Stanley Druckenmiller’s Duquesne Family Office has opened new stakes to the tune of more than $160 million in companies primed to directly benefit from the massive AI CapEx this year.
The Move
Data from the firm’s latest 13F filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission shows that Druckenmiller initiated a new stake in Broadcom, gobbling up 195,955 AVGO shares worth $60.65 million in Q1 of this year. Broadcom’s custom silicon is used by hyperscalers including Google and Meta to power their AI training and inference workloads, making it one of the most direct beneficiaries of the AI infrastructure buildout.
The firm also opened a new position in Sandisk, buying 38,155 SNDK shares worth $24.24 million. SanDisk is a leading flash storage manufacturer, and the surge in AI data center buildout has boosted demand for high-capacity storage solutions.
In addition, Duquesne snapped up Twilio, accumulating 181,760 TWLO shares worth $22.869 million. Twilio is a cloud communications platform that enterprises are increasingly using for AI-powered customer engagement tools and agentic workflows.
Duquesne also opened a fresh stake in Intel last quarter, buying 411,400 INTC shares worth $18.155 million. Intel is one of the biggest players in the CPU market and is developing a new generation of AI accelerators to compete in the exploding arena of AI inference.
Seagate Technology is also on Duquesne’s Q1 shopping list, buying 50,700 STX shares valued at $19.862 million. Seagate is a dominant player in hard disk drive manufacturing and is seeing increasing demand from data centers, as well as cloud and enterprise customers.
Lastly, Duquesne gobbled up ARM Holdings last quarter, opening a new position after buying 106,700 ARM shares worth $16.142 million. Arm designs the chip architectures that power the vast majority of AI inference hardware deployed globally, and its architecture is used by Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm, and other major chip designers.
What It Means for Investors
Duquesne’s latest moves suggest that the biggest whales in the investment realm are entering the AI trade with conviction and are doing so by following the money. Banking titan Morgan Stanley recently predicted that mega-cap tech US companies will spend a whopping $800 billion on AI this year. Duquesne appears to believe that the money will go to chipmakers, storage solutions, and cloud providers, the classic pick-and-shovels plays.
The charts show that pick-and-shovels plays are either consolidating or pulling back following the S&P 500’s remarkable rally from its March 30th lows.
Last month, McKinsey projected that global demand for AI compute power will require $6.7 trillion in CapEx by 2030. The figure suggests that hyperscalers and tech firms will have to pony up a massive amount of funding, to the benefit of AI picks-and-shovels names.
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