Michael Burry says a market crash that stops two of the biggest AI companies from going public would be good for humankind.
“For the benefit of humanity, the markets should tank hard and prevent the OpenAI and Anthropic IPOs,” the “Big Short” investor wrote Tuesday on X.
In follow-up replies, Burry offered more detail on his post. He said the companies would “suck up” and then destroy “TRILLIONS of dollars of capital,” adding that this would be “the least of the damage they do.”
Burry also replied “Along those lines” to a user who quipped: “tank the market so Skynet can’t IPO” — a reference to the destructive artificial-intelligence system in the “Terminator” movies.
Whatever wider damage Burry had in mind, the financial stakes around the two companies are already enormous.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said earlier this month that going public in 2026 would be “ill-advised” amid AI-safety concerns. Anthropic, meanwhile, is likely to IPO after November’s midterm elections, according to a prospectus seen by Reuters.
OpenAI and Anthropic didn’t respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
Both require substantial capital to develop advanced models and build the computing infrastructure that supports them. Going public could give them access to deeper pools of capital by opening them up to a wider range of investors.
Burry said in a Substack post this week that he was “more confident than ever” that his bearish AI thesis would play out over the next year, bringing forward his previous base case of 2028.
The investor said his conviction led him to refresh his bets against a slew of targets, including Nvidia, Palantir, Micron, Oracle, and the Nasdaq 100.
Burry has argued that debt-fueled spending on chips and data centers is unsustainable and vulnerable to higher interest rates. If spending slows, he wrote, “it all comes apart.”
However, AI stocks have largely shrugged off concerns in their march to record highs this year.
