Investor Michael Burry, the contrarian made famous by his housing-crash bet, has increased his stake in Alibaba and is publicly framing the Chinese giant as a leading artificial intelligence play.
According to Yahoo Finance, Burry has called Alibaba China's "most advanced" AI company. He argues the stock remains undervalued, and points to the company's share buybacks as a way it is boosting shareholder value even though, in his view, the market has yet to fully recognize that.
The Yahoo Finance report notes that Alibaba's cloud and AI businesses have posted strong growth. Yet despite that momentum, the stock — which trades under the ticker BABA — has stayed, as the headline puts it, "stuck in the mud," lagging the kind of enthusiasm investors have shown for other AI names.
That gap between business performance and stock price is the heart of Burry's thesis: a company growing in a hot sector, buying back its own shares, but not getting credit for it from the market.
Why it matters: When a high-profile contrarian investor publicly doubles down on a beaten-down stock and ties it to the AI boom, it signals a bet that the market is mispricing China's role in the global AI race — and gives ordinary investors a closely watched name to weigh.