Michael Burry, the contrarian investor who called the 2008 financial crisis, is back with his unique blend of dire warnings, cryptic messages, winking memes, and pop-culture references.
The Scion Asset Management chief has returned to X after a two-year hiatus to sound the alarm on the AI boom. Where advocates see a revolutionary technology that will supercharge productivity and generate massive profits, he sees hype, speculation, and excess.
Burry, whose iconic bet against the mid-2000s housing bubble was immortalized in the book and movie “The Big Short,” kicked off his comeback with a single, ominous post on Thursday.
“Sometimes, we see bubbles. Sometimes, there is something to do about it. Sometimes, the only winning move is not to play,” he wrote.
The third sentence is a nod to the movie “WarGames,” where an AI supercomputer runs thousands of simulations of nuclear war and discovers all of them end in mutual destruction. Burry’s quote underscores how perilous he believes today’s market is for investors.
Signaling he’ll be sticking around for a while, the famed forecaster has updated his profile picture and revised his bio to read: “Cassandra Unchained: Missteps to Mayhem, Coming December 2025, Stay Tuned.”
X
That line is an apparent reference to the Greek myth of Cassandra, the Trojan priestess cursed to utter true prophecies but never to be believed, and to a speech Burry gave at Vanderbilt Medical Center in 2011 titled: “Missteps to Mayhem: Inside the Doomsday Machine with the Outsider who Predicted and Profited from America’s Financial Armageddon.”
Back then, Burry delivered a step-by-step breakdown of how the subprime mortgage bubble inflated, how he predicted and placed bets on its collapse, and how the fallout revealed glaring vulnerabilities in the US financial system.
“We must remember that entire societies can and often do follow the wrong path for a very long time, and that there is nothing wrong with breaking from the social norm to ensure good outcomes,” Burry said. “Sober analysis on the part of the individual is paramount.”
Burry sees himself as a Jedi battling the Empire
Positioning himself as a rebel who’s speaking out against the AI mainstream, Burry swapped his banner image on X to a still from “Star Wars: A New Hope,” where Obi-Wan Kenobi uses a Jedi mind trick to deceive Imperial stormtroopers.
Related stories
Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know
Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know
Referring to that meme, the Scion boss posted on Monday before the release of his firm’s third-quarter portfolio update: “These aren’t the charts you are looking for. You can go about your business.” He attached three images offering fresh insight into why he’s bearish on the AI frenzy.
The first chart showed that growth has slowed sharply in Amazon and Alphabet’s cloud-computing divisions, and cooled slightly in Microsoft’s rival unit.
The second highlighted that the US tech sector’s capital expenditures have surged during the AI boom, echoing their spikes before the dot-com crash and the 2008 financial crisis.
The third shows the circular dealmaking between Nvidia, OpenAI, Oracle, Microsoft, and other AI companies.
Burry nodded to the meme again in a follow-up post, writing “Move along” and attaching an image of a stormtrooper. He also shared a highlighted excerpt from “Capital Account,” a book that covers the dot-com bubble. It detailed how the telecoms boom and bust resulted in vast tracts of unused infrastructure, plunging prices, and the downfall of many high-valued companies that wound up scrambling for protection from creditors.
Burry’s posts underline his skepticism about the AI boom. He appears to see shades of the dot-com bubble in the interwoven deals between tech titans, as they pour hundreds of billions of dollars into building huge amounts of infrastructure that might end up sitting idle if demand falters and valuations come crashing down, as they did 25 years ago.
Burry placed bets against Nvidia and Palantir
The hedge fund manager backed up his words with two striking bets last quarter that were revealed on Monday. Scion purchased bearish put options on 1 million Nvidia shares and 5 million Palantir shares, with notional values of $187 million and $912 million, respectively.
The wagers dominated the firm’s US stock portfolio, which had only eight holdings in total, including just four direct positions worth a combined $68 million.
Russ Mould, AJ Bell’s investment director, told Business Insider that Burry is “clearly backing convictions with what can only be called a highly unconventional portfolio, with sizable short positions against both Nvidia and Palantir, both darlings of the current AI boom, to the tune of around $1 billion.”
Nvidia and Palantir fell 4% and 8% respectively on Tuesday. Burry’s wagers drew the ire of Palantir CEO Alex Karp, who questioned why he was shorting companies that are “making all the money.”
Both stocks have soared in price over the past few years; Nvidia became the first company to secure a $5 trillion market value last week, while Palantir was valued at nearly $500 billion at Monday’s close — more than Mastercard, Exxon Mobil, or Netflix are worth.
The pair’s valuations and high growth expectations could leave their stocks vulnerable to sharp declines if they disappoint, especially when investors are increasingly using margin and levered ETFs, Mould said.
Burry could win big if Nvidia and Palantir stumble, but the “danger” is that he “gets run over by momentum and liquidity-fueled markets” if they keep impressing investors and the Federal Reserve keeps cutting interest rates, Mould added.
Daniel Bustamante, the chief investor and founder of asset manager Bustamante Capital Management, told Business Insider that he broadly agrees with Burry’s stance on AI stocks.
The Magnificent Seven’s capital spending is “already hurting earnings growth, retail is crowded into those names, and then margin debt is at all-time highs,” he said. “You basically have all tinder soaked in gas, and all it takes is a lit match at this point to cause some serious issues.”
