Michael Burry Doubles Down Against Palantir as Politics and Retail Traders Collide With AI Valuation Fears

Burry said he has been short Palantir since the fall of 2025 and has rolled that view into June 17, 2027 $50 puts and December 18, 2026 $100 puts, adding that he was not selling on April 10. The timing mattered because Trump had just posted support for Palantir’s “war fighting capabilities,” helping stabilize the shares intraday and triggering what market-tracking data described as the biggest 10-minute burst of retail net buying in the stock this year. Even so, the rebound was limited, showing that political endorsement could draw attention but not fully reset investor concerns around price and competition.

What makes the story more than a personality clash is that Palantir’s underlying business has kept producing the kind of numbers that usually justify enthusiasm. The company said fourth-quarter 2025 revenue grew 70% year over year, U.S. commercial revenue rose 137%, and full-year 2026 revenue guidance implied 61% growth, reinforcing the view that Palantir is one of the rare software names turning AI demand into large-scale commercial and government contracts. That operating strength is exactly why the stock became such a crowded momentum trade in the first place.

At the same time, Palantir’s own filings make clear that a significant portion of its business still depends on government contracts and continued success in public-sector procurement. The company warns that changes in fiscal priorities, contracting delays, budget shifts, or political transitions can materially affect growth. In other words, while investors often frame Palantir as a pure AI winner, the business still carries a meaningful layer of policy and procurement risk that is different from consumer-facing or usage-based software platforms.

That tension explains why the stock remains so polarizing. Palantir was trading around $128 with a market capitalization above $432 billion and a price-to-earnings ratio near 395 at the latest available quote, while market coverage also noted the shares were still roughly 38% below their November peak despite Trump’s intervention. Burry’s trade, then, is not really a claim that Palantir lacks real business momentum. It is a much narrower argument that the market has attached an extreme premium to that momentum, and that once valuation, crowd positioning, and AI competition are all priced together, even a great company can still be an overextended stock.