Paul Tudor Jones Warns of a 'Breathtaking' Market Crash — But Keeps Buying AI Stocks

Billionaire investor Paul Jones, the founder of Tudor Investment Corp, has told investors that the artificial intelligence-driven bull market likely has one to two years of runway left before it ends in what he calls a 'breathtaking' correction. Jones is not sitting on the sidelines waiting for that correction to arrive. He is actively buying AI stocks, and the reason is simply that the remaining upside is too large to ignore.

Jones is making a calculated bet that the final leg of a bubble can be its most profitable. He believes the AI bull market still has 50 to 60 percent more room to run with potential upside of around 40 percent from current levels. Jones shifted his public stance on AI stocks between February and May 2026, moving from a cautionary position to an explicitly bullish one.

Why Jones Compares Today's AI Market to the 1999 Dot-Com Peak

The comparison Jones reaches for is not subtle. He has pointed to 1999, the final year of the dot-com boom before the Nasdaq Composite index lost roughly 78 percent of its value between March 2000 and October 2002. That framing carries a specific warning: the markets of 1999 were not wrong about the internet's transformative power. They were wrong about how quickly that power would translate into profits, and they paid an extraordinary price when the gap between expectation and reality became undeniable.

Jones's use of the word 'breathtaking' to describe the eventual correction is deliberate. It signals that he expects the unwind to be fast and severe, not a gradual deflation. For American retail investors who have accumulated significant exposure to AI and technology stocks over the past two years, that is a pointed warning about the speed at which paper gains can evaporate.

The profitable bubble paradox at the heart of Jones's strategy is this: if he is right that the crash will be breathtaking, it means the conditions for a breathtaking crash are already forming. The very qualities that make the next year or two potentially lucrative, elevated valuations, concentrated positioning, and momentum-driven buying, are also the conditions that make the eventual correction more severe, not less. An AI crash that follows a 40 percent gain from already stretched levels would not simply erase that gain. It would, if the dot-com template holds, overshoot dramatically to the downside.

Business Insider reported in May 2026 that Jones sees the AI-powered bull market continuing for up to two more years while simultaneously cautioning that the corrections that follow such runs can be severe. Jones has not publicly specified which AI stocks he holds or is accumulating, but the broader framing of his position suggests exposure to large-cap technology companies with direct AI revenue streams.

Other Billionaires Are Taking Sides

Jones is not alone in seeing opportunity in the rally's remaining life. Leo KoGuan, a technology entrepreneur and one of the largest individual shareholders of Tesla, purchased 1 million shares of Nvidia Corp., the dominant designer of graphics processing units (GPUs) used to train and run AI models, and has publicly stated plans to buy another 1 million shares, according to Finviz. KoGuan has explicitly dismissed concerns about an AI bubble, positioning his Nvidia purchases as a long-term conviction bet rather than a momentum trade.

On the other side, Michael Burry, the investor made famous by his successful short position against mortgage-backed securities ahead of the 2008 financial crisis and depicted in the 2015 film 'The Big Short.' Burry has drawn direct comparisons between the current AI frenzy and the final stages of the late-1990s internet bubble. He has gone further than words: Burry is betting against major AI stocks through put options, derivative contracts that increase in value when an underlying asset falls in price, according to The Motley Fool. Burry's track record gives his skepticism a specific weight. He was early and correct on mortgage securities. He may also be early on AI, which is a different thing from being wrong.

The debate has a particular edge for American investors because domestic technology stocks, concentrated in the "Magnificent Seven," account for a disproportionate share of the S&P 500 index's total market capitalization. A sharp correction in AI-exposed names would not be confined to speculative corners of the market. It would hit index funds and retirement accounts with broad market exposure.

Jones's own framing of the opportunity, 50 to 60 percent more room to run before a breathtaking correction, is an acknowledgment that the rally's final stage may be its most volatile in both directions. The investors who profit from that stage will be the ones who correctly identify the exit, a task that proved catastrophically difficult for most participants in 1999 and 2000.