Artisan Global Discovery Fund Sold GoDaddy (GDDY) Due to Increased Competition

Artisan Partners, an investment management company, released its “Artisan Global Discovery Fund” second-quarter 2025 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. In the second quarter, the fund’s Investor Class APFDX returned 10.84%, Advisor Class APDDX posted a return of 10.83%, and Institutional Class APHDX returned 10.93%, compared to a 11.84% return for the MSCI All Country World Small Mid Index. Global markets experienced volatility in Q2, shifting from double-digit declines to gains. Following President Trump’s April 2 announcement of tariffs on US trading partners, equities fell sharply. However, on April 9, he suspended tariff increases, leading to a tentative agreement with Beijing in May. This announcement resulted in a strong rebound, allowing US equities to recover their April losses and rise heading into summer. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2025.

In its second-quarter 2025 investor letter, Artisan Global Discovery Fund highlighted stocks such as GoDaddy Inc. (NYSE:GDDY). GoDaddy Inc. (NYSE:GDDY) designs and develops cloud-based products. The one-month return of GoDaddy Inc. (NYSE:GDDY) was -4.66%, and its shares lost 9.81% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On September 26, 2025, GoDaddy Inc. (NYSE:GDDY) stock closed at $141.40 per share, with a market capitalization of $19.577 billion.

Artisan Global Discovery Fund stated the following regarding GoDaddy Inc. (NYSE:GDDY) in its second quarter 2025 investor letter:

“Along with Saia and Gerresheimer, we also ended our investment campaign in GoDaddy Inc. (NYSE:GDDY), a leader in domain registration with strong brand recognition. It generates 70% of its revenue from core domain services and 30% from higher margin applications and commerce tools. The company’s strategy has focused on using domain services to cross-sell into higher margin products, with ongoing tech modernization expected to drive accelerating product adoption and margins. We decided to sell GoDaddy due to concerns over increased competition from Wix and AI-based business models, as well as incremental marketing investments in Airo—its AI-powered suite of tools to help businesses with their online presence. Airo investments could offset operating leverage, and much of the low-hanging fruit has already been picked. While its guidance appears conservative and it is actively buying back shares, risks from increased competition and potential macro challenges for small and medium-sized businesses remain.”

GoDaddy Inc. (GDDY) – “Is This a Misdirection Play? Execution’s in Question,” Cautions Cramer

GoDaddy Inc. (NYSE:GDDY) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. According to our database, 56 hedge fund portfolios held GoDaddy Inc. (NYSE:GDDY) at the end of the second quarter, up from 50 in the previous quarter. GoDaddy Inc.’s (NYSE:GDDY) total revenue increased by 8% in Q2 2025 to $1.2 billion, exceeding the guidance. While we acknowledge the risk and potential of GoDaddy Inc. (NYSE:GDDY) as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than GoDaddy Inc. (NYSE:GDDY) and that has 10,000% upside potential, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.

In another article, we covered GoDaddy Inc. (NYSE:GDDY) and shared the list of most promising technology stocks to invest in. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q2 2025 page for more investor letters from hedge funds and other leading investors.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.