As global tech stocks surge, a fund with standout performance is drawing investors' attention. With an average 1-year return of 55% across all classes, Korea Investment Global AI & Semiconductor TOP10 ranked No. 1 among overseas equity IT public funds this year.
According to FnGuide on the 4th, the fund's return (based on UH type C-Pe) reached 209.93% from its inception in April 2023 through Oct. 30. This year's return is 42.06%, double the share price gains of Tesla and Nvidia and other "Magnificent 7" (M7) stocks (21.40%) and the Nasdaq 100 index's rise (21.41%). Even narrowing the window to the past six months, the fund's return was 68.18%, higher than the Nasdaq 100 (31.54%) and the M7 (48.72%).
The fund's portfolio manager is Kim Hyeon-tae, a chief manager at Korea Investment Management, born in 1992 and in the early 30s. Starting undergraduate studies in the Department of Physics at Seoul National University and going on to a doctoral program, Kim joined KIM in 2021. In 2023, when artificial intelligence (AI) began to draw full-fledged attention, Kim planned this fund directly.
The fund's main holdings include Nvidia, TSMC, Alphabet, Meta, Broadcom, and Arm Holdings—global corporations representing the AI and semiconductor industries.
Before they caught the market's eye, Kim added Oklo and Oracle, delivering strong results. It was a strategy to preemptively include small modular reactor (SMR)–related stocks and AI data center corporations that investors have recently flocked to.
Kim said, "Oracle and Marvell Technology were strategically added from the very first launch in 2023 based on their growth potential," adding, "We also increased the weight of Oracle starting in the second half of this year."
Oklo and Nuscale Power, SMR-related stocks, were newly added when their share prices fell sharply early this year. Kim said, "OpenAI founder Sam Altman left Oklo's board early in the year, and related share prices fell, but we saw that as a decision to avoid conflicts of interest given OpenAI's need for nuclear power contracts," adding, "We viewed it as a strong positive and added it to the portfolio."
Early this year, the fund experienced a temporary correction due to global interest rate issues and the emergence of China's DeepSeek. But it recovered returns through adjustments aligned with market changes, such as increasing SMR exposure and strengthening domestic semiconductor allocations.
In particular, increasing the weights of Samsung Electronics and SK hynix since August also lifted the fund's returns. The fund's net assets, which were 249.7 billion won at the start of the year, reached 800 billion won as of the 30th of last month.
Kim said plans remain to focus investments on big tech corporations with AI monopoly elements. Kim emphasized, "In the AI infrastructure field, the key determinant of growth is whether a company is active as a partner in the AI alliance made up of 'OpenAI-Oracle-Nvidia,'" adding, "In AI services as well, corporations with existing large platforms—such as Amazon's AI shopping assistant 'Rufus' and Meta's smart glasses—are delivering visible results."
Kim sees the AI infrastructure field as still the area with high barriers to entry and high added value across the AI value chain. Kim said, "We plan to continue investing in big tech with AI monopoly elements—such as algorithms, data, and semiconductors—and in corporations related to the AI infrastructure alliance."