Baron Global Advantage Fund

Investor Summary

Alex Umansky has served as portfolio manager of the Baron Global Advantage Fund since its inception on April 30, 2012, bringing over 13 years of tenure to the strategy. His investment approach emphasizes deep fundamental research, spending four to five hours daily reading with screens turned off to facilitate quality decision-making. Umansky focuses on identifying companies benefiting from disruptive change, particularly economic digitization, while maintaining portfolio balance and avoiding emotional extremes. His philosophy emphasizes patience and thorough due diligence, often investing in companies before they go public and maintaining positions for extended periods to capture long-term value creation.

Fund Strategy

The Baron Global Advantage Fund pursues long-term capital appreciation through concentrated investments in 30-50 high-quality global growth companies. The strategy emphasizes fundamental research and patient capital deployment, focusing on companies benefiting from secular digitization trends and disruptive change. Portfolio manager Alex Umansky's approach centers on bottom-up stock selection rather than thematic investing, with holdings maintained for an average of five years. The fund seeks to identify businesses with durable competitive advantages positioned to benefit from global economic digitization, artificial intelligence adoption, and other transformative secular trends.

ANNUALIZED SINCE INCEPTION	QUARTERLY	YTD
-	22.6%	11%

Executive Summary

Baron Global Advantage Fund gained 22.7% in Q2 2025, significantly outperforming benchmarks despite extreme market volatility. The fund experienced a V-shaped recovery after first quarter weakness, with many of the biggest losers becoming top contributors. AI infrastructure remains a core theme, with NVIDIA maintaining leadership despite drawdowns as scaling laws expand beyond pre-training. Latin American opportunities in e-commerce and digital banking show strong fundamentals, with MELI benefiting from Argentina's economic recovery and Nu Holdings disrupting traditional banking. Cloud infrastructure companies like Cloudflare and Datadog demonstrate resilient business models despite stock volatility. The manager emphasizes separating signal from noise in an information-overloaded environment, focusing on long-term value creation rather than short-term market movements. Portfolio construction remains bottom-up with conviction-weighted positions. Looking forward, the wide range of outcomes suggests continued volatility, but the focus remains on fundamental-driven wealth creation over time rather than attempting to time markets.

Core Thesis

Focus on high-quality businesses with sustainable competitive advantages and long-term growth drivers, particularly in AI infrastructure, digital transformation, and emerging market disruption, while maintaining conviction through market volatility to generate significant alpha over full market cycles.

Forward Outlook

The range of outcomes is as wide as we have seen in a long time, meaning extreme market volatility is likely. We remain focused on minimizing permanent capital losses while not exchanging long-term alpha generation for short-term volatility reduction. Fear drives markets short-term, but fundamentals drive wealth creation over time. Really big opportunities come when willing to invest when others are not.

Date	Letter	Tickers	Keywords	Pitches	Quick Takes
Aug 2 2025	2025 Q2	ARGX, BILL, CPNG, CRWD, DDOG, ENDV, GLOB, ILMN, LOAR, MELI, NET, NU, NVDA, PDD, SHOP, SNOW, TSLA, TSM, TTAN, ZS	AI, E-Commerce, global, growth, semiconductors, technology, volatility	-	Strong Q2 performance driven by AI infrastructure recovery and Latin American growth stories. NVIDIA, Cloudflare, and MELI led gains despite earlier drawdowns. New positions in Nu Holdings and Loar Holdings expand exposure to digital banking disruption and aerospace aftermarket. Extreme volatility expected but maintaining long-term focus on quality businesses with sustainable competitive advantages.
Mar 31 2025	2025 Q1	532978.BO, AFYA, ARGX, CPNG, DDOG, GLOB, MELI, NET, NVDA, PDD, SAIL, SHOP, SNOW, SQ, TSLA, TSM, WIX, ZOMATO.NS, ZS	AI, cybersecurity, E-Commerce, global, growth, semiconductors, tariffs, technology	-	Fund declined 9.4% due to tariff-driven volatility, with underperformance from tech overweight and multiple contraction despite stable fundamentals. Manager maintains AI conviction as biggest career opportunity while building positions in quality platforms with limited tariff exposure. Portfolio companies well-positioned to weather uncertainty through strong competitive moats and balance sheets.
Dec 31 2024	2024 Q4	ARGX, ASML, BAJFINANCE.NS, BILL, CPNG, CRWD, DDOG, ENDV.L, INDI, MELI, NET, NVDA, RIVN, SHOP.TO, SNOW, TSLA, TTAN, WIX, ZOMATO.NS, ZS	AI, Cloud, E-Commerce, global, growth, Robotics, semiconductors, technology	-	Baron Global Advantage Fund gained 26.4% in 2024, outperforming benchmarks through strong stock selection in AI-enabled businesses and global e-commerce platforms. Despite market headwinds favoring U.S. giant-cap stocks, the fund's focus on fundamental growth drivers and positioning around transformative AI disruption delivered solid results. Manager remains optimistic about long-term prospects while acknowledging near-term deglobalization and inflation risks.
Sep 30 2024	2024 Q3	-	-	-
Jun 30 2024	2024 Q2	ADYEN.AS, ALAB, ARGX, ASML, CPNG, CRWD, DAVA, DDOG, FVRR, GLOB, INDI, MELI, NET, NVDA, RIVN, SHOP, SNOW, TMP, TSLA, WIX	AI, global, growth, healthcare, semiconductors, software, technology	NVDA CRWD CPNG SHOP NET TXG	Baron Global Advantage Fund outperformed in Q2 2024 despite underweight positioning in Magnificent Seven stocks. NVIDIA drove returns with 36.8% gain on unprecedented AI-driven growth. Software holdings faced multiple contraction during investment cycles. Fund initiated Tempus AI position, combining AI with healthcare diagnostics. Manager remains focused on quality businesses with sustainable advantages positioned for AI paradigm shift.
Mar 31 2024	2024 Q1	ADYEN.AS, ALAB, ARGX, ASML, BJFN.NS, CPNG, CRWD, ENDV, INDI, MELI, NET, NVDA, RIVN, SDGR, SHOP, SNOW, TSLA, VKTX, ZOMATO.NS, ZS	AI, cybersecurity, Electric Vehicles, global, growth, innovation, semiconductors, technology	NVDA VKTX ALAB	Baron Global Advantage gained 3.6% in Q1, led by NVIDIA's 83% surge on AI momentum. The fund sees generative AI as a multi-decade disruption with NVIDIA as the platform leader. Cyclical headwinds hit IT services and EV holdings hard. New positions include obesity drug developer Viking Therapeutics and semiconductor companies. Manager maintains long-term conviction despite near-term volatility.
Dec 31 2023	2023 Q4	3690.HK, AAPL, ADYEN, AMZN, ARGX, ASML, BILL, BJFNF, CPNG, CRWD, DAVA, DDOG, EPAM, FVRR, GLOB, GOOGL, INPST, MELI, META, MSFT, NET, NVDA, SHOP, SNOW, SQ, TSLA, WIX, ZI, ZS	AI, Cloud, cybersecurity, Digitization, E-Commerce, global, growth, technology	-	Baron Global Advantage Fund posted strong 25.6% annual returns despite private investment headwinds, led by AI and e-commerce winners like Shopify and MercadoLibre. The fund eliminated China exposure and concentrated into 34 high-conviction positions benefiting from GenAI adoption, platform consolidation, and improving unit economics. Management remains optimistic on long-term secular trends while maintaining disciplined valuation approach.
Sep 30 2023	2023 Q3	ADYEN.AS, ARGX, BAJFINANCE.NS, CPNG, CRWD, DAVA, DDOG, FVRR, MELI, NET, NVDA, RIVN, SDGR, SHOP, SNOW, TSLA, VEEV, WIX, ZI	AI, Biotechnology, E-Commerce, global, growth, small caps, technology	CPNG VTWIX	Baron Global Advantage Fund's 6.1% Q3 decline reflected multiple contraction in small/mid-caps despite improving fundamentals. The manager increased exposure to attractively valued smaller companies while mega-caps dominated market returns. NVIDIA's AI-driven growth and improving portfolio fundamentals support the long-term thesis, though near-term volatility from higher rates persists.

