Michael Burry, the investor famed for “The Big Short,” aimed at Baidu Inc. (NASDAQ:BIDU) following its third-quarter 2025 earnings release, highlighting a pattern of accounting maneuvers that raises doubts about the company’s financial health.

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Baidu’s 2024 Accounting Changes Lead To Q3 Impairment?

While Baidu management touted an “AI-native” transformation this week, Burry flagged that the company's profit growth in the previous year was driven by administrative estimates rather than operational success.

Burry's critique centers on the contradiction between that 2024 “life extension” and the reality revealed in the current third-quarter 2025 report.

Benzinga has reached out to Baidu for a comment.

On Tuesday, Baidu announced a massive RMB 16.2 billion ($2.2 billion) impairment charge, effectively admitting that much of its existing infrastructure is now obsolete—less than a year after claiming those same assets would last longer.

“Took a RMB 16.2 billion impairment on RMB 30.1B net PPE (over 50%),” Burry noted, emphasizing the disconnect. He pointed out the irony of Baidu extending the useful life of servers in 2021 and 2024 to smooth earnings, only to write off half the value of its property, ...