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Harvard Management Company pulled back on many of its recent tech investments during the first quarter of 2025 while significantly increasing its stakes in Microsoft and Booking Holdings in a major shakeup of its directly held public equities portfolio.
The endowment exited positions in Apple, Amazon, and Tesla — each of which had been new additions the previous quarter. HMC also sold off its positions in microchip giants Advanced Micro Devices and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, and reduced its holdings in Meta, Nvidia, and Broadcom, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday.
The firm’s stake in Meta — HMC’s largest single public equity holding—fell by more than $475 million, a 62 percent decline.
HMC’s Microsoft stake increased from 53,300 shares to 420,000 shares over the quarter, raising its investment value from $22.5 million to $157.7 million. Booking Holdings saw its share count double, making it HMC’s second-most valuable directly held public equity investment, with a value of $173.2 million.
HMC first made a reinvestment of $150 million into Booking in the third quarter of 2024. It later cut back its position in the fourth quarter of 2024 by 46 percent.
Booking — the parent company of several travel-related businesses including Booking.com — has faced criticism from student activists for listing properties in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. HMC’s investment in the company has been the subject of repeated divestment demands on campus, including during recent protests on the University’s response to the war in Gaza.
HMC spokesperson Patrick S. McKiernan declined to comment.
Harvard also cut back on the number of shares it holds in the Invesco QQQ exchange-traded fund, which tracks the Nasdaq-100 index, as well as in the gambling services firm Light & Wonder.
The quarter also saw the addition of three new positions. HMC purchased 885,000 shares of Uber Technologies, valued at $64.5 million, and added smaller holdings in Rubrik Inc. and Maze Therapeutics, valued at $8.1 million and $7 million, respectively.
HMC only kept its directly held positions in two companies — PureCycle Technologies and 10x Genomics — steady.
As of March 31, HMC’s directly held public equities portfolio consisted of 14 companies — the lowest number of holdings since the third quarter of 2023 — valued at just under $1.13 billion.
That figure reflects only U.S.-listed equities held directly by HMC and does not include international securities or domestic positions held through external managers.
Harvard’s directly held public equities portfolio reached $1.69 billion at the end of 2024, down slightly from $1.73 billion in the previous quarter but still up 42 percent from $1.19 billion at the end of 2023. The first quarter’s $1.13 billion total marks the lowest since the third quarter of 2023, when the portfolio was valued at $885.8 million.
Public equities represented approximately 14 percent of Harvard’s $53.2 billion endowment as of fiscal year 2024, or about $7.5 billion in total. The majority of those assets are held in externally managed funds and are not included in public filings.
—Staff writer Saketh Sundar can be reached at saketh.sundar@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @saketh_sundar.
