Burry’s Oracle Short Reveals: Why Traditional Data Giants Are Crypto’s Next Target

Michael Burry just put Oracle in his crosshairs—and the move screams more about the future of finance than any earnings report ever could.

The Data Dilemma

For decades, giants like Oracle built impregnable fortresses around corporate data. They sold the locks, keys, and security systems, charging a king's ransom for the privilege. It was a brilliant, high-margin racket—until a new model emerged that didn't need permission.

Enter the blockchain. Public ledgers like Ethereum and Solana don't just store data; they verify it transparently and immutably. Need a price feed, a shipment confirmation, or proof of ownership? A decentralized oracle network like Chainlink pulls it directly on-chain, bypassing the legacy gatekeepers entirely. No more multi-year enterprise contracts. No more vendor lock-in. Just code-executed truth.

The Financial Fallout

Burry's bet isn't about Oracle's next quarter. It's a wager that the trillion-dollar data infrastructure market is ripe for disruption. Why pay Oracle millions when a smart contract can source, verify, and pay for data autonomously with crypto? The value is shifting from hoarding information to guaranteeing its integrity in real-time—a service crypto networks are architecturally built to provide.

This is where the cynical jab fits: Wall Street still thinks 'cloud migration' is cutting-edge. Meanwhile, the real revolution is building a global, trustless settlement layer that makes their entire data-vendor complex look like a slow, expensive relic.

Oracle might weather this storm for years on existing contracts. But the writing is on the blockchain. The old world of centralized data control is being shorted—not just by a famous investor, but by the very architecture of the next financial system.

Burry explains why Oracle is on his short list

“I do not like how it is positioned or the investments it is making. It did not need to do what it is doing, and I do not know why it is doing this. Maybe ego,” Burry wrote when a reader asked why he’d shorted Nvidia and not Oracle. It turns out he was doing both. He didn’t exactly say how big the bet was, but the message was he thinks Oracle’s AI push is reckless.

Oracle has gone all-in on cloud services, trying to keep up with Microsoft and Amazon. That means building out data centers stuffed with Nvidia chips, and that’s costing a fortune. Oracle has borrowed like crazy. The company now sits on $95 billion in debt, making it the biggest corporate borrower outside the financial sector in Bloomberg’s high-grade index.

Investors loved the idea at first. Oracle’s stock jumped 36% in a day back in September after it gave a bullish forecast tied to its cloud and AI plans.

But reality didn’t play along. Costs piled up. Doubts spread about its cloud contracts. And the debt kept climbing. The stock gave up all those gains and ended the year down 40% from that September peak.

Oracle reshuffles leadership as AI costs grow

The company’s boardroom is also changing. Two long-time directors (George Conrades and Naomi Seligman) are retiring. Conrades ran Akamai in the past. Seligman is a senior partner at tech research firm Ostriker von Simson. Oracle said there was no dispute involved. The board now has 12 members.

Meanwhile, Safra Catz is out as CEO. Oracle replaced her with Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia, two execs tasked with speeding up data center rollouts for clients like OpenAI and xAI. The plan is to keep buying Nvidia’s chips and run large-scale AI models for outside firms.

While Burry is avoiding shorts on Meta, Alphabet, and Microsoft, he says those giants aren’t pure AI bets. “If I short Meta, I’m also shorting its social media and advertising dominance,” he wrote. “The big ones are not pure shorts on AI.”

He said they’ll cut spending eventually and stay dominant, even if they overbuilt. “These three will not go away,” he added.

But he’d happily short OpenAI at a $500 billion valuation. For him, Nvidia is still the clearest way to bet against the AI bubble. “Nvidia also is the most loved, and least doubted,” Burry wrote. “So shorting it is cheap, and its puts are cheaper than some of the other big shorts out there that are more doubted.”

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