In this article, we will discuss the Top 10 Stocks to Buy According to Whale Rock Capital Management.
Whale Rock Capital Management marked two decades of operations on May 1, 2026, a moment that the fund celebrated in a LinkedIn post and noted is “a rare milestone in an industry where the median firm lasts only five and a half years.” The fund started as a three-person operation under the stewardship of Alex Sacerdote with around $40 million of capital. As of this writing, the fund manages more than $14 billion for over 450 investors.
The reason Whale Rock has endured for that long, and also grown the value of assets under management 350-fold, comes down to its investment framework built around S-curves, competitive advantage, and underappreciated earnings power. This is according to Sacerdote, who laid the framework out in detail on the Invest Like The Best podcast hosted by Patrick O’Shaughnessy on June 9. Sacerdote explained that his fund identifies technology S-curves early, finds companies with durable competitive advantages, and spots underappreciated long-term earnings power that markets fail to price in exponentially.
Whale Rock has now trained that framework on artificial intelligence. Sacerdote made this point clear at the Sohn Investment Conference on May 28, where he stated that the AI boom is not even close to its peak. He argued that while hundreds of millions of people are already using the technology, they are using what amounts to AI 1.0; that is, a search engine on steroids. Sacerdote added that the truly transformative phase, which is one where AI agents are plugged into all enterprise data sources, building skills and running autonomously, has barely begun.
“We’re in the first batter’s box of AI… Of course we haven’t seen any major productivity gains… But if you look carefully at what these people are doing, it’s astonishing,” he said.
That conviction explains why a good number of Whale Rock’s holdings are tech companies with operations deeply embedded in the AI stack. In that light, this article explores the top 10 names to buy from the fund’s perspective.
Source:Pexels
Our Methodology
For this list, we sifted through Whale Rock Capital Management’s Q1 2026 portfolio and picked the fund’s top holdings based on the stake value. From the portfolio, we selected top stocks and narrowed the list to companies with recent noteworthy developments likely to influence investor sentiment. We also ensured that the stocks have an upside potential of at least 20%, which was based on Wall Street analysts’ 12-month price targets as of July 2, 2026. We also considered the overall hedge fund sentiment for each stock using Q1 2026 13F holdings data from Insider Monkey’s database. The list is in ascending order of Whale Rock’s stake in each stock.
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. 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).
Top Stocks to Buy According to Whale Rock Capital Management
10. Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)
Whale Rock’s Stake Value: $19,933,655
Stock Upside: 47.45%
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 282
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is one of the top stocks to buy according to Whale Rock Capital Management. On June 29, Haleon, a consumer health company, announced a new five-year collaboration with Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) to expand the use of cloud, data, and artificial intelligence tools across Haleon’s global operations.
Haleon said the deal builds on its current use of Microsoft 365 Copilot and is designed to speed up the company’s wider “Win as One” strategy. The strategy is the company’s global plan for growth and digital transformation. The expanded collaboration entails Haleon continuing to use Microsoft Azure as its main cloud platform and expanding its use of Copilot. As such, Haleon will get access to broader computing power, data analytics, and enterprise security tools.
A major focus of the partnership is agentic AI, where Haleon plans to use this technology to help teams manage and secure digital AI agents across the business. To that end, the two companies will jointly build AI applications across several parts of Haleon’s operations. This includes consumer research, product innovation, supply chain management, marketing, and commercial execution. Microsoft will also provide stronger identity management, governance, and threat protection tools, which Haleon said will let it scale AI use safely across its systems and workflows.
Haleon framed the expanded AI push as supporting two long-term business goals: reaching one billion additional consumers by 2030 and improving shareholder returns.
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is a technology company. It develops and supports software, services, devices, and solutions worldwide, including the Microsoft 365 productivity suite, Azure cloud computing platform, Windows operating system, and Xbox gaming products.
9. Ciena Corporation (NYSE:CIEN)
Whale Rock’s Stake Value: $89,784,787
Stock Upside: 23.02%
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 73
Ciena Corporation (NYSE:CIEN) is one of the top stocks to buy according to Whale Rock Capital Management. On June 23, Ciena Corporation’s (NYSE:CIEN) Blue Planet division and Telefónica Deutschland announced they had completed a joint proof of concept, or PoC, showing how AI agents can speed up the design of 5G network slicing services.
The companies stated that the project tested whether agentic AI could help engineers manage the entire lifecycle of building a network slice, which is from initial design through to cataloging and final setup. For context, network slicing lets telecom operators carve a single physical network into multiple virtual ones, and each tailored with different speed, capacity, or reliability levels for specific business customers or use cases. However, designing these slices typically demands specialized engineering skills and significant manpower.
To test a faster approach, Blue Planet integrated its AI Studio platform into Telefónica Deutschland’s existing Multi-Domain Service Orchestration environment. The trial focused on tasks such as writing technical specifications for a network slice and generating the standardized data packages needed to activate it. According to Blue Planet, these tasks typically take weeks, but were completed in minutes once AI agents took over the repetitive, rules-based portions of the process.
The PoC showed that the AI agents could translate complex technical standards into simpler guided steps. The system then reused pre-built components already stored in Telefónica Deutschland’s service catalog rather than building each slice from scratch.
Beyond speed, the PoC showed that the approach also improved consistency and accuracy. The reason was that automated, repeatable workflows reduce the chance of human error compared to manual configuration.
