Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater Dumps Nvidia, Backs Applied Materials as Hedge Funds Turn Away From the ‘Magnificent Seven’

Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater Associates has slashed its Nvidia and other ‘Magnificent Seven’ holdings while quietly building a large position in Applied Materials and other chip-equipment and software names. Here’s what the latest Q3 13F filings say about hedge funds’ changing view of Big Tech, AI valuations, and bubble risks.

A Quiet Portfolio Shake-Up Behind Ray Dalio’s Bubble Warnings

New regulatory filings and fresh commentary from Bridgewater Associates show the world’s largest hedge fund talking and acting much more defensively on the AI-driven tech boom.

Q3 2025 13F disclosures reveal that Bridgewater, founded by billionaire Ray Dalio, aggressively cut back its exposure to the “Magnificent Seven” mega-cap tech stocks—especially Nvidia and Alphabet—while rotating capital into chip-equipment maker Applied Materials, software, payments, and other more diversified plays. ^[1]

At the same time, Dalio and Bridgewater’s current CIOs have warned that today’s market looks uncomfortably close to past bubbles, citing stretched equity valuations and unsustainable debt dynamics. ^[2]

And as of today, November 20, 2025, new analysis of institutional filings and earnings-season data confirms that Bridgewater is not alone. A growing number of major hedge funds are easing off the AI trade and the Magnificent Seven, even as U.S. indices sit near record highs. ^[3]

What Bridgewater Actually Changed in Q3

The calm headline number in Bridgewater’s Q3 13F—only a modest increase in total equity assets—hides a major reshuffle under the surface. According to Reuters, Marketscreener and related breakdowns of the filings, Bridgewater made the following big moves in the quarter ended September 30: ^[4]

1. Slashing Nvidia and Other Mega-Cap Tech

Nvidia (NVDA)
- Bridgewater cut its Nvidia stake by nearly two-thirds, reducing holdings to around 2.5 million shares, a drop of about 65% from Q2 levels. ^[5]
Alphabet (GOOGL)
- The fund more than halved its position, ending Q3 with roughly 2.65 million shares. ^[6]
Amazon (AMZN)
- Amazon was cut by about 9.6%, to just over 1.1 million shares. ^[7]
Broadcom (AVGO)
- Its stake in chip and infrastructure giant Broadcom fell by roughly 27%, to around 845,000 shares. ^[8]

Multiple summaries of the filings—from Reuters, crypto exchange news desks, and hedge-fund trackers—describe this as a deliberate pullback from overheated AI winners after a huge run in valuations. ^[9]

2. Leaning Into Software, Payments – and “Picks-and-Shovels” AI Plays

Bridgewater didn’t simply move to cash. It redirected capital into areas that still benefit from digital and AI trends, but with more diversified or “real economy” exposure, including: ^[10]

Application software & platforms:
- Increased stakes in Adobe, Dynatrace and Etsy, among others. These names are tied to cloud, analytics, and e-commerce, but are less single-factor dependent on Nvidia-style AI chip euphoria. ^[11]
Payments and financial technology:
- A bigger position in Fiserv, a major payments software and services company. (Ironically, both Bridgewater and Discovery Capital bought more Fiserv right before a profit warning wiped about $30 billion off its market cap in one day.) ^[12]
Semiconductor equipment:
- A new stake in Applied Materials (AMAT), plus exposure to Lam Research, giving Bridgewater more direct leverage to long-term chip-manufacturing demand rather than just one GPU designer. ^[13]

This reshuffle matches the tone of Bridgewater’s own research notes, which emphasize that AI-related spending may keep rising, but current equity prices already discount extraordinarily optimistic growth and profitability. ^[14]

The Big New Bet: Applied Materials Over Nvidia

One headline grabber this week has been the scale of Bridgewater’s move into Applied Materials, the world’s largest supplier of chip-fabrication equipment.

How big is the position?

