Tech

Peter Thiel's fund joins SoftBank in offloading Nvidia shares

Peter Thiel
Peter Thiel's hedge fund holds shares in Apple, Tesla, and Microsoft, as of September 30. Nordin Catic/Getty Images for The Cambridge Union
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Peter Thiel's hedge fund sold its entire stake in Nvidia in the third quarter, according to a 13F filing.

Thiel Macro LLC sold all of its 537,742 shares in the chipmaker, per the filing, which were valued at about $85 million at the end of the second quarter.

Those shares would have been worth about $100 million at market close on September 30 — but it is unclear when Thiel's fund offloaded its stake.

It comes hot on the heels of SoftBank disclosing that it sold all of its Nvidia shares during the same quarter.

Thiel Macro's holding was relatively small when compared with Nvidia's $4.6 trillion market capitalization and the $5.8 billion stake sold by SoftBank.

However, both sales come as some investors and tech leaders become increasingly wary of an AI bubble.

Nvidia, which provides advanced chips to power AI applications, has ridden the AI boom to become the world's most valuable company, becoming the first to pass the $5 trillion milestone last month.

SoftBank said during its earnings call last week that its decision to divest had "nothing to do with Nvidia itself" but was a way to reallocate its funds toward OpenAI.

The share sales come as Nvidia is set to report its third-quarter earnings on Wednesday.

Dan Ives, a Wedbush analyst who has previously been bullish on the AI boom, said in a Monday X post that Nvidia is a "foundational piece" of the AI revolution and he expects it to "handily exceed Street estimates."

Thiel Macro keeps the money moving

Thiel's fund ended the third quarter holding stakes in Apple, Tesla, and Microsoft, the filing showed. Combined, those shares were worth more than $74 million as of September 30.

Other filings show that Thiel and his team have chopped and changed their US stock portfolio this year. In the first quarter, the fund exited Amazon and built stakes in Microsoft, Vistra, and ASML.

It exited Microsoft and ASML in the second quarter, then last quarter it disposed of Vistra, reinvested in Microsoft, and established a new position in Apple.

The value of Thiel Macro's portfolio grew steadily from about $118 million at the end of last year to $153 million at the end of March, then $212 million at the end of June.

Only one stock has appeared in the fund's last four quarterly disclosures: Tesla. Both Thiel and Tesla CEO Elon Musk helped cofound PayPal, and since then, the pair have partnered and collaborated several times.

Thiel's fund pared its Tesla stake by 76% last quarter to 65,000 shares worth about $29 million as of September 30, after more than quadrupling its Tesla share count in the second quarter.

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Robert Scammell, Senior Tech Editor, Business Insider.
Robert Scammell
Robert Scammell is a senior editor working at Business Insider's London bureau, overseeing the tech team's coverage of companies such as Google, OpenAI, SpaceX, and Meta.He is also the editor of Vibe Mode, Business Insider's weekly newsletter on all things AI coding. Before joining Business Insider, Robert was the editor of the tech publication UKTN. 
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Theron Mohamed
Theron Mohamed is a London-based correspondent on the International team at Business Insider. His coverage spans finance, investing, wealth, markets, and the economy.Theron joined BI in 2019 as a reporter at Markets Insider and rose to the rank of correspondent before moving to the Trending team then the broader International team. He previously covered tech, media, and telecom stocks for Investors Chronicle magazine and had a brief stint on the Financial Times' Data team. He interned at the Wall Street Journal in New York where he primarily wrote for Heard on the Street.Theron has freelanced for The Independent, The Telegraph, WIRED, and several smaller publications. He holds an undergraduate degree in geography from the London School of Economics, and a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University.Theron often covers Warren Buffett, Michael Burry, and other elite investors. He also writes about the world's wealthiest people and shares financial advice from all manner of rich and successful people.Email Theron at tmohamed@bjinnox.com and follow him on X @theron_mohamed.