Ron Baron

Baron grew up in Asbury Park, a beach town in New Jersey, and worked multiple part-time jobs to put himself through college, including as a cabana boy, lifeguard, water-ski instructor, and ice cream truck driver. He wanted to be a doctor, and his parents also hoped he would become one, but he did not get into medical school.⁠[1][2][2][1]

In 1965, Baron graduated from Bucknell University with a B.A. in chemistry, and then worked at Georgetown University as a teaching fellow in biochemistry.⁠[1]

From 1966 to 1969, Baron worked as a patent examiner at the U.S. Patent Office while attending George Washington University Law School.⁠[1]

In 1969, Baron moved to New York City to pursue his dream of becoming a Wall Street analyst and landed his first analyst job within four months. From 1970 to 1982 he worked for several brokerage firms as an institutional securities analyst, selling research to institutional clients with his business partner. He named his dog Big Mac after one of his first successful stock recommendations.⁠[1][1][2]

Many of the stocks he recommended doubled or tripled in the short term, but his commission-based compensation encouraged clients to sell before the companies’ full potential was realized. He later concluded that holding exceptional growth companies for the long term could have yielded even greater returns, a realization that became the cornerstone of Baron Capital’s investment philosophy of holding durable, competitively advantaged growth companies for the long term.⁠[1][1]

On March 16, 1982, Baron founded Baron Capital with an initial book value of $100,000 in a cramped office, and hired two more employees that same year, including Susan Robbins, who later became a senior research analyst. The firm focused on long-term investing in small-cap companies and quickly brought Baron into the spotlight in publications such as Barron’s and the Wall Street Journal.⁠[1][1][1]

In 1983, Linda Martinson joined as the third employee, serving as general counsel and later as chief operating officer and president; in January of that year, the Baron Small Cap Growth Strategy was launched.⁠[1]

On June 12, 1987, Baron launched Baron Asset Fund, the firm’s first mutual fund, and BAMCO, Inc. was established that same year. Since 1987 he has served as CEO, trustee, and portfolio manager of Baron Investment Funds Trust.⁠[1][1][3]

Baron Partners Fund was launched on January 31, 1992. That same year, Baron Capital’s assets under management reached $100 million.⁠[1][1]

In 1993, Baron Capital held its first Baron Investment Conference at the Harmonie Club in New York City, attended by about 30 of Ron Baron’s friends. The conference has since been held every year, and in 2005 it was held at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center for the first time.⁠[1][1][1]

Baron Growth Fund was launched on December 31, 1994, and Baron has been its portfolio manager since inception; from January 2017 to August 2018 he was lead portfolio manager, and since August 28, 2018 he has co-managed the fund with Neal Rosenberg. Since that same year he has also been portfolio manager of Baron USA Partners Fund Ltd.⁠[3][3][3][3]

During the bull market of the 1990s, Baron Capital’s client assets grew rapidly. In 1995, Baron Asset Fund received a five-star rating from Morningstar; the firm subsequently launched funds specializing in small- and mid-cap growth stocks, including Baron Focused Growth Fund (1996) and Baron Small Cap Fund (1997), moved in 1998 to the 49th floor of the GM Building overlooking Central Park, and launched Baron Opportunity Fund in 2000.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][1][1]

After the dot-com bubble burst, Baron Capital’s assets under management grew from $6.5 billion in 2002 to over $17 billion in 2006. From 2003 he also served as CEO, trustee, and portfolio manager of Baron Select Funds; that same year Andrew Peck began co-managing Baron Asset Fund with him, and Peck has managed it alone since January 23, 2008.⁠[1][3][3]

The 2008 global financial crisis posed significant challenges for the investment management industry. Rather than making layoffs like many other firms, Baron Capital continued hiring and training employees and launched new investment strategies, subsequently establishing funds in areas including international growth, real estate, and emerging markets. From 2006 to 2012, the firm’s staff grew from 57 to 114.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][1]