Date

Letter

Tickers

Keywords

Pitches

Quick Takes

Aug 2 2025

2025 Q2

ARGX, BILL, CPNG, CRWD, DDOG, ENDV, GLOB, ILMN, LOAR, MELI, NET, NU, NVDA, PDD, SHOP, SNOW, TSLA, TSM, TTAN, ZS

AI, E-Commerce, global, growth, semiconductors, technology, volatility

Strong Q2 performance driven by AI infrastructure recovery and Latin American growth stories. NVIDIA, Cloudflare, and MELI led gains despite earlier drawdowns. New positions in Nu Holdings and Loar Holdings expand exposure to digital banking disruption and aerospace aftermarket. Extreme volatility expected but maintaining long-term focus on quality businesses with sustainable competitive advantages.

Mar 31 2025

2025 Q1

532978.BO, AFYA, ARGX, CPNG, DDOG, GLOB, MELI, NET, NVDA, PDD, SAIL, SHOP, SNOW, SQ, TSLA, TSM, WIX, ZOMATO.NS, ZS

AI, cybersecurity, E-Commerce, global, growth, semiconductors, tariffs, technology

Fund declined 9.4% due to tariff-driven volatility, with underperformance from tech overweight and multiple contraction despite stable fundamentals. Manager maintains AI conviction as biggest career opportunity while building positions in quality platforms with limited tariff exposure. Portfolio companies well-positioned to weather uncertainty through strong competitive moats and balance sheets.

Dec 31 2024

2024 Q4

ARGX, ASML, BAJFINANCE.NS, BILL, CPNG, CRWD, DDOG, ENDV.L, INDI, MELI, NET, NVDA, RIVN, SHOP.TO, SNOW, TSLA, TTAN, WIX, ZOMATO.NS, ZS

AI, Cloud, E-Commerce, global, growth, Robotics, semiconductors, technology

Baron Global Advantage Fund gained 26.4% in 2024, outperforming benchmarks through strong stock selection in AI-enabled businesses and global e-commerce platforms. Despite market headwinds favoring U.S. giant-cap stocks, the fund's focus on fundamental growth drivers and positioning around transformative AI disruption delivered solid results. Manager remains optimistic about long-term prospects while acknowledging near-term deglobalization and inflation risks.

Sep 30 2024

2024 Q3

Jun 30 2024

2024 Q2

ADYEN.AS, ALAB, ARGX, ASML, CPNG, CRWD, DAVA, DDOG, FVRR, GLOB, INDI, MELI, NET, NVDA, RIVN, SHOP, SNOW, TMP, TSLA, WIX

AI, global, growth, healthcare, semiconductors, software, technology

NVDA
CRWD
CPNG
SHOP
NET
TXG

Baron Global Advantage Fund outperformed in Q2 2024 despite underweight positioning in Magnificent Seven stocks. NVIDIA drove returns with 36.8% gain on unprecedented AI-driven growth. Software holdings faced multiple contraction during investment cycles. Fund initiated Tempus AI position, combining AI with healthcare diagnostics. Manager remains focused on quality businesses with sustainable advantages positioned for AI paradigm shift.

Mar 31 2024

2024 Q1

ADYEN.AS, ALAB, ARGX, ASML, BJFN.NS, CPNG, CRWD, ENDV, INDI, MELI, NET, NVDA, RIVN, SDGR, SHOP, SNOW, TSLA, VKTX, ZOMATO.NS, ZS

AI, cybersecurity, Electric Vehicles, global, growth, innovation, semiconductors, technology

NVDA
VKTX
ALAB

Baron Global Advantage gained 3.6% in Q1, led by NVIDIA's 83% surge on AI momentum. The fund sees generative AI as a multi-decade disruption with NVIDIA as the platform leader. Cyclical headwinds hit IT services and EV holdings hard. New positions include obesity drug developer Viking Therapeutics and semiconductor companies. Manager maintains long-term conviction despite near-term volatility.

