Sands Capital, an investment management company, released its “Sands Capital Technology Innovators Fund” Q2 2026 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. In the quarter, global equities rebounded sharply, with the MSCI ACWI posting its strongest quarterly gain since 2020, supported by broad market strength, easing geopolitical tensions, and continued enthusiasm for AI infrastructure. Information technology led the advance, with semiconductor and hardware companies accounting for most of the index’s rise. The fund returned 26.9% (net) in the second quarter of 2026. The portfolio benefited from strong gains across memory, software infrastructure, cybersecurity, and other AI-related holdings, although its concentrated exposure to mega-cap chip designers and manufacturers weighed on relative performance as leadership broadened into CPUs, networking, and memory. Vertical software, internet, and financial holdings were modest detractors amid macro concerns and uncertainty over AI disruption. The fund remains focused on critical AI bottlenecks, including compute, memory, manufacturing, networking, and power, while retaining selected businesses that may use AI to strengthen their competitive positions. You can check the fund’s top five holdings to learn more about its leading investment ideas for the year.
In its second-quarter 2026 investor letter, Sands Capital Technology Innovators Fund highlighted Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) as a newly added position. Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) is a leading semiconductor company that designs and manufactures AI accelerators, microprocessors, and graphics processing units, which contributed to the fund’s performance in the quarter. On August 7, 2026, Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) closed at $483.36 per share. One-month return of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) was -14.80% and its shares gained 178.94% over the past 52 weeks. Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) has a market capitalization of about $789.07 billion.
Sands Capital Technology Innovators Fund stated the following regarding Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) in its Q2 2026 investor letter:
“Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD), Arm Holdings, and Intel increased the portfolio’s exposure to rising CPU demand driven by agentic AI. While GPUs remain central to training and token generation, CPUs are increasingly important for scheduling, memory management, tool execution, and the orchestration of agentic workflows. As AI workloads evolve toward inference, agentic workflows, and more complex data center architectures, we believe the need to coordinate, feed, and manage accelerated compute could drive stronger CPU demand than investors previously expected. AMD and Arm provide exposure to supplier diversity, open standards, and more efficient compute architectures, while Intel adds exposure to server CPUs and potential foundry optionality as customers seek additional sources of advanced manufacturing supply. While execution risk remains meaningful, particularly for Intel, we believe these businesses provide differentiated exposure to emerging bottlenecks in the AI infrastructure stack.”
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) ranks 20 on our list of 40 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds Heading Into 2026. According to our database, 134 hedge fund portfolios held Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) at the end of the first quarter, up from 132 in the previous quarter. While we acknowledge the risk and potential of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) 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 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) and that has 10,000% upside potential, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
In another article, we covered Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) and shared a list of stocks Jim Cramer discussed. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q2 2026 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.
