INVESTMENT firms for the world’s ultra-rich boosted their Nvidia Corp. allocations ahead of the DeepSeek-driven selloff.
Family offices for Sweden’s Rausing dynasty, US hedge fund billionaire David Tepper and Silicon Valley’s elite all increased investments to the AI chipmaker in the three months that ended Dec 31, according to 13F regulatory filings.
Nvidia was the largest US stock by market value for the Rausing dynasty’s Longbow Finance, which had a US$87 million stake at year-end after the Swiss firm bought about 120,000 shares during the period.
Alta Advisers, a London-based money manager for other members of the Rausing family, also acquired 11,900 shares of Nvidia in the fourth quarter, its biggest purchase of US stocks between October and December, the filings show. The Rausing family now has a combined fortune of about US$30 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, largely from their ownership of food-packaging company Tetra Laval.
Nvidia’s shares have been a safe bet for a long time, gaining nearly 900 per cent from the start of 2023 to late January, when Chinese AI startup DeepSeek claimed high performance at a lower cost than its Western competitors. Nvidia’s shares then slumped 17 per cent in a single day, erasing about US$589 billion from the company’s market capitalisation.
Nvidia became the poster child for AI computing in recent years as data centre operators stocked up on the company’s processors to meet surging demand for chatbots and other tools.
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Tepper’s investment firm, Appaloosa, bought 55,000 shares of Nvidia during the closing quarter of 2024 while also boosting bets on Chinese companies, the filings show. Iconiq Capital, the multifamily office that manages money for many US tech billionaires, also bought 33,300 shares in the company led by Jensen Huang, the world’s richest chip billionaire.
Other family offices cut their Nvidia stakes. Kemnay Advisory Services, which helps manage the fortune of duty-free-shopping billionaire Alan Parker, sold about 26,000 of the chipmaker’s stock during the closing months of 2024, filings show.
Money managers overseeing more than US$100 million in US equities have to file a 13F form within 45 days of the end of each quarter to list their holdings in stocks that trade on US exchanges. It offers one of the few glimpses into how hedge funds and some large family offices invest.
Other highlights from 13F filings include:
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Iconiq disclosed a stake worth US$1.6 billion in Glendale, California-based cloud software company ServiceTitan, which went public in December. The company’s shares are up about 40 per cent since its debut.
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Wildcat Capital Management, the family office of the late David Bonderman, took new positions in software companies GitLab and Procore Technologies.
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Appaloosa sold out of a stake in Adobe worth US$104 million. BLOOMBERG
