Two of the most independent-minded money managers on Wall Street, Bill Ackman and David Tepper, arrived at the same conclusion in the first quarter of 2026: Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN | AMZN Price Prediction) belongs at the top of the portfolio. According to Q1 2026 13F filings dated March 31 and filed May 15, Ackman’s Pershing Square held Amazon at roughly 17.4% of its portfolio, while Tepper’s Appaloosa held it at roughly 15.2%, with Tepper nearly doubling his share count quarter-over-quarter.
Two managers, very different playbooks, one name over-weighted.
What They Bought and Why It Matters
Ackman runs a concentrated book of eight to 12 quality compounders. Tepper is a distressed-and-macro trader who rotates aggressively. When both allocate more than 15% of capital to the same mega-cap, the signal cuts through style bias. Notably, Berkshire Hathaway exited its Amazon stake last quarter, so the signal here comes from two operators independently sizing Amazon as their highest-conviction name at a moment when consensus is nervous about hyperscaler capital spending. Keep in mind, 13F data is point-in-time and does not necessarily reflect current positioning.
The Underlying Thesis
The numbers support the sizing. In Q1 FY2026, reported April 29, Amazon delivered EPS of $2.78 versus a $1.73 estimate, revenue of $181.52 billion, up 16.6% year-over-year, and operating income of $23.85 billion, up 29.6%. AWS grew 28%, its fastest pace in 15 quarters, at a 37.7% operating margin. The custom silicon business (Graviton, Trainium, Nitro) crossed a $20 billion annual run rate with triple-digit growth, and advertising reached over $70 billion trailing twelve-month revenue. Stores unit growth of 15% was the strongest since COVID-19.
The forward pull is Trainium. OpenAI has committed to roughly 2 GW of Trainium capacity starting in 2027, and Anthropic up to 5 GW. That is the crux of the bull case: if frontier models commoditize, the infrastructure layer wins. As one AI investing podcast framed it, “if everything becomes a commodity, that just makes AWS even more valuable.”
CEO Andy Jassy summed up the composite growth story: “AWS is growing 28% (our fastest growth in 15 quarters) on a very large base, our chips business topped a $20 billion revenue run rate (growing triple digits year-over-year), Advertising grew to over $70 billion in TTM revenue, and unit growth in our Stores reached 15%.”
What This Means for Retail Investors
The risks are real. CapEx hit $44.2 billion in Q1 alone, trailing free cash flow fell 95% to $1.2 billion, and long-term debt rose to $119.1 billion from $65.6 billion. The $16.8 billion pre-tax Anthropic gain that lifted net income is non-recurring. This is exactly the tension Reddit is chewing on, with bearish posts about hyperscaler overinvestment offsetting a bullish sentiment score of 78/100 as of July 7.
On July 28, shares traded around $231.13 against a P/E of 33, up nearly 11% since the March 31 filing date. The verdict: This is a follow-worthy signal for retirement-focused investors already comfortable with mega-cap tech, precisely because two managers with opposite temperaments underwrote the same margin and AI-infrastructure thesis. It is a reason to study Amazon at current levels, not a reason to chase.
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