Coatue Management allocated nearly 23% of its portfolio to three semiconductor equipment makers—Applied Materials, Lam Research, ASML, and KLA—to capitalize on AI advanced packaging and fab capacity expansions.
Philippe Laffont is not hedging his bets on artificial intelligence. The founder of Coatue Management has parked close to 23% of the firm’s public equity portfolio into a concentrated handful of AI-related stocks. Coatue’s 13F portfolio value hit $48.6 billion as of Q2 2026, a sharp increase from roughly $29 billion just one quarter earlier.
Laffont’s playbook deliberately avoids chasing the flashiest AI software names. Instead, he has been accumulating what he calls “semi-cap” stocks: semiconductor capital equipment and materials companies that manufacture the foundational tools for the AI infrastructure buildout. This strategy is anchored by what the firm internally refers to as the “Fantastic 40,” a curated list of enterprises Coatue believes are best positioned to thrive in an AI-driven economy.
The portfolio’s composition reflects this industrial thesis. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM), which fabricates the vast majority of the world’s most advanced processors, sits prominently in the holdings. Lam Research (LRCX) and Applied Materials (AMAT), both critical suppliers of chip fabrication equipment, round out the industrial side of the bet. Micron Technology (MU), a memory chip giant benefiting from insatiable AI data center demand, and ASML, the Dutch company with a near-monopoly on extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, complete the lineup.
The concentration has accelerated throughout the year. Earlier in 2026, three AI-related stocks alone represented roughly 20% of Coatue’s then-$39 billion public equity portfolio. By mid-August 2026, the firm held approximately 66 investments focused primarily on AI semiconductor supply-chain companies. Many of those positions have delivered year-to-date gains exceeding 50% to 100% through mid-2026.
In a June 2026 interview with CNBC, Laffont laid out his reasoning with the kind of quiet conviction that tends to move capital. He pointed to the substantial productivity gains he expects from agentic AI technologies, the next evolution beyond chatbots where AI systems can autonomously plan, execute, and iterate on complex tasks. The economic moats backing his picks are formidable. ASML’s extreme ultraviolet lithography machines cost upwards of $150 million each, and no competitor can produce anything comparable. Every cutting-edge chip in the world passes through ASML’s technology at some point in its manufacturing process. TSM manufactures chips for Apple, Nvidia, AMD, and virtually every other company designing advanced processors. Micron rounds out the thesis with high-bandwidth memory (HBM), a segment that has become one of the fastest-growing areas in semiconductors due to the extraordinarily memory-intensive nature of AI workloads.
Coatue manages approximately $90 billion in total assets across public and private strategies. Through its concentrated, supply-chain-focused approach, the firm continues to position itself at the center of the AI hardware revolution.