two with arrests. The tally and the 18 total are ours.
Eight Actions in 2026
The year opened in London. On 28 February more than 300 people marched “from OpenAI’s London office through the King’s Cross area to the offices of Google and Meta”, PauseAI UK said; Transformer put the peak at about 300. On 3 March QuitGPT rallied outside OpenAI’s San Francisco headquarters over its Pentagon deal, reported by KALW and Platformer, which counted about three dozen people.
Stop the AI Race marched from Anthropic to OpenAI and xAI on 21 March, per ABC7 and Decrypt, and between OpenAI, Anthropic and Google DeepMind on 11 July, Decrypt reported. Both called for a pause in frontier AI development.
On 10 August student activists occupied the building housing OpenAI’s lobbying office in Washington; Futurism cited a police incident report saying 13 people were arrested for “unlawful entry”. Days later a “Dump Big Tech” protest reached OpenAI’s Bellevue office, GeekWire reported, and on 20 October about two dozen people rallied outside OpenAI in San Francisco as part of a walkout across 50 cities and campuses, per KQED.
From Pause to Capital
As we read the eight reports, the demands shifted during the year. The London march and the Stop the AI Race marches of March and July asked the companies for a pause; the March rally at OpenAI concerned its Pentagon deal; the August occupation targeted lobbying; the November action, as Democracy Now reported it, demanded a halt to the IPO plans.
As we read the tally, arrests are rare: two of eight actions, 13 in Washington and five in New York, 18 in all by our arithmetic. Most of the actions in our count were marches or rallies outside offices.
As we read the petition, the campaign’s demands run to the buyers of the stock: a boycott of the Anthropic IPO, a moratorium on AI and data center investments, and a pledge against a future AI bailout.
Stop Funding Billionaires, petition on Action Network
“You have a fiduciary responsibility to make the right choice.”
Three Implications
FOR THE OFFERING The petition names the banks underwriting or facilitating the IPO and the asset managers that manage workers’ retirement assets as its addressees.
FOR OPENAIOpenAI’s offices were a target in seven of the eight actions in our count, in London, San Francisco, Washington and Bellevue.
FOR THE MOVEMENT The groups in the reports we read range from PauseAI UK and Stop the AI Race to Sunrise Movement, QuitGPT and Irreplaceable, which KQED said organised a walkout across 50 US cities and campuses.
The framework records: “the capex race is no longer a corporate spending cycle. It is a sovereign-scale financing problem dressed in tech-company clothing”.
As we read it, a protest campaign that addresses underwriters and pension stewards rather than engineers is contesting that financing at its source. The framework predates the protests and does not discuss them.
What Is Not Established
Our tally counts actions at AI labs’ offices reported by the outlets and organisers we read; it is not a census, and other actions may have gone unreported or unread. Crowd sizes are as reported and differ by source. We read only the organisers’ advisory for rallies called for 14 October, so we did not count them.
The petition page is undated and does not give a signature count. We did not contact Anthropic, OpenAI or the groups named for this piece, and we do not name anyone arrested.
This Week In The AI Supercycle
The Great Convergence of Capital, Power, and Geopolitics
This week’s issue: for two years the AI build-out was priced as a supply story, and last week as a credit story. This week it was priced as a permission story, and the answer arrived as a cost, not a ban.
Stop Funding Billionaires is asking banks, public financial officers and asset managers to boycott Anthropic’s IPO. By our count it was the eighth protest action at an AI lab’s offices this year and one of two with arrests, 18 in all by our arithmetic; OpenAI’s offices were a target in seven of the eight.
A note on sourcing. Trending Topics reported on 10 November that Stop Funding Billionaires organized the New York protest; Democracy Now named activists with Climate Defenders, New York Communities for Change and Planet Over Profit. The campaign’s demands are from its petition on Action Network and the October media advisory posted by The People’s Lobby, both read in full. Each protest action comes from the outlet or organiser linked in the text, all read in full; where a report names only a weekday, the date is our reading of it against the publication date.
The tally of eight, the target counts and the 18 arrests are our count and arithmetic from those reports, not an official figure. We do not name anyone arrested. We did not contact Anthropic, OpenAI or the groups named for this piece.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
