Why this early Uber investor would short OpenAI

OpenAI ( OPAI.PVT ) isn't even a public company yet, and there's already one prominent venture capitalist who would short the stock if it were public.

"If you look at it, I would argue that OpenAI and Anthropic are wildly overvalued. I would certainly short OpenAI," Tusk Strategies founder Bradley Tusk said on Yahoo Finance's Sozzi Unleashed .

Tusk was a very early investor in Uber ( UBER ) when it was led by Travis Kalanick — an investment he has described as once-in-a-lifetime.

Tusk added, "If you're Anthropic or OpenAI, you're competing against each other. Plus Meta and Google and Grok, and you've got all the energy issues and all of the regulatory issues, the data center issues, the public antipathy, the risk of China invading Taiwan. So to me, there are so many macro factors that are headwinds against these companies."

Both OpenAI and Anthropic ( ANTH.PVT ) are rumored to be eyeing public market debuts within the next 12 months, and they likely don't exactly have pristine financials to show prospective investors on a slide deck.

OpenAI told investors in August its revenue rose by 18% from the first quarter to the second quarter while losses deepened, the Wall Street Journal reported. Anthropic's sales reportedly increased by $1 billion sequentially in the second quarter, yet its profits were tiny.

"I don't even think they are close," Tusk said of Anthropic's readiness to go public.

Brian Sozzi is Yahoo Finance's Executive Editor, host of the Sozzi Unleashed morning show, the ' Power Players With Brian Sozzi' podcast and a member of Yahoo Finance's editorial leadership team. Follow Sozzi on X @BrianSozzi , Instagram , and LinkedIn . Tips on stories? Email brian.sozzi@yahoofinance.com.