On Tuesday morning, Palantir Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:PLTR) CEO Alex Karp criticized short-sellers and pointed directly at investor "Big Short" Michael Burry.
- PLTR stock is down. See the real-time price action here.
A new filing disclosed Monday evening that Burry's hedge fund Scion Asset Management had wagered against both Palantir and Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA) in the third quarter.
Read Next: Michael Burry Is Super-Bearish On Palantir — With 5 Million Puts
Karp Rants
Speaking on CNBC's "Squawk Box," Karp said it was strange that the companies generating most of the profits were being targeted, adding that betting against firms driving the AI sector was irrational.
"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."
According to the SEC filing, Burry's Scion Asset Management held put options valued at about $187 million against Nvidia and roughly $912 million against Palantir as of September 30. The document didn't disclose the contracts' strike prices or expiration dates.
"I do think these [short-sellers] behavior is egregious and I'm going to be dancing around when it's proven wrong," Karp said.
PLTR, NVDA Slip
The short-sellers were not proven wrong on Tuesday morning — Palantir's stock fell 7% despite outperforming Wall Street expectations for the third quarter and issuing positive guidance. Nvidia shares also slipped by nearly 2%.
It's uncertain whether Burry benefited from Tuesday's sell-off since the filing reflected his positions as of September’s end and could have changed since.
The revelation followed a cryptic post on X last week in which Burry warned investors about potential market bubbles, writing that sometimes "the only winning move is not to play."
Just before Burry's massive bearish positions were disclosed on Monday, he returned to X with a post referencing an AI bubble and Star Wars.
“These aren’t the charts you are looking for. You can go about your business,” Burry said in the post.
The charts he posted compare Cloud segment growth for Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft in 2018 through 2022 with the present period. Another showed the web of AI deals among Nvidia, OpenAI, Oracle Corp. (NYSE:ORCL), and other big tech companies.
A third chart shows AI capex matching the tech spending of the 1999-2000 tech bubble.
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Photo: Created by Midjourney
