Bill Ackman Says These Stocks Were “Never Cheap Enough” Until Now

Key Takeaways:

• Bill Ackman told Forbes that Pershing Square now owns Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta after years of calling them too expensive to buy.
• AI spending fears have compressed valuations across all three stocks, even as cloud growth and earnings have continued to climb.
• Ackman says the real opportunity is not picking the winning AI model, but owning the cloud businesses that power all of them.

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Pershing Square Capital Management founder Bill Ackman built his reputation on concentrated bets, usually eight to 12 stocks held for years at a time. Big Tech names rarely made the cut.

Ackman has long argued that Alphabet (GOOGL), Amazon (AMZN) and Meta Platforms (META) were simply too expensive for what he was willing to pay, no matter how good the businesses were.

That changed. In a recent interview with Forbes for its Iconoclast series, Ackman confirmed Pershing Square now owns stakes in all three companies.

His reasoning was blunt. The stocks, he said, were “never cheap enough” until this year.

Wall Street has spent months worrying about how much Alphabet, Amazon and Meta are spending on AI infrastructure, and that worry has weighed on their valuations even as earnings kept growing. Ackman is essentially betting that the fear itself created the opening he had been waiting for.

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Why the AI Spending Scare Made These Stocks Cheaper

The numbers behind that spending are enormous.

• Meta told investors on its first quarter call that it now expects 2026 capital spending of $125 billion to $145 billion, up from its earlier range, largely because chip and memory costs have jumped.
• Amazon posted $43.2 billion in cash capex in a single quarter, most of it tied to AWS and generative AI.
• Alphabet has been fielding similar questions about how much AI search tools like Gemini will cost to run at scale.

None of that spending is optional. Every hyperscaler is racing to build enough compute capacity to meet AI demand, and investors have punished the stocks of those spending the most without showing an immediate payoff.

That is exactly the dynamic Ackman appears to be leaning into.

Meta’s forward earnings multiple has fallen well below the level it traded at for much of 2025.

Alphabet’s multiple dipped sharply last year on fears that AI chatbots would eat into search, though it has since recovered.

Amazon’s multiple has stayed compressed for years as investors focus on AWS margins rather than its cloud growth.

Ackman’s investing style has never been about buying the cheapest stock on paper. It is about buying dominant businesses when the market is temporarily spooked by something management can eventually work through.

As he put it to Forbes, “the core strategy of Pershing Square has always been buying minority stakes in pretty big companies and helping make them more successful.”

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Ackman says the real prize is the cloud, not the chatbot

What stood out most in the interview was how little Ackman cared about picking the AI winner. He told Forbes that it is still unclear which company will end up with the best model, or whether there will be a single winner at all.

OpenAI led early, then Google caught up, and now Anthropic looks like the frontrunner, in his view. But he did not stop there.

His actual argument was simpler. Every company chasing AI needs enormous amounts of computing power, and that need is not going away regardless of which model wins.

“One thing’s clear: all of these companies require massive amounts of compute,” Ackman said, calling the cloud “the most scalable, safest place to get access to that kind of compute.”

That framing puts Amazon and Alphabet in a different light.

Amazon’s cloud business posted 28% growth in the first quarter, its fastest pace in 15 quarters, and CEO Andy Jassy told investors AWS now carries a $364 billion backlog, not counting a new Anthropic deal worth more than $100 billion.

Alphabet’s cloud arm has seen similar demand tailwinds tied to AI workloads.

Meta fits the thesis a bit differently. It does not run a public cloud business the way Amazon and Alphabet do. But Bloomberg reported in July that Meta is building a unit to sell its excess AI computing capacity to other companies, a move that would push it closer to the same compute story Ackman is describing.

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What it means for investors weighing these stocks now

For anyone tracking these names, Ackman’s comments are not a single trade thesis. Each stock carries its own valuation and its own risk.

Alphabet trades near 25 times forward earnings, a premium that reflects confidence in its search business and cloud growth.

Amazon trades slightly higher, near 28 times forward earnings, with investors watching AWS margins and capex closely.

Meta is the cheapest of the three at roughly 18 times forward earnings, which helps explain why it still fits a value-oriented portfolio despite criticism of its AI spending.

That gap between Meta and its peers also reflects lingering doubt. Investors have rewarded Amazon and Alphabet for cloud businesses that directly monetize AI demand.

Meta still has to prove its AI investments will pay off in a similarly visible way. Whether Ackman’s bet plays out may come down to which of the three proves that point first.

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Disclaimer:

Please note that the articles on TIKR are not intended to serve as investment or financial advice from TIKR or our content team, nor are they recommendations to buy or sell any stocks. We create our content based on TIKR Terminal’s investment data and analysts’ estimates. Our analysis might not include recent company news or important updates. TIKR has no position in any stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading, and happy investing!