‘Big Short’ Star Michael Burry Says Tesla’s Stock Is “Ridiculously Overvalued” — Again

With input from Business Insider and Quartz.

Michael Burry is back in market-skeptic mode, and this time he’s taking fresh aim at Elon Musk’s electric-car empire.

In a new post on his Substack, the investor made famous by The Big Short calls Tesla “ridiculously overvalued” and accuses Musk’s pay deal of quietly eating into shareholders’ slice of the pie.

“Tesla’s market capitalization is ridiculously overvalued today and has been for a good long time,” Burry wrote, adding that he expects Musk’s $1 trillion compensation package to keep diluting existing shareholders.

Burry has been on a mini-tour of tech skepticism lately.

• He’s already disclosed big bearish options positions against Nvidia and Palantir, betting that the current AI mania is a bubble in the making.
• He recently deregistered his hedge fund and launched a Substack, where he’s been using long posts instead of cryptic tweets to lay out his concerns about frothy valuations and the “AI everything” narrative.

Tesla is a familiar target. Back in 2021, Burry placed a sizable bet against roughly $530 million worth of Tesla shares, a position he later closed and described as “just a trade.” The stock, of course, kept running.

Now, with Tesla once again priced like a tech rocket ship rather than a car company, Burry’s circling back.

In his latest post, Burry doesn’t just question Tesla’s valuation — he goes after what he calls the “Elon cult” and the shifting story around the company.

He argues that Tesla’s most loyal fans keep jumping to the next big promise whenever reality catches up with the last one:

• First, it was all about electric cars — until serious competition from legacy automakers and Chinese EV players arrived.
• Then it was all about self-driving — until rivals like Waymo, Cruise and others showed up with their own tech.
• Now, it’s all about robots and robotaxis — a future where Tesla is supposedly an AI and robotics giant, not just an automaker.

That narrative shift, Burry suggests, is doing a lot of work to justify a valuation he thinks is already stretched to the breaking point.

Tesla’s stock still trades like a high-growth tech darling, not a cyclical manufacturer:

• The shares change hands at well over 250 times earnings, a multiple far above traditional automakers.
• Fellow short-seller Jim Chanos has also called Tesla overvalued in the past, making Burry far from alone on that front.

Layered on top of that is Musk’s massive new pay package. Tesla shareholders recently approved a compensation plan that could be worth up to $1 trillion if the company hits aggressive milestones — including a long-term market-cap target of about $8.5 trillion, nearly double Nvidia’s valuation.

Burry’s worry: to make that package real, Tesla will likely have to keep issuing more stock, chipping away at the ownership stake of existing shareholders.

In his view, investors are paying a sky-high price for a company that:

• Already has a huge valuation baked in;
• Could further dilute them to fund that vision;
• Faces rising competition in every “next big thing” it promises.

Despite the skeptics, Tesla’s stock has risen about 11% in 2025, helped by optimism around its robotaxi rollout and its Optimus humanoid robot program.

Musk has repeatedly blasted short-sellers and critics, insisting Tesla will eventually become the most valuable company in the world. He’s pitched Tesla not just as an EV maker, but as:

• A full-stack AI company;
• A leader in autonomous driving;
• A future robotics powerhouse.

On the ground, Tesla still dominates the US EV market with roughly 41% share as of August. But that grip has loosened as traditional carmakers and Chinese brands pump out more electric models and undercut Tesla on price.

And on the robotaxis and robots front, Tesla isn’t alone there either:

• Waymo and other autonomous-driving firms are already running pilot programs.
• Chinese robotics outfits like Unitree are pushing their own humanoid machines into the spotlight.

Burry has leaned into the role of market Cassandra — the prophet who warns of disaster and is ignored until it’s too late.

His Substack, big shorts against AI darlings, and now his broadside against Tesla all fit into a larger story he’s trying to tell: that markets are once again paying bubble prices for big dreams, assuming growth will be smooth and endless.

For now, Tesla’s faithful still believe the legend: robotaxis on every corner, humanoid robots in every factory, and an $8.5 trillion valuation to match.

Burry is betting that when the story is finally written, the reality will look a lot smaller than the myth on the way up — and that today’s “ridiculously overvalued” price will be remembered as another warning investors chose to ignore.