22% of Warren Buffett's $285 Billion Portfolio Is Invested in These 2 “Magnificent Seven” Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks
Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett is one of history’s most successful investors, and his expertise when it comes to identifying fantastic long-term opportunities has delivered incredible returns for his company’s shareholders. Notably, Buffett has been famously averse to investing in the tech sector for most of his tenure as Berkshire’s leader — but that’s changed a lot in recent years.
While Buffett has been cautious when it comes to tech companies due to the inherent complexities involved with many of the underlying businesses, Berkshire’s approach to the sector has shifted significantly over the last decade. In fact, just two top companies in the artificial intelligence (AI) space account for roughly 22% of Berkshire’s $279 billion in public stock holdings as of this writing. Read on for a closer look at how Buffett and Berkshire are approaching tech-sector investing and AI trends right now.
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1. Apple stock: 21.2% of Berkshire’s portfolio
Keith Noonan (Apple): Warren Buffett has famously said that his favorite holding period for a stock is “forever,” but it’s still not unusual to see Berkshire Hathaway make some significant adjustments when it comes to exposure to individual companies in its portfolio. Even so, the investment conglomerate’s moves to lessen its position in Apple (AAPL 1.35%) have been eye-catching — particularly as massive selling moves have taken place as the AI revolution has been heating up.
At the peak, Berkshire held 915 million shares of Apple stock — and its investment in the tech giant sometimes accounted for more than half of its total public stock holdings. Berkshire still holds 300 million Apple shares, but it sold 605 million shares across last year’s trading and sold roughly 10 million shares in Q4 2023. Apple stands as Berkshire’s top stock holding and accounts for roughly 21.2% of its portfolio, but Berkshire’s moves to reduce its exposure still raise some questions.
Berkshire has also made some big selling moves with Bank of America, Chevron, and other stocks that have been mainstays in its stock portfolio. The moves appear to reflect valuation concerns about the broader market — and it’s possible that macroeconomic and geopolitical risk factors have influenced Berkshire’s strategy.
Even so, it’s also a realistic possibility that Berkshire’s analysts have seen some warning signs when it comes to Apple’s position in the AI race. While Nvidia has scored massive wins thanks to demand for its AI-focused graphics processing units and Microsoft has seen major demand tailwinds connected to the rise of artificial intelligence software, Apple’s victories in the category have been more muted.
The company’s iPhone hardware is still its biggest performance driver, but the rollout of the Apple Intelligence software platform has yet to move the needle in a big way. In fact, Apple Intelligence actually wound up indirectly hurting the sales of iPhone 16s in China because Apple had not secured a local partner to collaborate with on the software and fulfill Chinese regulatory requirements. As a result, the iPhone 16 lines launched without support for Apple Intelligence at a time when Chinese customers were seeking AI-enabled devices and already showing a preference for domestic brands. There’s still a good chance that Apple will be able to land big wins in the AI space, but the company has some proving to do.
2. Amazon stock: 0.7% of Berkshire’s portfolio
Jennifer Saibil (Amazon): Amazon (AMZN 0.61%) makes up a tiny percentage of the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio at just 0.7%, but it presents incredible opportunities.
Amazon is the largest cloud services company in the world, with 30% of the market according to Statista. It has a strong lead against the next-largest competitor, Microsoft Azure, which has 23% of the market.
To keep its lead and stay ahead in the game, Amazon is investing more than $100 billion in its AI platform in 2025 alone. It has already launched thousands of features and services to meet demand at every end of the scale, from large clients that are creating their own custom large-language models to small business clients that need easy, plug-in solutions. It partners with AI chip giant Nvidia, but it’s also releasing its own cheaper options for its budget-conscious clients.
It already has several premier tools for developers, such as Bedrock, in what it calls the middle layer between fully custom and plug-in. It gives developers many options to customize LLMs for their specific purposes, and SageMaker, which can create code from prompts, debug, and more.
CEO Andy Jassy has stressed several times that 85% of IT spend is still on premises, and that there’s going to be a shift to the cloud. That should create a windfall for Amazon, which is in the best position to benefit from that shift. “AI represents, for sure, the biggest opportunity since cloud and probably the biggest technology shift and opportunity in business since the internet,” he said. He envisions AI becoming a core component of every app being developed, like storage and databases. As more clients want to benefit from the generative AI revolution, Amazon is drawing more business to AWS for its regular cloud services, too.
Even though Amazon is already the second-largest U.S. company by sales and the fourth by market cap, it has tons of opportunity in AI, and it may only be a matter of time before it reaches the No. 1 spot in both.
John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Bank of America is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. Jennifer Saibil has positions in Apple. Keith Noonan has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon, Apple, Bank of America, Berkshire Hathaway, Chevron, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.