Business Insider The veteran of the 2008 market crash is concerned that the success so many companies is reliant on the fortunes of just two AI labs.
- Steve Eisman is worried that success of the AI trade relies on just two companies: OpenAIandAnthropic. - The famed investor warns of risks to the broader AI ecosystem if they were to run into trouble.
- A price war with cheaper Chinese models would be a problem for OpenAI and Anthropic, he says.
The market is eagerly awaiting the day when OpenAI and Anthropic go public, but to Steve Eisman, the two AI giants are the soft underbelly of the AI trade.
Anthropic is barreling toward an IPO that could surpass this summer's historic SpaceX offering by valuation and by funds raised. Reports of a $2 trillion valuation would vault the Claude maker into the ranks of the world's most valuable companies.
But Steve Eisman, the trader whose contrarian bets against the housing market were chronicled in "The Big Short," is worried that too much of the AI trade is reliant on the success of just two companies.
"The 'Achilles' heel' of this whole story, if there's going to be an Achilles' heel, is if something bad happens to Anthropic and OpenAI," Eisman told CNBC, warning of a potential price war if cheaper models from China start to take market share. "And then we have a problem."
After years of powering stocks to new highs, the AI trade has proven to be a market-driving force yet again in 2026, concerns about the sustainability of the investment boom continue to grow.
"The issue is, to me, that something like 70% of all AI revenue from Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Oracle is from Anthropic and OpenAI. Period. Just those two…The futures of these massive companies, in a sense, are a bet that OpenAI Anthropic are going to succeed."
Eisman isn't the first to raise concerns about the finances of the two AI giants. Researcher and independent journalist Ed Zitron warned earlier this summer that OpenAI could end up being the Lehman Brothers of the AI trade, a systemic risk that takes down other companies if it were to stumble.
Meanwhile, the rise of the open-weight Chinese models, such as Kimi K3, caused panic on Wall Street last month as chip stocks fell on fears greater competition in the AI market. But as with DeepSeek's roll out in January 2025, the losses have mostly been recovered and the jitters have subsisded. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index is up 75% year to date.
Despite his concerns, Eisman clarified that he's not willing to make a call on a price war between OpenAI and Anthropic and their Chinese rivals yet, at least not until investors have more information about both companies' finances.
"It'll be nice when Anthropic goes public, so we can see real numbers and then see every quarter how they're doing," he stated. "Until then, it's just anecdotal."
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Key Terms Explained #
Anthropic An AI safety company founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers, including Dario and Daniela Amodei.
Claude Anthropic's family of AI assistants, including Claude Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus.
OpenAI The AI company behind ChatGPT, GPT-4, DALL-E, and Whisper.
Weight A numerical value in a neural network that determines the strength of the connection between neurons.