Michael Burry likens Nvidia’s AI boom to 1960s computer leasing bubble

Famed investor Michael Burry on Thursday drew a historical parallel between the ongoing exuberance over Nvidia’s NVDA GPU valuations and the speculative frenzy of the 1960s computer leasing bubble.

Burry addressed a Sept. 27th Nvidia NVDA investor presentation that featured a slide titled “NVIDIA AI Infrastructure Retains Value Beyond Accelerated Depreciation Schedules.” The chart plots the retained value of Nvidia’s A100, H100, and B200 chips against a standard five-year accelerated depreciation curve, implying that companies are over-depreciating their chip investments.

While Nvidia NVDA bulls, such as author Tae Kim, celebrated the slide as a definitive blow against “depreciation bears,” Burry—a known critic of these rapid chip depreciation schedules—framed the corporate defense as a repetition of past market delusions.

To illustrate his point, Burry excerpted the 1968-published financial book “The Money Game.” In the provided passages, a seasoned critic questions how fast computers are written off, only to be mocked by a “super-speculator” named The Great Winfield and young traders who dismiss the depreciation concerns as middle-aged and antiquated.

The ’60s traders justified their investments in computer leasing stocks by claiming the “need for computers is practically infinite” and brushing off concerns about high earnings multiples as the older generation failing to grasp the “New Market” and “New Economics.”

By directly comparing the contemporary Nvidia NVDA…