This AI Chip Stock Has Been Billionaire Philippe Laffont’s Largest Holding Throughout 2026. Here’s What $10,000 Invested Today Could Be Worth by 2030.
Philippe Laffont has made a name for himself as someone capable of spotting secular technology trends early and making big bets on some of the biggest potential beneficiaries. That makes his hedge fund, Coatue Management, a useful source of potentially great investment ideas in tech stocks.
Laffont has held the same artificial intelligence (AI) stock at the top of Coatue’s portfolio throughout 2026, and he has good reason to keep it as the fund’s biggest holding. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM -3.40%) accounts for nearly 9% of Coatue’s publicly traded U.S. equities. While the stock has performed well for Phillipe Laffont and anyone else who owns it, it could still climb a lot higher from here.
Here’s what a $10,000 investment in TSMC could be worth by 2030.
Image source: Getty Images.
Going up the supply chain
It’s worth noting that Laffont holds a lot of semiconductor stocks for Coatue. The massive spending on artificial intelligence is driving a significant cash transfer from hyperscalers to chipmakers, benefiting many companies. Having said that, Laffont also likes most hyperscalers, as they have the potential to generate strong returns on their enormous capital outlays.
Laffont’s largest positions, however, are mostly higher up the supply chain. TSMC is the world’s largest third-party semiconductor manufacturer. It buys equipment from Lam Research and Applied Materials, both of which sat in Coatue’s top-five holdings as of the end of June. He also holds a significant position in Micron Technology, which handles manufacturing in-house, exercising greater control over supply and benefiting from vertical integration.
Laffont appears to see better value higher up in the semiconductor supply chain than in chipmakers themselves or in end customers like hyperscalers or neoclouds. Despite high growth expectations for chip designers, TSMC may be best positioned to deliver sustainable earnings growth over the long run.
The center of the semiconductor industry
TSMC holds a dominant position in third-party semiconductor fabrication, especially among the world’s most advanced logic chips like GPUs or custom AI accelerators. Those chips require the most advanced fabrication processes to achieve better price performance. At the scale of AI, every small improvement in efficiency creates a huge difference in how much it costs to run a data center.
TSMC ended the second quarter with an estimated 73% market share, and that number has steadily climbed over the last few years. It could keep climbing as AI spending doesn’t appear to be slowing anytime soon, and TSMC is investing heavily to add new production capacity.
The demand for advanced chips, combined with its technology lead and capacity constraints, has allowed it to raise prices. It plans to keep raising prices on existing technologies through 2029 while it ramps up production of its newest generation, N2, and starts production of its next-generation processes.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
Today’s Change
(-3.40%) $-15.12
Current Price
$430.00
Key Data Points
Market Cap
Day’s Range
$428.06 – $440.39
52wk Range
$266.82 – $487.47
Volume
409.7K
Avg Vol
11.2M
Gross Margin
63.08%
Dividend Yield
0.88%
TSMC should be able to maintain its market share thanks to its close relationships with existing customers, its technology lead, and its capacity. That ensures it generates more revenue than its competitors, giving it more cash to reinvest in R&D to maintain its technology lead and build more production capacity.
Management previously forecast compound annual revenue growth of 25% between 2024 and 2029. That forecast may be conservative, given its 2026 revenue growth of above 35% through the first half of the year and 36% in 2025.
How much could $10,000 invested today be worth?
TSMC could maintain its 25% target growth rate through 2029, fueled by higher prices for older technology and a rapid ramp-up of its current and next-generation production processes. That should prevent much change in its gross margin profile, and net income could climb even faster than revenue, as it generates strong returns on its R&D spending and keeps capital spending in line with demand.
How much TSMC stock could climb will depend, in part, on how long the current earnings cycle lasts. While management works closely with its customers to ensure it doesn’t overbuild, it’s still subject to the semiconductor industry’s swings. On average, the company commands a price multiple of 20-25 times earnings. At a 25% earnings growth rate through 2030, that puts its total return somewhere between 52% and 90%, based on the stock price as of this writing. That means $10,000 invested in TSMC today could be worth between $15,200 and $19,000 by 2030.
