After two sizzling years, big technology heavyweights have had a rough 2025, but investors may be overlooking their potential to provide havens in times of turmoil.

That's according to Raghavendran Sivaraman, the co-manager of the Morningstar five-star-rated Columbia Integrated Large Cap Growth Fund ILGGX, which holds the Magnificent Seven names in the top ten of its fund.

Companies like Nvidia $(NVDA)$, the fund's biggest holding, have "a decent amount of cash on their balance sheet, which allows them to be less susceptible to any sudden drops in demand," Sivaraman told MarketWatch in a recent interview.

While those companies have had a rough Wall Street ride this year, over the last several years they have been expanding growth, helping shares, he said. That may be partly due to the fact they were able to buy up companies earlier in their life cycle.

Even in a recessionary environment, given substantial capital positions, some of those big technology groups "might benefit from being able to snap up some of the smaller names with attractive new technologies in AI and other spaces," Sivaraman said. "From a historical growth and potential for future growth valuation, we see some of these names as relatively more attractive now than they were earlier this year."

Investor concern over how long customers will continue to ramp up budgets for AI hardware, has been hovering over companies like Nvidia. That's especially as AI hasn't delivered meaningful revenue lifts yet for software companies, while a potential economic slowdown is also a worry.

While Trump's new tariffs could mean delays for what investments companies can make, fundamentally, the manager believes return on investment potential on all these AI investments could be seen as early as later this year or in subsequent years. Lots of companies were talking about AI evolution in 2023, but capital expenditures only started to surface in 2024- more than $500 billion from the big players.

"I think that's enough for these companies to produce a lot more earnings and cash flows that can drive the prices higher," said Sivaraman.

Nvidia, he argues, is a better bet than many consumer discretionary stocks that are more directly exposed to tariffs, with a solid backlog of orders, and its leader position within chips for AI.

The top five stocks in the fund are Nvidia, Apple $(AAPL)$, Microsoft $(MSFT)$, Meta $(META)$ and Amazon.com $(AMZN)$, with Tesla $(TSLA)$ an underweight at number 10.

Sivaraman said Tesla is a risk management play - they need the exposure because it's a substantial part of their benchmark, the Russell 1000 Growth Index RLG. "Essentially when Tesla runs up a lot, you're not lagging the benchmark by a huge amount, and right now it's not."

"Potential for future growth we don't see compensating for the high valuation we pay there, but at the same time we're cognizant of the fact that the stock is extraordinarily volatile, and it has the potential to go up substantially or go down substantially, and we don't want that to affect the performance of the portfolio," he said of the EV maker.

Away from tech, Mastercard $(MA)$ is the fund's eighth-biggest holding. He likes its relatively stable credit-card networks and sees it as a better bet volatile markets, with recession protection, he said.

"Mastercard in particular has had very attractive growth over the last several years, and they have much more potential to grow that growth. Their profitability is also excellent," he said.

In the challenging consumer discretionary sector TJMaxx owner TJX Cos. $(TJX)$ is the fund's13th largest holding, where consumers may trade down to off-price goods.

"The other potential possibility is they have to source their inventory from other companies that manufacture these goods that they sell, and in an environment where there is a slowdown, they have potential opportunity to improve their inventory as well," he said.