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- Firms tied to Bill Gates and Ray Dalio purchased small stakes in Nvidia last quarter, filings show.
- The Gates Foundation Trust and Bridgewater Associates both bought shares of the microchip maker.
- Funds linked to George Soros, Jim Simons, and Stanley Druckenmiller pared or exited their positions.
Nvidia attracted two high-profile backers last quarter, as funds linked to Bill Gates and Ray Dalio took small stakes in the microchip maker.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust, which invests the Gates Foundation's endowment, bought Nvidia shares for the first time on record, a SEC filing revealed this week. It purchased about 9,200 shares, worth $4 million at the end of September.
The Gates' trust diversified its stock portfolio in the period, expanding it from 23 holdings to 74, but its total value was almost flat at $39 billion. Its largest positions were a $12 billion stake in Microsoft, and nearly $8 billion worth of Berkshire Hathaway stock as a result of Warren Buffett's yearly gifts to the foundation.
While the bet on Nvidia was relatively small, the wager still ranked in the top half of the trust's portfolio by value. Cascade, the asset manager which oversees the Trust and Gates' personal fortune, also disclosed new stakes in Apple, Meta, Amazon, and Alphabet. It may have invested in Nvidia as part of a broader effort to boost its Big Tech exposure.
Dalio-founded Bridgewater Associates established a stake in Nvidia last quarter too, filings show. The hedge-fund behemoth, run by three co-CIOs since Dalio stepped down last year, purchased just over 48,000 shares worth $21 million at September's close.
The last time that Bridgewater reported a Nvidia stake was in the third quarter of last year. It's worth noting the new wager is small relative to the firm's biggest positions on September 30, which included a $700 million stake in Procter & Gamble and roughly $500 million positions in each of Costco and Coca-Cola.
Nvidia's stock price has soared by about 240% this year, as investors wager the artificial-intelligence boom will supercharge demand for its graphics chips. The company has certainly received a boost; its revenue roughly doubled year-on-year to about $14 billion in the three months to July, lifting its net income by nearly 10-fold to over $6 billion.
Funds tied to other high-profile investors took a different tack to Gates and Dalio's firms. Soros Fund Management dumped its entire $4 million stake in Nvidia, Jim Simons' Renaissance Technologies slashed its bet by 34% to 1.2 million shares, and Stanley Druckenmiller's Duquesne Family Office trimmed its position by about 8% to 875,000 shares, filings showed this week.