From 2014 to 2016, Baron Capital built a position in Tesla, first investing $380 million at an average cost of $43.07 per share. Baron recalled in 2021 that when he first met Elon Musk ten years earlier, he was very skeptical about whether Tesla would succeed, since more than 50 car companies he knew of had failed in his lifetime; his view changed after Tesla produced the Model S in 2012. He saw Tesla as sacrificing current profits, reinvesting them in factories and research to grow much larger.⁠[4][4][4][4][4]

In March 2014, Baron Capital held 9,581,636 shares of the Premier League club Manchester United, about a quarter of the shares the Glazer family listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2012, worth about $151 million; because the listed shares represented only about 10% of the club, the Glazer family still controlled about 90%. In the fall of that year, Baron Capital increased its stake to 15,026,190 shares, 37.8% of the publicly traded shares and 9.2% of the company overall.⁠[5][5][5][6]

In September 2017, Baron Capital first bought shares of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, when SpaceX was valued at about $20 billion, with a position of about 4% of Baron Partners Fund’s assets.⁠[4][7]

In October 2021, after Tesla’s market value passed $1 trillion, Baron Capital’s Tesla holdings had grown to more than $6.1 billion, and it also held about 1.3 million shares of SpaceX. Baron said at the time that the firm managed $58.9 billion in assets, held more than 400 investments, and had made its clients $54 billion in profits, $6.1 billion of it from Tesla; he called it a very long-term investment and said the firm would probably remain an investor in Tesla and SpaceX for about another 10 years.⁠[4][4][4][4][4][4]

Baron Partners Fund, managed by Baron, does not trim its winners to keep any single holding under a set weight. In 2022, Tesla rose to as much as 54% of the fund’s net assets; that same year, amid a bear market for growth stocks, the fund fell 43%, landing in the bottom decile of its peers, before recovering with gains of 43% and 33% in 2023 and 2024, respectively.⁠[7][7][7]

That same year, Baron Capital held its 29th annual investment conference at Lincoln Center, attended by more than 4,600 shareholders and clients, to mark the firm’s 40th anniversary; the 30th conference in 2023 drew more than 5,000.⁠[1][1]

On December 4, 2025, an updated SpaceX valuation roughly doubled Baron Partners Fund’s position of about 20% in SpaceX, and the fund returned 19% that day; by December 31, SpaceX made up 32% of the fund’s net assets. Baron Capital had previously treated SpaceX as an illiquid security subject to a 15% portfolio cap, but because of the security’s active secondary market and SpaceX’s consistent share repurchases, it reclassified it as a “less-liquid” security, freeing it from that cap; the firm said it had already run the plan by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Morningstar, which expected the fund to keep more than 60% of its net assets in just two companies for the foreseeable future, gave it a Negative rating.⁠[7][7][7][7][7][7][7]

On December 15, 2025, Baron Capital launched five actively managed ETFs, including Baron First Principles ETF (NYSE: RONB), managed by Ron Baron and his two sons, David Baron and Michael Baron, with an investment framework based on “First Principles” and “questioning everything.”⁠[8][8][8][3]

As of October 2026, Baron remained CEO and a portfolio manager of Baron Capital and, with his family, the principal owner of its holding company, Baron Capital Group; as of June 30, 2026, the firm had about $69.7 billion in assets under management. His sons David Baron and Michael Baron serve as the firm’s co-presidents.⁠[3][9][1][9]

Baron Capital advocates holding durable, competitively advantaged growth companies for the long term, investing exclusively in growth companies that benefit from long-term secular trends and have exceptional management teams, with “we invest in people” at the core of its mission statement. Baron himself is passionate about learning from the businesses Baron Capital invests in and mentoring younger analysts, and is deeply committed to supporting Jewish causes.⁠[1][8][6][9][9]

Baron Capital: Official website: https://www.baroncapitalgroup.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[9]