Burry disclosed short positions on Oracle and Nebius, warning of AI overinvestment. Oracle shares have tumbled 60% from highs; Nebius fell 13% on the news.
Michael Burry disclosed short positions against Oracle and Nebius, betting that two of the AI infrastructure buildout's biggest names are overvalued.
The investor of "The Big Short" fame posted the trades on his Substack, Cassandra Unchained, on Thursday. He said he shorted Oracle at about $145 a share and Nebius "in somewhat larger size" at around $212.
Burry compared AI companies to fish in a barrel. "The fish have gorged themselves on off-balance sheet liabilities. Backstops. Uncommenced leases. Purchase commitments," he wrote. "The fish have gotten very fat, very large, easy to shoot." He added they are so large it "shan't be long before every last one keels over for lack of oxygen."
Oracle shares surged from below $130 to nearly $350 between April and September last year as the AI boom drove demand for its cloud infrastructure. They have since dropped roughly 60% on concerns that the company took on too much debt building data centers. Nebius shares have more than doubled this year and roughly ninefold over the past two years. The stock fell 13% to $190 on Thursday after Burry's post, then rallied 5% in Friday's premarket.
Burry has been one of the most vocal skeptics of the AI buildout, warning that Big Tech and infrastructure companies are overinvesting in microchips and data centers that could become obsolete. In a chat thread for his latest post, he said Nebius faces a "ton of execution risk" given the high costs and long leases in the data center business and the difficulty of winning long-term commitments from customers.
He has been negative on Oracle for months. In a recent comment he said the company "does seem to be in a bit of a pickle" and called it "a Homeresque own goal by a modern deity." In January he said he owned bearish puts on Oracle stock and had shorted it during the second half of 2025, citing what he saw as an inexplicable and unnecessary AI strategy.
Bulls point to the growth rates. Oracle's remaining performance obligations, a measure of total future contract revenue, soared 363% to $638 billion in the year ended May 31. Nebius's revenue jumped nearly sevenfold year-on-year in the first quarter to almost $400 million. Its deferred revenue surged about 150% over three months to $686 million on March 31.
AlphaScala's proprietary score gives Oracle a 44 out of 100, labeled Mixed, and Nebius a 53, also Mixed.
Burry is best known for predicting and profiting from the collapse of the mid-2000s housing bubble. He pivoted from running a hedge fund to writing about his personal investments late last year. He said in an August 4 post that he had exited a bearish wager on Oracle using put options, calling the profit "substantial," and added that less volatility might prompt him to buy fresh puts.
Neither Oracle, Nebius, nor Burry responded to requests for comment from Business Insider.
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