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What if the man who predicted the 2008 crash and made hundreds of millions from it quietly builds positions in technology companies that the rest of Wall Street has abandoned? While everyone is chasing artificial intelligence hyperscalers, Michael Bury is doing the opposite. He buys up depreciated shares of software developers, payment systems, and Chinese e-commerce platforms that the market has already written off .
And the latest financial figures for 2026 show why his conviction may be more justified than the hype of the crowd. This is not another story about Bury again playing to drive Nvidia shares lower. This is the other side of the trade—the portfolio of assets he builds while the AI bubble narrative dominates all the headlines.
Scion Asset Management no longer exists. Bury now trades with his own capital and reveals his moves on his Substack. The pattern is obvious. He plays bearish on AI infrastructure companies and selectively buys high-quality technology businesses that trade at valuations that seem disconnected from their ability to generate money.
A major market opportunity lies in the capital rotation that always follows a period of excessive concentration. Capital has been pouring into a limited number of semiconductor manufacturers and AI software developers for years. Valuations have inflated, financing has become cyclical, and expectations of endless capital spending growth have reached levels last seen in the late 1990s.
Bury openly warned of this risk. At the same time, he secretly accumulated assets that provided real income, efficient free cash flow conversion, and share buyback programs, while trading for shares of his historical multiples. Three of these technological positions stand out in particular in his recent revelations.
The first is Adobe. ADBE, let's start with Adobe. In June 2026, Bury increased his position in the $190 range after the stock had already fallen nearly half its peak. The market's fears were simple: generative AI would devalue creative software. However, the real numbers say otherwise. In the second quarter of fiscal 2026, Adobe generated record revenue of $6.62 billion, up 13% year-over-year and 11% in constant currency.
Non-GAAP earnings per share were $5.96, up 18%. Total annual recurring revenue at the end of the quarter was $27.10 billion , including the Semrush acquisition. Subscription revenue accounted for 97% of total revenue. Cash from operating activities for this quarter alone was $2.77 billion. Management raised its annual revenue forecast for fiscal 2026 to $26.5 billion–$26.6 billion , and EPS (non- GAAP) to 24.35–24.45 cents .
AI metrics have more than tripled year-on-year and exceeded $500 million. Gross profit remains near historical highs. Bury's thesis is that the market has already priced in the consequences of irreversible changes, while the company continues to grow high-quality income and return capital through aggressive share buybacks.
This is classic mathematics of deep software value, not hype. The second is PayPal. PYPL moves from creative software to digital payments, the next name is PayPal. Berry described it as a normal to full position and continued to build it even as the stock was near multi-year lows. Management changes and competitive noise from Apple Pay, Stripe, and others have created a narrative that PayPal is structurally weakened.
The results of the second quarter of 2026 decisively refuted this story. Net income reached $8.68 billion, up 5% from last year. Total payments reached $486.4 billion, up 10%, or 9% excluding currency fluctuations. Non-GAAP earnings per share of $1.38 beat expectations. The dollar figure for transaction margin, excluding interest on customer account balances, increased by 3%.
Free cash flow remained robust, allowing the company to return $1.5 billion through share buybacks in the quarter alone. The forecast for the whole year was raised. Non- GAAP EPS target is now around $5.38, and dollar margin from transactions is around $15.6 billion. Berry pointed to a combination of ongoing share buybacks, a clear cost transformation program that projects at least $1.5 billion in annual savings, and a valuation that has in some places been squeezed into high single-digit earnings multiples.
In his opinion, competitive threats are already factored into the price, while the cash flow engine and capital return policy are not. Three, jd.com . JD, the third position related to technology, is jd.com. Berry shifted capital from Alibaba to JD and continued to add at a price of around $20, arguing that the sell-off in Hong Kong and China was driven by technical capital flows—money chasing semiconductors in South Korea and Japan—rather than fundamental deterioration.
The results of the first quarter of 2026 confirm this distinction. Net income increased by 4.9% to 315.7 billion yuan. JD Retail achieved a record operating profit of 15.0 billion yuan with an operating margin of 5.6 %, up from 4.9% a year earlier. Gross margin increased by 90 basis points. The number of active customers per year and the frequency of purchases increased by more than 20% and 37%, respectively.
Non-GAAP net profit attributable to common shareholders was 7.4 billion yuan. The company continues to generate substantial free cash flow and returns capital through share repurchases and dividends. Berry's view is that when the hype around AI memory eventually dies down , capital can return to high-quality Chinese platforms, which still trade at low single-digit sales multiples and mid- teens earnings multiples, while expanding margins and user acquisition.
These three positions have one thing in common . Each is a technology-based business with enduring competitive advantages, strong revenue from recurring or high-frequency transactions, and management teams that return capital to shareholders. Each has been punished by a market obsessed with a single narrative— generative AI infrastructure— while underlying financials continue to rise .
Adobe's AI successes , PayPal's recovery in payment volumes and free cash flow conversion, and JD's growth in retail margins and customer base are not the topics that dominate the financial media. That's why Berry is buying up their shares. The risk is obvious. If the AI spending cycle lasts longer and yields more profits than Berry expects, his short positions will suffer , and his long positions could lag behind.
However, the asymmetry he is betting on is the same one that made the “ Great Game of Downgrades” famous. When the market consensus becomes excessive, quietly accumulating quality assets at undervalued prices can yield huge profits once the narrative changes. The latest financial reports from Adobe, PayPal, and JD.com for 2026 show that businesses continue to grow, generate cash, and repurchase shares, despite skepticism about their value.
Berry has never been a trend-following investor. He studies cycles, balances, and human psychology. Right now, market psychology is completely focused on AI, and nothing else. The financial performance of these three technology companies suggests that the market may have over- adjusted their price. Time will tell whether this thesis will work, but the data is no longer theoretical.
They are reflected in the income and cash flow statements for the 2026 fiscal year. For investors willing to look beyond the headlines, this is where a real opportunity may be forming.
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