2025 Year-End Review
2025 was a year in which GZC's core thesis — that structural bottlenecks in AI infrastructure and commodity supply chains create the highest-conviction equity opportunities in public markets — played out more visibly than we anticipated at the year's outset. This letter reviews the full year, acknowledges where we were right, addresses what we would do differently, and outlines our positioning as we enter 2026.
Equities Pool: What Worked
The single most significant thesis validation of 2025 was the convergence of AI infrastructure capex and physical supply chain constraints. We had been building our research framework around this intersection since 2023, and 2025 was the year it became undeniable.
Specifically: HBM memory allocation became a gating factor for AI deployments at multiple major cloud providers. Optical interconnect solutions began the transition from evaluation pilots to production-scale deployment. Liquid cooling moved from a feature of custom hyperscaler builds to a standard infrastructure requirement. Each of these dynamics was visible in our research process before it became a mainstream investment narrative — and each produced material returns for the equities pool.
Our concentration discipline also worked. We did not own 50 names. We owned 10 to 14 names with deep conviction, and the best of them drove the portfolio's performance. Diversification as practiced by most equity managers would have diluted those results significantly.
Equities Pool: What We Would Do Differently
Our single biggest missed opportunity in 2025 was being too conservative in adding to our liquid cooling positions in Q3. We had done the work. We had validated the thesis. But we were waiting for a technical entry that did not materialize at our target level, and the positions ran while we remained underweight. This is a tension we will always face — conviction in the thesis versus discipline in the entry. In this case, we let entry discipline become an obstacle to appropriate position sizing.
We have adjusted our process to allow for staged scaling into a position when the thesis is validated but the perfect technical entry has not arrived. We will not abandon entry discipline — it is core to how we manage risk — but we will give ourselves more latitude to build positions incrementally when the fundamental setup is compelling.
Commodities Pool: Year in Review
Pool Two navigated a challenging macro environment with steady positioning. Oil and gas names held their ground through OPEC+ volatility, supported by strong midstream cash flows and sector-level underinvestment that keeps supply structurally constrained. We generated steady income-like returns from pipeline-oriented positions that did not require commodity price appreciation to perform.
Precious metals were the standout in the commodities pool. Gold's multi-year breakout from its consolidation range — driven by central bank demand, dollar reserve dynamics, and structural inflation persistence — provided both absolute returns and meaningful portfolio stability during the periods of equity market volatility in Q1 and early Q4.
Entering 2026: How We Are Positioned
As we begin 2026, the equities pool is concentrated in three primary thesis areas:
AI Infrastructure Bottlenecks: We continue to hold positions in companies serving the physical constraints of AI compute scaling — power delivery, thermal management, memory, and interconnect. Our confidence in multi-year demand durability for these names remains high.
Grid Infrastructure: The transformer and switchgear shortage is an investment thesis we expect to play out over a 3 to 5 year horizon. We are building patient positions in companies with manufacturing capacity that cannot be quickly replicated.
Optical Interconnect: Our ALAB thesis, first articulated in early 2025, has validated materially. We have trimmed slightly from peak weighting but remain meaningfully positioned for what we believe is a multi-year adoption curve.
The commodities pool enters 2026 positioned for continued precious metals strength and a potential capex cycle inflection in oil and gas as producer balance sheets have improved significantly.
Firm Updates
Green Zone Capital completed its sixth full year of operation in 2025. We published more research this year than any prior year, expanded our commodities coverage to include critical minerals, and continued to refine our investment process based on what 2025 taught us.
We remain a small, focused firm — by design. We do not manage capital at a scale that would compromise our ability to act decisively. We are grateful for the continued trust of our investor partners, and we enter 2026 with high conviction in our positioning and our process.
— Ahijah Ireland, Founder & CIO, Green Zone Capital
