'The future will regard this a picture of fraud': “Big Short” Investor Michael Burry slams Nvidia’s Q3 results

Michael Burry, the contrarian investor made famous by The Big Short, is once again aiming at Nvidia and the runaway AI boom, even as the chipmaking giant reports record-shattering earnings and forecasts explosive growth ahead.

Michael Burry's concerns

Nvidia’s latest quarterly results revealed all-time-high revenue and profit, sending shares soaring more than 5% after hours. But while Wall Street cheered, Burry issued a stark warning. In a detailed post on X, he argued that Nvidia’s soaring valuation masks what he sees as troubling accounting choices and unsustainable industry dynamics.

Burry highlighted Nvidia’s massive stock-based compensation (SBC) program, noting that while the company disclosed $20.5 billion in SBC since 2018, it spent $112.5 billion on stock buybacks, and it still ended up with 47 million more shares outstanding.

“The true cost of that SBC dilution was $112.5B, reducing owner’s earnings by 50%,” he wrote, calling the practice a hidden drain on shareholder value.

His critique goes further than Nvidia. Sharing a Bloomberg chart mapping more than $1 trillion in intertwined AI investments across OpenAI, Microsoft, AMD, Oracle, CoreWeave, xAI, Mistral and others, Burry claimed the sector is inflating a web of “give-and-take deals” that obscure real demand. “The future will regard this a picture of fraud, not a flywheel,” he warned, adding that “true end demand is ridiculously small.”

Since the beginning of 2018, NVDA earned about $205B net income and $188B free cash flow, assuming all cap ex was growth cap ex.
SBC amounted to $20.5B.
But it bought back $112.5B worth of stock and there are 47 million MORE shares outstanding.
The true cost of that SBC dilution… pic.twitter.com/u8VhZyokrB

— Cassandra Unchained (@michaeljburry) November 20, 2025

Jensen Huang dismisses AI bubble

Nvidia executives pushed back forcefully. CFO Colette Kress said the company has “visibility to $0.5 trillion” in upcoming Blackwell and Rubin chip revenue and expects a $3 trillion to $4 trillion annual AI infrastructure build by 2030.

CEO Jensen Huang dismissed AI bubble fears altogether, claiming, “From our vantage point, we see something very different.”

However, Burry remains unconvinced as the AI frenzy intensifies. He believes the risks are growing just as fast.

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