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Peter Thiel sells off all Nvidia stock, stirring bubble fears(thestreet.com)
198 points by hypeatei 19 hours ago | 170 comments
  • markus_zhang17 hours ago

    I think people like Peter Thiel has the insider view of the whole sector, so I would not discount this just because I don’t align with him on political stuffs.

    But again we never know his real positions.

    • mightyham17 hours ago |parent

      I agree that it's very difficult to fully understand what his real positions are, and interestingly I think he clearly wants that to be the case. Peter Thiel is interested in and has actually written extensively about Straussianism which is an intellectual movement obsessed with analyzing esoteric meanings in philosophical literature.

      • kibibu15 hours ago |parent

        Reading his recent "Greta Thunberg Is The Antichrist" stuff leads me to believe the Peter Thiel:

        - Is deeply unscientific, coming across as a highfalutin paranoid QAnon; and

        - Has zero self-awareness

        That said, he has plenty of money and connections, so moves like these are likely well justified.

        • red-iron-pine2 hours ago |parent

          Thiel is absolutely concerned about data mining and big picture and perceptions

          he doesn't believe the QAnon, he is the QAnon and is pushing stuff that he knows the base will eat up

          like if anyone is wearing the Mark of the Beast on their forehead it's MAGA, so get out in front of them and make sure it's pointed at the right place (e.g. Greta, et al)

        • gsf_emergency_412 hours ago |parent

          Detailed perspective from someone with insight into Thiel's thinking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6LakOrqDL4&t=1s

          That watched, imho Thiel is interested in the post-Straussian tension between "thinking in the open" (ideal science) and "focussed value creation" (which is best done behind closed doors)

          AI as driven by premium mediocre Millennials combines the worst of both: lazy group-think promoted by stochastic parrots, expensive hardware weaponized by people who didn't earn that privilege

          Capitalism or communism is a false dichotomy. You'd want any given pre-Jedi to access the Force, build their own lightsabers (in a cave), but not turn to the dark side.

          GitHub serves Midichlorians. NVDA serves the Federation (and is one of the deadly sins to boot)

          • rstuart41338 hours ago |parent

            > "focussed value creation" (which is best done behind closed doors)

            And yet, it is the most open societies that do best at value creation. It's almost as if the degree of cooperation and coordination between the individuals is more important to success than the insights of any one individual, even if they are as smart as Mr Theil believes himself to be.

            • gsf_emergency_57 hours ago |parent

              This suggests that things might not be as simple as that (it's a strong correlation, I admit)

              https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/iab8r7/social_trus...

              (By the scale used here US is exceptionally mid)

    • seanmcdirmid11 hours ago |parent

      He could be selling NVIDIA to buy OpenAI like SoftBank just did. It might not be a bubble exist but a re-positioning.

      • gsf_emergency_411 hours ago |parent

        It's in Thiel's nature to make moves counter to Altman's. Certainly, he does not share Masa's (or PG's) weakness for the genii of the day. (Secretly despises, actually?) They are kinda nontechnical in the same way (chess or SaaS are equally relevant to the future), but what Thiel has passion for are flexible moral abstractions, not politics (the whys rather than the whats of winning)

        • hnhn3410 hours ago |parent

          > It's in Thiel's nature to distance himself from Altman

          This is way off base. Altman is basically a mentee of his, like Zuckerberg. They go way back, and they've both publicly praised each other quite recently. They're very close friends.

          • gsf_emergency_410 hours ago |parent

            I've already edited to say "make moves counter to Altman's". You are right, but Thiel thinks about progress in a fundamentally different, I'd argue opposite, way from Zuck or Altman. More aligned with Elon or Karp. Or even some of the Chinese.

            To be concrete, he'd never consciously engage in the kind of circular financing or rentseeking that Altman/Zuck would be open to.

            (also he has enough social aptitude not to take Altman on in public.)

            • tarsinge9 hours ago |parent

              I don’t know, the biggest difference I see is Thiel and Elon are all about government/tax payer money (through contracts like Palantir or SpaceX, subsidies like Tesla, lobbying, influencing elections, or worst). In that way they align with China, as an autocracy directly financing their companies is their ideal business model. Altman and Zuck OTOH are more typical SV entrepreneurs.

              • piva008 hours ago |parent

                There's also a difference in Thiel: an intensely heretic view of Christianity, he touts himself as a Christian while trying to make it his work of stopping the Anti-Christ (which in Christian theology is impossible since you'd be stopping the Apocalypse).

                Peter Thiel is an interesting character mostly due to how bizarre he can be, a billionaire who is entranced in Christian mythology, afraid of death, using his power in capital to try to mold the world to his fractured mind. In a parallel world where he isn't rich he would be the town crazy spouting about the Anti-Christ at main square in some German village.

