Michael Burry, the renowned investor who has drawn attention in recent months for his criticism of the artificial intelligence boom, is betting against Corp.
Burry holds put options on Oracle shares, he stated in a Substack post after Friday’s market close. Puts typically gain value as the price of the underlying asset falls. Burry, who revealed bearish bets against AI chipmaker Corp. and Inc. in November, also took a direct short position on Oracle over the past six months, he said.
Oracle is known for its database software but has recently made an aggressive push into cloud-computing services, requiring a costly expansion of data center capacity—something it is funding with significant debt.
“I don’t like its positioning or the investments it’s making. It didn’t need to do what it’s doing, and I don’t know why it is. Maybe ego,” Burry wrote in response to a reader who asked why he had chosen to bet against Nvidia instead of Oracle. He didn’t share details about the put options.
This view follows a volatile year for Oracle’s stock. The share price surged 36% in a single session in September after the company issued a bullish forecast for its cloud business, signaling surging demand tied to artificial intelligence. Those gains quickly faded, however, as investors focused on rising capital expenditures, questions about the structure of some cloud deals and a growing debt load linked to data-center expansion. Oracle ended the year roughly 40% below its September peak.
Oracle has about in outstanding debt, making it the largest corporate issuer outside the financial sector in the Bloomberg high-grade index. The company didn’t respond immediately to a request for comment outside regular business hours.
Burry, who rose to fame for betting against the U.S. housing market during the 2008 financial crisis, said he has avoided shorting larger technology companies whose businesses extend well beyond AI, citing Inc., Alphabet Inc. and Corp. as examples.
“If I short Meta, I’m also shorting its dominance in social media and advertising. If I short Alphabet, I’m shorting Search in all its forms, Android, Waymo, etc. If I short Microsoft, I’m shorting a global office productivity SaaS leader,” Burry wrote. “The big ones aren’t pure AI shorts.”
Those companies, he noted, are likely to rein in spending over time, absorb losses from overbuilt capacity and potentially write down assets—while staying dominant in their core businesses. “These three won’t go away,” he added.
He said he would short OpenAI at a $500 billion valuation, underscoring his broader skepticism about the pace and economics of the AI buildout.
Burry described Nvidia as the most concentrated way to express a bearish view on the artificial intelligence trade.
“Nvidia is also the most loved and least doubted,” he wrote. “So shorting it is cheap, and its puts are cheaper than some of the other big shorts out there that are more doubted.”