Key Takeaways
- Michael Burry revealed he’s shorting Micron, Nvidia, Tesla, Applied Materials, Caterpillar, and a semiconductor ETF
- Burry initiated his Micron short position around $1,051.87, noting the stock’s distance from its 200-day moving average is the widest since 1984
- He described the AI boom as “mass addiction” and warned “the end is nigh” using a Joker movie reference
- Meanwhile, Micron reported quarterly revenue of $41.5 billion, representing 346% year-over-year growth with historic margins and cash generation
- Burry’s position focuses on valuation extremes and market timing rather than fundamental business deterioration
Michael Burry, renowned for correctly forecasting the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, has taken bearish positions against several major players in the artificial intelligence and semiconductor sectors.
Beginning June 30 through a sequence of Substack publications, Burry revealed short stakes in Nvidia, Tesla, Applied Materials, Caterpillar, and the iShares Semiconductor ETF. The following day, July 1, he announced shorting Micron at approximately $1,052 per share.
In his posts, Burry characterized “the AI narrative” as “nothing more than mass addiction.” He punctuated this assessment with a line from the Joker character in the original 1989 Batman movie: “The end is nigh. Dancing with the devil in the pale moon light.”
He shared Bloomberg data visualizations demonstrating that AI semiconductor equities have dramatically outpaced both the cloud infrastructure providers investing in AI and the wider universe of AI-related stocks. Another chart illustrated the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index hovering near the upper boundary of its valuation range over the last 15 years.
Why Burry Targeted Micron
Burry’s most pointed criticism centered on Micron. He highlighted that the company has experienced 34 separate drawdowns exceeding 30% throughout the past 42 years, characterizing it as cyclical “like no other.”
He calculated Micron’s median return on invested capital at merely 4% and median return on equity at 7%, describing both metrics as “frankly terrible.” According to Burry, Micron destroys shareholder capital in roughly one out of every three quarters.
Burry downplayed the significance of Micron’s high-bandwidth memory products, which serve AI applications, describing them as “just another in a very long series” of offerings rather than a sustainable competitive moat.
He attributed the stock’s recent climb to “fear of missing out, greater fool theory, and public commitment bias.”
Micron’s Financial Performance Tells Another Story
The actual financial results from Micron’s latest quarter present a contrasting narrative to Burry‘s characterization.
For the quarter concluded in May 2026, Micron delivered $41.5 billion in revenue, representing a staggering 346% increase compared to the prior year. Gross margin expanded dramatically to 84.6%, up from 37.7% in the year-ago period.
The company generated net income of $28.2 billion, versus $1.9 billion in the comparable quarter last year. Free cash flow surged to $17.6 billion, a remarkable improvement from $1.7 billion twelve months earlier.
During the June 24 earnings conference call, Chief Business Officer Sumit Sadana stated that customer demand for memory products is “well above our ability to supply” across virtually all product lines extending through 2028.
Micron shares have delivered approximately 1,000% returns over the trailing three-year period and have climbed roughly 260% in 2026 alone.
Currently trading around $976 per share, Micron’s valuation sits at approximately 22 times earnings. Company leadership projected roughly $50 billion in revenue for the upcoming quarter.
Burry’s thesis doesn’t claim Micron is presently underperforming operationally. Rather, he’s wagering that the stock’s valuation has stretched beyond sustainable levels and that the memory industry’s cyclical nature will inevitably reassert itself.
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