Billionaire family offices invested in pro soccer, bitcoin and semiconductors before the new year

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Leon Cooperman.

Scott Mlyn | CNBC

A version of this article first appeared in CNBC’s Inside Wealth newsletter with Robert Frank, a weekly guide to the high-net-worth investor and consumer. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.

Private investment firms of the ultra-wealthy capped off 2025 with equity bets ranging from airline stocks to bitcoin ETFs, according to fourth-quarter securities filings analyzed by CNBC.

Some of the investments made headlines. Leon Cooperman’s family office, Omega Advisors, for example, attracted attention last week for disclosing that it had upped its stake in Manchester United last quarter. Omega Advisors’ shares of the publicly traded English soccer club are now worth $46.5 million, per InsiderScore.

(Manchester fans fearing a takeover by the hedge-fund billionaire can rest easy. Another filing disclosing Cooperman’s 5.2% stake in the club stated that his holding is a passive investment.)

While it generated less buzz, Omega Advisors’ biggest move last quarter was buying more than $375 million worth of shares in mortgage lender Rocket Companies. The new position is now the firm’s largest holding valued at nearly $407 million, per InsiderScore.

Some other moves by billionaire firms have already paid off. David Tepper’s family office Appaloosa tripled its position in Micron to $428.1 million, making it the firm’s top holding. Shares of Micron, which produces memory chips that power artificial intelligence data centers, have surged by roughly 50% since the start of 2026. During the same quarter, Stanley Druckenmiller’s Duquesne Family Office initiated a new position in fuel-cell company Bloom Energy, which is up more than 100% year to date.

Bets on cryptocurrency have been less fruitful thus far this year. WIT LLC, an investment vehicle for the Walton family’s namesake family office, made a $4 million allocation to iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF, which has sunk 21% year-to-date. The new position makes up less than 1% of WIT’s portfolio. Duty-free mogul Alan Parker’s Kemnay Advisory Services increased its shares of Coinbase by nearly 44% last quarter. Shares of Coinbase have sunk 18% since the beginning of the year.

Last quarter’s filings highlighted major investors’ diverging approaches on trading the Mag 7. Duquesne, for instance, upped its Amazon holdings by 69% to roughly $170 million and exited its Meta position. Meanwhile, Longbow SA, an investment firm of the billionaire Rausing family, downsized its positions in Amazon, Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet and Meta.

Ray Dalio, who has repeatedly warned of an AI bubble and a potential capital war for months, has taken a striking approach, according to the latest filing for Dalio’s Marino Management. The firm disclosed a $438.5 million position in SPDR Gold Trust that makes up nearly 90% of its portfolio.

“I think people make the mistake of thinking, ‘Is [gold] going to go up and down, and should I buy it?’” Dalio told CNBC in early February. “Instead … perhaps central banks or governments or sovereign wealth funds should say, ‘What percentage of my portfolio should I have in gold?’ [and] keep a certain percentage, because it’s a very effective diversifier to other poor parts of the portfolio.”

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