Sands Capital, an investment management company, released its "Sands Capital Technology Innovators Fund" Q2 2026 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. In the quarter, global equities rebounded sharply, with the MSCI ACWI posting its strongest quarterly gain since 2020, supported by broad market strength, easing geopolitical tensions, and continued enthusiasm for AI infrastructure. Information technology led the advance, with semiconductor and hardware companies accounting for most of the index's rise. The fund returned 26.9% (net) in the second quarter of 2026. The portfolio benefited from strong gains across memory, software infrastructure, cybersecurity, and other AI-related holdings, although its concentrated exposure to mega-cap chip designers and manufacturers weighed on relative performance as leadership broadened into CPUs, networking, and memory. Vertical software, internet, and financial holdings were modest detractors amid macro concerns and uncertainty over AI disruption. The fund remains focused on critical AI bottlenecks, including compute, memory, manufacturing, networking, and power, while retaining selected businesses that may use AI to strengthen their competitive positions. You can check the fund's top five holdings to learn more about its leading investment ideas for the year.
In its second-quarter 2026 investor letter, Sands Capital Technology Innovators Fund highlighted Nu Holdings Ltd. (NYSE:NU). Nu Holdings Ltd. (NYSE:NU) is a leading digital banking platform, which detracted from the fund's performance this quarter. On August 7, 2026, Nu Holdings Ltd. (NYSE:NU) closed at $13.84 per share, reflecting a market capitalization of $66.85 billion. Nu Holdings Ltd. (NYSE:NU) posted a one-month return of 1.24%, while its shares gained 16.11% over the past 52 weeks.
Sands Capital Technology Innovators Fund stated the following regarding Nu Holdings Ltd. (NYSE:NU) in its Q2 2026 investor letter:
"Nu Holdings Ltd. (NYSE:NU) operates Nubank, a digital financial services platform serving more than 100 million customers in Latin America. First-quarter 2026 revenue growth was in line with expectations, but higher-than-expected provisions weighed on gross profit and raised investor concerns about household debt and credit quality. We are less concerned, as Brazil's low unemployment and real wage growth are more relevant, in our view, to future credit losses than household debt service ratios. We also believe Brazilian Central Bank data may overstate loan delinquencies because of an accounting change that affects how long banks can keep nonperforming loans on their books before recognizing a write-off. Importantly, after a detailed inspection of the bank's balance sheet and interaction with the management, we feel comfortable about Nu's prospects of generating healthy risk-adjusted net interest income in the coming quarters. ****** et quality concerns may take time to resolve, but Nu continues to execute against