Bridgewater’s latest 13F shows a new AMAT stake worth roughly $95 million as of Q3, according to Barchart and other portfolio trackers. ^[15]
Several institutional-investor roundups describe this as a “quiet bullish bet” on the semiconductor supply chain, even as Nvidia exposure is reduced. ^[16]

Why Applied Materials, and why now?

A cluster of recent AMAT coverage helps explain the timing: ^[17]

Strong fundamentals:
- AMAT reported Q4 FY2025 revenue of about $6.8 billion, beating consensus estimates and guiding the next quarter above expectations, even as U.S. export restrictions weigh on China-related business.
Up ~40% year-to-date in 2025:
- Despite regulatory headwinds, AMAT’s share price has climbed around 40% in 2025, supported by broad demand from AI data centers, automotive chips and specialty semiconductors.
Analyst support:
- Multiple Wall Street banks have raised price targets into the $250–$270 range, with several “Overweight” or “Outperform” calls, highlighting AMAT as a key enabler of the AI and high-performance-computing build‑out.
Institutional flows:
- Alongside Bridgewater, a range of asset managers and hedge funds have added or increased positions in AMAT in recent quarters, according to recent fund-holding reports.

For a macro-driven manager like Bridgewater, Applied Materials and Lam Research look like “picks and shovels” for the AI gold rush: they sell the tools needed to make chips, regardless of which chip designer or cloud giant ends up winning the AI arms race. ^[18]

At the same time, by slashing Nvidia—where expectations and valuation are most extreme—Bridgewater appears to be reducing single‑name bubble risk while still participating in long-term semiconductor demand. ^[19]

Wall Street’s New Theme: Easing Off the ‘Magnificent Seven’

Bridgewater’s moves are part of a broader pattern across U.S. hedge funds.

13F filings show a coordinated trim

Reuters’ analysis of Q3 13F filings, reiterated by MarketScreener, regional media and crypto news outlets, highlights that many of Wall Street’s biggest stock‑picking funds cut stakes in Magnificent Seven stocks—Nvidia, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Tesla, Microsoft and Apple—during the third quarter. ^[20]

Some notable patterns:

Bridgewater
- Slashed Nvidia and Alphabet, trimmed Amazon and Broadcom, and boosted Adobe, Dynatrace, Etsy and Fiserv. ^[21]
Lone Pine Capital & Tiger Global
- Reduced their Meta Platforms stakes by about 35% and 63%, respectively. ^[22]
Coatue Management
- Cut exposure to Nvidia and other AI high‑flyers while adding positions in Alphabet and other large‑cap tech stocks. ^[23]
Balyasny & others
- Adjusted positions in Amazon, Apple, and other megacaps, often trimming winners while reallocating to software, e‑commerce and healthcare names. ^[24]
Berkshire Hathaway
- Opened a new ~$4.3 billion stake in Alphabet while continuing to trim its massive Apple position, a theme repeated across several Q3 filings. ^[25]

An InsiderMonkey mid‑cap strategy piece published today notes that this rotation has freed up capital for mid‑cap opportunities, pointing specifically to Bridgewater’s heavy cuts in “two Magnificent Seven names” and its increased exposure to more reasonably valued mid‑cap stocks. ^[26]

Yet the AI story isn’t dead

Today’s fresh analysis from TradingKey, published November 20, uses the combined 13F data to show that institutional investors are now sharply divided on the AI trade: ^[27]

Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest increased holdings in six of the seven big tech names (all except Apple).
Peter Thiel’s fund completely exited Nvidia but added to Apple and Microsoft.
Point72 boosted Nvidia, Microsoft and Meta, while trimming Amazon.
Bridgewater and Baillie Gifford are highlighted as examples of managers that have publicly questioned tech valuations and are broadly pulling back from the Magnificent Seven.

The result is no longer a one‑way trade. Instead, Q3 ends with a noisy, highly polarized positioning picture: some funds are still leaning hard into the AI boom, while others are quietly heading for the exits.

Dalio and Bridgewater’s Bubble & Debt Warnings

The portfolio changes are easier to interpret once you look at what Dalio and Bridgewater have been saying this month.

