Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN): Among Billionaire Cliff Asness' Stock Picks with Huge Upside Potential

We recently published a list of Billionaire Cliff Asness’ 10 Stock Picks with Huge Upside Potential. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) stands against other billionaire Cliff Asness’ stock picks with huge upside potential.

Cliff Asness, the founder, managing principal, and chief investment officer of AQR Capital Management, is a well-known figure in the world of finance. Starting with a $10 million commitment from a small group of investors in 1995, Asness was able to boost the Goldman Sachs Global Alpha Fund’s assets to more than $100 million in just a handful of months. Cliff Asness’ investment strategies, which focus on value and momentum, have delivered exceptional returns for AQR, setting him apart from his fellow hedge fund managers. As a testament, the fund has produced positive returns over the last three years, with its greatest year in 2022, when it returned 43.5%.

The first quarter of 2025 continued that momentum. As Wall Street grappled with increased volatility resulting from President Donald Trump’s unpredictable tariff policy, AQR Capital Management outperformed the market by 9%. The firm’s Apex strategy, a $3 billion multi-strategy fund that includes equities, macro, and arbitrage trades, rose 3.4% in March, adding to its strong quarterly performance. Meanwhile, AQR’s Delphi Long-Short Equity Strategy returned 9.7%, while its trend-following Helix strategy gained 3% during the same period.

Cliff Asness has repeatedly stated that he is not an admirer of Bitcoin. In a recent CNBC interview, the hedge fund manager voiced pessimism about Bitcoin, claiming that it had no realistic use case, although he did not rule out the possibility that the leading cryptocurrency has formed a bubble. Back in February, the billionaire stated that Bitcoin and the S&P 500, were basically “the same thing” with varying amounts of volatility. Asness has also questioned the notion that Bitcoin must be seen as a store of value simply because it has a limited supply.

The billionaire seemed even more critical of the idea of a cryptocurrency reserve, a stance that sharply contrasts with President Donald Trump’s. In a piece written for The Free Press, the money manager stated his thoughts about the President’s executive order:

“I’ve been managing money for 33 years now with some modest success. While there are some worthy competitors, it’s hard for me to remember a much worse idea than the U.S. launching a “strategic cryptocurrency reserve.” Nevertheless, on Thursday, President Donald Trump issued an executive order calling for just such a fund. David Sacks—Trump’s crypto czar—tweeted that the reserve would be “like a digital Fort Knox,” perhaps forgetting that the U.S. has been off the gold standard since 1933. In any case, his words do not diminish my scorn for this dangerous boondoggle, as I will explain below.

A sovereign wealth fund for the U.S., which President Trump has also begun planning, is inappropriate, unneeded, likely harmful, and potentially quite corrupt. But a strategic cryptocurrency reserve looks at a “normal” sovereign wealth fund and says, “Hold my beer,” as we are going to plaid.”

Our Methodology

For this article, we examined AQR Capital Management’s Q4 2024 13F filings to list down billionaire Cliff Asness’ stock picks with the highest upside potential. We ranked the companies in ascending order of their upside potential. These equities are also popular among elite hedge funds.

Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)

AQR Capital Management’s Q4 Stake: $1.18 billion

Upside Potential as of April 26: 30.94%

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 286

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is a major technology company that runs the world’s largest e-commerce and cloud computing businesses. The company also offers digital streaming and AI technology. Amazon.com, Inc.’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) e-commerce position offers it a significant competitive advantage over competitors since it accounts for around 38% of total e-commerce sales in the United States.

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) announced solid financial performance in 2024, with revenue climbing 10% year-over-year and operating income of $21.2 billion, a 61% increase year-over-year . The North America segment rose 10%, while the International segment grew 9%. In addition, AWS maintained its strong performance, growing by 19% year-over-year to an annualized revenue run rate of $115 billion.

On April 24, Citizen JMP analysts maintained their Market Outperform rating and $240 price target for Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN). According to analyst Nicholas Jones, Amazon has invested around $2 billion per year in satellite launches since 2022, influencing the company’s operating income margin. According to Jones, these expenditures impacted Amazon’s consolidated operating income margin by 27 basis points in 2024.

Harding Loevner Global Developed Markets Equity Strategy stated the following regarding Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:

“During the quarter, we benefited from strong stocks within the Communication Services and Consumer Discretionary sectors. In Consumer Discretionary, Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) reported strong third-quarter results. Revenue increased by double digits, led by growth in advertising and Al products, while the company’s operating margins also hit an all-time high of 11%. The key reasons for the higher margins were that its international e-commerce operations turned profitable, and there was faster growth in its high-margin cloud-computing business.”

Overall, AMZN ranks 4th on our list of billionaire Cliff Asness’ stock picks with huge upside potential. While we acknowledge the potential for AMZN as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%.  If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than AMZN but trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.

READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires.

Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.