‘Big Short’ Michael Burry fires shots at major AI stock

Nvidia (NVDA) just dished out another monster quarter, the kind that typically has Mr. Market running out of superlatives.

Revenue jumped, guidance came in hot, as the company but declared that the AI build-out is accelerating at a breakneck pace.

However, with investors celebrating the apparent breather in the AI storm, a very familiar voice has stepped back into the conversation.

Scion Asset Management founder Michael Burry, the original “Big Short,” is back at it, questioning whether Nvidia’s explosive growth reflects sustainable demand.

In a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter), Business Insider reports that Burry fleshed out his arguments on the stretched-out depreciation schedules and inflated AI spending estimates. Burry emphasized that “dealer-funded” customers are masking real risks.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang argues the boom is far from over, while Burry feels we’ve been here before.

Nvidia’s quarter dazzled Wall Street, but not everyone’s buying into the AI-powered story.

Right on schedule, the market’s most famous contrarians stepped in to question the strength of the story behind those headline numbers.

Nvidia didn’t just beat expectations; it basically steamrolled them.

The company’s latest quarter posted the kinds of numbers that compel Wall Street to calibrate its models in real time effectively. Also, before investors could process it all, Nvidia stacked on guidance, which significantly raised the bar.

Related: Veteran analyst delivers surprise post-Q3 verdict on Nvidia

• Revenue crushed expectations:Q3 revenue hit $57 billion, up 62% year over year and 22% quarter over quarter, clearing Wall Street’s $54.9 billion bar.

• Profits rode the AI surge: EPS came in at $1.30 (GAAP and non-GAAP) versus $1.26 estimate, spearheaded by 73%+ gross margins.

• Data center dominated everything: Revenue in the segment soared to $51.2 billion, coming in at roughly 90% of Nvidia’s total, led by “off-the-charts” demand for Blackwell systems.

• Guidance kept the party going: Nvidia projected $65 billion in Q4 revenue, far above the $61-$62 billion consensus, signaling the AI build-out isn’t cooling.

In several posts on X, Burry’s skepticism of Nvidia’s record-setting Q3 showing came through with characteristic bluntness.

He argued that Nvidia’s biggest cheerleaders are completely ignorant of the accounting and economic realities that are unlikely to stay hidden forever.

He pushed back against the AI torchbearer’s insistence that extended GPU usefulness justifies longer depreciation schedules, saying that mixing up utilization with value creation ends up inflating earnings.

Related: Legendary billionaire Ken Griffin’s Citadel makes huge bet on major tech stock

Moreover, Burry also questioned the overall demand picture and whether it is as clear-cut as Nvidia claims.

He states that the higher electricity costs for older chips and the strange dynamic where “customers are funded by their dealers” imply that hyperscalers could potentially be propping up each other’s spending.

• Longer depreciation schedules tend to distort the earnings picture.

• AI demand feels overstated and artificially supported.

• Older chips result in higher electricity and operating expenses.

• Industry “give-and-take” deals are essentially blurring true end-customer demand.

Michael Burry is clearly a one-man army in the investing world.

The popular physician-turned-hedge-fund manager became a market legend in front of our very eyes by spotting the mid-2000s housing bubble long before it burst and aggressively shorting subprime mortgage bonds using credit-default swaps.

The bet earned him nearly $100 million personally, along with another $700 to $725 million for his investors, earning him the moniker “the Big Short” in both financial circles and pop culture.

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Inside the space, he has built a reputation of being violently contrarian, enduring brutal drawdowns, while emerging victorious years later.

After closing Scion Capital, he launched Scion Asset Management back in 2013.

As of March 2025, the firm, according to WhaleWisdom, was effectively managing a whopping $155 million in regulatory assets, with $1.3 billion in notional 13F exposure due to “options.”

By November 2025, though, Burry deregistered the firm, returning outside capital, suggesting he is moving on to “much better things.”

However, his latest swing on the 2025 AI bubble discussion is garnering the most attention. Earlier in November, Morningstar reported that Scion showed off put options on 1 million Nvidia shares and 5 million Palantir shares, representing over $1.1 billion in combined bearish exposure, roughly 80% of its Q3 portfolio.

Moreover, on X, Burry warned that today’s AI capital spending is similar to the dot-com-era excess, due to the heightened capex-to-GDP levels typically seen before major market busts.

Related: Nvidia, Microsoft deal takes ‘circular’ financing to entirely new level

This story was originally reported by TheStreet on Nov 22, 2025, where it first appeared in the Investing section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.