                • Hikikomorian hour ago |parent

                  The CEO of ycombinator is also part of the same church thing that Thiel is, acts 17, where he gave a talk about the anti christ. Looks like many of the tech billionares are just insane christians that believe in Curtis Yarvin.

                • gsf_emergency_56 hours ago |parent

                  There was an Orthodox ascetic that argued for physical immortality (and space colonialism):

                  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Fyodorov_(philosopher)

                  Yes making things people want is not really in their book of values. If they're about things that almost nobody wants (transhumanism, triggering the Apocalypse) it makes sense that governments might have to step in.

                  Counterpoint-- Thiel and Musk, if you believe them, brought the "Open" to OpenAI

                  https://archive.ph/KFxhI

                  >Because of AI’s surprising history, it’s hard to predict when human-level AI might come within reach. When it does, it’ll be important to have a leading research institution which can prioritize a good outcome for all over its own self-interest. We’re hoping to grow OpenAI into such an institution.

                  --Musk, 2015

  • hactually18 hours ago

    I'd say he's wanting to lock in those gains. Diamond hands are different when you're up 100s of millions on a single stock.

    • tim3338 hours ago |parent

      Diamond hands is more of a meme token punter term. Thiel is running a hedge fund and has a responsibility to get good returns for his investors. Buying underpriced stocks and selling overpriced is a normal thing to do.

    • dmix18 hours ago |parent

      Yeah everyone wants a conspiracy when the obvious signal is that he already made insane amounts of money off the stock spiking so high and he wants to diversify it on other stuff instead of continuing to gamble on a big one. Which is also what the article says he is doing.

      • dehrmann17 hours ago |parent

        And Nvidia has a target on its back right now. It's priced like it's the only game in town, but AMD, Google, Meta and Intel have varying degrees of competing chips for AI use.

        • lostmsu16 hours ago |parent

          > Meta and Intel

          ?

          • dehrmann16 hours ago |parent

            Meta: https://ai.meta.com/blog/next-generation-meta-training-infer...

            They don't sell it, but they could if Nvidia started charging too much, and some of these are going into Meta datacenters instead of Nvidia.

            Intel makes the Arc. It's probably the least viable competitor in that list, but the fundamentals are there, so some about of focus and investment could result in a viable competitor.

    • PaulRobinson16 hours ago |parent

      It doesn't take a genius to work out somebody who bought low might want to sell high.

      The newsworthy aspect to this is that the AI hype cycle is saying that right now, today, Nvidia is cheap. If AI is going to capture the entire economy, but it relies on Nvidia hardware, the current valuation is pennies on the dollar of what it will be one day.

      Except, you know, that's all a lie. And Thiel peddled it for a while, and is friends with Musk, and connected to many others in the hype cycle besides, and now he's showing his hand that he knows its a lie.

  • drumhead16 hours ago

    First it was Softbank and now its Thiel. Major sales coming from two of the ultimate tech insiders is probably a very good sell signal. Whether or not its the top is another question. Markets as we know can go higher longer than we think, Michael Burry shut down his hedge fund because he may have started shorting too soon.

    One of the funds that Meta were working with to finance their spending on AI, Blue Owl, had to stop redemptions on of their private credit funds merging it with another one of their bigger funds, leaving holders facing a 20% haircut. There also seem to be emerging liquidity issues with banks. The money for the AI gravy train might be running out.

    • rsanek16 hours ago |parent

      didn't softbank sell only to invest more into other ai investments?

      • drumhead16 hours ago |parent

        Yes, but whether they will remains to be seen. They needed a reason to sell out without it looking like they were selling out at the top.

      • sota_pop16 hours ago |parent

        I thought I read specifically with the intention of putting it into OpenAI directly, but yes they said they wanted to “pursue other ventures in the area of AI”.

  • adabyron17 hours ago

    What's interesting is that Thiel added MSFT but the Gates Foundation just reduced it by almost 2/3 and it was their biggest holding - https://hedgefollow.com/funds/Gates+Foundation+Trust

    • drumhead16 hours ago |parent

      If there is a bubble then the hyperscalers with dominant market shares and big cashflows are most likely to survive if it bursts. Google, MSFT and Amazon. Oracle are on very shaky ground. Their bonds are selling at a discount to par, even though interest rates are dropping, and their debt to equity ratio is nearing 400%. AI is an existential bet for them, but not so much for the others.

  • aestetix18 hours ago

    It's because he knows about the Antichrist.

  • garspin16 hours ago

    Making $$$ & keeping them are 2 different skills.

    He's demonstrated the former 16B times, now he's demonstrating the latter.

