Soros Fund's Intel stake swells to $340 million in Q3 13F

Soros Fund Management held 2,830,000 Intel shares worth $340.3 million at the close of Sept. 30, according to the quarterly 13F holdings report the firm filed with the SEC on Friday. At the end of June the same fund held 100,000 Intel shares, valued at $14.0 million — a share count about 28 times larger, built from a base that barely registered in an $8.14 billion book.

Intel is now the firm's largest common-stock holding, ahead of Amazon at $262.9 million and Taiwan Semiconductor ADSs at $250.4 million. The filing in total lists 263 positions with a reported value of $8.51 billion, up from $8.14 billion in June.

How big is the Intel bet, and how fresh is it?

The Intel line works out to roughly 4% of the portfolio's reported value. That share matters because the position is new rather than accumulated: $14.0 million of Intel a quarter earlier was a rounding item next to Amazon and TSMC. Adding about $326 million in a single quarter is what turned Intel into the top holding, and Reuters first reported the increase.

The filing also arrives in the same week that Intel assembled a 23-company Korean AI alliance around its D-Series inference GPU, and at a moment when other large investors made the same rotation. Capital Group bought Intel while trimming Nvidia, and Renaissance Technologies sold nearly all of its Nvidia.

The takeaway: an $8.51 billion book now leans on Intel in a way it did not in June.

What changed in Nvidia, Meta and the memory names?

Nvidia went the other way. The holding fell 19% to 858,822 shares worth $196.1 million, from 1,064,635 shares in June. Soros also held puts on 350,000 Nvidia shares, down from 400,000.

Meta Platforms rose about sevenfold, to 151,505 shares worth $109.9 million, from 21,776. Alphabet Class A edged up to 600,960 shares worth $206.8 million, from 596,286.

Two chip-related lines changed as well. SK Hynix appears for the first time at 325,000 ADSs worth $59.8 million, where the June filing showed nothing. TSMC ADSs grew to 548,915 shares worth $250.4 million from 522,158. Both names appear as American depositary shares, the form the filing does include. AMD was trimmed slightly, to 44,631 shares.

Soros also sold out of Electronic Arts, which it held 970,990 shares of in June, along with its entire 310,000-share Nebius position and its Digital Realty stake.

The takeaway: the quarter moved money out of Nvidia and into Intel, Meta and a new SK Hynix position.

Where is the largest exposure really?

The largest line in the filing by value was not a stock at all. Put options on 10.9 million shares of the Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF carried a reported value of $670.2 million, up from $106.2 million in June. The fund added puts on an oil and gas exploration ETF, plus calls on a 20-year Treasury bond ETF and a utilities ETF.

Those option figures describe the underlying shares, not the premium paid, so they overstate the capital at risk. Read that way, the energy hedge is the dominant exposure in the document and the equity positions are the smaller part of the story.

The takeaway: by notional value, the biggest bet in this portfolio is a short position in an energy-sector ETF.

What does the filing leave out?

Three limits matter for anyone reading the numbers. The 13F records holdings as of Sept. 30 only, so the firm may have traded since the reporting date. It shows no short positions. And it omits most non-US holdings, which leaves part of the portfolio's non-American exposure invisible.

The takeaway: treat the Intel position as a Sept. 30 snapshot rather than as a current holding.

Where this points

A 13F cannot show why Soros Fund added Intel, and the document offers no explanation. What it does show is a large hedge fund placing its biggest new money into Intel at the same moment other institutional buyers rotated toward the same name, and Intel pushing inference hardware into Korea through a 23-company alliance.

If the buying and the alliance overlap in time, the next disclosure — the fourth-quarter filing covering Dec. 31 — will settle whether the $340.3 million position held, grew or reversed.