The obvious trade on AI is chips. Thiel Macro just filed paperwork that says the obvious trade isn't where the bottleneck is.
The fund reported zero U.S. long holdings for two straight quarters — periods ending December 2025 and March 2026. Then it came back with $418.7 million across eight names. Seven were energy.
Vista Energy, developing Argentina's Vaca Muerta shale. Vistra, a merchant power producer. Four regulated utilities — American Electric Power, DTE, FirstEnergy, CMS — each about $40 million, each roughly 10% of the portfolio. A small nuclear play in X-Energy, which IPO'd in April. One tech stock: Amazon at $118 million.
The common read: Thiel sold an $85 million Nvidia position in Q3 2025, right as the AI bubble debate got loud, then went quiet. The part people skip: when he came back, he didn't rotate into another AI name. He bought the electricity that data centers run on.
About 72% of the portfolio sits in companies that generate power, deliver it, or supply the fuel. The spread matters too. This isn't a concentrated swing at one hot generator — it's the whole chain. Fuel, plants, and wires. Four regulated utilities at equal weight is a bet that rising demand lifts the boring parts of the grid, not just the flashy names.
Caveats: a 13F is a 45-day-old snapshot. It misses shorts, futures, cash. $419 million is a modest slice of Thiel's net worth, and he could be positioned differently by now. But the shape is specific: sell the chips, buy the power. If AI's bottleneck is moving from compute to electricity, who else is positioned wrong?
The fund reported zero U.S. long holdings for two straight quarters — periods ending December 2025 and March 2026. Then it came back with $418.7 million across eight names. Seven were energy.
Vista Energy, developing Argentina's Vaca Muerta shale. Vistra, a merchant power producer. Four regulated utilities — American Electric Power, DTE, FirstEnergy, CMS — each about $40 million, each roughly 10% of the portfolio. A small nuclear play in X-Energy, which IPO'd in April. One tech stock: Amazon at $118 million.
The common read: Thiel sold an $85 million Nvidia position in Q3 2025, right as the AI bubble debate got loud, then went quiet. The part people skip: when he came back, he didn't rotate into another AI name. He bought the electricity that data centers run on.
About 72% of the portfolio sits in companies that generate power, deliver it, or supply the fuel. The spread matters too. This isn't a concentrated swing at one hot generator — it's the whole chain. Fuel, plants, and wires. Four regulated utilities at equal weight is a bet that rising demand lifts the boring parts of the grid, not just the flashy names.
Caveats: a 13F is a 45-day-old snapshot. It misses shorts, futures, cash. $419 million is a modest slice of Thiel's net worth, and he could be positioned differently by now. But the shape is specific: sell the chips, buy the power. If AI's bottleneck is moving from compute to electricity, who else is positioned wrong?
