You're Not Going to Believe What This Billionaire Investor Just Said About Nvidia

There's no question that Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) has been the biggest winner in the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. The AI chip stock added a whopping $3 trillion in market cap since the beginning of 2023, shortly after ChatGPT was launched.

However, throughout the first half of the year, there was a surprising rotation out of Nvidia stock. A number of billionaire investors who had capitalized on the stock's initial gains sold the AI stock, arguing that there were better opportunities elsewhere.

Among those investors were David Tepper of Appaloosa Management, Israel Englander of Millennium Management, Ken Griffin of Citadel Advisors, George Soros of Soros Capital Management, and Stanley Druckenmiller, who ran Duquesne Capital Management for more than two decades.

Druckenmiller, who occasionally discusses his stock moves in interviews, was early to jump on the AI trend in Nvidia. The investor, whose hedge fund delivered annual average returns of 30% when it was active, first bought shares of Nvidia in the fourth quarter of 2022, recognizing that the launch of ChatGPT would lead to demand for Nvidia's GPUs, which were used for AI applications.

However, even Druckenmiller seemed surprised by Nvidia's dramatic surge through 2023 and 2024, and since sold out of the high-flying stock. Back in May, he acknowledged cutting his Nivida position, saying, "A lot of what we recognized has become recognized by the marketplace now." In other words, he believed that the upside potential in the stock was limited in late March when he sold it.

More than six months after that sale, Druckenmiller now has some regrets.

In an interview with Bloomberg, the billionaire said the decision to sell Nvidia was a "big mistake." He said he sold most of his position when Nvidia was priced between $80 and $95 (post-split) and the stock has now run up past $130, meaning the value of Nvidia has increased roughly 50% since he did most of his selling.

In 2023, Druckenmiller said he expected to own the stock for years, but he thought the "valuation was rich" after the stock tripled in just a year.

At one point, Nvidia was his biggest holding. At the end of Q2 2023, he had 9.5 million (post-split) shares of the stock worth roughly $400 million. He sold 754,000 in third quarter of 2023, 2.57 million in Q4 of that year, 4.42 million in the first quarter of 2024, and 1.54 million in the next quarter. He's since sold his remaining 214,060 shares of Nvidia, according to the Bloomberg interview.