By Suzanne McGee

PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island, May 15 (Reuters) - Institutional investors were eager buyers of stocks in companies whose fate hinges on the rollout and adoption of artificial intelligence during the first quarter of 2026, according to a Reuters overview of filings by nearly 6,000 hedge funds, pension funds, college endowments and other asset managers with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

These quarterly 13-F filings, which provide insight into how some major investors reacted to emerging opportunities and new sources of risk or anxiety during the three-month period, show that more than 4,000 of them added to their existing holdings or initiated new positions in a group of nine companies that are big players in the AI infrastructure arena, including Oracle ORCL.N, Arista Networks ANET.N and Vertiv VRT.N. Only 146 of those entities sold holdings in the space, or only 2.5% of the investors that have reported their positions to date.

Major institutional investors must report any changes made to their portfolio and its composition to the SEC within 45 days of the end of each calendar quarter. The data obtained by Reuters from the SEC's database reflect those firms that had submitted their filings as of mid-morning on Friday. The data does not capture changes to their portfolios they may have made since April 1.

These institutional investors also were eager buyers of data center companies, a category that includes firms like Digital Realty DLR.N, and utilities. So far, 13-F filings reveal there were no sellers of utilities stocks during the first quarter, while nearly 3,500 filers reported net buying.

The data appear to show that institutional investors are being more selective when it comes to the "Magnificent Seven" AI giants -- a cohort that also includes Meta META.O and Microsoft MSFT.O, amid ongoing uncertainty during the first quarter about whether they could sustain the pace of spending on AI and their growth. Sellers outnumbered buyers by a narrow margin during the period, according to the 13-F data.

Among the 143 investors who initiated a position in Palantir PLTR.O, another high-profile technology player, was Mubadala Capital, the sovereign wealth fund of the UAE. It acquired a small position valued at $9.9 million during the first quarter, according to its filing.

Mubadala also initiated a position in Shopify SHOP.TO, one of the software-as-a-service stocks slammed during the first quarter by fears that AI will disrupt their business models and derail their profitability. But for a group of 20 U.S.-listed stocks in that category, Reuters found that overall, institutions were more prone to sell than to buy amidst the carnage, with 397 liquidating one or more positions.

Market segments where buying outstripped selling included the semiconductor space, with more than 4,100 investors adding to or initiating positions in the segment during the quarter, even as share prices began to rally sharply.