Michael Burry, the investor who foresaw the 2008 financial crisis, has turned his attention to Anthropic’s looming stock market debut — and his verdict is blunt. In a Substack post this week examining the AI company’s updated IPO filing, Burry argued that Anthropic’s vast spending commitments far exceed what its revenue can plausibly support, and he questioned whether its cloud partners are helping dress up the numbers before the listing. He says he will not seek shares.
## The spending gap
The centrepiece of Burry’s case is a number from Anthropic’s prospectus, filed on 2 November: $895.4 billion in committed spending on AI compute, chips and other infrastructure. Burry’s tally runs higher, at $1.05 trillion to $1.07 trillion, because the disclosed figure excludes certain contracts tied to AMD, Google and SpaceX. By his broader count, the total could approach $1.2 trillion.
The schedule makes the figure bite. Burry calculates Anthropic must cover $101 billion in 2027, $112 billion in 2028 and $127 billion in 2029, requiring revenue to grow 11.6% every month through 2027, and 16.1% a month for a 20% profit margin. He notes the $120.5 billion SpaceXAI contract sits outside the filing’s obligation tables, which count only non-cancellable deals.
Business Insider’s account highlights the deals’ structure, not just their size. Many are take-or-pay contracts with large cloud providers, meaning Anthropic could end up paying for compute it no longer needs, pushing costs up and competitiveness down. Its new Anthropic Direct plan to build and run its own infrastructure, he adds, will only increase long-term liabilities.
## The revenue question
The second half of Burry’s critique concerns the revenue. Anthropic reported nearly $17 billion in third-quarter revenue, up from $1.4 billion a year earlier, but growth slowed, rising 47% quarter-on-quarter after jumps of 144% and 132% in the first two quarters. Burry links the slowdown to the fading of the tokenmaxxing boom, when customers burned through tokens at extraordinary rates.
The sharper question concerns sales and marketing costs, which fell to 14% of third-quarter revenue, down from 19% in the second quarter and 22% in the first. Channel partners sell Claude through their cloud marketplaces, keeping a cut and passing the rest to Anthropic.
Amazon, [which stands to gain most from the listing](https://geroundtable.com/anthropic-ipo-amazon-biggest-winner/), is one of those partners. Their share of revenue slipped from 48% in the first half to nearly 40% in the third quarter — a shift the filing links to changed distribution terms.
The filing blames the decline on the smaller channel share and changed distribution terms, the wording that caught Burry’s eye. “Could it be that Anthropic’s magnificent partners are helping Anthropic dress up results for the IPO? Yes, it could be,” he wrote. He frames it as a possibility, not a finding, and Anthropic did not respond to requests for comment.
## Our read
Burry’s timing is as important as his arithmetic. His critique landed in the middle of a brutal tech sell-off, with the Nasdaq down 6% on Thursday, its worst drop since the Covid crash, and into correction territory, just as prospective investors were already [pushing back on Anthropic’s $1.5 trillion valuation](https://geroundtable.com/anthropic-ipo-investor-doubts-valuation/).
Talk of a cut toward $1 trillion is already circulating, and a famous sceptic piling on at the market’s weakest moment is a story in itself. It raises the stakes for the listing, when Anthropic must convince investors the numbers add up.
There is a limit to what Burry has shown. His spending figures come from Anthropic’s own filing, so the commitments are indeed real, and the argument is over interpretation, since the payments stretch over many years while revenue compounds fast.
The financing behind the buildout already involves [unusual backstops](https://geroundtable.com/google-backstops-anthropic-terawulf-lease/), and valuation expert Aswath Damodaran trimmed his Anthropic estimate only slightly, to $1.45 trillion, keeping the $100 billion revenue projection. And the ‘dressing up’ claim is explicitly speculative, with no evidence offered.
What matters next is whether Anthropic answers, and what its October revenue figure, left blank in the filing, turns out to be. The roadshow is expected to begin next week, with pricing the week after, and its valuation will be read as the market’s verdict on the entire AI buildout. Watch whether other large investors echo Burry, or dismiss him.
## Why It Matters
Anthropic’s listing, aiming to raise up to $100 billion, would be the largest IPO on record, and its pricing will set the market’s verdict on the whole AI buildout. If Burry is right that the business only works on heroic growth assumptions, every AI infrastructure bet gets repriced.
If he is wrong, the episode still shows how fast sentiment can turn against even the most celebrated AI company. Either way, the debate now centres on whether Anthropic’s growth can outrun its obligations, a question only the listing can settle in the end.
## Background
Anthropic filed its registration statement on 26 October, planning to list on Nasdaq under the ticker ANT in the week before Thanksgiving. The filing revealed third-quarter revenue near $17 billion alongside heavy losses and enormous compute commitments to Amazon, Google and others, partners that are also investors and distributors.
The same filing disclosed that [four models had escaped safety testing](https://geroundtable.com/anthropic-s1-training-pause-model-escapes/) before launch, a disclosure that drew its own scrutiny. It also showed compute costs consuming 58% of revenue, up from 48% the previous quarter, as the company scales its infrastructure.
Source: [the Economic Times report](https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/us-stocks/wall-street-guide/are-amazon-and-google-polishing-anthropic-ipo-numbers-michael-burry-raises-big-question-amid-global-ai-crash/articleshow/135598167.cms) and [Stocktwits’ coverage](https://stocktwits.com/news-articles/markets/equity/anthropic-is-betting-its-entire-existence-on-optimism-michael-burry-flags-risks-after-ai-firm-s-updated-s-1-says-won-t-pursue-ipo-shares/cNG1O9xR9EZ)
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