Dec 31 2023

2023 Q4

3690.HK, AAPL, ADYEN, AMZN, ARGX, ASML, BILL, BJFNF, CPNG, CRWD, DAVA, DDOG, EPAM, FVRR, GLOB, GOOGL, INPST, MELI, META, MSFT, NET, NVDA, SHOP, SNOW, SQ, TSLA, WIX, ZI, ZS

AI, Cloud, cybersecurity, Digitization, E-Commerce, global, growth, technology

Baron Global Advantage Fund posted strong 25.6% annual returns despite private investment headwinds, led by AI and e-commerce winners like Shopify and MercadoLibre. The fund eliminated China exposure and concentrated into 34 high-conviction positions benefiting from GenAI adoption, platform consolidation, and improving unit economics. Management remains optimistic on long-term secular trends while maintaining disciplined valuation approach.

Sep 30 2023

2023 Q3

ADYEN.AS, ARGX, BAJFINANCE.NS, CPNG, CRWD, DAVA, DDOG, FVRR, MELI, NET, NVDA, RIVN, SDGR, SHOP, SNOW, TSLA, VEEV, WIX, ZI

AI, Biotechnology, E-Commerce, global, growth, small caps, technology

CPNG
VTWIX

Baron Global Advantage Fund's 6.1% Q3 decline reflected multiple contraction in small/mid-caps despite improving fundamentals. The manager increased exposure to attractively valued smaller companies while mega-caps dominated market returns. NVIDIA's AI-driven growth and improving portfolio fundamentals support the long-term thesis, though near-term volatility from higher rates persists.

