Renaissance Slashes NVIDIA 85%, Exits Meta Entirely: Inside the Quant Giant's Most Radical Portfolio Overhaul Since the Quant Quake

When Renaissance Technologies filed its Q4 2025 13F on February 12, 2026, the numbers told a story that even seasoned institutional watchers weren't prepared for. The world's most famous quantitative hedge fund didn't just rebalance — it detonated its portfolio.

An 85% slash to NVIDIA. A complete exit from Meta Platforms. The liquidation of a $312 million IonQ quantum computing bet. And yet, simultaneously, a 2,545% surge into Netflix, a 5,221% explosion into Costco, and a brand-new $206 million stake in Amazon. This isn't rebalancing. This is regime change.

The backdrop makes the moves even more dramatic. In October 2025, Renaissance's public funds suffered their worst monthly drawdowns in recent memory — RIEF plunged 14.39% and RIDA cratered 15.6% — in what's now being called the "Quant Quake." The correlation structures that Renaissance's models had relied on for decades broke down simultaneously. By November, the funds staged a dramatic 12.65% recovery, but the damage was done: the models had to be recalibrated, and the Q4 portfolio is the visible evidence of that recalibration.

Let me be direct: I believe this filing reveals Renaissance in full crisis-response mode. The sheer scale of turnover — 477 new positions added, 749 positions exited, touching nearly 40% of the entire portfolio — suggests this isn't a gradual model update. This is an emergency rebuild of factor exposures after the Quant Quake exposed systematic vulnerabilities in their signal architecture.

The AUM Collapse: $75.8B to $64.5B

Renaissance's 13F portfolio shrank from $75.8 billion in Q3 to $64.5 billion in Q4 — a decline of 14.9%. This is the first time since the COVID crash that Renaissance has reported such a significant quarter-over-quarter drop. The decline likely reflects a combination of October trading losses, deliberate risk reduction, and the massive position liquidations detailed below.

What's striking is that the S&P 500 rose roughly 2.4% in Q4 2025. A long-biased fund losing 14.9% of AUM while the market rises is a clear signal of forced deleveraging — exactly what you'd expect after a month like October where RIEF was down nearly 15%.

The NVIDIA Demolition: From $1.05 Billion to $163 Million

No single move in this filing is more significant than the NVIDIA slash. Renaissance cut 85% of its NVIDIA position, reducing it from approximately 5.63 million shares ($1.05 billion) to just 871,000 shares ($163 million). That's $888 million in NVIDIA exposure evaporated in a single quarter.

This isn't Renaissance's first NVIDIA rodeo. Looking at the position trajectory, you can see a clear pattern of "buy the build, sell the hype" — the classic quant contrarian signal. They bought aggressively in Q2 2025 (surging to $1.17B), held through Q3 ($1.05B), then dumped 85% in Q4. The timing is remarkable: they built the position before the AI infrastructure buildout peaked and exited before the market could reprice the concentration risk.

My take: Renaissance's models likely identified that NVIDIA's factor loadings had shifted. When a stock goes from a pure semiconductor play to an AI infrastructure monopoly, the statistical relationships that quant models depend on become unstable. After the October Quant Quake showed exactly how dangerous unstable correlations can be, dumping NVIDIA was almost certainly a risk management decision, not a fundamental call on the company.

The Great Rotation: What They Sold and What They Bought

The Q4 portfolio reveals a massive rotation that I'd characterize as "from momentum to mean-reversion, from growth to defensives."

The Exits (Selected Major Liquidations)

• Meta Platforms — Fully exited. $354M position liquidated entirely. After holding Meta through multiple quarters, Renaissance walked away from the entire position.
• IonQ — Fully exited. $312M quantum computing position dumped. This is particularly notable given the current quantum computing hype cycle.
• AppLovin — Slashed 68%, from $720M to $215M. The ad-tech darling's factor profile apparently no longer fits.
• Alphabet (GOOGL) — Cut ~85%, from $634M to $93M. Combined with the GOOG class cut (from $419M to $32M), total Alphabet exposure dropped ~88%.

The Buys (Selected Major Additions)

• Micron Technology — Surged 151%, from $201M to $859M. Now the #3 holding. Renaissance is betting on the memory cycle while dumping the GPU monopolist — a classic semiconductor rotation.
• Netflix — Surged 2,545%, from $325M to $673M. From a rounding error to a top-10 position in one quarter.
• Tesla — Surged 221%, from $189M to $613M. A bold contrarian bet given Tesla's volatile factor profile.
• Costco — Surged 5,221%, from $12M to $598M. This is the most defensive move in the portfolio — a consumer staples anchor in a sea of tech uncertainty.
• Procter & Gamble — Surged 272%, from $123M to $428M. Another defensive stalwart.
• Chevron — Surged 424%, from $65M to $334M. Energy exposure dramatically increased.

