- Michael Burry claims that NVIDIA’s stock-based compensation dilution since 2018 may be much greater than reported, potentially reducing earnings by 50%.
- Burry highlights “circular deals” and suspicious revenue recognition within the Artificial Intelligence sector’s major companies, including Microsoft, OpenAI, and Oracle.
- There are concerns about inflated demand and financial complexity in the AI sector, with Burry calling some arrangements “a picture of fraud.”
- Burry also notes that increasing the reported useful life of AI assets may artificially boost profits for hyperscalers like Oracle, Meta, and Baidu.
Michael Burry, renowned for his role in predicting the 2018 housing market collapse, has voiced concerns about an emerging bubble in artificial intelligence stocks. Ahead of his venture’s launch on November 25, Burry shared his critical views regarding Nvidia’s accounting methods and sector practices during the company’s recent quarterly results period.
Burry alleges that Nvidia’s actual cost of stock-based compensation dilution since 2018 is around $112.5 billion, significantly higher than the $20.5 billion the company reported. Stock-based compensation refers to non-cash payments to employees in the form of shares or options. According to Burry, this difference may have cut Nvidia’s earnings for the period by as much as 50% (Burry’s post). Some social media responses suggest Burry may be double-counting the effects of dilution.
Sharing a chart that illustrated the interconnected financial arrangements in artificial intelligence, Burry described what he views as “circular deals” in the industry involving more than $1 trillion. Companies named in these cycles include Nvidia, Microsoft, AMD, Oracle, CoreWeave, Elon Musk’s xAI, and others. Burry stated, “Every company listed below has suspicious revenue recognition. The actual chart with ALL the give-and-take deals would be unreadable. The future will regard this a picture of fraud, not a flywheel.”
The concept of a circular deal, as Burry describes, involves two or more companies exchanging money in a closed loop. One recent example involves Anthropic, an AI startup supported by Amazon, which agreed to purchase $30 billion in cloud capacity from Microsoft Azure, while Nvidia and Microsoft invested up to $10 billion and $5 billion, respectively, in Anthropic.
Additionally, Burry has questioned the industry’s practice of extending the useful life of AI infrastructure assets, which can reduce depreciation expenses and artificially boost profits. He argues that having older chips in use does not equate to ongoing value creation and pointed out that Nvidia’s A100s consume two to three times more power than newer models, further challenging the logic of these financial treatments.
Despite these criticisms, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang addressed investor concerns by stating that the company’s balance sheet is strong enough to support its partners and that all investments are intended to expand the reach of its CUDA systems.
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