“Big short” investor Michael Burry has long been a contrarian — and now he’s picking bones with Palantir Technologies (PLTR).
In a particularly blunt post on X this week, Bury claimed that AI startup Anthropic ( ANTH.PVT ) is effectively “eating Palantir’s lunch.” The Schon Asset Management founder has since deleted the post, but Palantir stock fell nearly 7% after the bold announcement.
For the Street, the concern isn’t the social media post, but the specific data Burry cited. He pointed to Anthropic’s explosive growth, noting that it went from $9 billion to $30 billion in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in just a few months. That’s proof that businesses are “easy, cheap, [and more] Easy” solution, he said.
This is not a new crusade for Burry. He has been steadily rising in Palantir. Around September 2025, he exposed a significant short position through long-dated put options on the company, anticipating a multiyear decline.
“PLTR may have a government, which is low-margin and small,” Bury wrote in a since-deleted post, noting that while Anthropic was scaling at lightning speed, “it took 20 years for $PLTR to reach $5 billion.”
Bury’s thesis is based on the idea that Palantir is more of a high-growth tech firm than a low- and low-margin consulting business. He argues that Palantir’s model relies on sending its own staff, known as forward deployed engineers (FDE), to live in a client’s office for months at a time to maintain its systems. According to Palantir’s 10-K filing, these deployments are often classified under “professional services,” in which the company essentially charges for human labor rather than production.
In contrast, Anthropic – the creator of the cloud – offers a plug-and-play API that allows companies to integrate AI intelligence almost instantly.
Technically, the two companies occupy different positions 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 a logic engine that powers real enterprise workflows.
But Bury argued that as the market moves toward direct relationships with AI model providers, Palantir’s lack of proprietary AI software makes it vulnerable.
That risk was thrown into the spotlight in early March. After a dispute between Anthropic and the Pentagon over security guardrails, the Trump administration issued an immediate ban on the AI lab. This forced federal contractors like Palantir to remove the startup from their systems. Reuters reported that Palantir was ordered to effectively remove Anthropic’s cloud AI from its Maven Smart system and rebuild parts of the platform.
