Baron Opportunity Fund has soared 45% this year, blowing its tech peers out of the water. Its portfolio manager believes this strong performance stems from early investments in winners in the artificial intelligence space. Portfolio manager Michael Lippert, who has over 20 years of experience, says the fund seeks to capture the growth in AI, which he thinks has just begun. “We’re focusing on these long-term trends… AI, we’re just in the earliest of innings,” Lippert said on CNBC’s ” Squawk on the Street .” “We’re really trying to figure out how big the opportunity can be and which companies have the competitive advantages to realize the opportunities and take market share.” The opportunity fund (BIOPX), with $1 billion assets under management, has notched a 10-year total return of about 15% on an annualized basis, according to Morningstar. Lippert said he owns about 40 names in the portfolio, including this year’s big AI winner Nvidia . The chipmaker has rallied over 220% this year alone on its AI ambition, topping a $1 trillion market cap. Another megacap name that Lippert owns to capitalize on the AI boom is Microsoft . Earlier this year, the tech giant announced a multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment in ChatGPT -maker OpenAI, marking the third phase of their partnership. Other than Nvidia and Microsoft, Lippert said he likes AI-related software companies ServiceNow and Workday . He also revealed that he’s bullish on a few other semiconductor names, including AMD and Marvell . “Everyone wants to talk about the big names, but we play this in a portfolio way,” Lippert said.
