Billionaire investor David Tepper's Appaloosa fund opened a new $107 million position in CoreWeave, an AI infrastructure company, in Q2 2026—the same quarter George Soros Fund Management disclosed puts against the stock.
However, Soros was actively reducing his bearish hedge, cutting the notional shares covered by 2,190,100 during the quarter, suggesting less bearish conviction.
CoreWeave's Q2 revenue jumped 112% year-over-year to $2.6 billion with a $104 billion backlog, but the company faces headwinds: free cash flow was deeply negative at $5.743 billion, interest expense nearly doubled, and debt-to-equity reached 8.94x.
What happened
David Tepper's Appaloosa fund opened a new 1,078,248-share position in CoreWeave (NASDAQ:CRWV) valued at $107,328,806 in Q2 2026, while George Soros Fund Management held puts covering 650,000 notional shares but reduced that bearish position by 2,190,100 shares during the quarter.
Why it matters
CoreWeave is an AI cloud infrastructure company with strong growth (Q2 2026 revenue up 112% year-over-year to $2.6 billion and a $104 billion revenue backlog) but also significant financial pressure—free cash flow ran negative $5.743 billion, interest expense nearly doubled to $640 million, and debt-to-equity stands at 8.94x. The opposing positions signal both managers are reading the same balance sheet but drawing different conclusions about its trajectory.
What to watch
Soros was actively shrinking bearish exposure (cutting puts by 2,190,100 shares and trimming his long holding by 139,360 shares), suggesting less bearish conviction through the quarter. Whether Tepper continues building the position in the next quarter will signal how central it becomes to his portfolio; he has a track record with names like Micron.
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CoreWeave represents a high-stakes bet on AI infrastructure demand, and the Q2 2026 13F filings reveal two elite macro investors taking sharply different views. Tepper's $107 million entry—built from scratch with no averaging in—signals conviction in the bull case: triple-digit revenue growth, a $104 billion backlog, and EBITDA that doubled in the quarter. Yet the same balance sheet supports a bear case. Free cash flow swung deeply negative at $5.743 billion, interest expense nearly doubled year-over-year to $640 million, and the company is financing hyperscale ambitions on the capital markets' continued patience, with debt-to-equity at 8.94x and total liabilities of $72.046 billion against only $5.024 billion of equity.
Soros's position complicates the simple Tepper-versus-Soros narrative. Rather than a pure short, the fund held both puts (covering 650,000 notional shares) and a long stock position (300,000 shares)—a classic hedge. More tellingly, Soros actively shrunk the bearish exposure during the quarter, cutting notional puts by 2,190,100 shares, suggesting the fund was getting less bearish, not more. The puts themselves carry an important caveat: 13F filings disclose only notional share count and market value of the underlying, not strike prices, expirations, or the premium Soros actually paid—so the true portfolio weight and cost of the hedge remain hidden.
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