At the age of 94 and currently in his last year as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, it would be easy to view Warren Buffett as an old-fashioned investor. But you don't become the best investor of all time by staying in the past.
While Buffett always abides by a core set of investing principles that have served him well, he's never been afraid to invest in new sectors if he sees a wonderful business trading at a fair price. When you look across Berkshire's massive $291 billion equities portfolio, most sectors are represented -- even the high-flying artificial intelligence (AI) sector. In fact, 39.1% of Berkshire's portfolio is invested in just three AI stocks.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
1. Apple: 21.9% of portfolio
Buffett and Berkshire first acquired shares in the iconic consumer tech company Apple (AAPL 0.46%) in 2016, and at one point, Apple consumed over 40% of Berkshire's portfolio. Since then, Berkshire has decreased its position in the company, although it was still the largest position in the portfolio at the end of the first quarter of the year.
As a "Magnificent Seven" stock and one of the largest publicly traded companies, Apple has always led the way on technological innovation with products such as the original MacIntosh computer, the MacBook, the iPad, AirPods, and of course, the iPhone. So naturally, it's not surprising to see the company become a leading innovator in the AI space by incorporating the tech into its product set.
Not long ago, Apple released Apple Intelligence, its broad suite of AI tools. These tools include more efficient ways to write on Apple products, new ways to create images and other visual content, and ways to leverage AI and machine learning into Apple's conversational chatbot Siri, which also integrates ChatGPT. Apple essentially put a supercomputer in everyone's pocket with the iPhone, so it's perfectly logical to assume that the iPhone will integrate more AI tools over time. Apple also uses AI for many other tasks within the iPhone, including battery management, voice recognition, fraud prevention in Apple Pay, and Face ID.
The stock has struggled this year and is down about 13.5% in 2025 (as of July 15). All of the chaos caused by tariffs has hurt Apple because so much of its supply chain is based in China and Vietnam. Trading above 29 times forward earnings, slightly above its five-year average, I still have near-term concerns about the stock. The tariff saga is certainly not over and I think investors probably want to see Apple do more with AI. However, given the brand Apple has built and its market share, I strongly suspect Apple will be able to weather the storm, so long-term investors should be fine.
2. American Express: 16.4% of portfolio
The credit card and payments company American Express (AXP -2.17%) will likely never be viewed as a traditional AI stock. That's because American Express, at its core, is a bank, and banks must hold regulatory capital. The banking sector has also woefully underperformed the broader market since the Great Recession, and banks also face cyclical headwinds because they make loans, which can go bad during economic downturns.
However, American Express is certainly not your traditional bank and also operates a closed-loop payments system. Buffett has owned the stock for decades, and there's no doubt that the company is tapping into AI and machine learning for automation and to more efficiently run complex parts of its banking and payments businesses as well.
American Express has a 17-person Frontier Research Team that specifically focuses on how it can use AI/ML across its operations. This team looks for areas where AI can be used to help market to and approve new customers for products. They also want to use AI to help customers better manage their accounts virtually, and for customer service and payments.
One use case of the Frontier team was looking at how AI/ML could be used to improve credit decisions and fraud prevention. They leaned on data pre-processing, which involves taking raw data and using AI/ML to organize it into formats that are easier to analyze, which not only saves time for more important tasks, but helped the company better train and improve its credit models.
American Express has been an excellent stock to own for decades, so it's no surprise to see the company at the forefront of innovation. American Express has a highly coveted revenue stream driven by interest income from credit card loans made to higher-income borrowers, as well as a large payments system that brings in fee income, and that won't be easy to replicate.
3. Amazon: 0.8% of portfolio
The large e-commerce and tech conglomerate Amazon (AMZN 0.97%) is a much smaller position for Buffett than the two stocks mentioned above, but it might be Berkshire's most traditional AI play.
Not only can Amazon integrate AI capabilities into its massive online e-commerce business to improve logistics and better market its products, but the company said earlier this year that it will likely spend $100 billion on AI-related capital expenditures. AI is an ideal fit for Amazon Web Services, which helps companies run their business in the cloud without having to own and operate the physical infrastructure. Amazon can now tack on AI services that companies can use without having to build AI-related infrastructure.
According to CNBC, Amazon has been building and investing in data centers and other hardware needed to power AI since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2022. The company has also unveiled many AI tools and products, including a chatbot for shopping called Rufus, a bundle of large language models for building AI applications, and even its own semiconductor chip called Trainium.
Amazon has had its own struggles with tariffs, primarily because so many sellers and products the company sells are not located in or made in the U.S. But considering how much opportunity there is to bring businesses onto the cloud, let alone the potential for widespread commercial AI use, it's hard to see how Amazon won't be a long-term beneficiary of the AI movement.
