Big Short investor Michael Burry has bet against AI and defence technology stock Palantir, much to the apparent displeasure of company chief executive Alex Karp.
Burry’s bets – regulatory filings show short positions against Palantir and Nvidia – are “batshit crazy”, said Karp.
Perhaps. Shorting is a risky business and shorting momentum stocks such as Palantir is especially hazardous. Not that Karp is concerned about the welfare of Burry and other shorts.
“These people claim to be ethical; they are actually shorting one of the best businesses in the world,” he said. “Pick something that is not doing a noble task.” Such behaviour is “egregious, and I am going to be dancing around when it’s proven wrong”.
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Not everyone agrees that Palantir, which does work for Israel’s military and the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), is “noble”, but let’s leave that aside.
Even if one agrees it’s “one of the world’s great businesses”, that doesn’t necessarily make it a good stock – hence the old expression on Wall Street, “great company, bad stock”.
Even after the recent dip, Palantir is up 150 per cent in 2025 and is valued at almost $450 billion (€390 billion). It trades on more than 200 times estimated earnings. Little wonder Jefferies released a note titled “Numbers are great, valuation is extreme”.
Karp has little patience for such nuance, judging by the company’s latest earnings call. Analysts and critics have been “wrong at every price”, jealous and hopelessly out of touch, he said.
His hostility toward supposedly elitist critics – “We were right, you were wrong”, “Get some popcorn, they’re crying” – plays perfectly into his populist narrative. Karp seems to imply the stock can’t be too expensive, a notion that resonates more with Palantir’s partisan retail investors than with logic.
