Michael Burry says he's shorting Caterpillar for the first time after it nearly doubled in the AI-driven rally of 2026

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Michael Burry attends "The Big Short" New York screening Ziegfeld Theater on Nov. 23, 2015, in New York City.

Astrid Stawiarz | Getty Images

Michael Burry said Tuesday he has placed a bearish wager against Caterpillar, believing the construction-equipment maker has become one of the market's most overvalued beneficiaries of the artificial intelligence investment boom.

The famed investor said he shorted Caterpillar shares at $1,060.98, alongside new bearish positions in Nvidia, Applied Materials, Tesla and the iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX), as he prepared for what he believes is an increasingly overextended rally in AI-linked stocks.

"Caterpillar jumped out at me," Burry wrote in a Tuesday SubStack post. "I have never shorted Caterpillar. It has always done great for me on the long side in the past."

Caterpillar shares just capped off the first half of 2026 with an 86% gain, making the construction equipment giant one of the best-performing stocks in the S&P 500 this year as investors increasingly embraced it as a proxy for the global AI infrastructure buildout.

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Caterpillar year to date

Burry said Caterpillar's stock valuation has reached levels that caught his attention. He shared a chart showing Caterpillar's price-to-sales ratio climbing to the highest level in at least three decades at the same time as the stock surged to record highs.

The investor, who famously predicted and profited from the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008, also reiterated his broader concerns about semiconductor valuations. He said the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index is trading about 65% above its 200-day moving average, a level he said was only reached previously during the dot-com bubble in 2000.

"The proximate cause of today's rally is big spending announced out of Korea. Well, I see that as the beginning of the end," Burry said. "It is only a matter of time now."

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