The New Positions

• Amazon — New $206M position. Notable because Renaissance exited AMZN previously; this is a re-entry.
• ServiceNow — New $204M position. Enterprise software — a quality growth bet.
• Eli Lilly — New $178M position. Riding the GLP-1 pharmaceutical wave.
• Circle Internet Group — New $164M position. This is the stablecoin infrastructure company behind USDC — a direct bet on crypto plumbing.
• QuantumScape — New $85M position. Solid-state battery technology. Ironic that they exit IonQ (quantum computing) while entering QuantumScape (quantum battery tech).
• Berkshire Hathaway B — Surged 8,155%, from $1.5M to $127M. When the world's most sophisticated quant fund starts buying Warren Buffett's company, it's worth paying attention.

Top 15 Holdings: The New Portfolio Architecture

Palantir remains the single largest holding at $1.56 billion, representing 2.4% of the portfolio. This is consistent with Palantir's presence as a top holding across multiple recent quarters — Renaissance's models clearly see persistent alpha in this name. What's changed is the composition below it: Micron has catapulted to #3, Netflix and Tesla have entered the top 10, and defensive names like Costco and P&G now anchor the top 15.

The diversification metrics are also telling. The top 10 holdings represent roughly 10.5% of the portfolio — remarkably low concentration for a $64.5B portfolio. Renaissance maintains extreme diversification with 3,185 positions, though this is down from 3,457 in Q3 (the 749 exits exceed the 477 additions).

Sector Allocation: The Defensive Pivot

Technology remains the dominant sector at 25.4% ($16.4B), but its composition has radically shifted. NVIDIA's weight dropped from a top-3 holding to a minor position, replaced by Micron and distributed across enterprise software names like ServiceNow and Salesforce.

The defensive pivot is visible in the data: Consumer Defensive jumped significantly with the Costco and P&G surges. Energy nearly doubled with the Chevron build-up. Healthcare expanded with new positions in Eli Lilly and existing holdings. This is a portfolio that's been rebalanced to survive the next correlation breakdown, not to maximize momentum returns.

The Post-Simons Question

Jim Simons passed away in May 2024. While Simons had been less involved in day-to-day operations for years, his death removed the gravitational center around which Renaissance's culture and risk tolerance were organized. The October 2025 Quant Quake was the first true stress test of the post-Simons leadership team under Peter Brown.

The Q4 portfolio suggests that the response was aggressive but disciplined. The massive turnover (1,226 position changes) shows willingness to abandon historical positions entirely when models demand it. The defensive pivot shows awareness that the factor environment has changed. The Circle Internet and QuantumScape positions show the models are still finding alpha in frontier themes.

My assessment: Renaissance is navigating the post-Simons era about as well as anyone could expect. The Quant Quake exposed real vulnerabilities — the public funds' October losses were brutal — but the Q4 repositioning suggests the firm's core capability (rapid model adaptation) remains intact. The Medallion Fund reportedly still generated approximately 20% returns in 2025, which means the best models still work. The question is whether the public fund models can close the gap.

What This Means for Investors

When the smartest quant fund on Earth slashes NVIDIA by 85% and pivots to Costco and Procter & Gamble, retail investors should take notice — not necessarily to copy the trade (Renaissance's holding period is often days, not quarters), but to understand the signal: the factor environment has changed.

The momentum trades that worked from 2023 through mid-2025 — concentrated AI/tech bets, NVIDIA as a one-way trade, growth at any price — are being unwound by the most sophisticated quantitative operation in history. Whether you agree with Renaissance's models or not, their Q4 2025 filing is a flashing amber light for anyone still running a momentum-heavy portfolio.

Compare Renaissance's positioning with other major filers: Berkshire Hathaway has been accumulating cash and Suncor Energy, while Bridgewater Associates made a massive 10x bet on SPY. Citadel, Millennium, and Two Sigma are all navigating the same post-Quant-Quake landscape. The divergence in approaches among the world's top institutions is itself a signal: nobody has a clear conviction on where markets go from here.

Data sourced from SEC 13F filings as of December 31, 2025. Renaissance Technologies filed on February 12, 2026. Track Renaissance's full portfolio on their filer page.