Bloomberg Talks · Sep 30, 2026 · 17m · 6m saved
With Bill Ackman, Founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management
Bill Ackman called Anthropic perhaps the greatest business story he has ever seen, and said Pershing Square is unlikely to buy it.
Investors have been waiting for the Anthropic IPO as the next big test of the market's appetite for AI. Ackman said his fund buys businesses whose shape it can predict over a very long period, and a fast-growing company consuming huge amounts of capital, with open-source models as competitors, does not fit.
"We use Claude internally. So it's clearly an amazing company." — Bill Ackman
Bill Ackman, founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, on Bloomberg Talks, spoke on the day of Howard Hughes Holdings' investor day, where he is turning the real estate company into an insurance-led holding company modeled on Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, and after taking Pershing Square USA public while his daughter recovered from a brain hemorrhage.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 17 minutes of audio, 11 minutes of reading.
Here are the 9 moments that matter.
Key Takeaways
Howard Hughes is copying Berkshire Hathaway's model: buy an insurer, keep most of its assets in short-term Treasuries and invest the rest in stocks
Vantage's assets were moved to about 65% short-term Treasuries and 35% stocks
Howard Hughes plans to cut its equity in its real estate by as much as 80% by bringing in outside investors, freeing $2B to $3B for the insurer
Ackman says Pershing Square USA's discount is a marketing problem, not a performance problem
He bought S&P Global at 21 times earnings and Intercontinental Exchange at 17 times
Anthropic is an amazing company that Pershing Square is unlikely to own, because open-source models may erode the frontier labs' position
Ackman worries less about Anthropic or OpenAI causing harm than about a rogue actor using an open-source model
The IPO was done from the hospital room next to his daughter's, and her illness led him to start a brain institute focused on patient care
1. A Page From Buffett
Howard Hughes recently closed its acquisition of the insurer Vantage, and the host asked what Ackman plans to do with the money it brings.
Ackman said Howard Hughes is following the path Warren Buffett took at Berkshire Hathaway
He described what Buffett did as the textile business wound down: buy an insurer, keep the float, the premiums collected before claims are paid, in short-term Treasuries so policyholders know the money is there, and invest the surplus in common stocks.
"And as a result, Berkshire was able to grow at a very rapid rate, compounding the insurance company's assets, earning a high return on capital. without having to issue stock." — Bill Ackman
"Basically, we're taking a page from Mr. Buffett." — Bill Ackman
Vantage has a new leadership team and a new portfolio
The deal closed in June. In July, Howard Hughes named Marc Grandisson, former CEO of Arch Capital Group, as Vantage's executive chair. Ackman said Grandisson recruited his protégé from Arch, David Gansberg, and that Lucy Fato, former vice chair and general counsel of AIG, also joined. Howard Hughes immediately sold Vantage's fixed income holdings.
"We invested money in short-term Treasuries, about 65% or so, and 35% of the assets we invested in a common stock portfolio that we managed." — Bill Ackman
The goal, he said, is a specialty insurer with high returns on equity, run by a strong team, with Pershing Square managing the assets.
