Burry's Timeless Investing Question for AI Boom

Michael Burry, known for his role in predicting the housing crash and the financial crisis of 2008, has shared an important investing lesson from his past. In a recent interview with venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, Burry revisited his early years growing up in Silicon Valley after high school. He won an IBM Thomas J. Watson Scholarship that funded his tuition at UCLA and secured summer internships at the company's research facilities in Silicon Valley.

Burry spent his summers hunting for discounted computer parts, building custom PCs, and participating in the pre-internet bulletin board system community. This experience greatly informed his interpretation of the dot-com bubble and has remained relevant across multiple technology booms.

The investing lesson that stayed with Burry is to ask 'What will the ROIC be?' when companies undertake massive spending campaigns. He believes this timeless theme remains relevant today, particularly in the context of AI infrastructure investment. This echoes the debate surrounding today's investment boom, where investors are questioning whether the high costs of developing and deploying AI justify its potential returns.