Michael Burry Flags Complex Circular Financing Webs With Anthropic's Compute Liabilities At 12x Current Revenue

What happened

Investor Michael Burry said Anthropic's IPO documents show about $537 billion in total compute commitments, including $114.5 billion owed to Google, $110 billion to Amazon, $44.9 billion to Microsoft and $161.2 billion in rack-lease obligations to Broadcom.

Confirmed

Global impact / market context

These are take-or-pay liabilities, meaning Anthropic must pay even if it uses less capacity. That fixed cost can drain cash available for other needs, pressure profit per sale, and force reliance on outside funding if revenue growth slows.

Analyst inference

Burry compares this to past telecom and computer-leasing buildouts, where heavy borrowing funded capacity ahead of demand. Similar circular financing across technology suppliers and cloud providers could tie their fortunes to the same spending cycle and shared risk.

Analyst inference

What to watch

1. Anthropic's revenue growth cooled in August and September after 132% and 144% sequential gains earlier in the year, according to the article, so watch whether that slowdown continues. Confirmed
2. Watch for more detail on how Anthropic plans to fund the $537 billion in commitments, such as new borrowing, outside investment, or cash from operations. Proposed
3. Watch cloud and chip suppliers named in the article, since payments owed to them depend on Anthropic's ability to keep paying for contracted capacity. Analyst inference

Evidence

• stocktwits.com