On families of anticommuting matrices

Let $e_{1},\dots, e_{k}$ be complex $n\times n$ matrices such that $e_{i}e_{j}=-e_{j}e_{i}$ whenever $i\not=j$. We conjecture that $\hbox{rk}(e_{1}^{2})+\hbox{rk}(e_{2}^{2})+\cdots+\hbox{rk}(e_{k}^{2})\leq O(n\log n)$, and prove some results in this direction.