Big Short investor Eisman questions Anthropic's prospectus for deliberately omitting Q3 data

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On Wednesday, big short seller Steve Eisman took direct aim at leading U.S. AI lab Anthropic, just as the latter is at a critical moment ahead of its upcoming IPO.

Eisman is one of the real-life figures behind the film The Big Short. At the time, as a senior portfolio manager at Neuberger Berman, he made his name by shorting subprime mortgages before the global financial crisis broke out.

On a podcast on Wednesday, Eisman accused Anthropic of deliberately failing to disclose third-quarter financial data in its IPO prospectus. He argued that more recent data could expose a sharp slowdown in growth at the AI giant.

Eisman questioned why the company disclosed only financial data through June in the prospectus it filed on October 26. There are signs that Anthropic's business growth momentum has weakened since then.

When asked whether the omission was intentional, Eisman replied: "Absolutely deliberate."

Eisman cited two sets of data indicating that Anthropic's stunning growth in the first half of the year may be difficult to sustain.

According to recent media reports, Anthropic's third-quarter revenue was $16.8 billion, up 45%, a sharp slowdown from the 144% growth rate in the second quarter.

At the same time, Eisman said, for every $1 Anthropic spent on compute and infrastructure costs in the third quarter, it generated only $1.70 in revenue, down from $2.08 in the second quarter, a decline of 18%.

Eisman blamed the slowdown on the end of the "tokenmaxing" era, a period in which companies encouraged software engineers to use AI heavily, often regardless of cost.

Eisman said Anthropic's prospectus is "very, very stale," arguing that it reflects the company's situation at the peak of the AI spending frenzy.

Given Anthropic's enormous future infrastructure obligations, the shift in its input-output equation could be dangerous. Eisman estimates that the company's potential compute spending commitments amount to as much as $800 billion to $900 billion.

Eisman questioned whether Anthropic has a durable competitive advantage, warning that a company forced to compete mainly on price wars will struggle to support such massive payment commitments.

When asked whether he would invest in Anthropic, his answer was unequivocal: "No."

On the prediction platform Polymarket, traders see about a 56% probability that Anthropic's IPO valuation will fall between $1.5 trillion and $1.75 trillion, while another 38% expect a valuation between $1.75 trillion and $2 trillion.

According to media reports, Anthropic has disclosed some third-quarter performance metrics to potential investors, including adjusted profitability.

Under SEC rules on the timeliness of financial statements, Anthropic's June data will become stale after November 12. If the IPO process runs later than that date, third-quarter financial statements would typically need to be filed.

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