Investor Michael Burry, whose prescient bet against the U.S. housing bubble earned him fame during the 2008 financial crisis, has emerged as one of the most prominent skeptics of the latest wave of technology exuberance, casting doubt on whether two of the world’s most celebrated private companies, SpaceX and Anthropic, deserve valuations approaching or exceeding $1 trillion.
In comments posted on his Substack discussion forums over the weekend, Burry questioned the fundamentals underpinning both companies, arguing that investors are increasingly being driven by hype, momentum, and artificial intelligence enthusiasm rather than traditional valuation metrics.
His remarks come at a pivotal moment for global markets, with AI-related stocks, infrastructure providers, and private technology companies commanding some of the richest valuations seen since the dot-com era. The debate is particularly relevant as both SpaceX and Anthropic are widely expected to pursue public listings in the coming months, potentially creating some of the largest technology IPOs in history.
Register for Tekedia Mini-MBA edition 20 (June 8 – Sept 5, 2026).
Register for Tekedia AI in Business Masterclass.
Join Tekedia Capital Syndicate and co-invest in great global startups.
Register for Tekedia AI Lab.
For SpaceX, Burry’s skepticism centers on the growing gap between financial performance and investor expectations.
The Elon Musk-led company recently disclosed in its IPO filing that it generated $18.7 billion in revenue last year while posting a net loss of $4.9 billion. Despite those losses, the company is reportedly targeting a valuation of roughly $2 trillion, a figure that would instantly place it among the most valuable corporations in the world.
Burry was unconvinced.
“Any move up will be on hype and technicals,” he wrote. “Nothing in that S-1 suggests it is worth $1 trillion let alone $2 trillion.”
His comments strike at the heart of a growing debate among institutional investors about how to value companies operating in industries with enormous long-term potential but relatively limited current profitability.
SpaceX occupies a unique position in global markets. It dominates commercial rocket launches through its Falcon program, controls the rapidly expanding Starlink satellite network, and is increasingly viewed as a strategic infrastructure provider for governments and enterprises. Many investors argue that its valuation reflects not only current earnings but also future monopolistic advantages in space transportation, satellite communications, and defense technologies.
Yet Burry’s concerns highlight a familiar warning from previous market cycles: transformative businesses do not automatically justify unlimited valuations.
His criticism also arrives as some market participants expect SpaceX shares to receive unusually rapid inclusion into major indexes following its eventual public debut. Such inclusion would trigger billions of dollars in automatic purchases by passive funds and ETFs, creating substantial demand regardless of underlying fundamentals.
Some analysts have argued that this dynamic could fuel further gains after listing. Burry’s assessment suggests he views those potential gains as technically driven rather than supported by intrinsic value.
Anthropic Too
His concerns extend beyond SpaceX and into the heart of the artificial intelligence boom. Burry was equally dismissive of Anthropic’s recently announced $965 billion valuation, which places the Claude developer among the most highly valued private technology companies ever created.
“There is no guarantee, and not even a strong likelihood, that Anthropic is long-term worth anywhere near $1 trillion,” Burry wrote.
The warning comes as investors pour unprecedented sums into frontier AI companies. Anthropic recently secured a massive funding round and has become one of the leading competitors to OpenAI, benefiting from surging enterprise adoption of generative AI systems and growing demand for advanced models.
However, Burry believes the economics of the AI industry may ultimately prove less attractive than many investors currently assume.
He argued that developing cutting-edge AI models remains extraordinarily expensive and dependent on massive computing resources, making the business vulnerable to future commoditization.
“Far too expensive, too much brute force,” he wrote, describing the current AI model-development race.
His argument reflects a concern raised by a minority of investors and industry observers: while today’s AI leaders enjoy strong demand, the underlying computing power that fuels AI could eventually become a commodity rather than a source of durable competitive advantage.
Burry suggested the current scramble for AI infrastructure may be sending misleading signals to investors.
“What is happening now is a false demand signal,” he wrote.
That statement directly challenges one of the dominant investment narratives of the past two years. Technology companies have committed hundreds of billions of dollars toward AI infrastructure, data centers, advanced chips, and cloud capacity. Nvidia, AMD, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and numerous private-equity firms have all expanded spending to secure computing resources.
Burry’s concern is that companies may be overbuilding capacity based on temporary demand conditions rather than sustainable long-term requirements. He warned that the current rush for computing power is driving infrastructure construction and hardware orders that could eventually exceed what the industry actually needs.
Such concerns echo previous technology cycles where investors extrapolated rapid growth indefinitely, only to encounter periods of oversupply and declining returns. The telecom boom of the late 1990s and portions of the cloud-computing buildout during the 2010s offer historical examples where infrastructure investment initially outpaced eventual demand.
The implications of Burry’s critique extend well beyond SpaceX and Anthropic.
His comments arrive as markets are increasingly pricing AI as a transformative force capable of reshaping entire industries. Semiconductor stocks, cloud providers, data-center operators, and software companies have all benefited from investor expectations that AI spending will continue rising for years.
Indeed, many Wall Street firms remain overwhelmingly bullish. Goldman Sachs recently raised its S&P 500 target, arguing that AI infrastructure companies could drive roughly half of the index’s earnings growth. Major private-credit firms are assembling tens of billions of dollars in financing for AI-related projects, while companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI continue attracting capital at unprecedented valuations.
Burry’s stance, therefore, represents one of the clearest counterarguments to the prevailing market consensus.
While he is not predicting the collapse of AI itself, his comments suggest investors may be confusing technological importance with investment value. History has repeatedly shown that groundbreaking technologies can transform economies while still producing disappointing returns for investors who buy at excessive valuations.