Why this ‘Mag 7’ stock is still a buy even though it’s behind on AI

Amazon may be lagging behind its peers on the artificial intelligence front, but the name is still investor Ray Wang’s favorite among the ” Magnificent Seven ” cohort of mega-cap tech titans. As a catalyst, the principal analyst and founder of Constellation Research pointed to Amazon’s advertising revenue, which he said is still growing at a 20% annual rate. This growth is quickly allowing the company to catch up to Google’s ad revenue numbers, Wang said Monday morning on CNBC’s ” Money Movers .” What’s more, the enormous Amazon Web Services cloud services business effectively allows Amazon the leeway to figure out the best path forward in terms of applying AI to the rest of its businesses. At the same time, Amazon’s Prime Video platform presents a formidable opponent against Netflix . Wang also said Amazon’s Prime membership rolls could benefit from the upcoming holiday shopping season. Despite these tailwinds, Wang acknowledged a big obstacle for Amazon: it’s currently lagging behind its peers’ artificial intelligence capabilities. But Wang believes that Amazon’s late-mover position won’t ultimately harm its potential too much. “The bright side is they’re done with their big CapEx investments into their data centers, whereas Microsoft has a lot of CapEx investment to do and Google has to play a lot of catch up. So Amazon has a little bit of time to get their AI story right,” he said. Wang added that investors can expect more insight into Amazon’s investments during its December re:Invent conference.