Malaysia’s stronger Q2 GDP and widening current account surplus highlight how some economies still benefit from resilient demand and solid trade flows. In that kind of backdrop, founders with real skin in the game can be well placed to steer through shifting costs, pricing power and growth opportunities. This article breaks down three founder led stocks from our screener that show how committed leadership can matter for long term investors.

The stocks covered below are just a sample, and the full founder led screen surfaced 1,449 more companies with equally compelling stories that are not unpacked in this article. If you want to identify which founders align most closely with your own investing playbook, head straight to the Founder-Led Companies screener to filter and analyze the highest conviction opportunities.

On Holding (ONON)

On Holding is a Zurich based sportswear company best known for its cushioned running shoes and growing performance apparel line. It sells these products through its own e commerce platform, owned stores and wholesale partners across running, outdoor, tennis and everyday use. The business is heavily skewed to athletic footwear, which generated about CHF 3.2b in revenue and shows how central its core shoe franchise is to the story. With a market value of roughly US$10.6b, On Holding sits in the large cap bracket. This puts more attention on how its founder led team balances premium positioning, rapid international expansion and brand risk after the sharp share price reaction to its Q2 2026 update.

On Holding’s premium running story is pulling in serious attention, yet many investors still have not joined the dots between brand, growth ambitions and balance sheet strength. Get the full picture in the On Holding financial health report

Build your own founder led shortlist

On Holding and the two other founder led stocks in this article all came out of a single Simply Wall St screen, but the real edge is in shaping your own filters. Use our flexible Screener to blend metrics like growth, valuation, balance sheet strength and risks, or start with any of our curated Investing Ideas.

Sea (SE)

Sea is a Singapore headquartered technology group that runs three major platforms for consumers and small businesses. Garena focuses on online gaming and e-sports, Shopee is a mobile first e commerce marketplace with integrated payments and logistics, and Monee provides digital financial services such as credit, e wallets, payments, banking and insurance. Sea has a market value of about US$75.5b, which puts it firmly in large cap territory.

Sea catches investor attention because it combines scaled e commerce, fintech and gaming under one founder led umbrella, with Shopee and Monee recently driving 48% year on year revenue growth in Q2 2026 and supporting improving EBITDA trends. The flip side is meaningful execution risk, from heavy competition in Brazil and Southeast Asia to reliance on Free Fire in Garena and exposure to credit cycles in the Monee loan book. As a result, the current premium P/E and slightly softer net margins deserve close scrutiny. For investors who want a founder still closely involved, a long serving board and a business model that leans hard into AI, logistics and payments, Sea offers a complex story that goes well beyond headline growth rates.

Sea’s accelerating mix of e commerce, fintech and gaming often distracts from the real question: Does the growth profile still justify today’s premium P/E? Get the full context in the analyst forecasts for Sea

Cerebras Systems (CBRS)

Cerebras Systems is an AI infrastructure company that designs and sells wafer scale chips and rack based systems built for high speed inference and Generative AI workloads. The business currently reports all of its roughly US$680.7 million in revenue from semiconductors, reflecting a pure play focus on AI compute hardware, and it has a market value of about US$54.9b.

Investors looking at founder led AI stocks cannot ignore Cerebras Systems. The company sits at the heart of the shift to fast inference, with its wafer scale engine, long term OpenAI and AWS partnerships, and a multi year revenue backlog that underpins its growth story. At the same time, the stock carries real tension points, including heavy cash burn, a funding structure built on external borrowing, and sharp share price swings around earnings such as the Q2 2026 sell off. For investors who can handle volatility and want exposure to AI infrastructure rather than just software, the full Cerebras story is far more complex and potentially more appealing than the headlines suggest.

Cerebras Systems sits where fast AI demand meets serious cash burn, and many investors stop there. The real story sits inside the 3 key rewards and 2 important warning signs (1 is major!) that could reshape how you frame the next move.

Seeking Fresh Alternatives Before They Fly

Fresh stock ideas rarely stay under the radar for long. By the time momentum is obvious, ideal entry points can be gone. Scan these focused lists now and consider them early.

• Spot cash generators with room to run by scanning a curated 50 high quality undervalued stocks while the market focus is still elsewhere and pricing inefficiencies may matter most.
• Track where real earnings momentum meets AI demand by reviewing the hand picked 76 profitable AI stocks that aren't just burning cash before the crowd treats them like the next big story.
• Explore income ideas that aim to keep paying even when sentiment is dropping by checking the tightly filtered 10 dividend fortresses while yields still look compelling.

This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.