Scion Asset Management founder, renowned investor of The Big Short fame, and tireless perma-bear โ Dr Michael Burry โ has resurfaced to sound the alarm on the AI boom.
And as per his MO, the man famously portrayed by Christian Bale has put his money where his mouth is by taking a 10-figure swing at two of the biggest AI players in the prison yard: as revealed earlier this week, last quarter, Burryโs Scion purchased bearish put options on a million Nvidia shares (NASDAQ: NVDA) and five million Palantir shares (NASDAQ: PLTR) with notional values of US$187 million and US$912 million, respectively (AU$1.5 billion total).
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Within a day of trading, Nvidia and Palantir fell 4% and 8%. The shockwaves quickly drew the ire of Palantir CEO Alex Carp, who spat a healthy dose of venom during his live interview with CNBC
โThe two companies heโs shorting are the ones making all the money, which is super weird,โ said Karp.
โThe idea that chips and ontology is what you want to short is bats**t crazy,โ he added, referring to Palantirโs expansive data โbrainโ that processes information for its AI systems.
Over the past five days of trading, those slides have worsened to approximately 10% apiece, which โ considering the scale of market caps weโre dealing with here โ ainโt exactly pocket change. Especially in the case of Jensen Huangโs US$5 trillion chipmaker. Now, the fallout has extended to any tech company meaningfully associated with the likes of Nvidia, like semiconductor giant TSMC (TPE: 2330).
โSometimes, we see bubbles. Sometimes, there is something to do about it. Sometimes, the only winning move is not to play,โ Michael Burry not-so-cryptically communicated via his X (formerly Twitter) account Cassandra Unchained (@michaeljburry) โ a reference to the priestess in Greek mythology cursed to share true prophecies but never to be believed โ thereby breaking two years of digital silence.
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These arenโt the charts you are looking for.
โ Cassandra Unchained (@michaeljburry) November 3, 2025
You can go about your business. pic.twitter.com/ICldNUp2OI
The good doctor followed this up with a chart illustrating how sharply growth has slowed in Amazon and Alphabetโs (Google) cloud computing division, as well as the cooling off experienced by Microsoftโs competing product; another drawing parallels between the US tech sectorโs capital expenditures with both the dot-com crash and the 2008 financial crisis; before rounding it out with a graphic outlining the โcircular dealmakingโ between the likes of the soon-to-be-listed OpenAI, Oracle, Microsoft, Nvidia, and other AI operations.
But it hasnโt exclusively been contrarian doom and gloom over at the offices of Scion Asset Management. Currently, Michael Burry is bullish on Pfizer (NYSE: PFE), oil service and fracking specialists Halliburton (NYSE: HAL), Molina Healthcare (NYSE: MOH), as well as Lululemon Athletica (NASDAQ: LULU), according to Scionโs latest quarterly regulatory filings. The latter also added positions in Bruker (NASDAQ: BRKR) and SLM Corporation (NASDAQ: SLM) to its portfolio, broadening exposure to scientific instruments and student loan finance.
Letโs see how this plays out.