    The big downside risk I see for Nvidia is a garage startup inventing a more efficient AI algo.... that only needs 20W to run.

    • NaomiLehman8 hours ago |parent

      still a more efficient algo would be better run on gigawatts of compute

  • deadeye3 hours ago

    I think it might be a reflection that there is no more power to run more chips, so chip sales will drop.

  • srameshc17 hours ago

    Could it all be triggered by the study : Gartner Says Agentic AI Supply Exceeds Demand, Market Correction Looms ?

    https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-10-0...

    • marcyb5st16 hours ago |parent

      interesting. For me charts and CSS are broken though, so I couldn't really see figures

  • JoeDohn15 hours ago

    -- Nvidia

    ++ Microsoft

    This sounds a lot like what SoftBank did : sold Nvidia, then invested (will invest?) in OpenAI. I guess the AI market's hit a point where hardware demand is pretty stable, and software demand is where all the juice is now?

  • redwood18 hours ago

    Having heartburn after making a $100M bet on hucksters?

    https://www.wsj.com/tech/peter-thiel-backed-startup-secures-...

    • djmips17 hours ago |parent

      Have any juicy articles to back up your unsubstantiated claim?

      • redwood4 hours ago |parent

        From HN the other week https://foxchapelresearch.substack.com/p/i-think-substrate-i...

        • red-iron-pinean hour ago |parent

          The founder is a known con artist involved in such other things as solving nuclear fusion and stealing $2.5M in a Kickstarter scam.

          The cofounder is the founder’s brother and has literally zero documented professional or academic experience.

          The company’s job postings are nonsensical and AI-generated.

          The company is unwilling to evidence any of its (extremely extraordinary) claims, which have been made on a timescale that makes no sense in the context of the semiconductor industry.

          The company’s research facility is, based on photographs that they’ve published, at least two orders of magnitude smaller than what would be necessary.

        • djmips4 hours ago |parent

          ₍⍨₎ Yikes!

  • yalogin17 hours ago

    This is concerning for sure. Looks like we may be getting the trigger for a sell off soon.

    • drumhead16 hours ago |parent

      It'll come from the other bubble in financial markets, Private Credit. There have been quite a few bankruptcies and problems emerging there, and they're stepping up to be major funders for the AI capex boom.

  • 1vuio0pswjnm711 hours ago

    SoftBank Sells $5.8 Billion Stake in Nvidia to Pay for OpenAI Deals

    https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/11/business/dealbook/softban...

  • amelius17 hours ago

    It would make sense if he used to money to buy TSMC or ASML instead.

    • andsoitis16 hours ago |parent

      MSFT and AAPL seem like better ways to diversify your money away from chips, while keeping it in technology.

      • drumhead16 hours ago |parent

        APPL is the best bet as it doesnt have any exposure to AI. MSFT has spent a truckload of money on datacentres, if AI doesnt deliver they're going to face a huge drag on earnings because of the overinvestment.

        • ethbr111 hours ago |parent

          Microsoft has the same struggle as Facebook and Google.

          If AI matures into the next big thing, it risks wiping them out of their dominant positions if they don't spend to keep pace.

          If it doesn't, then they just blew a bunch of money but are still dominant players, with an existential threat in the rearview.

          Given the relative risks, they'd be foolish not to pump some of their cash flow into AI for a few years until the pace settles.

    • bgwalter17 hours ago |parent

      Assuming he is correct (I think he is) and Nvidia goes down sharply, it will take AMD, Intel etc. with it. Usually the equipment makers and fabs go down with them, many times even at a higher percentage.

  • toxicdevil18 hours ago

    > Over 537,000 shares, which represent nearly 40% of the entire portfolio

    @190/share this is $102 million

    Also: > Vistra Energy, another 19% chunk, was wiped out as well.

    > Moreover, the fund’s turnover hovered over 80%, leaving just three holdings: Tesla, Microsoft, and Apple.

    Some would argue that tesla is a bigger bubble.

    > his personal net worth is an eye-popping $16.3 billion as of 2025.

    • mondrian18 hours ago |parent

      So this 'portfolio' is <200M on a net worth of 16B? This is like someone worth 1M selling $600 worth of stock.

      • brador3 hours ago |parent

        A 200M sale on a 16B net worth is like someone worth 1M selling about 12.5k of stock.

    • djmips17 hours ago |parent

      I noticed the article steered around that figure even though it would make sense to spell it out but that wouldn't bolster their gasping thesis.

    • pinkmuffinere18 hours ago |parent

      Ya Im shocked he continues to hold Tesla…

      • maratc18 hours ago |parent

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal_Mafia

      • seizethecheese18 hours ago |parent

        He has said on multiple occasions to never bet against Elon (though that’s different than betting on him).

