Whale Rock Talks AI, Waratah Sees Gold at Sohn Montreal

Article content

(Bloomberg) — Hedge fund managers and other investors are gathered at a conference in Montreal to pitch the next big thing, and everything from artificial intelligence, biotech and gold mining was on the table Thursday.

Article content

Whale Rock Capital Management LLC founder and chief executive officer Alex Sacerdote said he expects Anthropic PBC to be headed towards half a billion users.

Article content

Article content

“We are so so early. This is an L curve going straight up,” he said at the Sohn Montreal investment conference, without providing a time frame for the prediction. 

Article content

Article content

He added that Anthropic, which makes the Claude chatbot, has jumped from 2 million users to daily active users 14 million quickly. 

Article content

Article content

Whale Rock was a “significant investor” in Anthropic’s Series G round earlier this year, the Boston-based firm had earlier disclosed. 

Article content

“Enterprise is the real prize. It hasn’t really started,” he said, adding that the first three years of AI were like a search engine “on steroids.” 

Article content

The Sohn Montreal Investment Conference is the second annual gathering of well-known hedge funds and alternative asset managers such as KKR & Co., Blackstone Inc., Third Point Management and Bridgewater Associates, where they discuss trends and share investment ideas. High-level corporate executives and Canadian pensions funds were also present with all eyes on the jumbo initial public offerings coming out of the US.   

Article content

Also Thursday, StemPoint Capital LP pitched French biotech company Abivax SA in a “best idea” presentation on Thursday, pointing to it as a potential M&A target.

Article content

Chief Investment Officer and Managing Partner Michelle Ross said that Abivax’s drug obefazimod can be compared to Humira as a treatment that could be a “pipeline in a product for another company.”

Article content

Article content

Abivax shares plunged earlier this week after cancer cases in a crucial clinical trial for a bowel disease drug threw the French biotech’s future into question. The stock was up as much as 16% Thursday in Paris on analysts saying the concerns over the trial were overdone.

Article content

“It may be an understatement that biotech possesses one of the strongest M&A tailwinds that I believe we’re going to see over the next six to 12 to 18 months,” Ross said. “This is also a very high conviction M&A target.”

Article content

Gold Mining

Article content

Then Toronto-based hedge fund Waratah Capital pitched Artemis Gold Inc., the Canada-based gold miner that operates the Blackwater mine in British Columbia. The mining company is a bet on the idea that one of Canada’s newest gold mines is only beginning to show its earning power and the market has yet to fully value its future production profile, according to Brad Dunkley, chief investment officer and co-founder at Waratah. 

Article content

Dunkley noted that Artemis trades at a discount to comparable Canadian gold producers despite having a long runway of growth and insiders owning roughly 36% of the company. His analysis suggests that, at current gold prices, Blackwater could generate more than C$2 billion (US$1.4 billion) of annual free cash flow by 2029, while a re-rating toward peer valuation multiples could deliver upside of more than 50% from current levels.