AP Images / Jason Decrow
- Several world-class investors piled into Nvidia stock last quarter, SEC filings revealed this week.
- Firms tied to Jim Simons, Paul Tudor Jones, Stanley Druckenmiller, and George Soros all bought in.
- Nvidia stock has tripled this year as investors bet the AI boom will fuel demand for microchips.
Several of the world's best investors loaded up on Nvidia stock last quarter, signaling they expect the microchip maker to play a pivotal role in the artificial-intelligence revolution.
For example, David Tepper's Appaloosa Management boosted its stake in the chipmaker by nearly 600% to just over 1 million shares, worth $431 million on June 30, a Securities and Exchange Commission filing revealed on Monday.
Meanwhile, Dan Loeb's Third Point snapped up 500,000 shares of Nvidia, a stake valued at $212 million at the end of the quarter.
Renaissance Technologies — founded by Jim Simons, a former MIT math professor and Cold War codebreaker — placed an even bigger wager. The quant fund supercharged its Nvidia stake by nearly 600-fold, raising it from around 3,000 shares worth less than $1 million at the end of March, to over 1.8 million shares valued at $785 million at the end of June.
Between them, the trio of hedge funds owned $1.4 billion of Nvidia stock at the quarter's close.
Paul Tudor Jones' firm, Tudor Investment Corporation, also bet big on Nvidia in the period. It more than quadrupled its holding to around 180,000 shares, worth about $76 million at the end of June. Moreover, it held bullish call options on nearly 900,000 Nvidia shares, compared to fewer than 8,000 three months earlier. Tudor and his team also disclosed bearish put options on about 16,000 shares, up from 8,000 shares.
Other elite investors scooped up Nvidia stock in the period, SEC filings show. George Soros' firm, Soros Fund Management, and Jeremy Grantham's GMO both established positions in the chipmaker.
Meanwhile, Steve Cohen's Point72 Asset Management, Stanley Druckenmiller's Duquesne Family Office, and even the Mormon Church's investment arm bolstered their stakes in the company.
It's worth emphasizing that quarterly portfolio updates provide only a snapshot of a firm's holdings on a certain date. They also exclude private, overseas, and non-stock investments, as well as shares sold short. As a result, they don't always paint a full and accurate picture of a firm's investing strategy and activities.
Yet it's definitely striking that so many top-class investors bought Nvidia shares last quarter, after the microchip giant's stock nearly doubled in the first quarter. It has surged nearly 60% since then, meaning it's roughly tripled in price this year, and its market capitalization has grown to almost $1.1 trillion.
Nvidia's rapid climb reflects investors' excitement about AI's potential to boost productivity and bolster corporate profits. The company specializes in graphics processors that are critical to many AI applications, meaning everyone from Elon Musk to Chinese internet companies are lining up to buy them.