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VeriSign, Inc. (VRSN): Among Renaissance Technologies Portfolio’s Top Stock Picks

We recently published a list of Renaissance Technologies Portfolio: Top 10 Stock Picks. In this article, we are going to take a look at where VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRSN) stands against other Renaissance Technologies portfolio’s top stock picks.

The American quant hedge fund Renaissance Technologies is known for using statistical and mathematical tools to drive its investment programs. It was founded in 1982 by Jim Simons, a mathematician who worked as a code breaker for the US National Security Agency during the Cold War. As of December 31, Renaissance Technologies had a portfolio valued at over $67.5 billion.

READ ALSO: Cathie Wood’s Stock Portfolio: 2025 Stock Picks and Jim Cramer’s February Portfolio: Top 10 Stocks.

Simons was among the pioneers of quantitative investing. He had an estimated net worth of $31.4 billion at the time of his death in May last year, making him the 51st richest person in the world at the time. His use of mathematical models and algorithms to drive long-term investment returns earned him a legacy that rivaled the likes of Warren Buffett and George Soros.

The Renaissance founder stepped down from active hedge fund management in 2010 and resigned as its executive chairman in 2021. The firm is now headed by Peter Brown, who has a strong educational background in mathematics and computer sciences. His father, Henry B.R. Brown invented the Reserve Primary Fund in 1970, the first money market fund to be established.

Brown is committed to using mathematical models to discover and unlock the value of stocks in the market. 2024 was a strong year for Renaissance Technologies. According to a report on Business Insider, the two funds that are open to investors—Renaissance Institutional Equities Fund (RIEF) and Renaissance Institutional Diversified Alpha (RIDA)—delivered double-digit returns of 22.7% and 15.6%, respectively.

Its signature Medallion fund performed even better, with a 30% gain, outperforming the broader market by nearly seven percentage points. Medallion was closed to outside investors in 1993 and has since then only been available to past and current employees, and their families. The fund generated average annual returns of 66% for three decades between 1988 and 2018, resulting in over $100 billion in profits during the period. This earned Medallion the reputation of being one of the most successful investment portfolios of all time.

On February 13, Renaissance Technologies filed a portfolio update, reflecting its holdings for the fourth quarter of 2024. The 13F SEC filings revealed significant changes in the portfolio, including a substantial reduction of stake in a leading technology conglomerate and increased investments in Asia-based artificial intelligence companies during the quarter.

Our Methodology

We scanned Renaissance Technologies’ 13F portfolio, as of December 31, 2024. From there, we picked the top 10 stocks according to their stake value and ranked them in ascending order.

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 363.5% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 208 percentage points (see more details here).

A close-up view of an engineer deploying a new piece of internet infrastructure.

VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRSN)

Stake Value as of Q4 2024: $603,344,486

VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRSN) is a global provider of network infrastructure and domain name registry services. The company is the sole registry for the .com and .net domains. It is one of the top stock picks from the Renaissance Technologies portfolio, with the hedge fund having investments worth over $603 million in VRSN as of December 31, 2024.

During its Q4 2024 earnings call on February 6, the Reston, Virginia-based company reported a revenue of $395 million, up 3.9% from last year, driven by steady demand for domain registrations. An increasing number of businesses globally are amplifying their digital presence, which is benefiting internet infrastructure and domain registry service providers like VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRSN).

In November, VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRSN) renewed the .com registry agreement with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The company will remain the sole operator of the .com registry till November 30, 2030. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) also renewed its cooperative agreement with VRSN for another six years during the quarter.

For the full year, VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRSN) posted a revenue of $1.56 billion, up 4.3% year-over-year. Operating income increased to $1.06 billion from $1 billion in 2023. Net income for 2024 stood at $786 million with a diluted EPS of $8.00, down slightly from $818 million and $7.90 per share last year.

Wall Street analysts are bullish on VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRSN), with a consensus Strong Buy rating and an average share price upside potential of 8%. Investor sentiment continues to improve as well. According to Insider Monkey’s database, 41 hedge funds held a stake in the company at the end of the fourth quarter of 2024, up from 39 in Q3.

Overall, VRSN ranks 5th on our list of Renaissance Technologies portfolio’s top stock picks. While we acknowledge the potential of software companies, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than VRSN but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and Complete List of 59 AI Companies Under $2 Billion in Market Cap

Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.