        • pinkmuffinere17 hours ago |parent

          I appreciate that his actions match his words, at the very least

      • bookofjoe18 hours ago |parent

        PayPal mafia be tight

  • mmaunder17 hours ago

    Investor sentiment and fundamentals are distant relatives. If fear takes hold and enters a spiral, revenue growth and fundamentals go out the window.

  • FrankWilhoit19 hours ago

    When someone like this does something like this, it is not an economic act. It is a signal of some kind, a move in an opaque chess game, whose players are nowhere near as smart as they think they are.

    • scrps18 hours ago |parent

      I always thought the opposite was true like whales breaking up orders for various reasons like not moving the market too much over things like portfolio adjustments, secrecy, etc?

      • ralfd18 hours ago |parent

        I guess his fund did obfuscate the selling, or the selloff would have been known before the legally required disclosure.

    • amelius17 hours ago |parent

      Or maybe he just found out he suffers from some incurable disorder and now needs the money to build research centers to find a cure, because AI won't help obviously.

    • BurningFrog18 hours ago |parent

      "Someone like this" leaves a ton to the reader's imagination.

      • nine_k17 hours ago |parent

        A billionaire, especially a somehow secretive one. There are thousands of "people like this" to choose from, dozens of them with some publicity.

    • markus_zhang17 hours ago |parent

      Maybe this?

      Finance is the gun. Politics is to know when to pull the trigger!

    • zafarrancho18 hours ago |parent

      Interesting. Do you have any examples?

    • bamboozled19 hours ago |parent

      So not 4d chess ?

  • an0malous17 hours ago

    I’ve never seen so much cope in a single HN thread. Suddenly no one cares about Occam’s Razor

    • diamond55916 hours ago |parent

      This crowd is heavily invested/works in tech, nobody wants to admit they are wrong or that their wealth is an illusion.

  • ytrt54e18 hours ago

    Paperwork filed after market closed on Friday... some might take it as a bad omen, but Nvidia is showing as up 1/2% after hours.

  • buybuybuy18 hours ago

    Should we all buy stock in Nvidia now? It’s not like Peter Thiel is Warren Buffet or anything. And Warren Buffett is buying Alphabet.

    • TheAlchemist18 hours ago |parent

      Warren Buffett is buying Alphabet out of neceessity - he already sold most of what he could sell and has way too much cash on hand - he just need to buy 'something' - Alphabet seems like the least overvalued big stock out there.

      • drumhead16 hours ago |parent

        Berkshire is sitting on nearly $350 billion in cash. One of the ratio's that Buffet uses to measure overvaluation, Wilshire 2000 Market Cap as a % of GDP is at an all time, 220%. Its usually a good indicator of a market top. He's making a few small investments, but he's just waiting until there's more of sell off before heading back in. He's under no pressure to buy anything.

      • scarmig18 hours ago |parent

        Is he required to buy stock? AFAIK he could just as well hold cash or bonds, and if he believes a bubble pop is imminent (within the next couple months), that would be a responsible move.

        • Deegy18 hours ago |parent

          Not required of course. This move to finally move some of his cash horde into equities could be a result of the US governments recent announcement that they're ending their quantitative tightening policy. This likely signals a move back to a period of quantitative easing which could cause assets to continue to inflate while the value of the dollar continues to erode.

          Basically he could just be trying to protect the value of his dollars by putting them into a very stable company that also has exposure to the upside of AI.

          • andy9917 hours ago |parent

            Probably a stupid question, why not buy something like CHF then, if one is concerned about eroding dollar value? Is the thesis that blue chips (if google is one) would rise faster than USD is devalued?

            • rubyn00bie17 hours ago |parent

              Stocks are going to be better at hedging against inflation than any one specific currency, because they’re able to raise prices. This is something Buffet has talked about which is mildly detailed here: https://www.investopedia.com/how-warren-buffetts-1-rule-can-...

              How the dollar erodes, and its effect on other currencies will be unpredictable. Corporations raising prices to offset their rise in costs, is predictable. It’s just a matter of finding those corporations and industries which can do so without losing more sales.

              I’d assume the urge to “cash up” here is driven by the idea of trying to sell the top, and buy the resulting bottom. I highly doubt Thiel thinks AI isn’t worth today’s market cap or several multiples of it, in the long term, and that any “bubble burst” will likely be a generational buying opportunity.

        • ncruces18 hours ago |parent

          Whose cash or bonds? USD?

        • pojzon18 hours ago |parent

          Thing is, people dont know what will happen if this bubble bursts.

          Its so big that it could take with it whole global market.

          There is no safe asset you can turn into in such a case, digital money would literally mean nothing when whole financial system collapses.

          • skybrian17 hours ago |parent

            This doesn't track with what happened after previous bubbles.

