The third quarter was a rough period for Tiger Cubs, especially those that emphasize tech and AI-related stocks.

As Institutional Investor recently noted, most of the prominent felines lost money — despite gains in September following huge declines in July and in some cases August.

One Tiger Cub, however, stands out for posting healthy increases for the entire quarter: Lee Ainslie III’s Maverick Capital. The hedge fund firm reported a 5 percent-plus gain in the third quarter in its main long-short fund, Maverick Fund, boosting its rise for the year to 16.17 percent, according to a hedge fund database.

Maverick Long rose about 4 percent for the period and is now up 20.46 percent. Maverick Long Enhanced added approximately 4.5 percent in the third quarter and is up 24.54 percent. Maverick Neutral Fund, which launched this past April, has risen 9.94 percent in 2026. It targets 125 percent long exposure and 125 percent short exposure.

Maverick Fund apparently broke about even on its shorts in the third quarter but lost a small amount for the year. It is on target to post its fourth straight double-digit annual gain and fifth in the past six years (it lost 30 percent in 2022).

Maverick has had significant exposure to Magnificent Seven and AI beneficiary stocks all year. Its four largest long positions are all semiconductor companies, which together make up nearly 20 percent of U.S. assets.

AI chip juggernaut Nvidia has been the largest U.S.-listed long all year, responsible for more than 5 percent of U.S. assets at the end of the second quarter. The others are Advanced Micro Devices, Astera Labs, and Intel.

In the second quarter, Maverick boosted its stake in AMD by 44 percent and its positions in Astera and Intel by smaller percentages. Astera is a fabless semiconductor company that designs products for cloud and AI data center infrastructure. 

Nvidia is also one of five Magnificent Seven stocks among Maverick’s 13-largest U.S. long positions. Google parent Alphabet became the sixth-biggest position in the second quarter after Maverick increased its stake by roughly two-thirds. (It had cut the position by nearly 25 percent in the first quarter.)

Also in the second quarter, Maverick initiated a new position in Facebook parent Meta Platforms, immediately making it the firm’s eighth-largest long. The two other Mag Seven stocks are Amazon and Microsoft. Both were top-seven positions in the first quarter.

In the second quarter, Maverick slashed its stakes in three stocks that had ranked among its six-largest longs at the end of the previous period. It sold more than 99 percent each of its positions in semiconductor equipment makers Applied Materials and ASML Holding, leaving the hedge fund firm with just a handful of shares of each company, and cut its stake in chip maker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing by more than 42 percent.