While Wall Street artificial intelligence continues to hit a lifetime high in stocks rallying, legendary investor Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is sitting on nearly $400 billion in cash, while Michael Burry — best known for correctly predicting the 2008 housing crisis — continues to sound the alarm over potential AI.

Berkshire Hathaway recently reported a record cash pile of close to $400 billion at the end of the first quarter of 2026. Earlier this month, Buffett told CNBC that it was not an ideal environment in which to invest Berkshire’s record cash pile. Some market analysts explained that the rationale behind the move could be the expectation of a sharp crash ahead.

Buffett also downplayed recent volatility in global markets, suggesting current conditions are far from the disarray that has historically created big buying opportunities. He pointed out that Berkshire has seen very steep declines in the past, including declines of more than 50%, adding that the current environment does not warrant an aggressive deployment of capital.

Michael Burry, famous for correctly predicting the 2008 housing crisis, has remained firm in his bet against AI tech giants, raising concerns about an AI bubble. In a recent Substack chat, an analyst said he sees both technical and fundamental indicators lining up for the same conclusion as the dotcom crash.

“1999 went where no market had gone before, and I’d say this one might as well… It’s already on a number of indicators,” he said, arguing that massive venture capital inflows, rising AI debt issuance and heavy market optimism are creating conditions where valuations can diverge from economic reality.

The AI ​​boom has changed the global market order

This comes as the AI ​​boom coupled with the ongoing Iran-US war has caused a major shift in the global stock market hierarchy, with South Korea and Taiwan overtaking many long-established Western exchanges.

South Korea’s Kospi has emerged as the shining star across all stock markets so far this year, hitting fresh lifetime highs last week while most global markets crashed. According to a report in The Financial Times, the Kospi has rallied multiple times in less than 18 months, with the bull run surpassing the tech-heavy Nasdaq’s bull run in the 1990s, before the dotcom crash.

Despite the concerns, South Korea has overtaken the UK to eighth place, according to HSBC data tracking global equity-market capitalization rankings cited by CNBC.

This year, the end of April saw further bullishness in Asian markets. Taiwan’s stock market overtook Canada’s to become the world’s sixth largest, helped by strong investor demand for artificial intelligence-related stocks and a sharp rise in shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).

Notably, Taiwan’s stock market was only the twelfth largest in the world in 2004 while South Korea’s was 13th, the CNBC report added, showing how the market rankings have changed over the years. Currently, the top 10 stock markets in terms of total market capitalization, according to data provided by HSBC cited by the report, are: US, China, Japan, Hong Kong, India, Taiwan, Canada, South Korea, UK and France.

While optimism around AI remains high, the report shows that the rally has led to a heavy concentration of capital in a handful of AI companies. TSMC alone accounts for 40% of Taiwan’s market capitalization, while Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix together account for a record 42.2% of South Korea’s Kospi index, the report said.

The dotcom crash
About 25 years ago, the roughly five-year dot-com bubble burst, resulting in trillions of dollars in investment losses. Between 1995 and 2000, the S&P 500 nearly tripled while the Nasdaq 100 gained 718%.

However, as the tech bubble burst, fueled by the frenzy surrounding the Internet, more than 80% of the Nasdaq’s value was wiped off and the S&P 500 nearly halved by October 2002.

Indian equities were no exception as global markets collapsed. Between 2000 and 2002, the Nifty 50 tumbled about 51% peak-to-trough, the NSE said. However, they soon made up for all the losses.

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