Presumably these companies on the verge of an IPO don’t want the public to hate them or their product. It wasn’t exactly a calculated maneuver - they made a decision to leverage fear-based marketing and it backfired.

It wasn't any sort of maneuver! It's what they genuinely believe! Both OpenAI and Anthropic have been telling people about the existential risk of powerful AI since the very day they were founded; OpenAI has been at it since 2015, 8 years before they had any meaningful product to market.

Sam Altman still says, after being the victim of anti-AI violence, that "the fear and anxiety about AI is justified" and "it will not all go well".

People simply refuse to believe that AI companies are serious about this, and get twisted into knots trying to understand why AI companies would choose this messaging under the premise that they can't be serious.