            Investors will be sad, but businesses that still do useful work will still have revenue. Why would they be worthless?

          • rubyn00bie17 hours ago |parent

            That sort of crash is what central banks exist to protect against. That could be something like the Fed stepping in as a buyer of last resort and picking up several trillion dollars of equity, and/or pushing rates to zero again to incentivize private capital to more or less do the same.

            A global crash of financial systems is unlikely because it’s cause too much pain for everyone. It unfortunately means we plebs are likely the ones paying to bail it out.

            • int_19h17 hours ago |parent

              I rather suspect that in the current economic climate, a trillion dollar bailout of Big Tech would very quickly translate to riots in the streets.

              • TheAlchemist15 hours ago |parent

                Frankly, I would be happy if riots in the streets happen (if there is a bailout of Big Tech in the first place). What's going on recently with OpenAI publicly, and probably most of the 'AI' players not publicly, is disgusting - it's a bubble, everyone and their mother knows it, and these guys try to save their asses by asking for governement backing before the bubble even pops. Privatize gains, socialize losses...

                It's a shame that no more bankers went to jail after 2008, although I find the situation was much more complicated than here.

    • Ekaros10 hours ago |parent

      Always also calmly analyse what is the upside left. Especially if the stock has such huge valuation like Nvidia. My guess is probably not at this point.

    • surgical_fire18 hours ago |parent

      Yes, you should. Every grift needs bagholders.

  • jameslk18 hours ago

    > That’s why Thiel rotated into Microsoft and Apple, tech giants with more diversified revenue streams, cloud scale, devices, and software.

    These are supposed to be a hedge against a presumed AI bubble? Seems half hearted at best

    • pinkmuffinere18 hours ago |parent

      He is diversifying away from a pure AI play. The amount of diversification is relatively low, so he probably still believes in AI, just feels it is slightly overhyped.

      Personally I agree it’s too small of a move, but different people have different beliefs and different tolerance for risk.

  • Animats18 hours ago

    One to zero, here we come?

  • antasvara16 hours ago

    This could be anything, so making a sweeping generalization is premature IMO.

    It could be insider knowledge that Intel/AMD/other has made a huge step forward and has reduced Nvidia's moat (unlikely considering his public support for Nvidia's hardware, but possible).

    It could be that the AI bubble is popping.

    It could be that he wants to "lock in" the gains that Nvidia has made; having that much capital in one company tied to a pretty volatile sector is risky.

    Maybe he thinks that the beneficiaries of AI will be B2B companies like Microsoft with connections to most major businesses.

    Maybe it's a changing view on how much compute will be needed to fuel AI developments moving forward.

    And this is just the list I could thing of off the top of my head. There are plenty of other reasons this move could be happening. Absent an inside line on Thiel, anything else is speculation.

  • sota_pop17 hours ago

    100% is a serious move. Taken alone, I might not think much, but given the SoftBank exit recently, Jensen’s trading activity, Gates selling so much MSFT, Buffett’s recent trading activity, Trump’s recent trading activity, and the interesting observation from Michael Burry, this does not bode well for NVDA in the short/mid term.

    Burry’s critique was actually refreshingly novel compared to the “it’s a bubble lmao” type of comments I normally see.

    Can anyone expand on the validity of his “hardware depreciation” thesis?

    I’ve always understood typical corporate hardware cycle to be ~3 years. I don’t run it that hot, but my 3080 is still running strong with no signs of performance issues (except the fact that 10GB is not much vram these days). Plus doesn’t everyone (big corps) just buy the new generation every single year?

  • zrn90013 hours ago

    The main reason is likely this:

    https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/al...

    AliBaba succeeded in reducing GPU usage by 82%. On top of the improvements made by models like Deepseek, it looks like AI will be much more efficient than initially thought. As a result, there should be much less demand for GPUs compared to the ridiculous demand that was being pitched.

    Note that Softbank also sold all its Nvidia shares.

    • nurettin11 hours ago |parent

      Even if you reduce computing requirements for inference by 99.999% there is still enough demand to saturate all high end cards for decades.

  • jayess17 hours ago

    I wonder if he still holds all that in his Roth IRA.

  • rvz18 hours ago

    We are 1 day before the year 2000.

  • xenospn19 hours ago

    Perhaps looking for a new ivory back scratcher?

    • kotaKat18 hours ago |parent

      Palantir is looking to buy the American Red Cross, for... other reasons.

      • spacecadet17 hours ago |parent

        lol he is literally Bob Page from Deus Ex... taking over "fema" and all.

        • foolfoolz17 hours ago |parent

          bob page did nothing wrong, he just wanted to be a god like everyone else

  • mattas18 hours ago

    The market can stay irrational longer than even Peter Thiel can stay solvent.