The $250 Trillion AI Hype is Real. A few years from now, you’ll probably wish you’d bought this stock.

When Jeff Bezos said that one breakthrough technology would shape Amazon’s destiny, even Wall Street’s biggest analysts were caught off guard.

Fast forward a year and Amazon’s new CEO Andy Jassy described generative AI as a “once-in-a-lifetime” technology that is already being used across Amazon to reinvent customer experiences.

At the 8th Future Investment Initiative conference, Elon Musk predicted that by 2040 there would be at least 10 billion humanoid robots, with each priced between $20,000 and $25,000.

Do the math. According to Musk, this technology could be worth $250 trillion by 2040.

Put another way, that’s roughly equal to:

  • 175 Teslas
  • 107 Amazons
  • 140 Metas
  • 84 Googles
  • 65 Microsofts
  • And 55 Nvidias

And here’s the wild part — this $250 trillion wave isn’t tied to one company, but to an entire ecosystem of AI innovators set to reshape the global economy.

It’s a leap so massive, it could reshape how businesses, governments, and consumers operate worldwide.

Even if that $250 trillion figure sounds ambitious, major firms like PwC and McKinsey still see AI unlocking multi-trillion-dollar potential.

How could anything be worth that much?

The answer lies in a breakthrough so powerful it’s redefining how humanity works, learns, and creates.

And this breakthrough has already set off a frenzy among hedge funds and Wall Street’s top investors.

What most investors don’t realize is that one under-owned company holds the key to this $250 trillion revolution.

In fact, Verge argues this company’s supercheap AI technology should concern rivals.

Before I reveal the details, let’s talk about how some of the richest people on the planet are positioning themselves.

  • Bill Gates sees artificial intelligence as the “biggest technological advance in my lifetime,” more transformative than the internet or personal computer, capable of improving healthcare, education, and addressing climate change.
  • Larry Ellison — through Oracle, is spending billions on Nvidia chips and partnering with Cohere to embed generative AI across Oracle’s cloud and apps.
  • Warren Buffett — not known for tech hype — says this breakthrough could have a ‘hugely beneficial social impact.

When billionaires from Silicon Valley to Wall Street line up behind the same idea — you know it’s worth paying attention to.

Even as we admire what Tesla, Nvidia, Alphabet, and Microsoft have built, we believe an even greater opportunity lies elsewhere…

But the real story isn’t Nvidia — it’s a much smaller company quietly improving the critical technology that makes this entire revolution possible.

And judging by what I’m hearing from both Silicon Valley insiders and Wall Street veterans…

This prediction might not be bold at all:

A few years from now, you’ll wish you’d owned this stock.

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AI, Tariffs, Nuclear Power: One Undervalued Stock Connects ALL the Dots (Before It Explodes!)

Artificial intelligence is the greatest investment opportunity of our lifetime. The time to invest in groundbreaking AI is now, and this stock is a steal!

AI is eating the world—and the machines behind it are ravenous.

Each ChatGPT query, each model update, each robotic breakthrough consumes massive amounts of energy. In fact, AI is already pushing global power grids to the brink.

Wall Street is pouring hundreds of billions into artificial intelligence—training smarter chatbots, automating industries, and building the digital future. But there’s one urgent question few are asking:

Where will all of that energy come from?

AI is the most electricity-hungry technology ever invented. Each data center powering large language models like ChatGPT consumes as much energy as a small city. And it’s about to get worse.

Even Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, issued a stark warning:

“The future of AI depends on an energy breakthrough.”

Elon Musk was even more blunt:

“AI will run out of electricity by next year.”

As the world chases faster, smarter machines, a hidden crisis is emerging behind the scenes. Power grids are strained. Electricity prices are rising. Utilities are scrambling to expand capacity.

And that’s where the real opportunity lies…

One little-known company—almost entirely overlooked by most AI investors—could be the ultimate backdoor play. It’s not a chipmaker. It’s not a cloud platform. But it might be the most important AI stock in the US owns critical energy infrastructure assets positioned to feed the coming AI energy spike.

As demand from AI data centers explodes, this company is gearing up to profit from the most valuable commodity in the digital age: electricity.

