The famed investor who predicted the 2008 crash warns of a new “bubble” as he shorts Nvidia and Palantir.

Michael Burry — the investor immortalized in The Big Short movie for calling the 2008 housing market collapse — is betting big against artificial intelligence, warning that the frenzy around the technology may soon burst.

After a two-year hiatus from social media, Burry returned to X last week to sound the alarm on what he described as an AI “bubble,” posting cryptic memes and movie references to make his point.

“Sometimes, we see bubbles. Sometimes, there is something to do about it. Sometimes, the only winning move is not to play,” he wrote alongside an image of actor Christian Bale portraying him in The Big Short.

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Days later, a Securities and Exchange Commission filing revealed that Burry’s Scion Asset Management purchased roughly $187.6 million in puts on Nvidia and $912 million in puts on Palantir — bets that the share prices of two of AI’s biggest players will fall.

In subsequent posts, Burry shared three charts illustrating his bearish outlook: slowing growth at Amazon, Alphabet, and Microsoft’s cloud-computing divisions; surging tech sector capital expenditures reminiscent of pre-crash peaks in 2000 and 2008; and what he described as “circular dealmaking” between AI firms like Nvidia.

While Burry’s past warnings have sometimes missed the mark — he tweeted “Sell” in early 2023, later admitting, “I was wrong to say sell” — his pronouncements continue to sway markets.

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Following his latest disclosure, Palantir shares plunged 7.95% on Tuesday, their worst drop since August, while Nvidia fell 3.9%. Other tech giants, including Oracle, Microsoft, and Apple, also traded lower.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp dismissed Burry’s pessimism in an interview: “The two companies he’s shorting are the ones making all the money, which is super weird,” Karp said. “The idea that chips and ontology is what you want to short is bats*** crazy.”

Despite the criticism, Burry appears unfazed — signaling that, in his view, the AI boom is looking more like a bubble ready to burst than the dawn of a new era.

Earlier this year, Caleb Maresca, a researcher at New York University, issued a stark warning: the growing excitement around artificial intelligence could destabilize the U.S. economy before AI even reaches its full potential.

The economist argueed in a study that mere expectations of AI-driven automation could send wages plummeting, drive interest rates to extreme levels, and widen the wealth gap to dangerous levels. The dream of AI easing human labor is a utopia, he noted.