    • sien18 hours ago |parent

      Thiel is worth 25 Bn according to some sources, 16 Bn according the article.

      In this case surely there will be an AI correction before Thiel runs out of money.

  • adrianco18 hours ago

    It’s a bubble. Buy low and sell high. Right now, holding cash is the safe option. You can predict that the bubble will burst, but not when. However with the US being run by someone who is poking everything with sharp implements I think it bursts sooner.

    • jameslk18 hours ago |parent

      Cash is just another asset class, and since becoming a pure fiat it’s never been a good one: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL

      Given the fiscal dominance we’re in now that pretty much guarantees higher rates of inflation in the future, I think there’s much better places to place your money if you want to diversify. At least cash equivalents would be better

      • mondrian18 hours ago |parent

        The parent comment is probably just talking about temporarily timing the bubble pop.

    • simianwords18 hours ago |parent

      How are you so sure it is a bubble?

  • iammjm18 hours ago

    Peter Thiel the guy that believes that the literal biblical antichrist is walking amongst us? How much rational thought can one really expect from this guy? I am not questioning AI being a good investment or not, I am questioning this dude's sanity

    • AstroBen18 hours ago |parent

      Is there an opposite to the halo effect? Stupidity in one area doesn't mean they're stupid in another

      Judge him based on his investing skill here

      • andy_ppp17 hours ago |parent

        Startup investing and stock market investment records are probably not particularly well correlated. Certainly timing the market is difficult for everyone.

        • jjav17 hours ago |parent

          > Certainly timing the market is difficult for everyone.

          Timing the market is a lot easier for industry insiders and politicians, however.

          • andy_ppp17 hours ago |parent

            Or if you own a company specifically designed to siphon up and interpret private information…

      • trial317 hours ago |parent

        well, fittingly, there’s the devil horns effect

    • BurningFrog18 hours ago |parent

      I expect continued economic performance from a guy who went from nothing to... $25B was the latest number I heard.

      Empirically, I don't think Christians do worse investments than us atheists, so rationally speaking I don't think it's much of a factor.

      • bawolff17 hours ago |parent

        > I expect continued economic performance from a guy who went from nothing to... $25B

        I would expect a return to the mean

        • BurningFrog10 hours ago |parent

          He's been making big bucks for 30 years. That is his mean.

        • manmal17 hours ago |parent

          But why? He seems to know the right people, and is, uhm, ruthless - nothing changed.

          • bawolffan hour ago |parent

            I'll admit that im not all that familiar with his business dealings, but from what i understand most of his fortune comes from paypal, facebook and plantir. That's three high risk investments that really paid off. Impressive but at the end of the day, luck probably paid a big part as its a small number of very high yield investments. Over time i would expect his luck to balance out. I'm not saying he's going to lose all his money, but i'd expect it to grow at a more normal rate over the long term. I think its unlikely he will continue striking it rich in such a dramatic fashion over the long term.

            • BurningFrog32 minutes ago |parent

              Crunchbase lists a few hundred of his investments: https://www.crunchbase.com/person/peter-thiel

              He's also written several books. "Zero to One" is very influential: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Peter-Thiel/author/B00J0W47NA

      • gopher_space17 hours ago |parent

        How can you tell he’s a Christian? I only know him by his works.

        • thrance14 hours ago |parent

          He wrote a long rant about Greta Thunberg being the antichrist. I think that places him more in the "insane" box than the "christian" one, but still.

          • nurettin11 hours ago |parent

            The irony is killing me.

            • literalAardvark4 hours ago |parent

              He misnomers a very special definition of antichrist that probably would include Greta (anyone who could encourage mass collectivism).

              Which would make him hilariously unaware of the irony of the antichrist saying someone else is the antichrist.

        • andsoitis16 hours ago |parent

          > How can you tell he’s a Christian?

          Thiel has said so.

      • lostmsu16 hours ago |parent

        > Empirically, I don't think Christians do worse investments than us atheists, so rationally speaking I don't think it's much of a factor.

        Hm, why not? Like obviously it would be hard to do a study because you can't just control by wealth. But if you control by the level of education and stop at that I'm almost certain christians would lose.

      • advael17 hours ago |parent

        "From nothing" is a fairly suspect claim, but your overall point is a good one

        • BurningFrog17 hours ago |parent

          Rounded to the nearest $0.001B, I think it's correct.

    • jamesblonde18 hours ago |parent

      He's scarily sane. I am not joking when I say he invented the anti-christ thing as a way to entrench the billionaire class. He's basically saying the anti-christ will be somebody who want to solve the world's problems through collective action. So collective action is bad. We are in such an unbalanced world, that that is the best argument he can come up with for why we should allow such wealth inequality in society.