Ciena Corporation (NYSE:CIEN) is a network technology company. It provides hardware, software, and services for network operators, including optical networking, routing, and switching products, as well as automation and analytics platforms.
8. Viavi Solutions Inc. (NASDAQ:VIAV)
Whale Rock’s Stake Value: $115,586,499
Stock Upside: 36.13%
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 44
Viavi Solutions Inc. (NASDAQ:VIAV) is one of the top stocks to buy according to Whale Rock Capital Management. On July 1, Susquehanna analyst Mehdi Hosseini raised his price target on Viavi Solutions Inc. (NASDAQ:VIAV) to $66 from $60, while maintaining his Positive rating on the stock.
The reason for the call, according to Hosseini, was that Susquehanna was updating its estimates to reflect a higher Field Instrument revenue contribution. Viavi’s Field Instrument business is a product line within its Network and Service Enablement segment that supplies handheld and portable testing tools used by technicians to install, troubleshoot, and maintain fiber and network equipment in the field. Hosseini’s team lifted its revenue estimates for this business because they now expect a stronger ramp in data center interconnect, or DCI, deployments at two of Viavi’s major optical networking customers; that is Nokia and Ciena.
DCI refers to the high-capacity optical links that connect data centers to each other. The analysts noted that demand for this technology has been surging as hyperscale cloud providers race to expand AI computing capacity. They added that Nokia and Ciena are both racing to supply next-generation coherent optical equipment for these DCI links, and that Nokia recently unveiled a new suite of pluggable optical transceivers specifically built for DCI.
As these vendors ramp production and deployment of their new DCI and scale-across optical gear, they generate more business for Viavi, the analysts noted.
Viavi Solutions Inc. (NASDAQ:VIAV) is a network test, monitoring, and assurance company. It provides testing, monitoring, assurance, and security solutions for telecommunications, cloud, enterprise, military, aerospace, and critical infrastructure networks across the Americas, Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
7. Klaviyo Inc. (NYSE:KVYO)
Whale Rock’s Stake Value: $132,818,509
Stock Upside: 92.05%
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 43
Klaviyo Inc. (NYSE:KVYO) is one of the top stocks to buy according to Whale Rock Capital Management. On June 30, Klaviyo Inc. (NYSE:KVYO) announced that Composer, its AI marketing agent, moved into public beta, alongside major upgrades to its existing Customer Agent. Both tools are built directly into Klaviyo’s customer relationship management platform and now share the same real-time customer data, which means actions taken by one agent make the other smarter over time, the company said.
Klaviyo designed Composer to solve two common problems marketing teams face, starting with figuring out where to focus their efforts and not having enough time to act on opportunities. The tool also identifies high-value opportunities, builds the campaigns needed to capture them, and carries out the work automatically rather than just offering suggestions.
On the other hand, Customer Agent handles customer service and support. The tool works across multiple channels, including web chat, email, text messages, and WhatsApp, and users can set it up once to run consistently everywhere or embedded into a brand’s own custom interfaces.
According to Klaviyo, most companies investing in AI have not yet seen meaningful returns. As such, the company is positioning its dual-agent approach as a way to close that gap by connecting marketing and service functions instead of running them separately.
Klaviyo, Inc. (NYSE:KVYO) is a technology company. It provides a cloud-native software-as-a-service platform for marketing automation, including email campaigns, short message services, push notifications, and customer data management tools.
6. Tower Semiconductor Ltd. (NASDAQ:TSEM)
Whale Rock’s Stake Value: $187,191,009
Stock Upside: 22.97%
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 54
Tower Semiconductor Ltd. (NASDAQ:TSEM) is one of the top stocks to buy according to Whale Rock Capital Management. On June 18, Tower Semiconductor Ltd. (NASDAQ:TSEM) announced that it has shipped more than five million coherent photonic integrated circuits (PICs) to global customers of its partner Marvell Technology.
These chips are used in coherent optical transceivers, which are specialized components that transmit data over fiber optic cables. According to Tower, these components are increasingly needed to link data centers as AI computing drives up demand for network bandwidth and speed. It added that coherent PICs are harder to build than simpler chip types because they must precisely control both the phase and polarization of light. Tower has been working with Marvell to push this technology forward, including combining silicon with other specialized materials, stacking electronic components in three dimensions, and using an advanced packaging method known as V-Grooves to improve how light is guided through the chip.
Dr. Ed Preisler, who leads Tower’s RF Business Unit, said the company’s photonics manufacturing platforms need to keep evolving alongside the requirements of coherent optical transceivers, and that Tower is proud of its partnership with Marvell in this area.
For Dr. Radha Nagarajan, Marvell’s chief technology officer for optical engineering, the shipment is a milestone that proves the strength of the two companies’ collaboration. Nagarajan added that Marvell intends to keep working with Tower to develop next-generation coherent technology suited to large-scale data center networks.
Tower Semiconductor Ltd. (NASDAQ:TSEM) is a specialized semiconductor foundry. It provides technology, development, and process platforms for integrated circuits, including SiPho, SiGe, CMOS image sensor, RF CMOS, mixed signal CMOS, non-imaging sensors, and integrated power management technologies.
While we acknowledge the potential of TSEM to grow, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and have limited downside risk. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than TSEM and that has 100x upside potential, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
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