In a few short years, US artificial intelligence startups have grown into some of the most powerful and influential businesses in the world, reaching near-trillion-dollar valuations. As two of them, Anthropic and OpenAI, prepare for initial public offerings, there’s a notable absence: The companies haven’t disclosed their greenhouse gas emissions, made net-zero pledges or published sustainability reports. (Anthropic did join a carbon-removal coalition called Frontier.)
Not too long ago, investors would have cried foul. Even fossil-fuel stalwarts like ExxonMobil Holdings Corp. have been voluntarily producing sustainability reports for years. The Big Tech companies scaling up AI infrastructure — Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Meta Platforms Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. — have net-zero goals and report their emissions, which are now spiking due to the data-center boom.
But in an era of climate backlash, many investors have fallen quiet on the issue and US regulators have retreated. So the public is left guessing about how much climate pollution is tied to the large language models of OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceX’s SpaceXAI, and whether the companies plan to curb it. While they aren’t yet public companies, their scale dwarfs what people associate with startups.
