Billionaire investor Bill Ackman is standing firm on his Big Tech holdings even as Wall Street grows increasingly skeptical about the industry’s massive artificial intelligence spending commitments.
During a Forbes Iconoclast interview, Ackman discussed his portfolio strategy, his IPO plans, and his continued conviction in three of the market’s most debated technology giants.
Ackman’s firm, Pershing Square, had long admired Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL), Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), and Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META), but he acknowledged they were “never cheap enough” to act on until recently.
The sharp increase in AI-related capital expenditure across Big Tech triggered a selloff that, in Ackman’s view, created exactly the kind of valuation dislocation his firm looks for.
Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta collectively committed between $505 billion and $535 billion in 2026 capital expenditure, with the bulk of that tied directly to AI infrastructure development.
Wall Street has entered what many describe as a “show-me” phase, demanding that companies demonstrate returns from data center builds, chip procurement, and AI platform investments before rewarding valuations further.
According to filings tracked by 13Finfo, Pershing Square’s Q1 2026 13F showed Amazon at roughly 17% of its $13.7 billion portfolio, Meta at 11.1%, and a combined Alphabet Class A and C position at just 0.8%, with Reuters later reporting the Alphabet stake was fully exited by Q2.
With a new Microsoft position factored in, Big Tech now accounts for somewhere between 40% and 45% of Pershing Square’s disclosed U.S.-listed equity holdings, underscoring just how central the theme has become to the firm’s strategy.
Ackman’s core argument rests on the cloud infrastructure advantage held by Amazon and Alphabet, stating plainly that “one thing’s clear: all of these companies require massive amounts of compute.”
He described the cloud as the “most scalable, safest place to get access to that kind of compute,” positioning AWS and Google Cloud as direct beneficiaries of the broader AI buildout rather than just its funders.
On valuation, Alphabet trades at nearly 25 times forward non-GAAP earnings, Amazon at roughly 28 times on near-term earnings, and Meta at approximately 18 times, making Meta the cheapest of the three on that measure despite persistent investor doubt over its AI return trajectory.
Meta’s lower multiple reflects genuine market uncertainty about whether its AI capital spending will generate returns as clearly defined as those from cloud-based businesses like AWS or Google Cloud.
Adding a new dimension to the Meta story, Bloomberg reported the company is building a business to sell excess AI computing capacity, a development that, if it materializes, would support Ackman’s argument that investors are underpricing Big Tech’s long-term earnings potential.
Ackman summarized his broader investment philosophy simply: “The core strategy of Pershing Square has always been buying minority stakes in pretty big companies and helping make them more successful.”
For investors watching the AI spending debate play out across earnings seasons, Ackman’s position is a deliberate bet that the market is mispricing dominant platforms by focusing on near-term costs rather than long-term platform earnings power.
