Michael Burry won't buy Anthropic; funds at Fidelity, Capital Group and BlackRock hold over $15 billion
Funds run by Fidelity, Capital Group and BlackRock hold more than $15 billion of Anthropic, bought at a fraction of its expected listing value. Michael Burry reads the same November 2 filing, counts $895.4 billion of commitments, and wants none of it.
Vincent Jiang · 2 min read
Michael Burry, the investor made famous by "The Big Short" for betting against subprime mortgages, wrote on Substack on November 4, 2026, to rule himself out of the Anthropic$350B — Anthropic, private, latest valuation $350B listing 1. "Not only is the company priced for optimism," he wrote, "it is betting its entire existence on that optimism," adding that he has no plans to pursue shares 1.
The other side of the trade is already staffed. Mutual funds at Fidelity, Capital Group and BlackRock−0.27% — BlackRock, down 0.27 percent as of its last quote hold Anthropic shares worth more than $15 billion combined, per a compilation of fund filings, bought for a fraction of that value; the three firms declined to comment 2.
The $174 billion Fidelity Contrafund, a fixture in retirement accounts, holds about $600 million, marked at the end of September hundreds of millions above what it paid 2.
Capital Group's funds alone hold at least $9 billion of pre-IPO Anthropic
Disclosed floors only: retirement funds hold $15 billion-plus of Anthropic
Data
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Capital Group | $9B |
| Fidelity | $2B |
| BlackRock | $0.5B |
The commitment ledger runs 12 times the bullish year
Anthropic, the five-year-old maker of the Claude models, filed its amended prospectus on November 2: about $17 billion of third-quarter revenue, twelvefold a year earlier, against a nine-month net loss of $104 billion, mostly non-cash marks on convertible notes 23.
Burry's number is the ledger underneath. The filing lists $895.4 billion of purchase and lease commitments, "substantially all" of it compute and infrastructure, with about $70 billion due within a year of September 30 and roughly $448 billion more by the end of 2030, set against $132 billion of cash 35.
Nearly $900 billion of commitments, $70 billion of it due within a year
Data
| Part | Purchase and lease commitments | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Due within a year | $70B | 7.8% |
| Due by end of 2030 | $448B | 50.1% |
| Due after 2030 | $377.4B | 42.1% |
Commitments run about 12 times even a bullish $100 billion revenue year, and much of the paper is take-or-pay, which bills whether or not the compute is needed 1. His earlier tally traced $114.5 billion of it to Google and $110 billion to Amazon, both Anthropic backers 4. Sequential growth slowed to 47 percent in the quarter from 144 percent in the prior one 5.
The roadshow prices who is right
The bull case has its own arithmetic. Bankers have been told a valuation near $1.75 trillion is possible, against a $965 billion private round, with the range slipping as low as $1.4 trillion 2. "Investors will give it the benefit of the doubt," says Dan Ives, partner at merchant bank Yorkville Ives 2.
The roadshow's range runs from $965 billion to $1.75 trillion
Data
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Private round | $0.97T |
| Low end | $1.4T |
| Floated to bankers | $1.75T |
The roadshow could open the week of November 9, with a Nasdaq listing under the ticker ANT 6. BlackRock, mid-way through its own $33.4 billion utility buyout, holds at least $500 million of the pre-IPO shares 2. The last comparable debut, SpaceX+4.03% — SpaceX, up 4.03 percent today in June, opened up almost 20 percent and now trades below its first price 5. The listing is the funds' exit and the saver's entry at the same price.
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