Baillie Gifford US Growth Trust (USA) invests in exceptional US businesses with the potential to grow substantially faster than the market and deliver above-market returns. The trust has over £865m in assets under management and is managed by Gary Robinson and Kirsty Gibson, of Baillie Gifford, an Edinburgh-based investment manager.
1. USA’s managers are seeking the mega caps of tomorrow.
The managers target companies with deep competitive advantages, appealing financial characteristics and unique corporate cultures, which they view as the best indicator of an enterprise’s long-term performance potential and capacity to seize market opportunities.
Specifically, they seek businesses with the potential to deliver a minimum 2.5x return over rolling five-year periods if they are publicly listed and a minimum 5x return if unlisted. Such businesses tend to operate at the cutting edge of technology-led change, giving USA’s investors exposure to areas like artificial intelligence (AI), space travel, entertainment and online retail and business services.
Baillie Gifford was an early investor in companies such as Amazon, Tesla and NVIDIA. It has also been an early backer of some of the world’s most valuable private companies. These include SpaceX, which is expanding internet accessibility, while collapsing the cost of cargo to orbit, and Stripe, which aims to ‘grow the GDP of the internet’ through frictionless e-commerce tools. USA’s top 10 holdings also include DoorDash, which specialises in local order delivery.
2. The trust has significant holdings in unlisted companies.
USA has scope to invest up to 50% of assets in private companies. Baillie Gifford’s reputation as a long-term, patient investor in the US, and in private companies, gives the managers the ability to access exciting unlisted opportunities. Arguably this gives them a significant competitive advantage. USA’s private company holdings comprised 36% of the portfolio at end May 2025.
3. New portfolio ‘enhancements and guide rails’ intended to limit exposure to volatility.
The trust’s recent returns have been strong, but its longer-term performance has been adversely affected by the volatility in growth stocks between 2020 and 2022. To protect the portfolio from any such future volatility, the managers have implemented several portfolio construction ‘enhancements and guide rails’. These include the automatic re-testing of all listed stocks once they cross the strategy’s two and a half times return threshold, regardless of timing. The managers are also keeping an even closer eye on the overall shape of the portfolio to ensure an appropriate balance of styles, maturities and growth drivers across listed holdings, along with greater diversity of revenue sources and sectoral exposure.
4. The trust’s managers are excited by AI-fuelled investment opportunities.
The managers believe the US is the ‘innovation capital of the world’. Having led the way in previous technological developments such as the internet and mobile, the country’s companies are doing so again. In the managers’ view, AI is driving some of the biggest technological developments of the century, and they expect this tech revolution to accelerate and spread across the economy, generating ‘huge structural opportunities’ for the innovative and adaptable businesses they target.
Published 22 January 2026
