SE Steve Eisman Steve Eisman Investor known for betting against the subprime mortgage market before the 2008 financial crisis, a story told in Michael Lewis's book The Big Short.

“NVIDIA's revenue in the quarter that was just recently reported was up over 100%. But if you go in the queue, it says that 70% of accounts receivable is from five accounts. The largest company on planet Earth, basically 70% of its revenue comes from five customers — that's very frightening.”

The Real Eisman Playbook · September 2026

“NVIDIA's revenue in the quarter that was just recently reported was up over 100%. But if you go in the queue, it says that 70% of accounts receivable is from five accounts. The largest company on planet Earth, basically 70% of its revenue comes from five customers — that's very frightening.” — Steve Eisman, The Real Eisman Playbook

Eisman, who is best known for shorting subprime mortgages, says he cannot understand why almost nobody outside a few Substack writers has picked this up from NVIDIA's own filing. It sits inside a longer argument he and George Noble make that the AI trade rests on a short chain of dependencies — and that far down that chain are two companies, OpenAI and Anthropic, that lose enormous sums. Note that he slides from receivables to revenue mid-sentence; the 70% figure in the filing is accounts receivable.

The Real Eisman Playbook · 2026-09-21 Listen to the episode → More from Steve Eisman →

Transcript

The Real Eisman Playbook Around 20:11 into the episode
Steve Eisman

I mean, the circular financing kind of drives me crazy. But I'll turn it around. If by some miracle, Anthropic and OpenAI became insanely profitable, it wouldn't matter because the loans would be good. The circular financing just tells me that there's probably something wrong. But in and of itself, it's not necessarily the issue.

George Noble

Correct. But what you wouldn't do, you wouldn't blindly say, oh, look at the earnings, look at the PE. Not at all. I'm going to give you an example on something that NVIDIA

Steve Eisman

when they reported that I still to this day can't understand why no one has commented on this other than a few sub stackers, which is NVIDIA's revenue in the quarter that was just recently reported was up over 100%. But if you go in the queue, it says that 70% of accounts receivable is from five accounts. I mean, think about it this way, that the largest company on planet Earth, basically 70% of its revenue comes from five. Customers is very frightening.

George Noble

Yes.

Steve Eisman

That's frightening.

George Noble

But as you pointed out, the receivables piling up, the loans, the whole deal, if it was a healthy system, if the banks thought this was a good business or private credits now and it's back on its heels. If there were healthy lenders that thought these are good credits, they'd make loans. They'd make loans. But they're not doing it. Why?

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode

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