Burry Says Anthropic Valuation Buys 78 S&P 500 Firms, Calls It a Bubble

Michael Burry has argued that Anthropic's valuation is enough to purchase 78 profitable S&P 500 companies, a price tag he describes as a bubble.

Included in that group are Domino's, Clorox, lululemon, and Hormel Foods, though Burry stopped short of specifying which Anthropic valuation he was applying. The company was valued at $965 billion in its most recent private funding round in May, ahead of a planned initial public offering (IPO).

How Does Anthropic’s Valuation Stack Up Against UPS?

In a Substack post, Burry also compared the figure to the 1990s. He noted that United Parcel Service (UPS) held the record for the highest inflation-adjusted pre-IPO valuation between 1990 and 2000, at $119 billion.

That price represented 26 times earnings and 2.4 times sales, according to Burry. At the time, UPS was 92 years old and generated a net margin of around 8.6%.

A fun game in times like these is to go to the S&P 500 Index and see how many profitable companies one can buy with the bubble private company valuation.

The number that Anthropic’s valuation buys is 78, including Domino’s, Clorox, Smucker, Stanley Black & Decker, Deckers,…

— Cassandra Unchained (@michaeljburry) October 8, 2026

Anthropic, founded in 2021, reported a $42 billion net loss for 2025 in its leaked draft prospectus, according to Fortune. Reuters noted that most of the loss stemmed from an accounting charge rather than operational spending.

Still, the same filing revealed $11.5 billion in second-quarter 2026 revenue and indicated a second consecutive operating profit.

It also outlined $518 billion in planned spending on cloud and infrastructure over the coming years.

Will Public Markets Pay for Growth Before Profit?

The $65 billion funding round that established the $965 billion valuation was led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia Capital, as reported by CNBC.

Potential investors now estimate fair value at between $1.8 trillion and $2 trillion, with Anthropic targeting a listing before Thanksgiving, according to the same report.

The remarks follow Burry’s earlier warnings about the stock market. On October 5, he stated that equities are in a denial phase he expects to persist for six to nine months.

A few days after the May funding round, he told Substack subscribers that Anthropic’s long-term value near $1 trillion was far from certain.

A listing near $2 trillion would test whether public market investors are willing to pay for revenue growth before profits are realized. Reuters reported that the first AI lab to go public is seen by analysts as the pricing benchmark for the industry.