Burry Adds to Micron and Nebius Shorts, Backing Acer's CEO Against the Memory Kings

Michael Burry said Tuesday he has added to shorts in Micron, Nebius, the iShares Semiconductor ETF and Palantir, doing it, in his words, "in some size" ¹. Scion Asset Management is gone; the disclosure came on his Substack↗, where he has run the Micron leg as an outright short since entering near $1,051 in late June, after deciding the puts were too expensive ¹.

The tape answered with a bid: Micron rose about 4.75% on the day ¹. His framing stayed careful. "Interpreting this news ... is fraught," he wrote of the Acer interview behind it. "Nevertheless, it aligns with what I believe to be true" ¹.

The charge, in some size

Three men who sell memory say the shortage runs to 2030 or beyond. The man who buys it for a living says supply caught up months ago. That is the trade. Burry's evidence is Acer chief executive Jason Chen, who told DigiTimes reporters↗ that inventories are building, mainland Chinese suppliers are releasing volume, and real scarcity is now confined to the fastest DDR5 modules and a few CPUs ¹²³. Chen expects PC prices to rise 5% to 20% by year-end, peak in the first half of 2027, then decline as cheaper CXMT supply lands; the longer timelines, he says, are margin defense: "prices won't come down until the year 20-whatever" ².

The camp that owns the tape

Micron's Sanjay Mehrotra sees tight supply beyond 2027, SK hynix's Kwak Noh-Jung sees shortages peaking in 2027 and staying tight through 2030, and Adata's chairman prices in another decade ³. Their receipts are real: DRAM prices have risen roughly fivefold in a year ²³, and SK hynix holds 58% of global HBM revenue with about $38.3 billion committed through 2031 ⁴. Kwak has called 2027 the industry's worst year↗ "from the supply perspective", even with output expected to grow 12% ⁵.

Who pays if the buyer is right

Micron's May quarter booked $41.5 billion of revenue, more than quadruple a year earlier, at an 84.6% gross margin, with roughly $50 billion guided for the current quarter ⁶⁷. Scarcity is a transfer mechanism: while memory is short, hyperscaler and PC capex flows into memory margins and into neocloud rental rates, the transfer The Inference traced Monday in "Memory Is Eating the AI Boom".

Normalize supply and the flow reverses, back to the buyers, with Acer's own bill of materials first in line; an 84.6% margin is temporary on Chen's timeline ². Nebius is the same wager a link down the chain: $5.65 billion of capex against $582 million of revenue last quarter ⁸, rental economics premised on GPUs staying scarce and dear.

What decides it

The disagreement is now priced, 2027 against 2030, and Micron's next print against that $50 billion guide is the first reading. The supply side feeds both camps: YMTC just won two German patent injunctions against Micron↗ ⁹¹⁰, CXMT is lifting DRAM dies-per-wafer by 50%↗ ¹⁰, and Kwak publicly commits to HBM leadership ¹⁰. Someone's model of the memory cycle is wrong, in some size.