In this article, we will highlight Billionaire Cliff Asness’ Top 10 Healthcare Stock Picks.
Cliff Asness is a billionaire investor and the co-founder and chief investment officer of AQR Capital Management, a quantitative hedge fund. Asness, who owns about 30% stake in the firm, is worth an estimated $6.3 billion, making him one of the wealthiest hedge fund managers in the world. The firm he co-founded in 1998 now oversees $249 billion in assets, which is an all-time high, especially after attracting a record $75 billion in new capital in 2025 alone.
In that year, the firm’s flagship Apex multi strategy fund returned 19.6%, which Bloomberg said was largely driven by stock-picking trades. This growth outpaced most quant peers and more than doubled the S&P 500’s 14.4% annualized return over the last five years. AQR’s market-neutral Adaptive Equities Strategy did even better, gaining 24.4% for the 12 months of 2025.
Much of that turnaround boils down to AQR integrating artificial intelligence deeply into its operations. According to a March 16 analysis by Forbes Magazine, AQR has expanded machine-learning techniques across research and trading, and that AI is now helping to detect complex interactions between factors, recalibrate their weights in real time, and mine large datasets for predictive signals. Forbes quoted Asness himself describing the shift as AQR having “surrendered more to the machine.”
Incidentally, that same AI wave is now moving through the healthcare sector. Just one example, a BioSpace report revealed that one giant pharmaceutical company estimated to have slashed billions in spending across R&D and administrative operations over the past 12 months to February 2026. The report quoted the company’s CEO, who said: “We didn’t just cut cost, what we did is we improved productivity. And the main lever – of course, there [were] simplification efforts that also took place – but the main lever was the successful deployment of AI.”
Because of the AI aspect and several other factors, there is growing interest in healthcare stocks. For instance, the S&P 500 Healthcare Index is up 3.74% year-to-date as of this writing, and has gained 12.6% since April 29. Even AQR’s own Q1 2026 13F filing shows the fund raised its stake in one healthcare name by 15%, which elevated the stock to AQR’s sixth largest holding by value.
Against that backdrop, this article takes a look into Asness’ top 10 healthcare stock picks.
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Our Methodology
We searched through AQR Capital Management’s Q1 2026 portfolio and identified all healthcare stocks, which we ranked based on the fund’s stake in them and picked the top 10. We also considered the overall hedge fund sentiment using Q1 2026 13F holdings data from Insider Monkey’s database. The list is in ascending order of the value of AQR Capital Management’s stake in each stock.
Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research shows we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Insider Monkey’s quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 599.2% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 372 percentage points (see more details here).
Billionaire Cliff Asness’ Top Healthcare Stock Picks
10. Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ:ILMN)
AQR Capital Management’s Stake Value: $490,707,847
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 48
Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ:ILMN) is one of billionaire Cliff Asness’ top 10 healthcare stock picks. On June 26, Bernstein SocGen analyst Eve Burstein resumed coverage of Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ:ILMN) with a Market Perform rating and a price target of $185.
According to Burstein, the backdrop to this coverage resumption is a company that endured a genuinely difficult stretch. She noted that beginning in early 2025, China placed the company on its Unreliable Entities List and restricted imports of its sequencing instruments. This was a double blow that hit the company’s revenue estimates hard through much of last year, Burstein said.
Rather than staying stuck, Illumina leaned into its next-generation NovaSeq X sequencer and an expanding portfolio of clinical applications, including uses in cancer detection, rare disease diagnosis, and reproductive health. That pivot, in Burstein’s view, has fueled a significant recovery.
Illumina also benefited greatly from many things going right for the life science tools and diagnostics sector, Burstein noted. She stated that the sector is seeing new drug approvals and trial starts. Even funding is better in the last 12 months versus the 12 months prior. The analyst is of the view that the increased funding will boost customer spend especially while AI drives demand for semiconductor-related tools.
Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ:ILMN) is a life sciences technology company. It develops, manufactures, and markets integrated systems for the analysis of genetic variation and biological function, including DNA sequencing and array-based platforms.
9. Incyte Corporation (NASDAQ:INCY)
AQR Capital Management’s Stake Value: $536,130,025
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 42
Incyte Corporation (NASDAQ:INCY) is one of billionaire Cliff Asness’ top 10 healthcare stock picks. On June 22, Truist Securities analyst Srikripa Devarakonda raised the price target on Incyte Corporation (NASDAQ:INCY) from $103 to $105, while keeping a Hold rating on the stock.
Devarakonda said the target increase was partly driven by a one-time financial boost coming from Incyte winning a dispute with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). The dispute was over how Incyte’s inflammation drug Opzelura should be classified for Medicaid rebate purposes. Incyte winning the dispute resulted in a non-cash settlement worth about $246 million that the company will add to Opzelura’s net sales in Q2 2026.
On top of the settlement, Truist also revised its model to reflect a roughly 5% improvement in Opzelura’s gross-to-net ratio going forward. Put simply, Incyte will effectively retain more revenue from Opzelura sales after accounting for rebates and discounts.
The analyst added that they updated their outlook on VGA039, which is Incyte’s experimental drug for von Willebrand disease (VWD). Truist projects that VGA039 could reach approximately $1 billion in peak worldwide sales by 2036, and that international markets will make up around 20% of that total. A key reason Truist is optimistic about VGA039 is that the drug is designed to work across all subtypes of VWD.
Incyte Corporation (NASDAQ:INCY) is a biopharmaceutical company. It discovers, develops, and commercializes proprietary therapeutics, with a primary focus on oncology and inflammation. Its portfolio includes Jakafi (ruxolitinib), an approved treatment for myelofibrosis and polycythemia vera, and Opzelura, a topical formulation for atopic dermatitis and vitiligo.
