Key Points
In the 1990s, Philippe Laffont cut his teeth working for Julian Robertson’s legendary hedge fund, Tiger Management.
When Tiger Management closed in 2000, many of Robertson’s disciples launched their own funds. This group is known as the “Tiger cubs,” and many of them have done extraordinarily well.
Missed Nvidia in 2009? This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again. In 2009, a “Double Down” signal flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia. For the first time in years, that same “Total Conviction” signal is flashing for a company 1/100th the size of Nvidia. Continue »
Laffont is one example. His hedge fund, Coatue Management, had roughly $48.6 billion in assets under management at the end of the second quarter, and Laffont has become a billionaire himself.
At the end of the second quarter, nearly 23% of Coatue’s capital was invested in three artificial intelligence (AI) stocks.
Image source: Getty Images.
Taiwan Semiconductor — 8.8%
Taiwan Semiconductor doesn’t quite get as much attention as a chip designer like Nvidia, but it arguably plays just as important a role in the AI build-out, given that it manufactures most of the complex chips that designers such as Nvidia create.
Various studies indicate that Taiwan Semiconductor now handles more than 70% of advanced AI chip manufacturing worldwide. Counterpoint Research put Taiwan Semiconductor’s share of the third-party foundry market at 73% in the first quarter of 2026, up from 68% one year prior.
The stock is up nearly 72% in the past year. Taiwan Semiconductor has also been expanding its production capacity to meet the incredible demand for high-end chips. The company recently committed an additional $100 billion to its fabrication campus in Arizona, bringing its total planned investment on that site to $265 billion.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has, on numerous occasions, more or less called Taiwan Semiconductor a critical part of the AI supply chain, not only because of its dominance in the foundry space but also because of the supply chain it has built en route to becoming the dominant chip manufacturer.
Micron Technology — 7.5%
In the second quarter, Coatue increased its position in Micron Technology by 1,794%, bringing its total position at the end of the quarter to more than $3.6 billion.
Micron has been one of the hottest trades of the year, up roughly 197% (as of Aug. 18), driven by strong demand for memory, which plays a critical role in data centers by feeding data to graphics processing units (GPUs) and other processing chips.
Micron makes both NAND flash memory and dynamic random-access memory (DRAM).
NAND flash memory is a cheaper, long-term solution that can store massive data sets for GPUs, whereas DRAM is a temporary yet faster-to-access form of memory that helps AI models retrieve data so that they can process it and respond more rapidly to queries.
Demand for both types of memory has far exceeded the volume that manufacturers are able to produce, leading to soaring memory prices, and they are expected to remain supply-constrained until 2027 and maybe even 2028. Memory companies have historically been cyclical businesses in part because of the time it takes them to increase their manufacturing capacity. Whenever there’s a shortage, they expand, but when supply catches up to demand, it usually overshoots, flipping the market dynamic. And often, by the time new foundries come online, memory demand has already declined, leading to a supply glut.
But some think the incredible level of memory demand being driven by the AI trend could change things. In the third quarter of its fiscal 2026, Micron inked 16 multiyear strategic customer agreements that will collectively generate at least $100 billion in revenue through 2030.
It’s quite possible that Laffont and the Coatue team think this memory cycle could be very different for players like Micron.
SpaceX — 6.5%
Coatue Management also makes venture investments in privately held companies, and Space Exploration Technologies (NASDAQ: SPCX) was one of them. Coatue reportedly gained exposure to the company in later private funding rounds, according to CNBC.
At the end of the second quarter, Coatue disclosed that its SpaceX position was valued at close to $3.2 billion.
Given that Laffont and the Coatue team are big believers in AI, that investment makes sense. In its registration statement, SpaceX asserted that its AI unit has a total addressable market (TAM) of $26.5 trillion.
SpaceX has already begun to forge lucrative deals leasing AI compute from its data centers, and the company claims it will be able to build more of them faster and monetize them more quickly than competitors. SpaceX also plans to build a massive chip manufacturing complex, dubbed “Terafab,” and has big ambitions in space, including plans to deploy a constellation of orbital data center satellites.
Many of its space ambitions hinge on making its super-heavy-lift reusable rocket, Starship, operational and eventually deployable weekly, and possibly even daily.
Should you buy stock in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing right now?
Before you buy stock in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, consider this:
The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.
Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $432,189!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,330,956!*
Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 967% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 212% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built by individual investors for individual investors.
See the 10 stocks »
*Stock Advisor returns as of August 21, 2026.
Bram Berkowitz has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Micron Technology, Nvidia, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