QUARTER	THEMES	TAGS
2025 Q2	AI AI infrastructure buildout is durable with NVIDIA maintaining leadership. Scaling laws have expanded beyond pre-training to post-training and test-time scaling, driving GPU demand. AI workloads will be supported by large language models in datacenters, unlocking trillions in value across intelligence-bottlenecked industries.	GPUs Infrastructure Scaling Inference Datacenters
	E-commerce Latin American e-commerce shows strong growth with MELI gaining market share. Argentina's economic improvement benefits the largest player with 65% market share. E-commerce penetration remains low in mid-teens with significant runway for growth.	Latin America Penetration Market Share Argentina Growth
	Cloud Cloud infrastructure companies like Cloudflare and Datadog show strong fundamentals despite stock volatility. Edge computing and AI inferencing drive demand for distributed cloud services. Enterprise adoption accelerating with million-dollar contracts becoming more common.	Edge Computing Enterprise Infrastructure Performance Security
	Semiconductors TSMC benefits from AI proliferation across industries as the ultimate arms dealer regardless of GPU vs ASIC market share split. Leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing positioning remains unmatched despite near-term tariff uncertainty.	Manufacturing Leading Edge AI Foundries Technology
	FinTech Digital banking disruption in Latin America led by Nu Holdings with over 100 million users. Structural under-penetration of financial services creates long runway with credit card penetration only 35% in Brazil versus 70% in developed markets.	Digital Banking Latin America Penetration Credit Disruption
2025 Q1	AI AI represents the biggest disruptive change in the manager's career. Models continue to improve on the intelligence curve while costs decline, opening new markets and opportunities. NVIDIA's progress across hardware and software remains unmatched, with reasoning models requiring 100x more compute than previously thought.	Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning Compute GPUs Deep Learning
	Trade Policy Tariff uncertainty created significant market volatility and drove the Fund's underperformance. The administration's disruptive approach creates instability and chaos, though the manager acknowledges the trade deficit problem needs addressing as articulated by Warren Buffett.	Tariffs Trade War Import Certificates Trade Deficit Economic Policy
	Semiconductors TSMC's competitive positioning in leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing remains unmatched despite near-term tariff uncertainty. The company will benefit from long-duration growth as AI adoption proliferates across industries.	Foundries Chip Manufacturing Leading Edge Process Technology Semiconductor Cycle
	E-commerce MercadoLibre continues strong growth with 56% year-over-year GMV growth and 49% growth in Total Payments Volume, capturing leading share of structural growth opportunity in Latin America. Shopify maintains strong positioning despite cyclical headwinds.	Online Retail Digital Commerce Marketplaces GMV Payments
	Cybersecurity SailPoint represents a new investment in identity governance and administration software. The company has a sticky customer base with 97% gross retention rates and multiple growth levers including cloud migration and cross-selling opportunities.	Identity Management Security Software IGA Cloud Migration Enterprise Security
	Cloud Cloudflare's edge network and expanding platform enable durable growth of 25% year-over-year. The company's unique ability to run all cloud products on every server enables margin expansion as incremental product adoption costs approach zero.	Edge Computing CDN Platform SaaS Network Infrastructure
2024 Q4	AI The fund views AI as one of the biggest disruptive changes in human history, comparing it to the early internet era. AI model intelligence is improving rapidly through multiple vectors including scaling laws, multiple modalities, synthetic data, post-training techniques, and inference-time scaling. The fund owns businesses positioned to benefit from this paradigm shift including NVIDIA at the epicenter and platforms like Shopify that can utilize AI to help merchants.	Machine Learning Neural Networks Automation Data Analytics Computing
	E-commerce The fund holds significant positions in global e-commerce platforms including Shopify, MercadoLibre, and Coupang. These companies are benefiting from continued market share gains and expansion into new verticals like B2B commerce. The fund sees long-term growth tied to secular e-commerce adoption and financial services penetration across different regions.	Digital Commerce Online Retail Marketplaces Payments Logistics
	Semiconductors The fund maintains exposure to the semiconductor industry through NVIDIA and ASML, viewing them as critical enablers of AI advancement. Despite near-term cyclical challenges and geopolitical concerns around Chinese demand, the fund believes growing demand for AI chips and increasing chip complexity will drive long-term growth for leading semiconductor companies.	Chip Design Manufacturing AI Chips Lithography Memory
	Cloud The fund invests in cloud infrastructure and software companies like Cloudflare and Datadog that are using AI on proprietary data to improve their offerings. These platforms benefit from companies modernizing their networking infrastructure and the continued migration to cloud-based solutions.	Infrastructure SaaS Data Centers Networking Software
	Robotics The fund sees promising progress in robotics with examples like Waymo achieving significant market share in San Francisco and Tesla demonstrating humanoid robots. The fund believes Tesla's progress in robotics, both autonomous driving and humanoids, creates significant opportunities for the business model to inflect positively.	Automation Autonomous Vehicles Manufacturing AI Hardware
2024 Q2	AI The fund views AI as driving a new industrial revolution, with NVIDIA positioned as the AI generator creating tokens for every industry. The manager believes we remain early in AI adoption across industries and the race for Artificial General Intelligence continues with exponential demand growth for accelerated computing.	Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning Accelerated Computing GenAI AGI
	Semiconductors NVIDIA continues unprecedented growth with quarterly revenues of $26 billion growing 262% year-over-year. The Blackwell architecture represents the next product cycle with GB200 racks becoming the new unit of compute, strengthening competitive advantages as datacenter-scale computing demand grows.	GPUs Chip Design Foundries Memory Processing
	E-commerce Coupang showed strong performance with 33% revenue growth and continued market share gains in Korean e-commerce. The fund sees significant runway for growth as companies gain market share and expand internationally while investing in infrastructure density.	Online Retail Marketplaces Digital Commerce Logistics Platform
	Cybersecurity CrowdStrike demonstrated strong execution with 33% revenue growth and 35% free cash flow margins. The company is gaining share in endpoint detection and response while emerging products reach material scale, benefiting from growing threat landscape driven by AI advancements.	Endpoint Security Threat Detection Cloud Security Identity Protection SIEM
	Cloud Software companies like Shopify and Snowflake are entering investment cycles to strengthen competitive positioning and drive market share gains. While short-term margins are impacted, the fund believes these investments make sense for long-term growth in cloud-based services.	SaaS Cloud Infrastructure Platform Services Software Delivery Scalability
	Genomics Tempus AI represents the convergence of AI and diagnostics, providing cancer treatment selection tests with industry-leading breadth and accuracy. The company has amassed over 200 petabytes of proprietary multimodal dataset combining clinical and genomic data for pharmaceutical R&D.	Gene Sequencing Precision Medicine Biomarkers Clinical Data Diagnostics
2024 Q1	AI Fund views AI as a multi-decade paradigm shift with NVIDIA at the epicenter. GenAI is showing rapid real-world adoption with revenues exceeding $3 billion. The manager believes AI will drive productivity gains and technological breakthroughs across industries from drug discovery to autonomous machines.	GenAI LLMs GPUs Platform Productivity
	Semiconductors NVIDIA's dominance in AI chips drives significant performance improvements through full-stack innovation from GPUs to software. The fund sees accelerating demand for AI-specific semiconductors despite cyclical industry concerns.	GPUs Blackwell NVLink Foundries AI Chips
	Electric Vehicles EV holdings Tesla and Rivian faced headwinds from production challenges, competitive pressures in China, and demand uncertainty. Despite near-term volatility, the fund maintains conviction in long-term EV market expansion and autonomous driving potential.	Tesla Rivian Cybertruck Autonomous EV Market
	Cybersecurity CrowdStrike delivered strong results with accelerating market share gains in endpoint detection and emerging products scaling to $850 million ARR. The growing threat landscape driven by AI advancements supports continued growth.	Endpoint EDR SIEM Threat Intelligence Cloud Security
2023 Q4	AI GenAI is creating an inflection point that benefits many portfolio companies beyond just NVIDIA. Enterprises are accelerating digitization trends to benefit from GenAI, with less than 10% of companies having mature data and AI capabilities. This trend should be a tailwind for businesses that enable or benefit from digitization such as cybersecurity, infrastructure monitoring, and data platforms.	GenAI Digitization Data Enterprise Transformation
	Cloud Cloud infrastructure and software companies in the portfolio are benefiting from customer consolidation trends and rising win rates against competitors. Companies like Datadog are seeing customers consolidate multiple tool providers onto their platform, while Cloudflare is becoming the single vendor for comprehensive security solutions.	Infrastructure Platform Consolidation SaaS Enterprise
	E-commerce E-commerce platforms like Shopify and MercadoLibre are showing strong performance with improving unit economics and market share gains. Shopify demonstrated 124.5% annual returns with 22% GMV growth and expanding margins, while MercadoLibre posted 85.7% annual returns with 59% constant-currency GMV growth and significant margin expansion.	GMV Platforms Merchants Digital Commerce
	Cybersecurity Cybersecurity companies are benefiting from GenAI trends as enterprises accelerate digitization efforts. CrowdStrike is expected to increase operating margins from 15.9% to 20.8% while benefiting from the broader digital transformation and security consolidation trends.	Security Platform Enterprise Digital Protection
2023 Q3	AI NVIDIA continues to exceed projections with 94% revenue growth and 192% EPS growth expected for 2023, driven by accelerating demand for Generative AI. The company raised guidance multiple times during the quarter, demonstrating the strength of AI adoption across industries.	NVIDIA Generative AI GPUs Data Centers Machine Learning
	E-commerce Coupang demonstrates strong market leadership in Korea with 25% market share and 99.8% next-day delivery. The company is expanding profitability while investing in automation and reducing reliance on distributors. Shopify continues benefiting from its commerce operating system position despite near-term consumer concerns.	Coupang Shopify Online Retail Logistics Marketplaces
	Electric Vehicles Rivian showed improving unit economics through increased production rates, better cost absorption, and renegotiated supplier agreements. The company expects continued profitability progress as it scales production and prepares to launch its smaller R2 SUV in early 2024.	Rivian EV Manufacturing Battery Technology Production Scaling
	Biotechnology Argenx achieved positive Phase 3 trial results for CIDP, representing billions in potential sales. The strong Vyvgart launch exceeded consensus expectations with multiple upcoming catalysts including readouts in pemphigus vulgaris and other autoimmune disorders.	Argenx Autoimmune Clinical Trials Drug Development
	Cloud Cloudflare shows signs of stabilization with record pipeline generation and improving deal close rates despite macro headwinds. The company benefits from customers consolidating spending on its platform due to high gross margins and differentiated offerings.	Cloudflare Infrastructure Networking SaaS
	Payments Adyen faced significant challenges with decelerating growth and increased competitive pressure in North America, leading to a 59% stock decline. While the company maintains market share gains, it lost wallet share with large merchants to lower-priced competitors.	Adyen Payment Processing Fintech Competition

QUARTER

THEMES

AI

AI infrastructure buildout is durable with NVIDIA maintaining leadership. Scaling laws have expanded beyond pre-training to post-training and test-time scaling, driving GPU demand. AI workloads will be supported by large language models in datacenters, unlocking trillions in value across intelligence-bottlenecked industries.

