Steve Eisman Says AI Boom Has an Achilles' Heel but Too Early to Short

Industry
โดย Benzinga·US·Read original
Summary · why it matters

Steve Eisman, the investor known for his 'Big Short' bet against subprime mortgages, says the AI boom has an 'Achilles' heel' in its enormous dependence on OpenAI and Anthropic, but he is not ready to short the sector yet because investors lack evidence that a breakdown has begun. Speaking on his Weekly Wrap podcast, Eisman recalled that before shorting subprime, his team bought access to Moody's securitization database and watched delinquency data deteriorate month after month, confirming his thesis, but he said there is no such data set with respect to AI because both labs are private. He sees a real bear case in that there don't seem to be any moats around large language models, as users switch between models constantly and Chinese open-weight rivals are far cheaper, which could eventually trigger a price war. Research estimates cited by Eisman suggest OpenAI and Anthropic account for roughly 70% of AI revenue across Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet, and 25% to 35% of their cloud revenue, while roughly half of the approximately $600 billion backlog at Oracle comes from OpenAI. Eisman called that dependency huge and quite scary, warning that if a price war undermines the labs' economics, hyperscalers may pull back on capex and the entire AI chain goes into reverse. He said when OpenAI and Anthropic go public, we will have some real data, and prediction-market traders expect Anthropic to reach public markets first, with Polymarket giving Anthropic a 90% chance of beating OpenAI to an IPO and a 70% chance of completing its IPO before Nov. 1. So far, Eisman sees little evidence that the breaking point has arrived, as hyperscalers are still spending heavily and Nvidia is working with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR to mobilize more than $500 billion for AI infrastructure, while Anthropic is projecting $190 billion to $200 billion of 2028 revenue, up from a $47 billion annualized run rate in May.

Impact on stocks 11

Artificial Intelligence▼ · 5 stocks
Amazon.com Inc
AMZN
▼ NegativeDemandrelevance

OpenAI and Anthropic account for ~70% of AI revenue and 25-35% of cloud revenue; a price war undermining them could reduce demand for Amazon's AI services.

Alphabet Inc Class C
GOOG
▼ NegativeDemandrelevance

Same dependency on OpenAI and Anthropic for AI and cloud revenue; potential pullback in capex could hurt Alphabet's AI-related demand.

Microsoft Corporation
MSFT
▼ NegativeDemandrelevance

Microsoft's AI revenue heavily depends on OpenAI and Anthropic; a price war could reduce demand for its AI offerings.

NVIDIA Corporation
NVDA
▼ NegativeDemandrelevance

Hyperscalers may pull back on capex if AI labs' economics weaken, reducing demand for Nvidia's chips.

Aging Population▲ · 2 stocks
Financials▲ · 2 stocks
Cloud & Digital Infrastructure▼ · 1 stocks
Oracle Corporation
ORCL
▼ NegativeDemandrelevance

Roughly half of Oracle's $600B backlog comes from OpenAI; a price war could threaten that demand.

Digital Finance & Tokenization▲ · 1 stocks

Theme Impact 3

Off-coverage companies 2

AnthropicPrivate± Mixed
relevance

OpenAIPrivate± Mixed
relevance

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