Not all “Magnificent Seven” stocks are being treated equally in the great AI boom.
The only two Magnificent Seven stocks that have outperformed the S&P 500 (^GSPC) since the start of 2025 are Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) and Nvidia (NVDA), with respective gains of 88% and 49%. The S&P 500 is up 27% during that period.
Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT), Tesla (TSLA), and Meta (META) have all lagged the S&P 500 over this stretch. Meta has been the worst performer with only a 3% increase.
The analysis: Nvidia’s and Alphabet’s relative outperformance isn’t too difficult to understand.
Nvidia continues to act as the ultimate kingmaker of the artificial intelligence boom. It’s riding the insatiable global demand for its AI chips and server hardware, which has translated directly into impressive earnings and outlooks.
More recently, the company revealed a new $80 billion stock buyback plan and a higher dividend.
Meanwhile, Alphabet has completely silenced the bears that it was being left behind in the AI wars. Its Gemini model is seen as a leader in the industry, and Google Cloud is on fire.
The rest of the Magnificent Seven cohort has run into a wall of severe stock dispersion, with names like Microsoft and Amazon feeling the pinch as Wall Street intensely scrutinizes their massive, near-$200 billion capital expenditure budgets for immediate returns on AI software.
Compounding that pressure, consumer-facing giants like Apple and Tesla have lagged the index significantly due to cooling hardware upgrade cycles and bruising global electric vehicle price wars.
The bottom line: It’s hard to make a strong case for this trend reversing in the near term, given the extra scrutiny on AI capex spending by Big Tech. As for Tesla, let’s see if it gets a hype boost from the upcoming IPO of Elon Musk’s SpaceX (SPAX.PVT).
Brian Sozzi is Yahoo Finance’s Executive Editor and a member of Yahoo Finance’s editorial leadership team. Follow Sozzi on X @BrianSozzi, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Tips on stories? Email brian.sozzi@yahoofinance.com.
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