GPUs Infrastructure Scaling Inference Datacenters

E-commerce

Latin American e-commerce shows strong growth with MELI gaining market share. Argentina's economic improvement benefits the largest player with 65% market share. E-commerce penetration remains low in mid-teens with significant runway for growth.

Latin America Penetration Market Share Argentina Growth

Cloud

Cloud infrastructure companies like Cloudflare and Datadog show strong fundamentals despite stock volatility. Edge computing and AI inferencing drive demand for distributed cloud services. Enterprise adoption accelerating with million-dollar contracts becoming more common.

Edge Computing Enterprise Infrastructure Performance Security

Semiconductors

TSMC benefits from AI proliferation across industries as the ultimate arms dealer regardless of GPU vs ASIC market share split. Leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing positioning remains unmatched despite near-term tariff uncertainty.

Manufacturing Leading Edge AI Foundries Technology

FinTech

Digital banking disruption in Latin America led by Nu Holdings with over 100 million users. Structural under-penetration of financial services creates long runway with credit card penetration only 35% in Brazil versus 70% in developed markets.

Digital Banking Latin America Penetration Credit Disruption

2025 Q1

AI

AI represents the biggest disruptive change in the manager's career. Models continue to improve on the intelligence curve while costs decline, opening new markets and opportunities. NVIDIA's progress across hardware and software remains unmatched, with reasoning models requiring 100x more compute than previously thought.

Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning Compute GPUs Deep Learning

Trade Policy

Tariff uncertainty created significant market volatility and drove the Fund's underperformance. The administration's disruptive approach creates instability and chaos, though the manager acknowledges the trade deficit problem needs addressing as articulated by Warren Buffett.

Tariffs Trade War Import Certificates Trade Deficit Economic Policy

Semiconductors

TSMC's competitive positioning in leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing remains unmatched despite near-term tariff uncertainty. The company will benefit from long-duration growth as AI adoption proliferates across industries.

Foundries Chip Manufacturing Leading Edge Process Technology Semiconductor Cycle

E-commerce

MercadoLibre continues strong growth with 56% year-over-year GMV growth and 49% growth in Total Payments Volume, capturing leading share of structural growth opportunity in Latin America. Shopify maintains strong positioning despite cyclical headwinds.

Online Retail Digital Commerce Marketplaces GMV Payments

Cybersecurity

SailPoint represents a new investment in identity governance and administration software. The company has a sticky customer base with 97% gross retention rates and multiple growth levers including cloud migration and cross-selling opportunities.

Identity Management Security Software IGA Cloud Migration Enterprise Security

Cloud

Cloudflare's edge network and expanding platform enable durable growth of 25% year-over-year. The company's unique ability to run all cloud products on every server enables margin expansion as incremental product adoption costs approach zero.

Edge Computing CDN Platform SaaS Network Infrastructure

2024 Q4

AI

The fund views AI as one of the biggest disruptive changes in human history, comparing it to the early internet era. AI model intelligence is improving rapidly through multiple vectors including scaling laws, multiple modalities, synthetic data, post-training techniques, and inference-time scaling. The fund owns businesses positioned to benefit from this paradigm shift including NVIDIA at the epicenter and platforms like Shopify that can utilize AI to help merchants.

Machine Learning Neural Networks Automation Data Analytics Computing

E-commerce

The fund holds significant positions in global e-commerce platforms including Shopify, MercadoLibre, and Coupang. These companies are benefiting from continued market share gains and expansion into new verticals like B2B commerce. The fund sees long-term growth tied to secular e-commerce adoption and financial services penetration across different regions.

Digital Commerce Online Retail Marketplaces Payments Logistics

Semiconductors

The fund maintains exposure to the semiconductor industry through NVIDIA and ASML, viewing them as critical enablers of AI advancement. Despite near-term cyclical challenges and geopolitical concerns around Chinese demand, the fund believes growing demand for AI chips and increasing chip complexity will drive long-term growth for leading semiconductor companies.

Chip Design Manufacturing AI Chips Lithography Memory

Cloud

The fund invests in cloud infrastructure and software companies like Cloudflare and Datadog that are using AI on proprietary data to improve their offerings. These platforms benefit from companies modernizing their networking infrastructure and the continued migration to cloud-based solutions.

Infrastructure SaaS Data Centers Networking Software

Robotics

The fund sees promising progress in robotics with examples like Waymo achieving significant market share in San Francisco and Tesla demonstrating humanoid robots. The fund believes Tesla's progress in robotics, both autonomous driving and humanoids, creates significant opportunities for the business model to inflect positively.

Automation Autonomous Vehicles Manufacturing AI Hardware

2024 Q2

AI

The fund views AI as driving a new industrial revolution, with NVIDIA positioned as the AI generator creating tokens for every industry. The manager believes we remain early in AI adoption across industries and the race for Artificial General Intelligence continues with exponential demand growth for accelerated computing.

Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning Accelerated Computing GenAI AGI

Semiconductors

NVIDIA continues unprecedented growth with quarterly revenues of $26 billion growing 262% year-over-year. The Blackwell architecture represents the next product cycle with GB200 racks becoming the new unit of compute, strengthening competitive advantages as datacenter-scale computing demand grows.

GPUs Chip Design Foundries Memory Processing

E-commerce

Coupang showed strong performance with 33% revenue growth and continued market share gains in Korean e-commerce. The fund sees significant runway for growth as companies gain market share and expand internationally while investing in infrastructure density.

