In this article, we discuss the latest analyst views on Coatue’s favorite 33 AI stocks.
Philippe Laffont, the billionaire chief of Coatue Management, recently made an appearance on the All-In Podcast, a business and technology podcast hosted by four venture capitalists: Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks, and David Friedberg. Laffont, who has more than $58 billion in assets under management, and oversees a 13F equity portfolio worth close to $24 billion at the end of the fourth quarter of 2024, rarely makes media appearances, as he himself admitted during his latest interview, and his appearance has sparked a frenzy of interest around his views on the latest economic situation with regards to China tariffs, artificial intelligence, and the world of venture capitalism in general.
Laffont tackled all these topics during the podcast. For further context, refer to his previous ideas regarding AI and markets that are discussed in Coatue’s 35 Most Important AI Stocks and 33 Most Important AI Companies You Should Pay Attention To, previously published on Insider Monkey. In response to a question about his thoughts on tariffs, the market in general, and the latest decision of the Fed to hold rates steady, the billionaire noted that he was surprised at how bad market sentiment seemed given how good the hard data was on the overall market. He said it was the first time his fund had seen such a large discrepancy between the sentiment and the data. He lauded the Fed for the job it had done so far.
“I actually think the economy is doing really well. We also learned two really important things. One is when the market did go down a lot, the government did budge and said we need to step in here. And the second part is the Fed did something that I thought was very clever. They basically said we’re not going to cut just to bail out the equity market, but if the market’s liquidity is no longer functioning, emphasis on liquidity, then we’ll step in to restore liquidity. And I think those two things really brought the market back up. And I think it’s more a case of a tariff correction or a tariff tantrum, but not a tariff crisis.”
Read more about these developments by accessing 10 Best AI Data Center Stocks and 10 Buzzing AI Stocks According to Goldman Sachs.
Laffont also further elaborated on his views about tariffs, artificial intelligence, and the world of semiconductors. He noted that for a lot of technology investors, the services sector had been very important, which was out of the picture, for now, with regards to tariffs. He identified two key areas of difficulty for technology firms: semis and the assembling of motherboards. He noted that in addition to base tariffs, investors should also be wary of sector tariffs as well that had proved very disruptive in the last few months. He predicted that there was a chance that at some point in the next year or two, the hullabaloo around the tariff situation was going to die down and investors would move on to other things. Laffont, in response to a question about Google, said he found some AI stocks to be a little bit too complicated.
“There’s like a lot of forces at work. But the one thing stepping out that I would think about is there was this concept of the Mag 7. And for the last two or three years, everybody is like, oh, you just need to own the Mag 7. Uh, it’s really easy. I can do it on my own. And I think what AI is showing is that at a time of great change. And like you guys said on the show, a couple of you, AI is sort of precipitating so many fast changes. To me, it’s a little bit like the end of the Mag 7. And what we should do is almost think like, hey, what is the next? Remember when the Mag 7 used to be Fang and then Fang Plus and nobody talks about Fang anymore. Uh, and now I don’t know like the Mag 7, the sexy 6, the fabulous 5. There’s going to be a new index that comes up and I think we should think about who’s going to be on the new index, which private companies, which public companies.”
Read more about these developments by accessing 30 Most Important AI Stocks According to BlackRock and Beyond the Tech Giants: 35 Non-Tech AI Opportunities.
For this article, we selected AI stocks by combing through a note on the AI industry by Coatue Management. These stocks are also popular among other hedge funds. 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 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).
Philippe Laffont of Coatue Management
Latest Analyst Views on Coatue’s Favorite AI Stocks
33. Fabrinet (NYSE:FN)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 36
Barclays analyst George Wang recently lowered the price target on Fabrinet (NYSE:FN) to $234 from $245 and kept an Equal Weight rating on the shares. Fabrinet offers optical packaging, along with precision optical, electro-mechanical, and electronic manufacturing services. In an investor note, the analyst noted that the company reported solid fiscal Q3 results, though they were overshadowed by softer Datacom despite continued Telecom strength. The advisory sensed that the 1.6T cycle timing was slightly shifted to the right or at a minimum came with great uncertainty when the cycle started.
