In this article, we will discuss Here is How Billionaire Philippe Laffont’s Top 10 Picks Crushed The Market.
Billionaire Philippe Laffont, a protege of legendary investor Julian Robertson, has evolved his strategy over the years. Once focused mainly on fundamentals and long-only growth investing, the French billionaire now believes that approach is becoming outdated as more high-growth companies stay private longer. His firm, Coatue Management, is pushing into private markets with a new hybrid fund, according to a Bloomberg report.
The fund will invest in both publicly traded stocks and late-stage private startups, with around 20% allocated to private companies. Artificial intelligence and technology remain a key focus. Coatue’s assets under management reached about $70 billion in 2026, up from roughly $10 billion in 2016, the report said.
During a CNBC interview in November, Laffont said that investing in public markets comes with a key caveat: investors must constantly assess whether catalysts are already priced in. He added that private markets offer strong potential, but require greater patience and a longer time horizon.
“On the private side usually things take longer,” he said. “You have to be more right. You have to be more patient. You have to be active in your companies. You have to support the founders or the CEOs a lot. So I would say that if you can do both, great.”
For this article, we picked the top 10 stock holdings of Coatue as of the end of Q4. Based on a cumulative equal-weight basis, these 10 stocks as a whole are up about 17% year to date, compared with the S&P 500’s 4.8% return. The performance was driven by AI semiconductor names, among others. Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 498.7% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 303 percentage points (see more details here).
Philippe Laffont of Coatue Management
10. Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX)
YTD Stock Performance: +35%
Philippe Laffont’s Stake: $1.67 Billion
Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX) has been one of the biggest winners in the portfolio during the AI boom because it’s a key pick-and-shovel name. The company makes wafer fabrication equipment, mainly etch and deposition systems, which are essential steps in building advanced chips. These tools are used repeatedly in the production of AI chips, including GPUs, high-bandwidth memory (HBM), and advanced logic semiconductors. The company’s equipment is critical as AI data center demand accelerates, chip designs are becoming more complex, especially with the shift toward 3D architectures and smaller process nodes.
Only a few global players compete at the highest level in etch and deposition technology, which means a strong moat for Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX). Once a chipmaker qualifies Lam’s tools for its production process, switching costs are extremely high due to the sensitivity of advanced manufacturing.
Lam Research (NASDAQ:LRCX) customers include major semiconductor manufacturers such as TSMC, Samsung, Intel, Micron, SK hynix, and SMIC, along with other global foundries and memory chip producers. These companies use Lam’s equipment to build advanced logic chips and memory products, especially for AI data centers.
Parnassus Mid Cap Fund stated the following regarding Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX) in its fourth quarter 2025 investor letter:
“Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX), a designer and maker of semiconductor processing equipment, continues to see strong demand for its industry-leading process tools and equipment to support semiconductor manufacturing driven by the AI megatrend.”
9. NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA)
YTD Stock Performance: +12%
Philippe Laffont’s Stake: $1.71 Billion
NVIDIA’s stock has been a target of skeptics ever since the AI hype debate started taking over Wall Street. Despite concerns around AI spending and valuation, the company has repeatedly beaten analyst estimates and raised guidance. What bears may have underestimated is that Nvidia is no longer just a GPU company. The AI buildout is creating an ecosystem where Nvidia sits at the center.
Beyond its Blackwell GPUs and upcoming Vera chips, the company has growth catalysts like CPUs (Grace) and deeper infrastructure with NVLink and InfiniBand networking. Networking has become one of its fastest-growing segments, with revenue more than doubling year over year, driven by strong demand for systems like Spectrum-X that connect large AI data centers.
Nvidia is also moving into full rack-scale systems such as GB200 NVL72, which combine compute, networking, and memory into complete data center units. This shifts Nvidia closer to a full infrastructure provider rather than just a chip designer. Gross margins have stayed strong at around 75%, supported by higher-margin networking and software. The stock has a forward PE ratio of 24x, which is decent given Nvidia’s growth, ecosystem expansion, and strong competitive moat.
Nightview Capital stated the following regarding NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) in its Q1 2026 investor letter:
“The AI efficiency selloff in NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) earlier this year gave us an opportunity to add to our position. Our view: the demand for AI compute is not declining; the efficiency of that compute is improving. These are not contradictory trends. Jevons’ Paradox is real and relevant here — as the cost per unit of AI output falls, the total demand for AI output rises. More compute gets consumed, not less. NVIDIA’s H100 and Blackwell architectures remain the preferred infrastructure for training and inference at scale. The company’s software ecosystem, from CUDA, cuDNN, to the broader developer platform, represents a switching cost that is rarely fully appreciated in market discussions.”
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