AQR Capital’s Q4 2025 Filing: 16,900+ Positions and the Momentum Machine in Full Swing

When AQR Capital Management filed its Q4 2025 13F on February 17, 2026, the numbers were staggering: $190.6 billion in reported assets spread across 16,934 line items and 3,544 unique securities. That makes AQR one of the broadest institutional books in the entire 13F universe—a quantitative juggernaut that treats the stock market less like a portfolio and more like a laboratory.

Under the leadership of founder Cliff Asness, AQR has built its reputation on factor-based investing: systematic strategies that harvest risk premia across value, momentum, quality, and carry. The Q4 filing offers a rare window into how those models are positioned heading into 2026, and the signals are unmistakable.

The Scale: $190.6B and Growing Fast

AQR’s reported 13F assets have nearly quadrupled since late 2022, rising from $41.0 billion in Q3 2022 to $190.6 billion in Q4 2025. That’s a 145% year-over-year jump from Q4 2024’s $77.6 billion—driven by both market appreciation and significant inflows into the firm’s strategies.

The growth in position count is equally telling. AQR held 2,477 positions in Q4 2022; by Q4 2025 that number had exploded to 16,934. This isn’t a fund buying more stocks—it’s a factor engine scaling its models across a broader universe as assets grow.

Top 10 Holdings: Mega-Cap Anchors

Despite the extreme breadth, AQR’s top 10 holdings read like a who’s who of mega-cap tech and defensive names:

1. NVIDIA (NVDA) — $4.89B (2.57% of portfolio)
2. Apple (AAPL) — $3.40B (1.78%)
3. Microsoft (MSFT) — $3.03B (1.59%)
4. Amazon (AMZN) — $2.06B (1.08%)
5. Broadcom (AVGO) — $1.55B (0.81%)
6. Alphabet GOOG/GOOGL — $2.84B combined (1.49%)
7. Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) — $1.39B (0.73%)
8. Meta Platforms (META) — $1.38B (0.72%)
9. Walmart (WMT) — $1.38B (0.72%)

No single position exceeds 2.6% of the portfolio. That level of diversification is deliberate—AQR’s models are designed to capture small edges across thousands of positions rather than making concentrated bets.

The Momentum Tilt: Massive Quarter-over-Quarter Adds

The most revealing data in any AQR filing is what changed quarter-over-quarter. In Q4 2025, the increases tell a clear story of momentum factor loading:

• ServiceNow (NOW) — +953% increase in shares
• Netflix (NFLX) — +691% increase
• Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG) — +342% increase
• Atlassian (TEAM) — +291% increase (now a $1.26B position)
• Keurig Dr Pepper (KDP) — +285% increase

Every one of these stocks exhibited strong price momentum heading into Q4 2025. ServiceNow and Netflix were both multi-quarter outperformers; Chipotle was riding post-split strength; Atlassian surged on AI-driven productivity narratives. This is textbook momentum factor deployment at scale.

The Exits and Trims: Where AQR Pulled the Plug

On the sell side, AQR showed equal conviction:

Notable decreases:

• Public Storage (PSA) — -61% reduction
• DoorDash (DASH) — -59% reduction
• Intuit (INTU) — -50% reduction
• Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH) — -49% reduction

Complete exits:

• Molina Healthcare (MOH) — exited a $562M position entirely
• Alexandria Real Estate (ARE) — exited $212M
• Zebra Technologies (ZBRA) — exited $169M
• Workday (WDAY) — exited $160M

The exits paint a picture of factor rotation: managed healthcare (MOH), REITs (PSA, ARE), and defense services (BAH) were trimmed as momentum signals faded. Meanwhile, the technology and consumer momentum names surged in share count.

69 New Positions, 69 Exits: The Balanced Churn

AQR added 69 entirely new positions in Q4 while exiting exactly 69 others—a symmetry that underscores the systematic nature of the rebalancing. For a fund running 16,900+ positions, this relatively low turnover at the tails (less than 1% of holdings) suggests the core portfolio remains stable, with factor signals driving changes at the margins.

What the Bristol-Myers Position Signals

One position worth highlighting: Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) at $1.39 billion is AQR’s eighth-largest holding. This is a classic value factor play—BMY trades at depressed earnings multiples relative to its pharmaceutical peers, and AQR’s models appear to be harvesting that discount. The presence of BMY in the top 10 alongside momentum names like NVDA and AAPL illustrates AQR’s multi-factor approach: value and momentum coexisting in the same book.

The Bigger Picture

AQR’s Q4 2025 filing reveals a firm in its strongest position in years. The nearly 4x growth in AUM since 2022 reflects renewed investor appetite for systematic strategies following the value factor’s comeback in 2022–2023. The momentum tilts visible in the Q4 data suggest AQR’s models are currently favoring growth-oriented names that have demonstrated strong recent performance.

For investors watching institutional flows, AQR’s filings are uniquely informative because of the scale: with 3,544 unique holdings, changes at the position level aggregate into a readable signal about which factors the models are favoring. Right now, that signal is clear—momentum is king, value remains a supporting pillar, and the factor machine keeps scaling.

Explore AQR Capital Management’s full Q4 2025 portfolio on 13F Insight to see every position, historical trends, and quarter-over-quarter changes.