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Starboard Value’s Jeffrey Smith has called artificial intelligence “an enormous opportunity,” and there are hints of his enthusiasm in his latest, quarterly 13F filing to SEC. The activist investor drastically increased his stake in Wix.com , making it his ninth-biggest holding at the end of June. Wix.com, whose shares have gained more than 15%, is a web development platform enabling businesses to take workflow online. Meanwhile, Smith hiked his stake in Acacia Research to a bet worth more than $250 million last quarter, pushing it to the 10th-biggest position. The patent licensing company’s shares have fallen about 8% this year. Smith has come out as an AI bull, comparing the technology advance to the internet. “There’s been a few technology advancements over the last 20 plus years that have been able to do things like that,” Smith said on CNBC last month. “The internet was one to start with … maybe you talk about cryptocurrency blockchain and then you might talk about AI.” During the last quarter, the hedge fund manager trimmed his holding in Salesforce , the customer relations management software company that he famously took an activist stake in in 2022. Shares of Salesforce have rallied nearly 60% this year. The hedge fund manager said there’s more room for Salesforce to grow and the stock can rally another 30% on the back of the AI boom. Splunk is another software name that Smith previously said could benefit from the rise of AI. Smith said Splunk is slightly behind Salesforce in terms of execution. Smith has been one of the busiest activist investors over the last two decades, best known for his proxy fights in the restaurant space. He launched the Starboard Value investment strategy at Ramius in 2002. Nine years later he spun out his New York-based hedge fund and became the CEO. The hedge fund manager also added a relatively small stake in British life science company Abcam PLC last quarter.
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