Warren Buffett, Bill Ackman, and Cathie Wood aren't exactly the three musketeers. They've all achieved tremendous success through the years. However, they've taken significantly different paths.

There's very little overlap between the three famous investors' portfolios. But that doesn't mean there isn't any common denominator. Here's the one stock that Buffett, Ackman, and Wood all own -- and why you should consider owning it too.

Three for three (with an asterisk)

Ackman's Pershing Square Capital Management portfolio only included eight stocks as of the end of the second quarter of 2023. Two of them were different classes of shares for Google parent Alphabet (GOOG 9.96%) (GOOGL 10.22%).

Wood's various Ark Invest exchange-traded funds (ETFs) own more than 120 stocks. Alphabet ranks as the 12th-largest holding for her Ark Autonomous Technology & Robotics ETF and the 17th-largest holding for the Ark Space Exploration & Innovation ETF. 

You won't find Alphabet in Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway portfolio, even though the legendary investor has expressed regret for not buying the stock in the past. However, Buffett nonetheless owns a stake in Alphabet.

Way back in 1998, Berkshire acquired General Re. Three years earlier, General Re acquired New England Asset Management. As of the end of Q2, New England Asset Management owned 30,400 shares of Alphabet. Any stock in NEAM's portfolio is by default a Buffett stock, albeit indirectly. 

I should note that there is one small asterisk here. While Ackman owns both Alphabet class A and class C shares, Buffett only owns the class A shares and Wood only owns the class C shares. Technically, all three investors don't own the same stock ticker -- but they do own shares of the same company.

Why Buffett, Ackman, and Wood are Googling it

So why do Buffett, Ackman, and Wood like Alphabet? Ackman's reasoning is the easiest to determine because he explained exactly why he invested in the company at the CNBC Delivering Alpha conference in September 2023.

The hedge fund manager told CNBC's Scott Wapner that he initially bought Alphabet stock earlier this year because it "was cheap." Ackman was also confident about the company's long-term prospects in the artificial intelligence (AI) space. He stated that Google will "be a dominant player in AI for the very, very long term." 

Interestingly, Wood isn't as big of a fan of Alphabet as you might think. She told an audience at Fortune's Most Powerful Next Gen conference in May 2023, "I've never liked Google Search." Wood added that she thinks that OpenAI's ChatGPT "is going to cause a lot of problems for Google." 

However, it's not too hard to figure out why two of Wood's ETFs own significant stakes in Alphabet. Wood is really bullish about self-driving cars and space innovation. Alphabet's Waymo unit is one of a handful of leaders in autonomous vehicle technology. Google Ventures has invested in several space-related businesses through the years, including SpinLaunch, which is developing kinetic space launch systems.  

As far as I know, NEAM's management hasn't publicly disclosed exactly why they invested in Alphabet. But Buffett acknowledged in the past that he thought the company had a great advertising business.

Why you should consider owning Alphabet stock too

I think that you should consider owning Alphabet stock too because of the same reasons Buffett, Ackman, and Wood own it. It's cheap. The company will continue to be a leader in AI. Alphabet is investing in multiple game-changing technologies. And it's a giant in the advertising market.

Sure, skeptics will raise questions about the company. They'll argue that Google Cloud's growth rate is slowing. They'll suggest that OpenAI and Microsoft are beating Google in AI. Some will even claim that AI presents an existential threat to Google Search.

My view is that those objections will fall by the wayside one by one over time. I expect that Google Cloud's growth will reaccelerate when Google's new Gemini generative AI models are launched in 2024. Gemini is reportedly already five times more powerful than GPT-4. Google Search is much more likely to be enhanced rather than jeopardized by AI. 

When three of the world's most well-known investors only agree on one stock, chances are that it's a good one.