The Q2 2026 13F filings gave us the cleanest single-stock face-off of the cycle. David Tepper’s Appaloosa opened a brand-new position in CoreWeave. In the same quarter, George Soros’s fund disclosed puts against the stock. Two of the most respected macro minds in the business sit on opposite sides of the same AI infrastructure name.
The headline tension is real, but the data tells a more nuanced story than the Tepper-versus-Soros framing suggests.
The Company in the Middle
CoreWeave (NASDAQ:CRWV) is the pure-play AI cloud infrastructure name that everyone loves to argue about.
Q2 2026 revenue hit $2.6 billion, up 112% year-over-year, with a revenue backlog of $104 billion. Adjusted EBITDA doubled to $1.5 billion. The bull case writes itself. The bear case writes itself too.
Free cash flow ran negative $5.743 billion in the quarter, interest expense surged to $640 million from $267 million a year ago, and total liabilities reached $72.046 billion against just $5.024 billion of equity. Debt-to-equity sits at 8.94x. This is a company financing hyperscale ambitions on the capital markets’ patience.
Tepper’s Side
Appaloosa opened a new stake of 1,078,248 shares with a disclosed value of $107,328,806, reported at 0.23% of the class. This was from scratch. No prior position, no averaging in. That signals higher conviction than the alternative.
Soros’s Side, With the Nuance
Soros Fund Management held CoreWeave puts covering 650,000 notional underlying shares with an underlying value of $64,701,000.
Crucially, that put position was cut by 2,190,100 notional shares during the quarter, meaning Soros was actively shrinking the bearish exposure. The fund also separately held 300,000 shares valued at $29,862,000, reported at 0.065% of the class, a long position it trimmed by 139,360 shares.
Puts plus stock reads as a hedge, not a pure directional short. A shrinking put position suggests Soros was getting less bearish through the quarter, not more.
The Options Caveat Nobody Mentions
13F filings disclose only the notional share count for options positions. They do not show strike prices, expirations, or premium paid. The $64,701,000 figure is the market value of the underlying shares, not money Soros put at risk. The true cost and portfolio weight of those puts are unknown. Anyone presenting notional value as the size of the bet is misreading the filing.
My Takeaway
These positions are as of June 30, 2026, filed August 14, 2026.
CRWV closed at $105.26 on August 14. A 45-day-old snapshot is a stale positioning marker, not real-time guidance. Elite managers land on opposite sides of the same AI infrastructure name all the time. The lesson for retail investors is to recognize that both sides are looking at the same balance sheet and reaching different conclusions. CoreWeave sold off today, but its future largely hinges on your conviction in the AI trade. Tepper has bet on names like Micron; if CoreWeave is a position he continues building again next quarter, it becomes one of the most important positions in his portfolio to watch.
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