The next-generation ‘Tiger Cubs’ who see the AI bubble risk—and know exactly where the next trade is

For the better part of four years, AI has been the only trade that mattered. Nvidia. Data centers. The infrastructure buildout. A rising tide of capex spending that has minted fortunes and reshaped the S&P 500. If you were long the AI stack, you were a genius. Ben Silver and David Tykocinski think the easy part may be ending. “There’s a risk,” according to Tykocinski, co-chief investment officer of Maverick Capital’s public funds, of an “air pocket” in the gap between the infrastructure buildout and the actual productivity handoff. Even for a full-throated AI believer, he says, that gap is precisely where market volatility breeds. Silver and Tykocinski are the co-CIOs of Maverick Capital, the Dallas- and New York-based hedge fund founded in 1993 by Lee Ainslie, one of the original “Tiger Cubs”—the generation of investors trained under legendary hedge fund manager Julian Robertson at Tiger Management. Ainslie built Maverick into one of the most respected long/short equity firms on the street over three decades and Silver and Tykocinski are the men he chose to carry it forward. They are, in other words, the next generation of Tiger Cubs—and, as they said in an appearance on Goldman Sachs’ Exchanges: Great Investors podcast, they are looking at a market most investors still see as a one-directional AI trade and seeing something considerably more complicated. Following the bottleneck To understand their thesis, you have to understand how they think about where value migrates in a major technology cycle. Bloomberg reported in August 2025 it was raising money for a new semiconductor fund in a “rare expansion” after “trouncing” rivals with a strong run since 2021, exactly when Silver and Tykocinski assumed co-CIO duties. Its oldest hedge fund returned more than 70% cumulatively from the start of 2021 through the first half of 2025, which Bloomberg noted beat the performance of founder Ainslie’s T