Tepper exits Sandisk, buys Broadcom in AI chip bet

Tepper's rotation from Sandisk to Broadcom illustrates a deliberate rebalancing within the AI infrastructure trade rather than an abandonment of the sector. Sandisk entered the year positioned to benefit from the AI data center storage boom—AI workloads demand vast amounts of fast, dense storage for training data and inference—and the company's revenue mix, margins, and pricing power all improved sharply as enterprise data center customers drove demand. Yet after just one quarter, Tepper exited at what the timing suggests were elevated valuations, recognizing that memory and storage markets are inherently cyclical and that much of the near-term upside may already be priced in. Broadcom, by contrast, offers Tepper exposure to the custom silicon layer of the AI infrastructure stack—chips designed specifically for hyperscalers rather than general-purpose products—plus the interconnect layer, creating what Tepper may view as more durable competitive advantages and longer visible growth. The move reflects capital discipline: book gains after an abnormal rally, then redeploy into a company with deeper moats and a more defensible multi-year backlog.