Michael Burry bets $912 million against Palantir as Anthropic captures 73% of new enterprise AI spend

Palantir stock fell between 7% and 8% after investor Michael Burry claimed the company is being outpaced by AI startup Anthropic. Burry, who holds put options on approximately five million shares of Palantir expiring in 2027, disclosed a short position valued at $912 million through Scion Asset Management in the third quarter of 2025.

Burry's critique centers on a shift in enterprise AI adoption. Citing data from corporate spend tracker Ramp, Burry stated that Anthropic is capturing 73% of all new enterprise spending. He contrasted the two companies' growth trajectories, noting that Anthropic's annual recurring revenue rose from $9 billion to $30 billion in months, while it took Palantir 20 years to reach $5 billion in revenue.

The disagreement lies in the scalability of the two business models. Palantir employs Forward Deployed Engineers to work directly within client organizations over extended periods. Palantir's 10-K filing labels these efforts as professional services, which Burry characterizes as a low-margin consulting model reliant on human labor. In contrast, Anthropic's plug-and-play API allows companies to integrate AI functionality without on-site staffing or prolonged implementation.

This vulnerability was highlighted when the Trump administration mandated federal contractors to remove Anthropic's Claude AI from their systems following a jurisdictional dispute over safety guidelines with the Pentagon. Palantir was compelled to excise Claude from its Maven Smart Systems and rebuild affected sections of the platform.

Despite these headwinds, Palantir reported fourth-quarter 2025 revenue of $1.4 billion, up 70% year over year, with U.S. commercial revenue rising 137% to $507 million. The stock currently trades at approximately 142 times expected earnings, the third-highest multiple in the S&P 500.