Although Warren Buffett’s pursuit of the latest stock market trends is not evident, it can be seen from Berkshire Hathaway’s investment portfolio that many of the stocks held by the company benefit from artificial intelligence.
Warren Buffett has been leading Berkshire Hathaway Holding Company since 1965. He likes to invest in companies with stable growth, reliable profitability, and strong management teams. He also implements shareholder-friendly measures such as dividend payments and stock buybacks.
This strategy is indeed working. From 1965 to 2023, Berkshire’s return rate reached an astonishing 4,384,748%. This is equivalent to a compound annual return rate of 19.8%, almost twice the annual return rate of the S&P 500 index during the same period, which was 10.2%.
In US dollars, a $1,000 investment in Berkshire Hathaway stock in 1965 would have grown to over $43 million, while the same investment in the S&P 500 index, with dividend reinvestment, would only be worth $312,333.
Warren Buffett is not an investor who chases the latest trends in the stock market, so you won’t see him heavily invested in popular artificial intelligence stocks.
However, three stocks currently held by Berkshire are benefiting greatly from artificial intelligence and account for over 45% of Berkshire’s publicly traded securities portfolio, with a total value of $398.7 billion.
In the first quarter of the 2025 fiscal year, ending April 30th, Snowflake’s product revenue reached $789.6 million, a 34% year-on-year growth. At first glance, this is a strong growth rate, but it has slowed down compared to previous quarters.
Although Snowflake continues to invest heavily in growth initiatives such as marketing and research and development, the pace of acquiring new customers has slowed down, and existing customers are expanding their consumption at a slower rate.
Berkshire Hathaway bought shares of Snowflake when the data cloud specialist company went public in 2020, so the per-share price may be around $120.
In 2021, the company’s stock price soared to a high of $392, but has since dropped 63% from that level and is currently at $142. Unfortunately, due to the company’s growth slowdown, the stock price still seems quite expensive, so investors may want to avoid Berkshire’s selection in this regard.
02.
Amazon: accounts for 0.5% of Berkshire Hathaway’s investment portfolio
Berkshire bought shares of Amazon (AMZN 1.22%) in 2019, and Buffett has expressed regret for not discovering this opportunity earlier. Amazon was initially an e-commerce company and later expanded into cloud computing, streaming media, digital advertising, and now into artificial intelligence.
Its Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing division has designed its own data center chips, which can reduce the cost for AI developers using these chips by up to 50% compared to infrastructure using Nvidia chips.
In addition, Amazon’s Bedrock platform provides developers with a ready-made library of LLMs, which come from some leading start-ups in the industry. Amazon has also independently developed its own LLM series called Titan.
Essentially, AWS aims to be the preferred destination for developers who plan to create their own AI applications. Various predictions on Wall Street suggest that AI could add $7 trillion to $20 trillion in revenue to the global economy in the next decade, which could be Amazon’s biggest opportunity ever.
Berkshire Hathaway holds $2 billion worth of Amazon shares, accounting for only 0.5% of the conglomerate’s stock portfolio.
In the long run, AI could drive significant growth for Amazon. Therefore, if Buffett previously wished for a larger position, he may blame himself for not increasing it earlier in the new chapter of AI.
03.
Apple: accounts for 44.5% of Berkshire Hathaway’s investment portfolio
Apple (AAPL 2.16%) is the largest holding of Berkshire Hathaway to date. The conglomerate has accumulated stocks worth about $38 billion since 2016, and the current value of the holdings is $177.6 billion.
Apple is committed to producing the world’s most popular electronic devices, including iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods, and Mac computers.
The company is entering the field of artificial intelligence through its new Apple Intelligence software, which will be released in September with the iOS 18 operating system.
The software, developed in collaboration with OpenAI, will change the user experience of Apple devices. Siri voice assistant will leverage the capabilities of ChatGPT, and similarly, its writing tools like Notes, Mail, and iMessage will also utilize the capabilities of ChatGPT to assist users in content creation.
There are over 2.2 billion active Apple devices worldwide, which means Apple could soon become the largest company distributing AI technology to consumers.
The upcoming iPhone 16 is expected to be equipped with powerful new chips capable of handling AI workloads on the device, which could trigger a significant upgrade cycle.
Apple meets all of Buffett’s stock selection criteria. Since Berkshire’s initial investment in 2016, the company has been steadily growing, consistently profitable, has CEO Tim Cook as a strong leader, and has returned a substantial amount of money to shareholders through dividends and stock buybacks.
In fact, Apple has just announced a $110 billion buyback plan, the largest in US corporate history.