Warren Buffett is one of the world’s most successful investors. He is the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A 0.96%) (BRK.B 0.98%), where he oversees more than 70 wholly owned subsidiaries and a $291 billion portfolio of dozens of publicly traded stocks and securities. This holding company is also sitting on a record $347 billion in cash, which Buffett and his team can deploy when they find new investment opportunities.
Had you invested $1,000 in Berkshire stock when Buffett took the helm in 1965, you’d have been sitting on a staggering $44.7 million at the end of 2024. The same investment in the benchmark S&P 500 index would have grown to just $342,906 over the same period.
Buffett will step down as CEO of Berkshire at the end of 2025, but he will continue in his role as chairman, so his brand of long-term value investing is likely to endure. Throughout his career, he has targeted companies with steady growth, reliable earnings, strong management teams, and shareholder-friendly initiatives like dividend schemes and stock buyback programs.
One thing Buffett never does is chase the latest stock market trends, not even a trend as strong as artificial intelligence (AI). However, at least four of Berkshire’s existing holdings, which make up 32.4% of its $291 billion portfolio, are deploying AI to elevate their legacy businesses.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
1. Domino’s Pizza: 0.4% of Berkshire Hathaway’s Portfolio
Domino’s Pizza (DPZ -0.39%) is the world’s largest pizza chain, serving more than 1 million customers every day from its 21,300 stores in 90 countries. It’s a relatively new holding for Berkshire — Buffett and his team bought it in the third quarter of 2024, but they also added to it in the fourth quarter, and then again in the first quarter of 2025.
Domino’s invests heavily in technology to deliver a silky smooth customer experience and to improve efficiency, and AI is a big part of its strategy. The company built an algorithm that identifies patterns in customer behavior through its digital sales channels, so it knows when to start making pizzas even before an order is officially completed. This translates to rapid delivery for customers.
Domino’s is also using AI to monitor customer feedback on platforms like Reddit, so it can improve its services faster than ever. According to CEO Russell Weiner, the company’s AI strategy will eventually extend beyond the customer experience to handle everything from rostering employees to managing inventory.
2. Amazon: 0.8% of Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio
Amazon (AMZN 1.62%) is the world’s largest player in the e-commerce and cloud computing industries, and it’s using AI to solidify its dominance in both. The company developed an AI shopping assistant called Rufus, which helps customers compare products on amazon.com to make more informed decisions. It also uses AI in its fulfillment centers to weed out defective products before they are shipped, which reduces the frequency of returns.
Amazon’s cloud platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), wants to lead all three core layers of AI:
- Hardware: AWS designed its own data center chips, which are up to 40% more cost-efficient when training AI models compared to competing chips.
- Large language models (LLMs): AWS created a family of AI models called Nova, which developers can use to accelerate their AI software projects.
- Software: AWS launched its own AI assistant called Q, which can write computer code to help developers build software, and it can also help businesses analyze their internal data to identify opportunities.
Berkshire bought Amazon stock in 2019, but Buffett has expressed regret in the past for failing to identify the opportunity much sooner. Berkshire’s holding is currently worth just $2.2 billion, so it only represents 0.8% of its total portfolio, but the conglomerate can still do well over the long run if AI drives a new phase of growth for Amazon’s various businesses.
3. Coca-Cola: 9.9% of Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio
Coca-Cola (KO 0.55%) wouldn’t be the world’s largest beverage company without using technology to enhance the customer experience and drive efficiency across its manufacturing processes and logistics networks. Therefore, it’s no surprise the soda giant is eagerly diving into the AI space.
Coca-Cola appointed Pratik Thakar as its “head of generative AI” in 2023 to oversee its strategy. Since then, the company has used the technology in its marketing campaigns, and even to craft a promotional beverage called Coca-Cola Y3000, which used troves of customer data to predict what its flagship soda might taste like in the next millennium.
Thakar believes everything will be powered by AI eventually, so Coca-Cola plans to spend $1.1 billion with Microsoft Azure by 2029 to integrate this technology more deeply into its marketing, production, and distribution processes.
Coca-Cola is a long-term holding for Berkshire. Buffett spent $1.3 billion to acquire 400 million shares between 1988 and 1994, and he hasn’t sold a single one. The position is now worth $28.8 billion, and will pay Berkshire $816 million in dividends during 2025 alone.
4. Apple: 21.3% of Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio
Apple (AAPL 0.53%) has received criticism over the last couple of years for taking more of a wait-and-see approach to the AI revolution compared to many of its peers in the tech industry, which have been spending tens of billions of dollars to develop the technology. Rather than creating a chatbot like every other company, Apple is subtly weaving AI into the background of its operating systems to transform the user experience for iPhone, iPad, and Mac users.
To achieve this, Apple partnered with ChatGPT creator OpenAI to develop Apple Intelligence. This software introduced new writing tools that can summarize and generate text content in emails and text messages. It also features an image generator, and it injected more knowledge into the Siri voice assistant to make it more capable than ever. Plus, since Apple designs its own chips, its computers and devices are now fitted with hardware specifically built for Apple Intelligence workloads.
There are more than 2.35 billion active Apple devices worldwide, so Apple is probably right to take a steady approach to AI. It isn’t easy to make drastic changes to the user experience when one misstep could drive millions of customers into the arms of the competition. As an iPhone user myself, I think Apple should take its time and learn from the success and mistakes of other AI companies to build the best solution for the long term.
Berkshire held around $170 billion worth of Apple stock at the start of 2024, which accounted for 50% of the value of its entire portfolio at the time. Buffett and his team sold more than half of the position throughout last year to cash in some gains and to manage risk, but it’s still Berkshire’s largest holding with a value of $62.3 billion, and a portfolio weighting of 21.3%.
John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Anthony Di Pizio has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon, Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, Domino’s Pizza, and Microsoft. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
