Jay Kahn’s Flight Deck Capital had its first breakout year since its 2021 founding. Last year, the Tiger Grandcub and onetime Institutional Investor Hedge Fund Rising Star saw a 51.6 percent jump in the liquid portfolio of his long-short TMT hedge fund. This followed a midteens gain in 2024 and a 20 percent return in 2023.
Last year, the long book kicked in 69 percentage points to gross gains and shorts detracted by just 12.5 percent. Flight Deck now manages close to $300 million, one-third of which is in nine private investments, according to an investor.
Kahn was previously a partner at Light Street Capital Management, founded by Tiger Cub Glen Kacher. While earning an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, Kahn also interned for Tiger Cub Philippe Laffont of Coatue Management.
Kahn began to hone his specialty in technology and media companies in his first job at L.E.K. Consulting, a Bain & Co. spinout, advising Fortune 500 media companies transitioning to digital. He then moved on to Elevation Partners, headed by Roger McNamee, where he analyzed late-stage growth and buyout investments in tech and media.
Kahn founded Flight Deck during the Covid pandemic. Although he was unable to go on the road to raise money, he managed to launch with $225 million. However, he was quickly humbled when he lost 42 percent in 2022.
The Tiger Grandcub, who has been riding around in a self-driving car for two years, focuses on disruptive technology often found in artificial intelligence, telling clients that most everything in the world is affected by AI. But rather than investing in high-profile companies like Nvidia, Kahn prefers what he likes to refer to as the AI enablers, the makers of the picks and shovels.
And he finds them throughout the world. In fact, more than half his long portfolio and virtually his entire net long exposure at year-end was connected to Asia, including Japan and Latin America, according to the firm’s December exposure report, obtained by II. In fact, Flight Deck had a 135 percent gross exposure to North America, but the net exposure amounted to about 3 percent. Altogether, the hedge fund’s net exposure at year-end was a little more than 68 percent.
By far the largest allocation was to hardware companies, with internet companies a distant second. Four of the five largest longs at year-end were companies based outside the U.S. The biggest is Bloom Energy, whose stock nearly quadrupled last year. The company makes solid oxide fuel cells that produce electricity onsite for power generation in data centers and elsewhere. The second-largest long is Japan-based Samsung Electronics.
Samsung is followed by Chinese tech giant Baidu, with the stock rising more than 50 percent last year. Kahn highlighted Baidu in his presentation at the Sohn Hong Kong Investment Leaders Conference last spring, asserting that its cloud business was worth more than the stock's market cap at the time. The founder also talked up the potential of Apollo Go, Baidu’s autonomous robotaxi service.
Flight Deck’s next-largest long positions are Japanese computer memory manufacturer Kioxia and Chinese data center giant GDS Holdings.
In private markets, Flight Deck participated in a second fundraising last year for Clutch, a Canadian online vehicle marketplace.
