Steve Eisman says he wouldn’t want to run OpenAI or Anthropic right now, and with both labs preparing to go public, the timing stings.
On the latest Real Eisman Playbook, the investor made famous by “The Big Short” pressed tech bulls Dan Ives and D.A. Davidson’s Gil Luria on whether AI model companies have any moat at all.
Eisman argued that Chinese lab Moonshot AI is undercutting US frontier-model developers by enough to threaten a price war.
Kimi K3 charges $3 per million input tokens, compared with $5 for OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol and $10 for Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5. Moonshot says the model delivers near-frontier performance, although it still trails both rivals overall.
“If I was the head of Anthropic or OpenAI, I’d be petrified,” Eisman said. “That spells to me price war.”
The threat is not limited to lower API prices. Moonshot released Kimi K3’s full model weights, allowing developers to operate and customize it without remaining tied to the company’s platform. That portability could put further pressure on the economics of closed models.
Eisman added that AI has made once capital-light giants suddenly capital intensive. Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) fell last week after lifting its 2026 capex outlook to as much as $205 billion.
The Timing Problem
Anthropic filed confidentially with the SEC on June 1, OpenAI a week later, and both are now preparing to test public-market investors on exactly the moat Eisman doubts exists.
Polymarket traders put Anthropic’s chances of going public by year-end near 69%, compared with 19% for OpenAI, as of Wednesday.
The bulls’ answer is the revenue curve. Luria noted OpenAI and Anthropic have a combined run rate above $75 billion, likely topping $100 billion once Gemini and others are counted. Two years ago that number was zero, he added.
That figure, he argued, is the point: real customers paying real money for AI, whatever the moat debate says. It is also the exact story both labs will need to sell public investors, that the growth outruns the commoditization.
Ives, fresh off launching Yorkville Ives, a self-described modern merchant bank, framed the pricing scare differently. We’re in year three of an eight to 10 year buildout, he said, one that will bring “gut check moments” three to four times a year.
Where the Trade Hides
A price war at the model layer does not have to hurt the chip names. Cheaper models could encourage more usage and every extra token still runs on silicon. That leaves Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA) collecting rent whichever lab wins, in Ives’ telling.
Luria sees the sharper opportunity in what he called a market contradiction. Micron Technology Inc. (NASDAQ:MU) trades near six times earnings, priced as if the AI cycle ends next year, he said, while Intel Corp. (NASDAQ:INTC) trades near 100 times, priced as if it runs through 2030.
The market, in his view, cannot have it both ways. And if Eisman’s price war arrives, the models get cheaper, but somebody still has to make the memory.
Image: Shutterstock
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