The billionaire hedge fund manager is betting on the picks-and-shovels layer of AI while quietly building a bridge to crypto infrastructure
Billionaire investor Dan Loeb is putting his money where the silicon is. His hedge fund Third Point held 275,000 shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company as of the first quarter of 2026, a position valued at roughly $93 million, making TSMC his top AI conviction bet.
The move is notable not just for what Loeb is buying, but for what he’s trimming. Third Point significantly reduced its Nvidia stake during the same quarter, signaling a preference for the company that actually fabricates the chips over the company that designs them.
Why TSMC, and why now #
Loeb described semiconductors as “the most attractive sector right now” in May 2026. TSMC commands roughly 70% of the global contract semiconductor production market. Nvidia, AMD, and virtually every major AI hardware player relies on the Taiwanese foundry to turn designs into physical silicon.
The financial results back up the thesis. TSMC reported $13.2 billion in revenue for May 2026 alone, representing a 30.1% jump compared to the same month a year earlier. That growth was driven overwhelmingly by AI-related orders, as hyperscalers and cloud providers continue racing to build out the compute infrastructure required for increasingly demanding AI models.
Loeb’s framing centers on what he calls a “compute-constrained world.” The basic argument: demand for AI processing power is growing faster than the industry’s ability to supply it, and the company with the most advanced manufacturing capabilities sits at the bottleneck.
The crypto connection: Hut 8 enters the portfolio #
Third Point also opened a new position in Hut 8, the Bitcoin mining and data center operator, during 2026. Hut 8 operates large-scale data centers that can flexibly allocate capacity between Bitcoin mining and AI compute tasks.
TSMC itself has historical ties to the crypto industry. The foundry has manufactured application-specific integrated circuits, or ASICs, for mining companies like Bitmain. Those same fabrication capabilities have now been redirected toward the AI chip market.
What this means for investors #
TSMC’s 70% market share in advanced chip fabrication creates what amounts to a near-monopoly at the most critical step in the AI supply chain. Competitors like Samsung Foundry and Intel’s foundry division have been trying to close the gap for years with limited success.
The risk is geopolitical. TSMC’s primary manufacturing operations are concentrated in Taiwan, and any escalation in cross-strait tensions would send shockwaves through the entire AI hardware ecosystem. The company has been diversifying with new facilities in Arizona and Japan, but the most advanced nodes still run through Taiwanese fabs.
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