Michael Burry says markets should crash hard enough to stop the OpenAI and Anthropic initial public offerings (IPOs). The Big Short investor also signaled agreement with a follower who joked that tanking the market would keep Skynet from going public.
Anthropic’s prospectus, seen by Reuters, shows the company could seek a valuation above $2 trillion. OpenAI, meanwhile, has pushed its own listing to 2027.
Michael Burry Escalates His Attack on the OpenAI and Anthropic IPOs
Burry framed a market crash as a public good in a post on X.
“For the benefit of humanity, the markets should tank hard and prevent the OpenAI and Anthropic IPOs.”
Michael Burry
In the same thread, one user argued that both labs lose money and could only survive as government-owned strategic assets. Burry replied that the companies will absorb and then destroy trillions of dollars in capital, calling that the least of the damage.
Then another user suggested tanking the market so Skynet cannot IPO. Burry said his view ran along those lines.
The reference is to the machine intelligence from the Terminator franchise that launches a nuclear war on humanity, a pop culture stand-in for AI running out of control.
When a user asked Grok, xAI’s chatbot, to explain his stance, it described a dot-com-style bubble built on unprofitable large language models that fall short of artificial general intelligence (AGI). Burry publically agreed with, and cheered the answer on.
Why the Timing Matters
Anthropic’s prospectus shows a $42 billion net loss in 2025 and $518 billion in planned cloud and infrastructure obligations, according to CNBC. However, BeInCrypto’s breakdown of Anthropic’s IPO notes the operating loss was closer to $8.06 billion.
OpenAI filed confidentially in June. Still, CEO Sam Altman called this year a poor time to list, and OpenAI now aims for 2027.
Burry’s post follows a September 14 message in which he called the labs’ slowdown pleas self-serving. On Monday, he also swapped shorts for puts on several AI-linked stocks.
Reuters previously reported that Anthropic’s debut is likely to slip past the November US midterm elections. Until then, markets have the prospectus figures to weigh against Burry’s view.