Artisan Partners, an investment management company, released its fourth-quarter 2025 investor letter for “Artisan Mid Cap Fund”. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. The Fund seeks to invest in companies that possess franchise characteristics, with strong earnings trajectories, and are trading at a discount to the estimated private market value. US equities ended a record year with robust fourth-quarter gains. The Fund’s Investor Class, ARTMX, delivered -0.44%, the Advisor Class, APDMX, delivered -0.37%, and the Institutional Class, APHMX, delivered -0.35% in the fourth quarter compared to -3.70% for the Russell Midcap® Growth Index. Continued strength in information technology (IT) and health care contributed to the performance during the quarter. Please review the Fund’s top five holdings to gain insights into their key selections for 2025.
In its fourth-quarter 2025 investor letter, Artisan Mid Cap Fund highlighted stocks like Astera Labs, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALAB). Astera Labs, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALAB) is a semiconductor-based connectivity solutions manufacturer for cloud and AI infrastructure. On February 20, 2026, Astera Labs, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALAB) stock closed at $129.68 per share. One-month return of Astera Labs, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALAB) was -20.56%, and its shares gained 53.23% over the past 52 weeks. Astera Labs, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALAB) has a market capitalization of $22.073 billion.
Artisan Mid Cap Fund stated the following regarding Astera Labs, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALAB) in its fourth quarter 2025 investor letter:
“During the quarter, we initiated new positions in L3Harris, Astera Labs, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALAB) and Carvana. Astera Labs is a fabless provider of connectivity chips designed to address data, network and memory bandwidth bottlenecks in data centers. Modern GPUs and CPU soften can not operate at full performance due to limitations in how they connect to memory and networks, and Astera’s chips help remove these constraints to improve system efficiency. The company also enables communication across different types of chips, supporting the industry’s shift toward heterogeneous computing. With continued cloud growth and rising AI demand driving rapid data center expansion, we believe Astera has a strong long-term growth opportunity. We took advantage of a recent pullback to start a GardenSM position.”
Astera Labs, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALAB) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. According to our database, 51 hedge fund portfolios held Astera Labs, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALAB) at the end of the fourth quarter, compared to 57 in the previous quarter. In Q4 2025, Astera Labs, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALAB) reported revenue of $270.6 million, up 17% from the prior quarter and up 92% versus Q4 of last year. While we acknowledge the risk and potential of Astera Labs, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALAB) 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 Astera Labs, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALAB) and that has 10,000% upside potential, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
In another article, we covered Astera Labs, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALAB) and shared a list of best tech stocks that beat earnings estimates. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q4 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.
