Trevor Jennewine, The Motley Fool

Wed, Jun 4, 2025, 1:40 AM5 min read

• A few hedge fund billionaires during the first quarter sold Nvidia and bought Arista Networks, a stock that recently split and has returned 530% in the last five years.

• Nvidia has struggled with headwinds related to DeepSeek and chip export controls, but the company is still ideally positioned to monetize demand for AI infrastructure.

• Arista is the market leader in high-speed Ethernet switches, devices that play a critical role in supporting artificial intelligence applications in data centers.

• 10 stocks we like better than Arista Networks ›

The artificial intelligence (AI) trade has continued to thrive on Wall Street despite global trade tensions. In the first quarter, these billionaire hedge fund managers sold Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) and bought Arista Networks (NYSE: ANET), a stock that split in December and has returned 530% in the last five years:

• Ken Griffin at Citadel Advisors sold 1.5 million shares of Nvidia, cutting his exposure 50%. He also added 108,000 shares of Arista, increasing his stake 17%.

• Israel Englander at Millennium Management sold 740,500 shares of Nvidia, trimming his stake 7%. He also purchased 979,600 shares of Arista, increasing his position 43%.

• Paul Tudor Jones of Tudor Investment sold 209,000 shares of Nvidia, reducing his exposure 24%. He also purchased 213,800 shares of Arista, opening a new position.

Importantly, Citadel and Millennium are two of the three most profitable hedge funds in the world, as measured by net gains since inception, which makes Griffin and Englander particularly good sources of inspiration. But the trades shown were made during the first quarter, which ended two months ago.

Here's what investors should know about Nvidia and Arista today.

Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek shook investor confidence in Nvidia earlier this year when it reportedly trained sophisticated large language models with fewer and less powerful chips than United States competitors like Anthropic and OpenAI. Investors worried more efficient training methods would reduce demand for Nvidia GPUs, but the opposite is happening, as cheaper models have allowed more businesses to experiment with AI.

Investors are also concerned about the long-term impact of the trade war and chip export restrictions. Nvidia built H20 GPUs for China to comply with existing guidelines, but the Trump administration recently prohibited the sale of those chip in China. CEO Jensen Huang says Nvidia could miss hundreds of billions of dollars in sales in the years ahead because the Chinese market is effectively closed to the company.