Michael Burry Just Called Nvidia’s SpaceX Chip Deal ‘Fugazi.’ Here’s Why It All Seems Wrong
Key takeaways
- The analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks.
- Investors have watched Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) ride the AI wave to extraordinary heights, with data center revenue exploding in recent years.
- Michael Burry, the investor who foresaw the 2008 housing crisis, took to his Cassandra Unchained Substack and X to label a major Nvidia chip transaction with xAI "fugazi" -- his term for something fake or contrived.
Michael Burry Just Called Nvidia’s Space X Chip Deal ‘Fugazi.’ Here’s Why It All Seems Wrong Rich Duprey Mon, June 1, 2026 at 10:45 PM GMT+7 6 min read NVDA CSCO APO SPAX.PVT Quick Read Nvidia (NVDA) booked $5.4B in revenue from selling GB200 GPUs to Valor Compute Infrastructure, which then leased them to x AI, with Nvidia itself investing $1.9B as an anchor equity partner in the structure, allowing both companies to avoid balance sheet impact while capturing upside. Apollo Global Management (APO) provided $3.5B in debt financing routed through insurance affiliate Athene, which holds $74.2B in U.S. reserves but shifted $217B into a Bermuda captive insurer with 34.7% in Level 3 illiquid assets and 16x leverage, ultimately exposing retail annuity holders to concentrated credit risk.
Michael Burry warns that multi-layered AI infrastructure financing structures, while legal, obscure true economic risks behind complex arrangements similar to Cisco’s dot-com era accounting, as these deals multiply across the AI buildout and could amplify losses if demand weakens or hardware becomes obsolete.
The analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks. Get them here FREE.