‘Big Short’ Michael Burry Questions SpaceX and Anthropic's Trillion-Dollar Valuation
Alina Collins
What does SpaceX's S-1 actually show?
SpaceX filed its IPO prospectus on May 20, disclosing $18.7 billion in revenue and a $4.9 billion net loss last year.
The company is widely reported to be targeting a roughly $2 trillion post-IPO valuation — but Burry says the S-1 financials cannot justify even $1 trillion.
This means → a company losing $4.9 billion a year needs extraordinarily aggressive growth assumptions to reach $2 trillion. That gap is the core of Burry's skepticism.
Why is Burry skeptical of Anthropic too?
Anthropic — the company behind Claude — announced a funding round last Thursday at a $965 billion valuation, widely seen as a stepping stone to an even higher IPO price.
Burry argues the probability that Anthropic is worth close to $1 trillion long-term is low.
His logic: building frontier AI models is a business that is "too expensive, too reliant on brute force" — the business model itself is the problem.
What does "false demand signal" mean?
Burry stated bluntly: "What is happening is a false demand signal."
In plain terms = companies are panic-buying compute and racing to build data centers. It looks like surging demand, but much of the ordering may be fear-driven hoarding, not real long-term usage.
He expects compute to commoditize the way internet bandwidth did — once supply catches up, prices and margins fall sharply.
What does this mean for markets?
Burry's view extends his recent warnings about "tokenmaxxing" — the scramble for AI compute is driving build-outs and order expansion, but in a few years supply may far exceed actual demand.
This means → if Burry's logic holds, today's richly valued tech companies — especially in AI and space — face not just short-term volatility but a potential repricing of the valuation anchor itself.
In plain terms = Burry's core position is simple — "any upside will come from hype and technicals." The fundamentals, he argues, cannot hold this price.
Content is for reference only, not financial advice.