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“Big Short” investor Michael Burry has long been a contrarian — and now he’s picking bones with Palantir Technologies (PLTR).
In a characteristically blunt post on X this week, Burry claimed that AI startup Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) is effectively “eating Palantir’s lunch.” The Scion Asset Management founder has since deleted the post, but Palantir stock fell roughly 7% following the bold proclamation.
For the Street, the concern isn’t a social media post, but the specific data Burry cited. He pointed to Anthropic’s explosive growth, noting its climb from $9 billion to $30 billion in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in just months. That’s proof that businesses are pivoting toward “easier, cheaper, [and more] intuitive” solutions, he said.
This isn’t a new crusade for Burry. He has been consistently bearish on Palantir. Around September 2025, he disclosed a significant short position through long-dated put options on the company, forecasting a multiyear decline.
“PLTR can have government, which is low margin and small,” Burry wrote in the deleted post, noting that while Anthropic is scaling at lightning speed, “it took $PLTR 20 years to get to $5 Billion.”
Burry’s thesis rests on the idea that Palantir is less of a high-growth tech firm and more of a low-margin consulting business. He argues that Palantir’s model relies on sending its own staff, known as Forward Deployed Engineers (FDE), to live and work inside a customer’s office for months at a time to maintain its systems. According to Palantir’s 10-K filing, these deployments are often categorized under “professional services,” a tier in which the company essentially charges for human labor, rather than just a product.
In contrast, Anthropic — the creator of Claude — offers a plug-and-play API that allows companies to integrate AI intelligence almost instantly.
Technically, the two companies occupy different niches in the tech ecosystem. Palantir serves as a secure, operational platform for organizations such as the Department of Defense (DoD) and major health systems. Anthropic provides the reasoning engine that powers the actual enterprise workflows.
But Burry argued that as the market moves toward direct relationships with AI model providers, Palantir’s lack of proprietary AI software makes it vulnerable.
That vulnerability was thrust into the spotlight in early March. Following a dispute over safety guardrails between Anthropic and the Pentagon, the Trump administration issued an immediate ban on the AI lab. This forced federal contractors like Palantir to purge the startup from their systems. Reuters reported Palantir was effectively ordered to remove Anthropic’s Claude AI from its Maven Smart Systems and rebuild parts of the platform.
