Artisan Value Fund Q2 2026 Portfolio Update

The Q2 pattern points to a market that is rewarding capital intensity and monetizable compute, not just “AI exposure” in the abstract. The clearest winners are the semiconductor ecosystem names tied to unit growth and equipment spend, while IT services and enterprise software look like the parts of the stack most vulnerable to internal AI substitution and delayed discretionary budgets. That creates a second-order dynamic where budget dollars move from consulting and SaaS seats toward hardware, tooling, and cloud infrastructure, compressing multiples for labor-arbitrage models before the revenue impact is fully visible.

The underperformers are a useful tell: defensives and rate/volatility-sensitive businesses are not being sold for fundamental deterioration so much as for opportunity-cost rotation. That matters because it is usually a late-cycle signal for breadth: if leadership stays this narrow, index returns become increasingly dependent on the same few AI-linked earnings beats, which raises fragility if any hyperscaler capex guide disappoints. In the next 1-3 months, the key catalyst is not macro GDP; it is whether management teams validate continued AI spend acceleration and whether margins hold as pricing improves.

Contrarian view: the market may be underestimating how quickly AI capex can become self-correcting. If returns on invested capital in software and consulting remain weak, enterprise CFOs will push harder on vendor consolidation, which could cap upside for CRM/ACN even if headline demand looks healthy. Conversely, if equipment lead times normalize faster than expected, the current premium on semicap names can unwind quickly because the trade is crowded and already tied to a favorable positioning backdrop.