      • fullshark18 hours ago |parent

        Yeah it's funny when you read his antichrist ramblings, it's essentially the antichrist will come in the form of a leader arguing for wealth redistribution via collective action. This is what instills sheer terror in the billionaire class.

      • lisbbb17 hours ago |parent

        I'm pretty sure the antichrist is that sports betting guy, Dave Portnoy? The good news is that he's low key, it's kind of a more casual antichrist this time around getting everyone addicted to gambling.

    • jameslk17 hours ago |parent

      https://paulgraham.com/disagree.html

    • EarlKing18 hours ago |parent

      Then how about SoftBank[1]... are they irrational? Or Michael Burry[2] who shorted Nvidia and Palantir before concluding the market is once against being irrational and selling his positions and closing his hedge fund... is he irrational?

      The people in a position to know are telling you something: This is a Bubble, and they're getting the hell out while they're ahead. You should do the same.

      --

      [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/11/softbank-sells-its-entire-st...

      [2] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/big-shot-michael-burrys-ai-14...

      • thrwaway5518 hours ago |parent

        Burry was underwater on that trade though and likely did it to avoid some paperwork revealing positions. He folded because he can't time it, if he was confident he was right he wouldn't have folded and we'd have another movie about him.

        • rafale18 hours ago |parent

          Did he close his position or just shutdown the fund?

      • jasonlotito18 hours ago |parent

        Softbank sold all of Nvidia in 2019. Look how that turned out for them.

        > SoftBank’s Vision Fund was an early backer of Nvidia, reportedly amassing a $4 billion stake in 2017 before selling all of its holdings in January 2019. Despite its latest sale, SoftBank’s business interests remain heavily intertwined with Nvidia’s.

        Further, ″[SoftBank] made a point of saying that it wasn’t any view on NVIDIA. ... At the end of the day, they are using the money to invest in other AI related companies,” he said.

        Make of that what you will, but asking "are they irrational?" needs to answer with more than just "Softbank sold all of Nvidia again."

        Both of these come from the link you provided.

        • sharklasers12317 hours ago |parent

          - SoftBank Vision Fund Founded 2017 [1] - Nvidia Founded 1993 [2]

          Strange definition of “early backer of Nvidia”.

          [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftBank_Vision_Fund [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia

        • lisbbb17 hours ago |parent

          If I going to bank with someone, I want it to be more aggressive. Hard Bank is what I'm talking about--a bank with cojones.

      • NicoJuicy17 hours ago |parent

        I don't think it's a bubble.

        Thiel sold Palantir which is ridiculously overrated ( 1740.10 pe ).

        Additionally, NVIDIA is going to get some competition for AMD. Or even Broadcom ( see TPU's from Alphabet)

        He bought Microsoft, which has both AMD and NVIDIA for inference.

        His sales aren't about selling AI. Just some bets cashing out.

        Microsoft, Amazon, ... All can't build infrastructure quickly enough and they even admit in quarterly earnings that it's a bottleneck for now.

        And they all grew a lot ( 20-40% )

    • gooseus18 hours ago |parent

      When it comes to his Antichrist schtick I say "takes one to know one".

      Also, Thiel seems like the sort of guy with the money and connections to pop the AI bubble whenever he believes it'd be advantageous, whether that is the product of a rational mind seems to be beside the point.

      • rwmj18 hours ago |parent

        Every accusation is a confession.

      • jsunderland32318 hours ago |parent

        > seems like the sort of guy with the money and connections to pop the AI bubble

        …and has been known to cause bank runs

    • markus_zhang17 hours ago |parent

      I mean if I were a Christian I wouldn’t be surprised that the anti Christ is among us. The only difficulty is to pick which one of them is.

      But I’m an atheist so I don’t care about it.

      • bawolff17 hours ago |parent

        If you believe in this sort of thing i think the signs are there https://www.benjaminlcorey.com/could-american-evangelicals-s...

        • markus_zhang17 hours ago |parent

          I used to be very into stuffs like the Revelation when I was young, but that was many years ago. I’m an atheist and I don’t need the bible to see that reality is like a slow moving train wreck.

          • bawolff14 hours ago |parent

            As an atheist, i know revelations is probably about nero, and that similarities are probably due to similar economic/cultural concerns bringing similar leaders to power. Nonetheless, some of revelations is kind of uncanny.

      • defrost17 hours ago |parent

        As a rational atheist living on a shared resource in which a very small group have control over most of the assets, shouldn't it concern you if they leverage talk about an antichrist to edge out the masses even more?

        The concern is less about what others announce as a belief, more about future access to essentials.