Online Retail Marketplaces Digital Commerce Logistics Platform

Cybersecurity

CrowdStrike demonstrated strong execution with 33% revenue growth and 35% free cash flow margins. The company is gaining share in endpoint detection and response while emerging products reach material scale, benefiting from growing threat landscape driven by AI advancements.

Endpoint Security Threat Detection Cloud Security Identity Protection SIEM

Cloud

Software companies like Shopify and Snowflake are entering investment cycles to strengthen competitive positioning and drive market share gains. While short-term margins are impacted, the fund believes these investments make sense for long-term growth in cloud-based services.

SaaS Cloud Infrastructure Platform Services Software Delivery Scalability

Genomics

Tempus AI represents the convergence of AI and diagnostics, providing cancer treatment selection tests with industry-leading breadth and accuracy. The company has amassed over 200 petabytes of proprietary multimodal dataset combining clinical and genomic data for pharmaceutical R&D.

Gene Sequencing Precision Medicine Biomarkers Clinical Data Diagnostics

2024 Q1

AI

Fund views AI as a multi-decade paradigm shift with NVIDIA at the epicenter. GenAI is showing rapid real-world adoption with revenues exceeding $3 billion. The manager believes AI will drive productivity gains and technological breakthroughs across industries from drug discovery to autonomous machines.

GenAI LLMs GPUs Platform Productivity

Semiconductors

NVIDIA's dominance in AI chips drives significant performance improvements through full-stack innovation from GPUs to software. The fund sees accelerating demand for AI-specific semiconductors despite cyclical industry concerns.

GPUs Blackwell NVLink Foundries AI Chips

Electric Vehicles

EV holdings Tesla and Rivian faced headwinds from production challenges, competitive pressures in China, and demand uncertainty. Despite near-term volatility, the fund maintains conviction in long-term EV market expansion and autonomous driving potential.

Tesla Rivian Cybertruck Autonomous EV Market

Cybersecurity

CrowdStrike delivered strong results with accelerating market share gains in endpoint detection and emerging products scaling to $850 million ARR. The growing threat landscape driven by AI advancements supports continued growth.

Endpoint EDR SIEM Threat Intelligence Cloud Security

2023 Q4

AI

GenAI is creating an inflection point that benefits many portfolio companies beyond just NVIDIA. Enterprises are accelerating digitization trends to benefit from GenAI, with less than 10% of companies having mature data and AI capabilities. This trend should be a tailwind for businesses that enable or benefit from digitization such as cybersecurity, infrastructure monitoring, and data platforms.

GenAI Digitization Data Enterprise Transformation

Cloud

Cloud infrastructure and software companies in the portfolio are benefiting from customer consolidation trends and rising win rates against competitors. Companies like Datadog are seeing customers consolidate multiple tool providers onto their platform, while Cloudflare is becoming the single vendor for comprehensive security solutions.

Infrastructure Platform Consolidation SaaS Enterprise

E-commerce

E-commerce platforms like Shopify and MercadoLibre are showing strong performance with improving unit economics and market share gains. Shopify demonstrated 124.5% annual returns with 22% GMV growth and expanding margins, while MercadoLibre posted 85.7% annual returns with 59% constant-currency GMV growth and significant margin expansion.

GMV Platforms Merchants Digital Commerce

Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity companies are benefiting from GenAI trends as enterprises accelerate digitization efforts. CrowdStrike is expected to increase operating margins from 15.9% to 20.8% while benefiting from the broader digital transformation and security consolidation trends.

Security Platform Enterprise Digital Protection

2023 Q3

AI

NVIDIA continues to exceed projections with 94% revenue growth and 192% EPS growth expected for 2023, driven by accelerating demand for Generative AI. The company raised guidance multiple times during the quarter, demonstrating the strength of AI adoption across industries.

NVIDIA Generative AI GPUs Data Centers Machine Learning

E-commerce

Coupang demonstrates strong market leadership in Korea with 25% market share and 99.8% next-day delivery. The company is expanding profitability while investing in automation and reducing reliance on distributors. Shopify continues benefiting from its commerce operating system position despite near-term consumer concerns.

Coupang Shopify Online Retail Logistics Marketplaces

Electric Vehicles

Rivian showed improving unit economics through increased production rates, better cost absorption, and renegotiated supplier agreements. The company expects continued profitability progress as it scales production and prepares to launch its smaller R2 SUV in early 2024.

Rivian EV Manufacturing Battery Technology Production Scaling

Biotechnology

Argenx achieved positive Phase 3 trial results for CIDP, representing billions in potential sales. The strong Vyvgart launch exceeded consensus expectations with multiple upcoming catalysts including readouts in pemphigus vulgaris and other autoimmune disorders.

Argenx Autoimmune Clinical Trials Drug Development

Cloud

Cloudflare shows signs of stabilization with record pipeline generation and improving deal close rates despite macro headwinds. The company benefits from customers consolidating spending on its platform due to high gross margins and differentiated offerings.

Cloudflare Infrastructure Networking SaaS

Payments

Adyen faced significant challenges with decelerating growth and increased competitive pressure in North America, leading to a 59% stock decline. While the company maintains market share gains, it lost wallet share with large merchants to lower-priced competitors.

