We are living through a market moment built on a dazzling idea: that artificial intelligence (AI) will remake business, lift productivity, and deliver a new era of profits. That idea is real. But what’s also real is that markets—like people—get caught up in stories, and stories can outrun substance. The recent giant bets by Michael Burry against two blue-chip AI names should be a loud wake-up call: when an investor who famously profited from a prior systemic excess smells a bubble, it’s worth asking why.

In a regulatory filing for the quarter ending September 30, Scion Asset Management — Michael Burry’s fund — disclosed large put-option positions (bets that a stock will fall) on Palantir and NVIDIA: roughly $912 million of exposure to Palantir and about $187 million to Nvidia (total ≈ $1.1 billion). The news pushed short-term volatility in both stocks and refocused attention on whether AI enthusiasm has outpaced earnings and economics. 

Shorting is the mirror image of buying. Instead of paying now and hoping a price rises, you borrow (or buy an option) to sell at today’s price and profit only if the asset falls. It’s high-risk: if the price climbs, losses can be large and fast. Puts can limit some downside to the premium paid, but betting against high-momentum, widely held stocks is still a bold move. Burry’s put purchases are a way of saying: “I think these prices are wrong.” 

Burry is not famous because he likes being contrarian; he’s famous because he anticipated the U.S. housing bubble in the mid-2000s and profited by buying credit-default swaps (CDSs) that paid off when mortgage securities collapsed. That

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