        • markus_zhang17 hours ago |parent

          I do. The whole situation has been concerning since like 10 years ago. I believe the future, the near future, is going to be more dystopian than many of those dystopian movies.

          I wrote a few comments about my reasons throughout the years, but I never felt I had enough to make the reasoning more solid. It was a lot of guesses from a depressing old man.

    • lisbbb17 hours ago |parent

      Not a fan of Palantir or Level3 (L3?) Systems myself--talk about companies ushering in a police state!

    • rvz18 hours ago |parent

      The best explaination is that Thiel, Softbank and Huang are selling before a risky Nvidia earnings release that could result in an indication that the AI boom is going to collapse.

    • ajross18 hours ago |parent

      The news is that a whale is dumping, not that the whale is making a rational decision. We all know the market isn't rational in the short term, merely efficient in the long term. And we all suspect (as does Thiel!) that NVDA is unsustainably priced.

      So if the whale is dumping, maybe smaller investors will dump too. Maybe we should too.

    • pessimizer17 hours ago |parent

      It's so bizarre how a gay billionaire helping build artificial intelligence, owning a surveillance empire, and basically trying to put the mark of the beast on everyone is also yelling about the antichrist. If you were a bible-believing Christian, you'd think he was a top 5 candidate.

      Mentioning the antichrist would probably move him up to at least top 3. Isn't the antichrist supposed to pretend he's fighting the antichrist in modern popular Pentacostal/Charismatic eschatology?

    • simianwords18 hours ago |parent

      No he doesn’t believe that the literal biblical Antichrist is walking amongst us. Uncharitable take

      • estearum17 hours ago |parent

        He maybe wouldn’t commit that it is currently, but he’d absolutely commit to the idea that the literal biblical Antichrist will exist and will walk among us, and might be already.

        This is exactly the same level as insane as thinking the Antichrist actually does walk among us today.

      • more_corn17 hours ago |parent

        Pretty sure he said exactly that. If you think the quote is taken out of context feel free to add that here.

      • rsynnott17 hours ago |parent

        I mean, sometimes if it look like a crazy person and quacks like a crazy person, it’s a crazy person.

        Not everything is some great 4d chess conspiracy; sometimes people just believe completely irrational stuff.

  • standardUser18 hours ago

    Maybe it means something if it's insider trading, but otherwise I'm not taking advice from a man who is clearly haunted by some political obsession and willing to act against his own financial interest in pursuit of it.

  • coolThingsFirst3 hours ago

    It's over time to burst this bubble. It's going nowhere.

  • throwacct17 hours ago

    I mean, he bought low and now he's selling when the stock is high. What else can we expect?

  • JCM917 hours ago

    At this point if you don’t think AI is a bubble then I don’t know what to tell you.

    • lostmsu16 hours ago |parent

      Tell me why quantum mechanics stops at SU(3) in SU(3) x SU(2) x U(1) symmetry group.

  • _dain_17 hours ago

    extremely low IQ / reddit comments ITT

  • awestroke18 hours ago

    Probably wants more liquidity to funnel into the pain and suffering industry

    • jameslk18 hours ago |parent

      No need to guess, the article literally states where the money went:

      > That’s why Thiel rotated into Microsoft and Apple, tech giants with more diversified revenue streams, cloud scale, devices, and software.

      • zetanor17 hours ago |parent

        Rotated into pain and suffering indeed.

        • mensetmanusman17 hours ago |parent

          Ads on my desktop. Windows crashes that prevent me from filling my car at the tank.

      • jmye17 hours ago |parent

        Moving into Apple, given the potential risk/uncertainty in a new CEO and no real new revenue streams, is an interesting choice. I guess maybe it feels relatively safe? But even then, if there's any real downturn, they seem pretty at risk, as the 'luxury' brand.

  • gnarlouse17 hours ago

    Peter Thiel is in the epstein files.

  • ck217 hours ago

    google Peter Thiel and Rockbridge and be afraid, it makes Project2025 pale in comparison

    (starting point for the lazy https://authoritarian-stack.info )

  • ggm17 hours ago

    He's seen a better investment opportunity and is maximising his profit to target it.

    I think this says less about Nvidia than people think. What interests me is what he will put in to? What kind of investment is he targetting?

    Pet sitting service for after the uplift to heaven has a low ROI. I don't think his eschatology informs his money sense.

    • djmips17 hours ago |parent

      Microsoft and Apple? per article. Not very mind-blowing

      • ggm17 hours ago |parent

        A parking spot with good return and solidity. I don't think he's staying there at scale for long. Neither want him on the board.

        • djmips17 hours ago |parent

          this whole article is about $100 m. - isn't that basically pocket change?

          • ggm17 hours ago |parent

            Yes. I think you put this into context well.