Adyen Payment Processing Fintech Competition

Date	Pitch Type	Author	Ticker	Company	Industry	Sub Industry	Bull / Bear	Exchange	Keywords	Action
Jun 30, 2024	Fund Letters	Baron Global Advantage Fund	SHOP	Shopify Inc.	Information Technology	Software	Bull	NYSE	e-commerce, growth, International, Multi-channel Commerce, platform, SaaS, Software	Login
Jun 30, 2024	Fund Letters	Baron Global Advantage Fund	CPNG	Coupang, Inc.	Consumer Discretionary	Internet & Direct Marketing Retail	Bull	NYSE	Consumer Discretionary, e-commerce, growth, infrastructure, Korea, marketplace, retail	Login
Jun 30, 2024	Fund Letters	Baron Global Advantage Fund	NET	Cloudflare, Inc.	Information Technology	Software	Bull	NYSE	cloud, content delivery network, cybersecurity, founder-led, Global network, Multi-product, Software	Login
Jun 30, 2024	Fund Letters	Baron Global Advantage Fund	NVDA	NVIDIA Corporation	Information Technology	Semiconductors & Semiconductor Equipment	Bull	NASDAQ	Accelerated Computing, AI, datacenter, Gaming, GPUs, growth, semiconductors, technology	Login
Jun 30, 2024	Fund Letters	Baron Global Advantage Fund	TXG	Tempus AI, Inc.	Health Care	Health Care Technology	Bull	NASDAQ	AI, Biotech, Cancer, Data, diagnostics, Genomics, healthcare, Precision-medicine	Login
Jun 30, 2024	Fund Letters	Baron Global Advantage Fund	CRWD	CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc.	Information Technology	Software	Bull	NASDAQ	AI, cloud, cybersecurity, Endpoint Security, growth, platform, SaaS, Software	Login
Mar 31, 2024	Fund Letters	Baron Global Advantage Fund	ALAB	Astera Labs, Inc.	Information Technology	Semiconductors & Semiconductor Equipment	Bull	NASDAQ	AI infrastructure, Bandwidth, Connectivity, data center, Fabless Semiconductor, First Mover, growth, hyperscale, PCIe Retimers, Signal integrity	Login
Mar 31, 2024	Fund Letters	Baron Global Advantage Fund	VKTX	Viking Therapeutics, Inc.	Health Care	Biotechnology	Bull	NASDAQ	biotechnology, Diabetes, drug development, GLP-1, Large Addressable Market, MASH, Metabolic Disease, Obesity, Primary Care	Login
Mar 31, 2024	Fund Letters	Baron Global Advantage Fund	NVDA	NVIDIA Corporation	Information Technology	Semiconductors & Semiconductor Equipment	Bull	NASDAQ	Artificial Intelligence, Cloud computing, data center, Full-stack, generative AI, Gpu, growth, platform, semiconductors, vertical integration	Login
Sep 30, 2023	Fund Letters	Baron Global Advantage Fund	VTWIX	Wix.com Ltd.	Information Technology	Application Software	Bull	NASDAQ	AI, Cloud software, FCF margins, Partners segment, profitability, SaaS, small business, Website builder	Login
Sep 30, 2023	Fund Letters	Baron Global Advantage Fund	CPNG	Coupang, Inc.	Consumer Discretionary	Internet & Direct Marketing Retail	Bull	NYSE	Automation, e-commerce, Fulfillment, growth, Logistics, market share, Next-day delivery, South Korea	Login

Date

Pitch Type

Author

Ticker

Company

Industry

Sub Industry

Bull / Bear

Exchange

Keywords

Action

Jun 30, 2024

Fund Letters

Baron Global Advantage Fund

SHOP

Shopify Inc.

Information Technology

Software

Bull

NYSE

e-commerce, growth, International, Multi-channel Commerce, platform, SaaS, Software

Jun 30, 2024

Fund Letters

Baron Global Advantage Fund

CPNG

Coupang, Inc.

Consumer Discretionary

Internet & Direct Marketing Retail

Bull

NYSE

Consumer Discretionary, e-commerce, growth, infrastructure, Korea, marketplace, retail

Jun 30, 2024

Fund Letters

Baron Global Advantage Fund

NET

Cloudflare, Inc.

Information Technology

Software

Bull

NYSE

cloud, content delivery network, cybersecurity, founder-led, Global network, Multi-product, Software

Jun 30, 2024

Fund Letters

Baron Global Advantage Fund

NVDA

NVIDIA Corporation

Information Technology

Semiconductors & Semiconductor Equipment

Bull

NASDAQ

Accelerated Computing, AI, datacenter, Gaming, GPUs, growth, semiconductors, technology

Jun 30, 2024

Fund Letters

Baron Global Advantage Fund

TXG

Tempus AI, Inc.

Health Care

Health Care Technology

Bull

NASDAQ

AI, Biotech, Cancer, Data, diagnostics, Genomics, healthcare, Precision-medicine

Jun 30, 2024

Fund Letters

Baron Global Advantage Fund

CRWD

CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc.

Information Technology

Software

Bull

NASDAQ

AI, cloud, cybersecurity, Endpoint Security, growth, platform, SaaS, Software

Mar 31, 2024

Fund Letters

Baron Global Advantage Fund

ALAB

Astera Labs, Inc.

Information Technology

Semiconductors & Semiconductor Equipment

Bull

NASDAQ

AI infrastructure, Bandwidth, Connectivity, data center, Fabless Semiconductor, First Mover, growth, hyperscale, PCIe Retimers, Signal integrity

Mar 31, 2024

Fund Letters

Baron Global Advantage Fund

VKTX

Viking Therapeutics, Inc.

Health Care

Biotechnology

Bull

NASDAQ

biotechnology, Diabetes, drug development, GLP-1, Large Addressable Market, MASH, Metabolic Disease, Obesity, Primary Care

Mar 31, 2024

Fund Letters

Baron Global Advantage Fund

NVDA

NVIDIA Corporation

Information Technology

Semiconductors & Semiconductor Equipment

Bull

NASDAQ

Artificial Intelligence, Cloud computing, data center, Full-stack, generative AI, Gpu, growth, platform, semiconductors, vertical integration

Sep 30, 2023

Fund Letters

Baron Global Advantage Fund

VTWIX

Wix.com Ltd.

Information Technology

Application Software

Bull

NASDAQ

AI, Cloud software, FCF margins, Partners segment, profitability, SaaS, small business, Website builder

Sep 30, 2023

Fund Letters

Baron Global Advantage Fund

CPNG

Coupang, Inc.

