Peter Thiel's Q3 Portfolio Shuffle: Dumping Nvidia & Tesla for Apple & Microsoft—Here's What It Really Means

PayPal cofounder and Palantir’s Peter Thiel just made a bold move in Q3: He completely exited his Nvidia position, dumped 208,000 Tesla shares worth ~$72M, and pivoted into Apple (79k shares) and Microsoft (49k shares). But here’s the plot twist—he only spent ~$43B on these new positions, meaning he’s sitting on a massive cash pile. Translation: He’s de-risking.

The Tesla→Microsoft swap? Makes sense. Both are blue chips with solid fundamentals. But Nvidia→Apple? That’s where it gets spicy. Nvidia is still printing money with explosive data center growth and beating earnings expectations, while Apple’s revenue growth has been stuck below 10% for years. Yet they trade at nearly identical forward P/E ratios—which makes Thiel’s move either genius hedging or a controversial defensive play.

Thiel’s basically signaling: “I think the market’s getting frothy, and I’d rather own safer bets.” Whether he’s right? That’s what makes markets interesting. Time will tell if selling one of the AI chip leaders was actually the move.