Billionaire Phillipe Laffont’s Top 10 “Mostly AI” Stock Picks

7. NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA)

NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) justified its growth expectation of over 100% this year and 32% next year when it recently revealed three accelerators – B200, GB200 and GB200 NVL72 at this year’s GTC Conference. Recently, Barclays Tom O’Malley gave an overweight rating on the stock, with a $145 price target due to its potential $25 billion opportunity from countries building up their AI capabilities. O’Malley expects NVIDIA Corporation’s (NASDAQ:NVDA) earnings at $3.62 per share in fiscal 2026, while Wall Street analysts on average have a $3.55 per share estimate for NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) earnings for 2026.

The largest shareholder in NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) is GQG Partners holding 133 million shares worth $12 billion whereas Coatue Management holds around 13 million shares in NVDA worth $1.2 billion

Answering to a question about whether a geopolitical risk concerning China invading Taiwan would affect NVIDIA or not, Philippe Laffont said, “I think it would adversely affect NVIDIA, it would adversely affect the stock markets around the world, it would adversely affect everybody in this room. If this happens, we think this would be obviously a very significant event.”

RiverPark Large Growth Fund stated the following regarding NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) in its first quarter 2024 investor letter:

“NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) shares were our top contributor in the quarter following blowout 4Q results and 1Q guidance driven by strong data center sales. The company reported quarterly revenue of $22.1 billion, up 265% year-over-year, and EPS in the quarter of $5.16, up 487% year-over-year and 12% ahead of expectations. Revenue guidance for 1Q of $24 billion was 8% above very high expectations. The artificial intelligence arms race kicked-off by ChatGPT and Alphabet’s Bard, among others, has generated tremendous demand for Nvidia’s next generation graphic processors.

NVDA is the leading designer of graphics processing units (GPU’s) required for powerful computer processing. Over the past 20 years, the company has evolved through innovation and adaptation from a predominantly gaming-focused chip vendor to one of the largest semiconductor/software vendors in the world. Over the past decade, the company has grown revenue at a compound annual rate of over 20% while expanding operating margins and, through its asset light business model, producing ever increasing amounts of free cash flow. Following recent results, Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA stated in the company’s press release, “a trillion dollars of installed global data center infrastructure will transition from general purpose to accelerated computing as companies race to apply generative AI into every product, service and business process.”