Michael Burry buys Microsoft LEAP calls targeting 2028 gains

Michael Burry, via his Scion Asset Management Substack, disclosed on June 25, 2026 that he bought Microsoft December 2028 LEAP call options with strike prices in the low $700s, roughly double Microsoft's trading range of $350-$373 at the time. He said he views $350 as a good entry point for the common stock but chose the options because he considered them "inexpensive" relative to his outlook. The same disclosure showed Burry adding to JD.com and Adobe positions, exiting Alibaba for tax-loss reasons, and covering half of his Palantir short at $107.15 while keeping the puts. Microsoft shares, which had just posted their worst drawdown of the year, rallied more than 4% intraday and closed up 5.71% on June 26, per TIKR data, with GuruFocus separately reporting a roughly 1% pre-market bump to $356.30 immediately after the news broke.

Because Scion Asset Management no longer files Form 13F reports with the SEC (it fell below the $100 million reporting threshold and deregistered in November 2025), there is no regulatory filing to confirm contract count or capital committed. Multiple outlets, including Yahoo Finance and 24/7 Wall St, note explicitly that the trade could represent anything from a small speculative position to a major allocation - nobody outside Scion knows. That uncertainty matters for how much weight to put on this as a market signal: LEAPs are inherently leveraged and can lose their full value if Microsoft fails to clear the $700 strike plus premium by December 2028.

The disclosure lands alongside Microsoft's own AI disclosures, which are independently verifiable and arguably more informative than the trade itself. Per TIKR, Microsoft's fiscal Q3 2026 results (reported April 29) showed Azure growing 40% as reported, commercial remaining performance obligations of $627 billion (up 99% year-over-year), and an AI business that CEO Satya Nadella said crossed a $37 billion annualized revenue run rate, up 123% year-over-year. Nadella has also flagged a shift from per-seat to usage-based pricing as agents become a larger share of enterprise workloads. None of this is part of Burry's stated rationale - he has only said he sees Microsoft as undervalued near $350 - but it is the context reporters and investors are using to frame why a well-known bear would take a multi-year bullish options position on a hyperscaler right now.

Three things would sharpen this signal: any future 13F-equivalent disclosure or interview detail from Scion revealing position size; Microsoft's fiscal Q4 2026 earnings (due mid-to-late July) for whether Azure growth holds near the 39-40% guided range and whether free cash flow improves as capital expenditure (roughly $190 billion guided for calendar 2026) starts converting to revenue; and options-market open interest at the December 2028 $700 strike, which would show whether other investors are following Burry's structure rather than just his direction.

Options-flow stories about individual investors are a recurring pattern in financial media: a well-known name discloses a leveraged, multi-year directional bet with an unknown notional size, and coverage fills the gap with company fundamentals that the investor never actually cited. That's largely what happened here. The verifiable facts - the trade structure, the strike and expiration, the stock's next-day rally, Microsoft's own AI and cloud metrics - are solid and multi-sourced. What isn't verifiable, and shouldn't be asserted as fact, is Burry's private reasoning beyond the "$350 is a good entry, LEAPs are cheap" comment he actually made. Readers should treat this as a market-sentiment data point on AI infrastructure names, not as an endorsement of any specific AI capex thesis.