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Steve Eisman is warning that the artificial intelligence boom has become increasingly dependent on the fortunes of just two companies: OpenAI and Anthropic.<\/p>\n
The investor, best known for his bet against the housing market ahead of the global financial crisis, said the two AI startups account for roughly 70% of AI-related revenue at Microsoft<\/a>, Amazon<\/a>, Alphabet<\/a>‘s Google and Oracle<\/a> \u2014 and as much as 25% to 35% of their cloud revenue.<\/p>\n “The futures of these massive companies, in a sense, are a bet that OpenAI, Anthropic are going to succeed,” Eisman said late Tuesday on CNBC’s “Fast Money<\/a>.” <\/p>\n “The Real Eisman Playbook” podcast host and former Neuberger Berman senior portfolio manager\u00a0believes that the biggest revenue threat could come from China, as Chinese open-source AI models are significantly cheaper and appear to be gaining market share.<\/p>\n “The Achilles heel of this whole story … is if something bad happens to Anthropic and OpenAI … the Chinese open end models, open weight models are much cheaper. And if they start really taking a lot of market share and it sounds like, from what I’m hearing, that they’re starting to, you could have a big price war. And then we have a problem,” he said <\/p>\n Eisman’s warning adds another prominent voice to a growing debate over whether the extraordinary spending behind the AI boom can generate sufficient returns.<\/p>\n Michael Burry, another investor whose wager against the housing bubble was chronicled in The Big Short, has taken an even more bearish view. Burry has questioned<\/a> whether much of current and future AI demand ultimately comes from end customers, arguing instead that a significant portion is financed through what he has described as circular arrangements.<\/p>\n Burry is putting his money where his mouth is, placing bearish bets against<\/a> some of the biggest beneficiaries of the AI boom, including Nvidia<\/a>, while also disclosing bearish positions tied to the broader semiconductor sector.<\/p>\n