The “Toll Booth” Operator of the AI Energy Boom

  • It owns critical nuclear energy infrastructure assets, positioning it at the heart of America’s next-generation power strategy.
  • It’s one of the only global companies capable of executing large-scale, complex EPC (engineering, procurement, and construction) projects across oil, gas, renewable fuels, and industrial infrastructure.
  • It plays a pivotal role in U.S. LNG exportation—a sector about to explode under President Trump’s renewed “America First” energy doctrine.

Trump has made it clear: Europe and U.S. allies must buy American LNG.

And our company sits in the toll booth—collecting fees on every drop exported.

But that’s not all…

As Trump’s proposed tariffs push American manufacturers to bring their operations back home, this company will be first in line to rebuild, retrofit, and reengineer those facilities.

AI. Energy. Tariffs. Onshoring. This One Company Ties It All Together.

While the world is distracted by flashy AI tickers, a few smart investors are quietly scooping up shares of the one company powering it all from behind the scenes.

AI needs energy. Energy needs infrastructure.

And infrastructure needs a builder with experience, scale, and execution.

This company has its finger in every pie—and Wall Street is just starting to notice.

Wall Street is noticing this company also because it is quietly riding all of these tailwinds—without the sky-high valuation.

While most energy and utility firms are buried under mountains of debt and coughing up hefty interest payments just to appease bondholders…

This company is completely debt-free.

In fact, it’s sitting on a war chest of cash—equal to nearly one-third of its entire market cap.

It also owns a huge equity stake in another red-hot AI play, giving investors indirect exposure to multiple AI growth engines without paying a premium.

And here’s what the smart money has started whispering…

The Hedge Fund Secret That’s Starting to Leak Out

This stock is so off-the-radar, so absurdly undervalued, that some of the most secretive hedge fund managers in the world have begun pitching it at closed-door investment summits.

They’re sharing it quietly, away from the cameras, to rooms full of ultra-wealthy clients.

Why? Because excluding cash and investments, this company is trading at less than 7 times earnings.

And that’s for a business tied to:

  • The AI infrastructure supercycle
  • The onshoring boom driven by Trump-era tariffs
  • A surge in U.S. LNG exports
  • And a unique footprint in nuclear energy—the future of clean, reliable power

You simply won’t find another AI and energy stock this cheap… with this much upside.

This isn’t a hype stock. It’s not riding on hope.

It’s delivering real cash flows, owns critical infrastructure, and holds stakes in other major growth stories.

This is your chance to get in before the rockets take off!

Disruption is the New Name of the Game: Let’s face it, complacency breeds stagnation.

AI is the ultimate disruptor, and it’s shaking the foundations of traditional industries.

The companies that embrace AI will thrive, while the dinosaurs clinging to outdated methods will be left in the dust.

As an investor, you want to be on the side of the winners, and AI is the winning ticket.

The Talent Pool is Overflowing: The world’s brightest minds are flocking to AI.

From computer scientists to mathematicians, the next generation of innovators is pouring its energy into this field.

This influx of talent guarantees a constant stream of groundbreaking ideas and rapid advancements.

By investing in AI, you’re essentially backing the future.

The future is powered by artificial intelligence, and the time to invest is NOW.

Don’t be a spectator in this technological revolution.

Dive into the AI gold rush and watch your portfolio soar alongside the brightest minds of our generation.

This isn’t just about making money – it’s about being part of the future.

So, buckle up and get ready for the ride of your investment life!

Act Now and Unlock a Potential 100+% Return within 12 to 24 months.

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For a ridiculously low price of just $9.99 per month, you can unlock our in-depth investment research and exclusive insights – that’s less than a single fast food meal!

Space is Limited! Only 1000 spots are available for this exclusive offer. Don’t let this chance slip away – subscribe to our Premium Readership Newsletter today and unlock the potential for a life-changing investment.

Here’s what to do next:

1. Head over to our website and subscribe to our Premium Readership Newsletter for just $9.99.

2. Enjoy a month of ad-free browsing, exclusive access to our in-depth report on the Trump tariff and nuclear energy company as well as the revolutionary AI-robotics company, and the upcoming issues of our Premium Readership Newsletter.

3. Sit back, relax, and know that you’re backed by our ironclad 30-day money-back guarantee.

Don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity! Subscribe now and take control of your AI investment future!


No worries about auto-renewals! Our 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee applies whether you’re joining us for the first time or renewing your subscription a month later!