We recently published a list of Mark Cuban Stock Portfolio: Top 10 Stock Picks. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) stands against other top stock picks from Mark Cuban’s portfolio.
Mark Cuban is a well-known entrepreneur and television personality, recognized for his diverse business ventures and outspoken presence in the sports and entertainment industries. He was the principal owner of an NBA franchise, the Dallas Mavericks, of which he now serves as a minority owner. Raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Cuban showed an entrepreneurial spirit from a young age. At age 12, he sold garbage bags to afford a pair of expensive sneakers after which, at 16, he capitalized on a newspaper strike by transporting newspapers. Later, he enrolled at the University of Pittsburgh before transferring to Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, where he earned a degree in management in 1981.
Cuban started his career at Mellon Bank, where he developed an interest in technology and networking. After being fired from his sales job in a software retailer, he founded MicroSolutions, a company specializing in system integration and software reselling. Under his leadership, the company flourished, generating over $30 million in revenue before Cuban sold it to CompuServe for $6 million in 1990, netting approximately $2 million after taxes. Cuban’s success continued with Audionet, a company he co-founded in 1995 alongside Todd Wagner. Audionet evolved into Broadcast.com, growing rapidly and generating millions in revenue. In 1999, at the height of the dot-com boom, Yahoo! acquired Broadcast.com for $5.7 billion in stock.
Over the years, Mark Cuban has invested in various industries, including social software, networking, entertainment, sports, and cryptocurrency. He was an early investor in IceRocket, a blog search engine, and backed companies like RedSwoosh, Weblogs, Inc., and Goowy Media. In 2005, he experimented with a new business model for online journalism through Sharesleuth.com and later launched Bailoutsleuth.com for government oversight. Cuban also ventured into film distribution with Magnolia Pictures and invested in Motionloft, a storefront analytics company. His Shark Tank investments since 2011 total nearly $20 million, with mixed success. In 2022, he launched Cost Plus Drugs to lower prescription prices and disrupt the U.S. healthcare industry. His sports ventures include owning the Dallas Mavericks from 2000 until selling a majority stake in 2023. Cuban has also been active in cryptocurrency, accepting Dogecoin for Mavericks merchandise and tickets.
Mark Cuban’s investment philosophy is centered on discipline, frugality, and informed decision-making. He emphasizes “living like a student” in the early years to build a financial cushion, saving at least six months’ income before investing in low-cost index funds. Cuban strongly discourages credit card debt due to high interest rates, advocating for cash or debit card use instead. He also promotes strategic spending by negotiating prices and buying essentials in bulk when discounted. For more experienced investors, Cuban suggests deep expertise in a particular domain and holding cash until a unique opportunity arises, rather than following conventional buy-and-hold strategies. Ultimately, his approach prioritizes financial discipline, smart spending, and long-term investing for steady wealth growth.
The outspoken tech mogul has a well-defined investment strategy focused on generating wealth through smart, long-term decisions. He favors dividend-paying stocks, referring to them as “real-world value generators,” emphasizing their ability to provide steady income rather than relying solely on price appreciation. In the rapidly evolving AI sector, Cuban sees massive potential, believing that AI will be essential for every company’s survival. Comparing AI investments to buying Apple stock in the 1980s, he considers them the future of passive wealth. As he puts it, “Non-dividend stocks are basically baseball cards. But AI? That’s a whole different game.”
Cuban also acknowledges the high-risk, high-reward nature of cryptocurrency investments but warns investors to be cautious. He advises only investing in what one can afford to lose and focusing on cryptocurrencies with real-world applications. His stance is clear: “If you’re not a true adventurer, stay away.” For those seeking a more stable approach, he recommends the broader market, which has historically delivered reliable returns of around 10% annually. Additionally, his involvement with private companies through “Shark Tank” highlights the potential of venture capital, though he recognizes that most investors may need to turn to crowdfunding or venture funds to access similar opportunities.
Our Methodology
The stocks listed below were picked from the public comments that Cuban has made on his investments. He has explicitly mentioned some of his private holdings during these public appearances while only alluding to others. However, based on a careful assessment of the comments, the stocks listed below largely align with his investment philosophy. The list is compiled in descending order of the number of hedge funds having stakes in each firm, which was derived using data from over 1,000 hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey in the fourth quarter of 2024.
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).
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Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders as of Q4: 339
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), a leader in e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence, has demonstrated extraordinary long-term growth, with its stock surging over 226,744% since its 1997 IPO. In Q4 2024, the company’s operating income rose to $21.2 billion from $13.2 billion the previous year, while net income doubled to $20 billion. AWS, its cloud computing division, reported a 19% increase in quarterly revenue to $28.8 billion. For the full year, net sales grew 11% to $638 billion, with operating income nearly doubling to $68.6 billion and net income reaching $59.2 billion. Despite a 44% stock surge in 2024, outpacing the market’s 23% gain, early 2025 has brought volatility due to conservative forward guidance. However, Amazon’s financial strength, market dominance, and AI-driven innovations suggest strong long-term growth potential.
On February 27, 2025, Amazon Web Services (AWS) introduced Ocelot, a groundbreaking quantum computing chip designed to lower the costs of quantum error correction by up to 90% compared to existing methods. Developed at the AWS Center for Quantum Computing at Caltech, Ocelot marks a major step toward fault-tolerant quantum computers capable of tackling complex commercial and scientific problems beyond the reach of conventional systems. The chip’s architecture integrates error correction from the outset, utilizing “cat qubits,” which inherently suppress certain types of errors, reducing the resources needed for error correction. For the first time, AWS researchers have successfully combined cat qubit technology with additional quantum error correction components on a scalable microchip, leveraging manufacturing techniques from the microelectronics industry.
Mark Cuban has found remarkable success investing in Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), revealing in 2019 that he owned nearly $1 billion worth of the company’s stock, purchased at a split-adjusted price between $25 and $35 per share. Insider Monkey’s database indicated that 339 hedge funds out of the 1,009 hedge funds held stakes in Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) at the end of Q4 2024, with a value of over $69 billion, as opposed to 286 funds in Q3.
Overall, AMZN ranks 1st on our list of top stock picks from Mark Cuban’s portfolio. 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. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than AMZN but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
