Alger基金经理谈超大规模计算与AI投资

This week on the podcast, another extra special guest, Doctor Ankur Crawford. Crawford is co-head of portfolio manager of Large Cap strategies at Alger. She's got a fascinating background. She was an engineer at Intel, won a number of patents and was the awardee of the Intel PhD fellowship. She's been recognized as one of the top women in asset management. If you're interested into the details of how artificial intelligence, semiconductors and software works as I am, you're going to find this to be a fascinating conversation.

With no further ado, my conversation with Alger's Ankur Crawford. Ankur Crawford. Welcome to Bloomberg. Thank you for having me, Barry. So let's start with your background, which is really kind of fascinating. Bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and material science and engineering. That's a double B.S. from UC Berkeley. And then a master's and a PhD in materials science and engineering at Stanford. What was the original career plan?

I didn't have one, to be honest. I think when I made the decision to become a mechanical engineer, I was kind of following my brother's footsteps. Who was a mechanical engineer and became an orthopedic surgeon. And I realized if I didn't know what I wanted to do, I wanted to keep my options open. So he becomes a, an orthopedic surgeon with a mechanical engineering degree. Is he designing replacement joints and things like he does?

He does actually bring that aspect of his engineering background into device, different device configurations. And he works a lot with the device companies as well. But there's also, you know, as a kid, I loved, you know, figuring how figuring out how things work, whether it was like a car or a calculator. And I would always be kind of fidgeting, to understand how things work. I loved building. So, mechanical engineering kind of felt like, you know, I'm just curious person.

So I like to, to satiate that need to know how things work. And I read somewhere that you originally wanted to be an astronaut. Is this correct? Did so. I grew up, till I was five. We lived in Florida, close to Cape Canaveral, and we would go watch the space shuttle take off. And I was so fascinated by space because it was almost, ethereal. You know, this thing goes up into the sky. And, for me, the astronauts were celebrities.

So, you know, for a long time, I did want to be an astronaut. So I have Florida somewhere in between. You're born in Kansas. Is this correct? Yes, yes. Canvas. But you end up in the Middle East? Yes. And then you're sent to a convent boarding school in the Himalayas. Is this possibly right? That has to be in the nation, right? No, that is all correct. And then you end up in Buffalo, New York. You got it. All right. So.

So that's real human research. Not not chat. I'm curious. That is a broad global life experience. How does that shape your views on, either international investing or just the concept of risk and reward? Yeah. I think it more so shapes the way I think about, you know, the cultural differences. When I look at companies, when I look at management teams, I understand very well that there are certain cultural differences that are simply endemic, to businesses and to management teams.

And, you know, just because a, a management team isn't necessarily always bullish or they're always telling you that the negative aspect of their, of their company doesn't necessarily mean that there's something wrong. And, so, you know, I think that that has been like, like an example of this is a company called Nadia's, where the CEO is a Russian CEO who is incredibly humble, and he will never tell you what's right.

He will always point out to you all the things that are wrong. And a lot of investors are like, you know, I don't that doesn't sound good. And I'm kind of looking at the opportunity because that's just his culture, right? It's his culture not to be boastful. So just living in all these different countries and having exposure as a, as a kid to many different religions, it just gives a really unique perspective on, on any problem that you look at because, it helps take kind of the blinders off it.

It's fascinating. I never really thought about how it was, a societal, cultural set of norms make its way to management. You think about the Japanese culture is the sort of, bravado and very aggressive, forecasts we tend to see in the United States. You would never see anything like that in Japan. How do you calibrate what is, cultural diffidence and what is just hey, there's a problem here, and they're telling us this is an issue.

Yeah. You know, I think you have to know the business, right? That the first thing is, is no, know the business, and then you can calibrate the tone of the management. And, you know, an example is Taiwan Semiconductor. I remember speaking to them over there over many of these years that we've owned the stock. And I would always say, you guys are going to become the single supplier of leading edge. Why is it that you can't take up pricing?

And they would always talk me down and say like, oh no, you know, we are here to serve our customer. We are here to. And I was like, there's there's absolutely no reason for you not to be raising pricing. And they would just push back and, and not really. Because that wasn't part of their philosophy and it wasn't part of their philosophy that Morris said Morris Chang had kind of put into place in the early years. However, that is what they ended up doing.

And so I had to take that with a grain of salt. Understanding that's their philosophy was a little frustrating at the time. But, you know, a business is a business. And at at some point, the realization of how good that business was came into the numbers. So you mentioned the advantage of really understanding the business. You own an Intel doctorate fellow. You worked as an engineer at Intel. You hold multiple patents.

How much of an advantage is that when you're looking at semiconductors or AI or any of the hyperscalers? What what advantage is that give you? Look, I think understanding the technology is, is kind of crucial right now because in this world of AI, I think there's a lot of people who don't really understand what is happening under the covers. And that's dangerous. And that's why you also see the volatility that you see today, because, you know, they're kind of loose holders and not truly understanding the different dynamics of the technology.

And it's just a hard it's a hard way to invest when you can get shaken out because you don't have conviction in the technologies. So it's I feel like it's always helped and in part because, you know, chips. I was a semiconductor analyst when I first started at Alger, and I kind of immediately understood, well, I understand what a deposition tool is. You know, I used one I understand what etching is. I used this tool.

I understand what the issues are, in fabricating a chip. And you know how hard it is to, to fabricate a chip. So, you know, it just gives you a little bit of a edge on the conceptual understanding and where the industry is going. So, you know, early I remember in 2011, 12 or 13, one of those years, I put together a presentation about how we're at the end of Moore's Law and what will happen if we're at the end of Moore's Law.

And I sent the presentation out to all of the companies that I covered, and I said, I would like your feedback and tell me why I'm wrong, but that was thinking kind of 8 or 9 years ahead because it had implications for the entire sector. And so those kinds of insights, I think are easier. Not that any everyone can have them, they just come probably a little easier because I understand the technology. So so I see the advantage of having the technical background as an analyst.

I'm curious what made you leave the technical field of being an engineer and working with SMEs to becoming an analyst in the space and working on the financing of Sonys? Yeah. You know, I,