Consumer Discretionary

Internet & Direct Marketing Retail

Bull

NYSE

Automation, e-commerce, Fulfillment, growth, Logistics, market share, Next-day delivery, South Korea

TICKER	COMMENTARY
NET	The shares of Cloudflare had a maximum drawdown of 45% during the first half, while we believe the intrinsic value of the business has only grown. Cloudflare is rapidly becoming a more important vendor for its customers with $1 million and $5 million customers growing 48% and 54% year-over-year, respectively, while the company also booked a milestone contract of over $130 million during the quarter.
MELI	MELI had a maximum drawdown of 21%, likely driven by a decision to reduce its minimum threshold for free shipping (as well as the general market weakness). We liked the initiative, which we think could drive up purchase frequency, since MELI customers on average buy 9 to 10 times per year, versus almost 50 times for Amazon. The rapid improvement in Argentina's economy is beneficial to MELI, by far the largest e-commerce player in the country with around 65% market share.
NVDA	NVIDIA's stock price had a 37% drawdown during the first half of 2025. The DeepSeek moment was misunderstood or misinterpreted by investors. We argued in the last quarterly letter that it will actually drive an expansion in demand for inference reasoning AI. NVIDIA is uniquely positioned to power this transformation through its full-stack approach, spanning silicon, systems, software, and developer ecosystem, and hence its competitive moat continues to widen.
DDOG	Datadog's shares had a correction of 43% during the first half. At the same time, we judged their reported financial results to be strong and improving. The company demonstrated success expanding into the lucrative enterprise segment with new logo annual contract value up 70% year-on-year and gross retention of existing logos exceeding 99%.
TSM	Our largest add during the quarter was Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited as we continued to build our position. We believe that while near-term uncertainty due to tariffs and macro remains heightened, TSMC's competitive positioning in leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing remains unmatched.
NU	During the quarter, we initiated a position in Nu Holdings Ltd., a leading Latin American digital bank operating in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. Founded in 2014 to provide Brazilian consumers with better access to financial products, Nu is disrupting a banking system long dominated by an oligopoly of incumbents notorious for high fees, poor service, and limited credit availability.
LOAR	We recently initiated a position in Loar Holdings Inc., a niche aerospace parts manufacturer founded in 2012. Loar boasts an 85% proprietary product portfolio, with over 50% of its revenue derived from the high-margin aftermarket channel. Proprietary, aftermarket-focused products are among the strongest business models in the aerospace and defense industry.
ILMN	We also added to our position in the leading DNA sequencing platform, Illumina, Inc. Illumina is the dominant next generation sequencing tools provider, a technique that enables massive amounts of genetic analysis in both research and clinical diagnosis. The stock has come under heavy pressure recently due to a confluence of several factors including pricing pressure from transition to the next-gen 'X' platform.

TICKER

COMMENTARY

NET

The shares of Cloudflare had a maximum drawdown of 45% during the first half, while we believe the intrinsic value of the business has only grown. Cloudflare is rapidly becoming a more important vendor for its customers with $1 million and $5 million customers growing 48% and 54% year-over-year, respectively, while the company also booked a milestone contract of over $130 million during the quarter.

MELI

MELI had a maximum drawdown of 21%, likely driven by a decision to reduce its minimum threshold for free shipping (as well as the general market weakness). We liked the initiative, which we think could drive up purchase frequency, since MELI customers on average buy 9 to 10 times per year, versus almost 50 times for Amazon. The rapid improvement in Argentina's economy is beneficial to MELI, by far the largest e-commerce player in the country with around 65% market share.

NVDA

NVIDIA's stock price had a 37% drawdown during the first half of 2025. The DeepSeek moment was misunderstood or misinterpreted by investors. We argued in the last quarterly letter that it will actually drive an expansion in demand for inference reasoning AI. NVIDIA is uniquely positioned to power this transformation through its full-stack approach, spanning silicon, systems, software, and developer ecosystem, and hence its competitive moat continues to widen.

DDOG

Datadog's shares had a correction of 43% during the first half. At the same time, we judged their reported financial results to be strong and improving. The company demonstrated success expanding into the lucrative enterprise segment with new logo annual contract value up 70% year-on-year and gross retention of existing logos exceeding 99%.

TSM

Our largest add during the quarter was Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited as we continued to build our position. We believe that while near-term uncertainty due to tariffs and macro remains heightened, TSMC's competitive positioning in leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing remains unmatched.

During the quarter, we initiated a position in Nu Holdings Ltd., a leading Latin American digital bank operating in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. Founded in 2014 to provide Brazilian consumers with better access to financial products, Nu is disrupting a banking system long dominated by an oligopoly of incumbents notorious for high fees, poor service, and limited credit availability.

LOAR

We recently initiated a position in Loar Holdings Inc., a niche aerospace parts manufacturer founded in 2012. Loar boasts an 85% proprietary product portfolio, with over 50% of its revenue derived from the high-margin aftermarket channel. Proprietary, aftermarket-focused products are among the strongest business models in the aerospace and defense industry.

ILMN

We also added to our position in the leading DNA sequencing platform, Illumina, Inc. Illumina is the dominant next generation sequencing tools provider, a technique that enables massive amounts of genetic analysis in both research and clinical diagnosis. The stock has come under heavy pressure recently due to a confluence of several factors including pricing pressure from transition to the next-gen 'X' platform.

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Investment Summary

Investor Summary

Fund Strategy

FUND PERFORMANCE AS OF 30th June 2025

Investor Letters

Latest Executive Summary:

Executive Summary

Core Thesis

Forward Outlook

Investment Themes

AI

E-commerce

Cloud

Semiconductors

FinTech

AI

Trade Policy

Semiconductors

E-commerce

Cybersecurity

Cloud

AI

E-commerce

Semiconductors

Cloud

Robotics

AI

Semiconductors

E-commerce

Cybersecurity

Cloud

Genomics

AI

Semiconductors

Electric Vehicles

Cybersecurity

AI

Cloud

E-commerce

Cybersecurity

AI

E-commerce

Electric Vehicles

Biotechnology

Cloud

Payments

Investor Pitches

Current Portfolio as of ( 30th June 2025 )

Key Risks identified by Manager:

Key catalysts include:

Portfolio Implications

Ticker Commentary

Alex Umansky Top Holdings

Recent Buys (13F)

Recent Sells (13F)

13F Sector Summary

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Latest 13D & 13G Filings

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