Anthropic has cut its target valuation from $2 trillion to $1.3 trillion, and the analyst who called WeWork's failed listing "the most ridiculous IPO of 2019" now says the AI company's offering is the "most ridiculous IPO of 2026."

The verdict comes from New Constructs, the independent financial research provider founded and run by David Trainer. It lands days before one of the largest technology debuts in market history — and at a moment when orders for Anthropic shares have reportedly already exceeded the number on offer several times over.

The company, co-founded by CEO Dario Amodei, has attracted loud praise from Wall Street analysts and venture capitalists. It has also attracted skeptics. Their concerns center on three things: the valuation, mounting operating losses, and the enormous spending commitments tied to compute, chips and infrastructure.

The parallel to SpaceX is instructive. In the days before that IPO, bearish forecasts and open skepticism circulated widely — and the listing proceeded at scale regardless. Anthropic's critics are positioning themselves the same way: not disputing the demand, but disputing what buyers are paying for.

Who is raising the red flags?

New Constructs is the loudest of the bears. The firm's track record gives its warning weight. When WeWork filed to go public in 2019, Trainer labeled the offering ridiculous — a call that proved prescient when the office-space company's valuation collapsed and its debut was withdrawn.

Trainer is not quite as negative on Anthropic as he was on WeWork, according to his own framing. But he raised large questions about the valuation, arguing that:

• Operating losses are mounting, not narrowing
• Competition from other AI firms is intensifying
• Open-source models threaten the economics of the business
• Together, these pressures make the business model unsustainable

"We don't think Anthropic has a viable business," New Constructs wrote in its research note. "While Anthropic offers more to society than WeWork ever did, at a $2 trillion valuation, its IPO presents far bigger risks and is positioned to be a far bigger rip off of U.S. capital markets."

What is Michael Burry's objection?

The Big Short investor Michael Burry has joined the pessimists. In a Substack post earlier this month, he took aim at the company's numbers — particularly the spending commitments tied to compute, chips and infrastructure, the capital-intensive core of any frontier AI business.

His critique is about fragility, not just price. The company's cost structure assumes the optimistic scenario holds indefinitely.

"Not only is the company priced for optimism," Burry wrote, "it is betting its entire existence on that optimism."

For a firm valued at $1.3 trillion — a figure cut from an earlier $2 trillion ambition — that framing matters. A valuation markdown of roughly 35% before the IPO signals that even the sellers adjusted expectations amid recent volatility in tech stocks.

How big is the deal?

By every available measure, the offering is enormous. Demand has reportedly exceeded supply several times over, meaning the book is covered multiple times before trading begins. That level of oversubscription typically guarantees a strong first-day pop — and, skeptics would argue, guarantees that late retail buyers absorb the most risk.

The bullish case rests on Anthropic's position as one of the giants of the AI industry, led by Amodei, and on the broader wave of enthusiasm that has carried AI valuations to record levels.

The bear case, laid out by New Constructs and Burry, rests on arithmetic: a business with mounting operating losses, a valuation that even after the cut remains among the largest ever taken to market, spending commitments that Burry describes as existential, and competitive pressure from rivals and open-source alternatives that shows no sign of easing.

What does the WeWork precedent mean here?

Trainer's warning carries credibility precisely because his WeWork call was right. In 2019 he identified an offering that collapsed under scrutiny before it ever traded. His current critique is more measured — he concedes Anthropic offers more to society than WeWork did — but the scale of the risk, in his view, is larger, not smaller.

A $2 trillion valuation, New Constructs argues, would make this IPO a bigger drain on U.S. capital markets than WeWork ever was. Even at the reduced $1.3 trillion, the firm's core objection stands: the business, in its assessment, is not viable.

Investors now face a familiar choice. The demand is real, the narrative is powerful, and the orders have piled up. Whether the numbers underneath them hold is the question Trainer and Burry have now put on the record before the bell rings.