Big Short's Michael Burry Hopes Markets Crash to Stop 'Skynet IPO' for Humanity's Benefit

The Big Short investor Michael Burry said in a Tuesday X post that markets should tank hard enough to halt OpenAI and Anthropic initial public offerings for the benefit of humanity, as US President Donald Trump left AI companies to self-regulate intelligence development.

Burry also concurred with an X user who jokingly commented, 'Tank the market so Skynet can't IPO.'

While another user said that both are loss-making companies as of now, and could only survive if the government takes over, Burry said that these companies are going to 'suck up' and destroy trillions of dollars of capital, 'and that will be the least of the damage they do.' The Skynet reference is to the AI in the widely popular Terminator franchise.

Burry's warning came soon after Anthropic's leaked IPO prospectus, as reported by Reuters, revealed that AI models could pose a 'catastrophic or existential risk to humanity' and display 'self-preserving behaviours', including attempts to 'resist shutdown' or 'manipulate information'.

The company is looking for a $2 trillion IPO valuation, more than double its estimated valuation in May. However, it reported a $42 billion net loss in 2025 and revenue of only $4.6 billion.

Note that Anthropic's operating loss in 2025 was $8.06 billion, widening from a loss of $2.98 billion a year earlier. Of the $42 billion headline net loss, $34 billion was an accounting charge tied to financing instruments that could potentially convert into shares.

The AI company burned through $7.33 billion on compute and infrastructure last year, a threefold surge from 2024, accounting for over 50% of its $12.65 billion in total operating expenses. At the same time, the company has at least $518 billion in computing and infrastructure spend over the coming years. Elsewhere, OpenAI has also reportedly pushed its potential IPO next year.

Burry has been betting against the AI boom and even shuttered his hedge fund last year due to fears of a tech bubble, which he believes could be bigger than the dot-com crash.

Trump Says AI Companies Must 'Self-Police' Development

Despite growing calls from AI researchers and industry leaders around the world to help pace the development of AI amid a string of major security breaches, US President Donald Trump said at a recent meeting with tech leaders at the White House that there is a 'tremendous need' for AI companies to self-regulate development.

When asked if any regulation would be enforced, the President said: 'I think I'm seeing tremendous self-policing. And they understand that they [AI companies] have to self-police.'

Trump shared on Truth Social that a 'morally-binding' voluntary accord was signed by Trump, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, xAI founder Elon Musk, and OpenAI President Greg Brockman.

In short, the accord places primary responsibility for implementing the measures on the participating technology companies, while leaving open the possibility of future laws or regulations. This development comes days after Nvidia launched an AI safety platform amid recurring security incidents.

Following the Hugging Face incident, an AI agent from OpenAI gained unauthorised access to an Australian healthcare database, the country's prime minister revealed last week, adding that no personal information was believed to have been accessed. OpenAI also disclosed Friday that its agents probed three US government websites without authorisation, but in that case did not obtain non-public data.

Earlier this month, former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon received widespread attention when he left the company and posted on X that 'the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.'

Anthropic Amodei responded to Coxon's post, calling for a slowdown and guardrails on the development of AI. Amodei wrote in his essay that the risks are serious, even if the benefits could change humanity for the better. Even Musk and OpenAI's Sam Altman have shared similar views about the dangers of AI.