24% of Warren Buffett's $300 Billion Portfolio Is Invested in 3 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks, Including This Recent Purchase

Warren Buffett said his longtime friend Bill Gates showed him ChatGPT soon after its release. After asking it to write a parody of My Way (presumably Frank Sinatra's, not Usher's) in Spanish, he was quite impressed. "I think it's an incredible technological advance in terms of showing what we can do," Buffett said in an interview.

Even so, Buffett hasn't made many direct moves to capitalize on the rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in recent years. He remains wary of the technology and how it could be used. Nonetheless, Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) (NYSE: BRK.B) finds about 24% of its $300 billion in marketable equities invested in three AI stocks, including one Berkshire Hathaway just added to the portfolio.

1. Apple (23.1%)

Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) once accounted for more than half of Berkshire Hathaway's portfolio. Even after selling nearly 70% of its stake since the end of 2023, the stock remains Buffett's largest marketable equity holding, valued at more than $69.4 billion.

Apple has had some trouble getting its artificial intelligence efforts off the ground. After the company announced generative AI-powered features for iOS in 2024, much of that functionality has failed to materialize. Apple has reportedly pivoted to building a chatbot interface, including a web search tool like Perplexity and a fully redesigned Siri. The project will likely combine Apple's own foundation models with other large language models from a third party.

Apple also made its foundation models free to use for developers, enabling them to build AI apps that keep data on the users' devices instead of pinging a third-party data center. The effort is to support an ecosystem of apps using secure AI features.

Buffett hasn't been selling Apple stock due to its lagging AI efforts, though. The biggest driving force behind the sales appears to be its valuation. The stock currently trades for 31 times forward earnings estimates. For a company growing relatively slowly, that's an expensive price to pay. With the huge gains Berkshire held (and still holds) in its Apple investment, it seems like an appropriate time to take some off the table.

2. Amazon (0.7%)

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) is the biggest cloud computing provider in the world. While it was caught flat-footed as generative AI took off, it's caught up with its offerings for Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers.

Amazon separates its "AI stack" into three layers, giving AWS customers optionality and functionality. At the bottom is its custom silicon for training and inference, which offers developers better price performance than general-purpose GPUs. At the middle is its platform called Bedrock, which is a managed service for building new AI applications. Amazon also offers its own foundation model, Nova. The top layer includes AI-powered tools for developers like Amazon Q, which provides assistance for coding projects.

Management says AI services on AWS is a multibillion-dollar business growing at a triple-digit rate. Furthermore, it has more demand than supply, which should support continued growth as it spends heavily to build out new data centers. To that end, Amazon's spending over $100 billion this year on capital expenditures.

Some of those expenses include Amazon's growing logistics footprint, which it overhauled a couple of years ago to improve efficiency. AI models help predict where to store items, ensuring faster shipping for more items. At the same time, the new model has reduced overall shipping costs, which has shown up in Amazon's improving operating margin for its retail business.

Amazon is a relatively small position in Berkshire's portfolio, but it could deserve a much larger portion of your own.

3. Nucor (0.3%)

Nucor (NYSE: NUE) pioneered the process of using electric arc furnaces, or mini-mills, to turn low-cost scrap metal into steel. Since it operates in America, it benefited from President Donald Trump's tariff policies, which placed a 50% tax on steel imports. Berkshire Hathaway picked up 6.6 million shares of Nucor stock in the second quarter.

Data center infrastructure has been a huge driving force for Nucor. Management said steel shipments for data centers doubled through the first half of 2025. It cited third-party data showing spending on new data center construction will accelerate in 2026 from 18% this year to 26%. That should support continued growth in Nucor's top line as big tech builds more and more data centers to house billions worth of silicon.

But since Nucor uses electricity in its mini-mills, it's seen costs climb quickly as the growing number of data centers strain the supply of electricity and have sent prices higher. Management forecasts margin compression for the third quarter, weighing on its earnings per share. Last month, management provided guidance of $2.05 to $2.15 in earnings per share for the third quarter, well below the $2.60 it reported for the second quarter.

But analysts expect it's just a temporary setback, as the massive demand for data centers should propel earnings per share higher in 2026 and 2027. With the stock trading for just 12 times analysts' 2026 earnings expectations as of this writing, Nucor is a value stock with great exposure to the artificial intelligence trend.

Adam Levy has positions in Amazon and Apple. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon, Apple, and Berkshire Hathaway. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.