Everyone wants a piece of the artificial intelligence (AI) market. Since ChatGPT's release, AI has grabbed countless headlines on Wall Street and helped many companies rise in prominence. There are many options for investors looking to cash in, and no doubt many already have.
But which AI stock is the best of the bunch? The answer will depend on each investor's preferences and risk tolerance. My pick is Amazon (AMZN +0.34%). Here's why.
A good way to hedge your bets
Many investors looking to profit from AI would gravitate toward Nvidia. That's not a bad choice, but Amazon, which offers a suite of AI-related services through its cloud segment, Amazon Web Services (AWS), has an advantage: diversification. Nvidia's incredible performance in the past two years has been due to AI. If the field stops growing as quickly or the chipmaker encounters some other AI-related issue, its shares will almost certainly fall off a cliff.
That's not the case, at least not nearly as much, for Amazon. The company's AI initiatives are contributing to its financial results, but AWS is far more than that. It's only gotten stronger thanks to AI. But let's look at the numbers.
According to management, AWS now boasts a $110 billion annual run rate.
NASDAQ: AMZN
Key Data Points
What percentage of that figure is from AI? The company didn't give specific numbers. It only said AI is a multibillion-dollar business growing at triple-digit percentages every quarter. Investors can, however, get a clue from one of Amazon's competitors: Microsoft, another leader in cloud computing and AI. Microsoft recently said its AI business will hit a $10 billion run rate next quarter.
Even assuming Amazon's AI unit is doing three times better, it would still be a relatively small part -- albeit a rapidly growing one -- of Amazon's cloud computing business. So the continued growth of AI is a tailwind for the tech giant, but if anything bad happens in this field, it won't be a catastrophe for the company. That's especially the case when looking beyond cloud computing. Amazon's e-commerce unit had a 37.6% share of the U.S. market as of 2023, much higher than any of its competitors.
That helps fuel its advertising business, since Amazon is one of the most visited websites in the world. The company is also a leader in video and music streaming. It has operations in healthcare and grocery shopping, too.
True, Amazon's top line isn't growing as fast as Nvidia's. In the third quarter, Amazon's revenue increased 11% year over year to $158.9 billion. The company's net income of $15.3 billion was up 54.5% from the year-ago period.
One of Amazon's strengths, then, is that it's exposed to the AI space and boasts deep footprints in multiple other markets that will be long-term growth drivers.
Culture matters
Some things are difficult to measure when considering a company as a potential investment opportunity. But some of those intangibles are just as important, if not more so, as any metric. Consider Amazon's culture of innovation. The company has made it a habit to pursue lucrative business opportunities and is a leader in almost every industry where it operates. That's what it did with cloud computing nearly 20 years ago. It's doing the same right now with AI. And it will almost certainly do it again as new opportunities come to light.
It helps that Amazon generates plenty of cash. As of the end of the third quarter, the company had generated $47.7 billion in free cash flow over the trailing-12-month period, more than double from the year-ago period. Amazon's culture makes it an attractive stock, since its prospects don't rely solely on the AI business or even cloud computing. Investors likely can safely add this company to their portfolio in 2025.
