Nvidia's rebuttal to Michael Burry's criticism (www.businessinsider.com)

Nvidia has issued a direct rebuttal to investor Michael Burry after he publicly criticized the company’s stock-based compensation and cast doubt on the sustainability of the AI boom. In a note to Wall Street analysts—cited by Business Insider and Barron’s—Nvidia named Burry and pushed back on his specific numbers, saying the company repurchased $91 billion of shares since 2018 (not $112.5 billion), and alleging Burry improperly included RSU tax impacts. Nvidia argued employee equity grants shouldn’t be conflated with its share repurchase program, that compensation is in line with peers, and that Burry’s broader claims (which he plans to expand on via his new Substack after closing outside capital at Scion Asset Management) omit necessary context. Beyond the headline dispute, Nvidia’s memo addresses bigger reputational and market issues: it rejects comparisons to historical accounting frauds, defends the economic soundness and transparency of its reporting, and says its strategic investments are a small sliver of revenue and global private capital flows—while portfolio companies largely sell to third parties, not depend on Nvidia. The exchange matters for the AI/ML community because investor scrutiny is shifting from hype to fundamentals: questions about buybacks, compensation dilution, circular financing, and the pace of high-end GPU depreciation are now influencing valuation models, governance debates, and how firms disclose AI-related investments and hardware lifecycles.