“As optimistic as it’s been in nearly 100 years”

In a note to clients earlier in November, Bridgewater’s three co‑CIOs—Bob Prince, Greg Jensen and Karen Karniol‑Tambour—warned that: ^[28]

The S&P 500 is up around 16% year‑to‑date, driven largely by AI‑linked mega‑cap tech.
Growth expectations embedded in U.S. equities are “among the most optimistic in nearly a century,” comparable mainly to the dot‑com bubble period.
Investors are underpricing the risk that massive AI infrastructure investments (chips, data centers, networking gear) may not deliver the cash flows needed to justify current valuations.
The current environment carries an “uncomfortably high” probability of extreme, hard‑to‑predict outcomes given geopolitical tensions, policy uncertainty, and a long federal government shutdown earlier in the year.

Separate commentary and interviews this week amplify those concerns. Coverage of a recent conversation between Dalio and Andrew Ross Sorkin highlights his view that the parallels between the bubbles of 1929, 2008 and today are “striking,” with excessive debt as the common thread. ^[29]

In a Barchart column, Dalio is also quoted warning that the next major debt crisis is more likely to stem from over‑indebted governments than from banks, pointing to soaring fiscal deficits and rising sovereign funding costs. ^[30]

The message behind the trades

Put together, the message from Bridgewater’s research and its Q3 holdings looks consistent:

AI and big tech are real, but already priced for near‑perfection.
Debt and macro risks are rising, especially at the government level.
Therefore, reduce concentration in the most crowded AI winners, spread risk across sectors, and favour assets with more tangible cash‑flow support or diversified demand drivers.

Buying Applied Materials and trimming Nvidia is almost a textbook execution of that thesis.

What It Means for Individual Investors

This is not investment advice, but there are some practical takeaways in the Bridgewater / Magnificent Seven story that matter for everyday market participants.

1. 13F data is lagged – but still useful

Q3 filings show positions as of September 30, not November 20. Bridgewater and its peers may already have adjusted again since then. Still, the filings offer a clear view of medium‑term positioning trends, especially when you see multiple funds moving in the same direction. ^[31]

2. Watch concentration risk in your own portfolio

The Magnificent Seven now represent an outsized share of major U.S. indices. If you own index funds or concentrated tech ETFs, you may be more exposed to the same small group of names than you realize, both directly and indirectly. That’s exactly the structural issue Dalio and Bridgewater keep flagging. ^[32]

3. “Picks and shovels” vs. “lottery tickets”

Bridgewater’s pivot from Nvidia toward Applied Materials, Lam Research and diversified software suggests a preference for businesses that sell essential inputs to many players, rather than betting everything on a single dominant platform stock. For individual investors, that’s a reminder to look beyond the headline AI winners. ^[33]

4. Bubbles can last longer than you expect

Today’s TradingKey analysis argues that we may still be some distance from a full‑blown AI bubble burst, precisely because many investors remain optimistic. ^[34] Bridgewater’s stance looks less like an outright short on U.S. tech and more like a calculated reduction of downside if the optimism proves excessive.

Key Takeaways on November 20, 2025

Bridgewater has quietly but decisively reshaped its portfolio, slashing Nvidia, Alphabet, Amazon and Broadcom while building positions in Applied Materials, Lam Research, software, and payments. ^[35]
Hedge funds across Wall Street are cooling on the Magnificent Seven, with multiple Q3 filings showing reduced exposure and sector rotation into software, payments, healthcare and select industrials. ^[36]
Dalio and Bridgewater’s CIOs are openly worried about bubble‑like valuations and a looming debt problem, especially from governments, not banks. ^[37]
Today’s fresh research and commentary (November 20) confirm a split institutional view: some “star investors” are still adding to AI mega‑caps, while others—Bridgewater among them—are quietly lowering the temperature on the trade. ^[38]

For investors watching Ray Dalio and Bridgewater as a macro barometer, the signal is clear: the AI story isn’t over—but the easy, one‑way bet on the Magnificent Seven might be.