Key Points
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Bill Ackman’s fund, Pershing Square Capital Management, typically holds 10 to 12 stocks at any given time.
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Lately, Ackman and his team have had an appetite for stocks in the artificial intelligence space.
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They look for companies trading below what they believe to be their intrinsic value over time.
Retail investors pay close attention to billionaire investor Bill Ackman and his fund, Pershing Square Capital Management (PSCM), the investment manager for Pershing Square Holdings. PSCM typically owns only about 10-12 stocks at any one time, allowing the team to conduct extremely thorough due diligence and really get to know every aspect of every business they invest in.
Naturally, like many of the market’s biggest winners, Ackman and PSCM have more recently begun to acquire large stakes in artificial intelligence stocks, especially as extreme volatility earlier this year allowed some of them to go on sale. In fact, close to 48% of PSCM’s capital is invested in these three AI stocks.
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1. Uber — 20%
Ackman and his team initiated their position in Uber (NYSE: UBER) earlier this year, with Ackman applauding Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi’s efforts in transforming Uber from a high-growth company that was losing money into a free-cash-flow machine that now generates billions in profits each year.
UBER Net Income (Annual) data by YCharts
Khosrowshahi has implemented several significant actions during his tenure to make Uber profitable, including cutting costs and focusing on ridership in more profitable areas, rather than everywhere. Uber’s delivery business, Uber Eats, has also been highly successful, and although Uber is now profitable, it continues to experience strong growth. In the third quarter of 2025, gross bookings surged 21% year over year.
In a recent presentation to investors, PSCM stated that it expects Uber to continue growing its free cash flow and reduce its share count through repurchases, and generate 30% annual earnings-per-share growth over the medium term. Furthermore, the company has an AI component, as it partners with autonomous driving companies such as Waymo, WeRide, and AVRide. These companies can leverage Uber’s massive network and the company’s operational expertise to begin getting their vehicles on the road.
Uber fits the mold of a company with a strong core business, but also with exposure to the AI trade, which is why it’s a good stock to own long-term.
2. Alphabet — 19%
PSCM first purchased shares in Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG)(NASDAQ: GOOGL) in 2023, buying both Class A and Class C shares. The position now collectively makes up 19% of PSCM’s portfolio. Many investors and Wall Street analysts have previously said that Alphabet, on a sum-of-the-parts basis, would have a much higher valuation than its current $3.6 trillion market cap.
Now, that’s normally the case when using sum-of-the-parts valuations, and the key is finding ways to unlock value from the conglomerate as a whole, but Alphabet owns several businesses that are not only leaders in their respective markets but also have significant growth runways. There’s YouTube, which is a leader in the content space, Google Cloud, and Waymo, just to name a few. D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria, who has previously argued for a Google break-up, also noted that the company has started selling chips to other cloud players.
While there have been concerns over how Google will maintain its search dominance with the emergence of AI chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, PSCM noted in a letter to shareholders in August that it is impressed with Google’s new AI capabilities, like Gemini’s AI overviews, which have been rolled out to 2 billion people in over 200 countries, and experienced strong user engagement. Alphabet is another stock you can buy for the core business, and also enjoy AI upside without being overly risky.
3. Amazon — 8.7%
Ackman and Pershing took advantage of the tariff-induced sell-off in April to snap up shares of Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN). The company’s global e-commerce business is heavily exposed to President Donald Trump’s tariffs due to its extensive global supply chain network and all of the site’s third-party sellers that are based outside of the U.S.
Still, the e-commerce business is the best in the world, and one would think that with its moat and strong logistics capabilities, Amazon will be able to weather the storm. Another factor to consider is Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company’s cloud business, which accounts for the majority of its revenue.
PSCM pointed out that AWS is a leader in the massive global cloud market. Even without factoring in the potential of AI, PSCM also noted that only about 20% of information technology workloads are hosted on the cloud. As this trend increases over time, Amazon will be a big winner. Additionally, AI will benefit all cloud players that can help businesses run their large language models, which power AI applications. These cloud players can also provide AI tools to help businesses become more efficient, so there’s a huge runway for Amazon with and without AI, which is why it’s also a good long-term buy.
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Bram Berkowitz has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, and Uber Technologies. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.