Abstract:
On October 1, according to "Business Insider", Michael Burry, the prototype character of the movie "The Big Short," said,
If the stock market crash prevents two leading AI companies from going public, this will be a good thing for mankind.
Bury
"For the good of humanity, the stock market should plummet, preventing OpenAI and Anthropic from IPOing," Burry wrote on X on Tuesday.
He further explained his point of view in a follow-up reply. Burry said the two companies would "suck away and destroy trillions of dollars of capital," and that was "not the worst damage they would do."
One user joked: "Let the stock market plummet so that Skynet can't IPO." Skynet refers to the destructive AI system in the "Terminator" series of movies. Burry replied: "That's exactly what it means."
Whatever the greater harm Burry has in mind, the financial stakes surrounding the two companies are already enormous. Both companies require significant funding to develop advanced models and build the computing infrastructure to support them. Going public allows them to access a wider range of investors, thereby obtaining more adequate sources of funding.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said earlier this month that it would be "unwise" to go public in 2026 due to concerns about AI safety. Meanwhile, Anthropic is likely to launch an IPO after the November midterm elections, according to a prospectus seen by Reuters.
Burry posted on Substack this week that he is "more convinced than ever" that his bet on the AI industry will come true within the next year, which is earlier than his previous prediction of 2028.
He said this belief prompted him to re-increase short positions on a series of targets, including Nvidia, Palantir, Micron, Oracle and the Nasdaq 100 Index.
Burry has long argued that
debt-driven spending on chips and data centers is unsustainable and vulnerable to rising interest rates
. If spending slows, "it will all fall apart," he wrote. However, AI stocks have been largely unaffected by these concerns this year as they have hit all-time highs.As of press time, OpenAI and Anthropic have not commented on this.
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