There’s a certain kind of investor who doesn’t just buy stocks , they tell a story with their portfolio. Brad Gerstner, the founder of Altimeter Capital, is that kind of investor. His Q4 2025 13F filing dropped last week, and if you read it carefully, it reads less like a list of trades and more like a thesis on where the next decade of technology is heading.
So let’s break it down.
The Big Picture First
Altimeter runs a tight ship. Unlike mutual funds that hold 300+ stocks, Gerstner’s portfolio at the end of Q4 2025 has just 26 positions , and the top five alone (NVDA, META, MSFT, SNOW, UBER) account for over 60% of the fund. When a man this concentrated makes a move, it counts.
The Q4 13F reveals a portfolio worth roughly $6.6 billion, with a clear strategic direction: double down on AI infrastructure and platform winners, ruthlessly exit anything that doesn’t fit that thesis.
What He Bought
CoreWeave (CRWV), New Position, 3.2 million shares
This is the headline. CoreWeave is the AI cloud company that Gerstner had been backing since it was private. When it went public in early 2025, Altimeter bought in. When the stock fell along with other “neocloud” names, Gerstner bought more , and made it a brand new top-10 position at 3.45% of the portfolio.
Why? CoreWeave is essentially a GPU factory for hire. It doesn’t make chips; it rents massive Nvidia GPU clusters to AI labs that need serious compute power to train and run models. Think of it as the landlord for the AI revolution. With a revenue backlog reportedly exceeding $55 billion and multi-year contracts from some of the biggest names in AI, Gerstner sees a business that’s barely scratched the surface of its potential.
Shopify (SHOP), New Position, 570,000 shares
Shopify made its return to the Altimeter portfolio in Q4 , a fresh buy of 570,000 shares worth roughly $92 million. This isn’t surprising when you connect the dots. Gerstner has always believed in platform businesses that become indispensable to their ecosystems.
Shopify has quietly morphed from a “website builder for small businesses” into the operating system of e-commerce , handling payments, logistics, capital, and now AI-powered commerce tools. With international expansion accelerating and enterprise adoption growing, the thesis holds up.
Bloom Energy (BE) , New Position, 260,000 shares
This one’s a bit of a curveball. Bloom Energy makes fuel cell systems that generate clean, on-site electricity, and it is not your typical Gerstner pick. But here’s the thing: AI data centers are power-hungry monsters. A single hyperscale data center can consume as much electricity as a small city, and the grid simply cannot keep up. Bloom Energy sells a solution, delivering reliable, lower-carbon power directly on-site without waiting for grid upgrades. Gerstner’s buy here looks like a quiet but deliberate bet on the unglamorous energy infrastructure sitting beneath the entire AI boom.
Other Adds: Gerstner added to Coupang (+56%), MercadoLibre (+81%), Microsoft (+10%), TSM (+14%), and Alphabet (+66%). Each of these reflects conviction in platform scale , whether it’s Southeast Asian e-commerce, Latin American fintech, cloud computing, or the semiconductor backbone of AI.
What He Sold
ARM Holdings, Sold Everything
Arm was one of the hottest chip stocks of 2024-25. Gerstner bought it, rode a portion of the rally, and then walked away completely. The likely reason: ARM’s valuation had stretched to levels that priced in perfection. With Nvidia still being his largest position, a purer, more direct bet on AI silicon dominance, there may have been little reason to hold a second chip-design company at a lofty multiple.
Alibaba (BABA), Sold Everything
The China story, once again, comes and goes.
Gerstner had rotated into Chinese internet in Q3 2025 via both BABA and PDD Holdings, apparently attracted by their cheap valuations. By Q4, both were gone. The US-China tech decoupling, regulatory unpredictability, and geopolitical tension around tariffs likely made holding these names more trouble than they were worth. When macro risk is unquantifiable, even cheap stocks become unappealing.
PDD Holdings, Sold Everything
Same logic as Alibaba. PDD (owner of Temu and Pinduoduo) was a value bet on Chinese consumer internet. That thesis appears to have run its course for Gerstner within a single quarter, a reminder that Altimeter, for all its long-term thinking, moves quickly when the calculus changes.
Instacart / CART, Sold Everything
Maplebear (Instacart’s parent) was never a clean fit with Altimeter’s AI infrastructure thesis. After a weaker-than-expected Q4 2024 earnings report and a stock that had rallied sharply, Gerstner appears to have decided the risk-reward no longer worked. Exit, full stop.
Synopsys (SNPS), Sold Everything
Synopsys, the EDA (chip design software) company, was a Q3 2025 buy that lasted exactly one quarter. The company had a mixed earnings report, missed revenue expectations, and faced headwinds from its Ansys acquisition integration. When a thesis cracks quickly, Gerstner doesn’t hesitate to move on.
Other Exits: Netskope (NTSK) and Gemini Space Station (GEMI) were also cleared out , both relatively small, speculative positions that appear to have not passed muster in the portfolio review.
What He Trimmed
Gerstner wasn’t all-or-nothing in every position. He trimmed Confluent (CFLT) by 38%, Broadcom (AVGO) by a whopping 96% (essentially out), Robinhood (HOOD) by 50%, and Snowflake (SNOW) by 16%.
The Snowflake trim is interesting , Gerstner is one of the most well-known Snowflake bulls on Wall Street, having backed it since before its IPO. But at roughly 6.7% of the portfolio, it’s still a core position. The trim here looks like valuation discipline, not a change of heart.
The Gerstner Playbook, Decoded
Step back, and a clear pattern emerges across these moves:
Bet on picks and shovels, not just the gold rush. CoreWeave, TSM, Nvidia, these are companies providing the physical and digital infrastructure of the AI era. Gerstner is less interested in which AI app wins and more interested in who builds the highways everyone needs.
Platforms with moats get the most love. Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, Uber, Shopify , all of these are companies that are deeply embedded in the habits of businesses and consumers. Switching costs are high. Network effects are real. These are the positions Gerstner has held the longest and trimmed the least.
Be willing to be wrong fast. The Alibaba, PDD, and Synopsys buys-and-sells within one quarter show that Gerstner has no ego about reversing course. The China thesis looked attractive, then didn’t. He moved. That kind of discipline is rare among high-profile investors.
The Bottom Line
Brad Gerstner’s Q4 2025 portfolio is a bet on three big ideas: AI infrastructure (CoreWeave, NVDA, TSM), software platforms with durable moats (Meta, Microsoft, Uber, Shopify, Snowflake), and global commerce (Coupang, MercadoLibre). Everything that didn’t fit that frame , China plays, speculative positions, high-valuation chip design names , got cut.
Whether you agree with every call or not, there’s something to be learned from how decisively he moves. In a world where most investors anchor to their past decisions, Gerstner’s portfolio tells a different story: have a thesis, move with conviction, and don’t be afraid to be wrong.
This blog is based on Altimeter Capital’s Q4 2025 13F filing (filed February 2026) and publicly available research. It is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
Sonia Boolchandani is a seasoned financial writer She has written for prominent firms like Vested Finance, and Finology, where she has crafted content that simplifies complex financial concepts for diverse audiences.
Disclosure: The writer and her his dependents do not hold the stocks discussed in this article.
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