TLDR
- Michael Burry disclosed short positions against Micron, Nvidia, Tesla, Applied Materials, Caterpillar, and the iShares Semiconductor ETF
- Burry shorted Micron at $1,051.87, saying the stock trades further above its 200-day moving average than any point since 1984
- He called the AI narrative “mass addiction” and posted a Joker quote saying “the end is nigh”
- Micron’s latest quarter showed revenue up 346% year over year to $41.5 billion, with record margins and free cash flow
- Burry’s bet is about timing and valuation stretch, not whether the businesses are failing
Michael Burry, the investor who predicted the 2008 housing crash, has placed short bets against some of the biggest names in artificial intelligence and semiconductors.
In a series of Substack posts starting June 30, Burry disclosed short positions in Nvidia, Tesla, Applied Materials, Caterpillar, and the iShares Semiconductor ETF. On July 1, he added a short against Micron, entered near $1,052 per share.
Burry wrote that “the AI narrative is nothing more than mass addiction.” He followed that with a Joker quote from the 1989 Batman film: “The end is nigh. Dancing with the devil in the pale moon light.”
He posted Bloomberg charts showing AI semiconductor stocks far outperforming both the cloud companies funding AI infrastructure and broader AI beneficiaries. A second chart showed the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index trading near the top of its 15-year valuation range.
Burry’s Case Against Micron
Burry’s sharpest argument was aimed at Micron. He noted the stock has suffered 34 drawdowns of more than 30% over the past 42 years, calling it cyclical “like no other.”
He pegged Micron’s median return on invested capital at just 4% and median return on equity at 7%, calling both figures “frankly terrible.” He also said Micron destroys capital roughly one quarter out of every three.
Burry dismissed Micron’s high-bandwidth memory chips, which are tied to AI demand, as “just another in a very long series” of products rather than a lasting advantage.
He said the stock’s recent surge was driven by “fear of missing out, greater fool theory, and public commitment bias.”
What Micron’s Numbers Actually Show
Micron’s most recent quarterly results paint a different picture from the one Burry described.
For the quarter ending May 2026, revenue came in at $41.5 billion, up 346% year over year. Gross margin rose to 84.6%, up from 37.7% a year earlier.
Net income hit $28.2 billion, compared to $1.9 billion in the same quarter last year. Free cash flow reached $17.6 billion, a sharp turnaround from $1.7 billion a year prior.
On the June 24 earnings call, Chief Business Officer Sumit Sadana said customer demand for memory chips is “well above our ability to supply” across nearly every product category through 2028.
Micron stock has returned close to 1,000% over the past three years and is up around 260% in 2026.
At roughly $976 per share, Micron trades at about 22 times earnings. Management guided for around $50 billion in revenue next quarter.
Burry’s bet is not that Micron is currently failing. It is that the stock price has run too far, too fast, and that the memory cycle will eventually reverse.
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