U.S. stocks are standing at record high levels; the S&P 500 hit another all-time high today and now stands just above 6,875 – about a 17% surge year-to-date. These gains have been driven largely by the tech sector, where the AI boom continues to capture attention and headlines, and the mega-cap ‘Magnificent 7’ stocks remain at the heart of the rally.
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With trillion-dollar-plus valuations, vast customer ecosystems, and a constant pipeline of innovation, these tech titans have reshaped industries and redefined what’s possible. They aren’t just delivering new technologies and platforms – they’re setting the pace for the market itself and creating enormous opportunities for investors seeking exposure to long-term growth.
Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) are two of the leading names among the Mag 7. Their trillion-dollar market caps are backed up by a multitude of projects – while these companies are best known for their work in retail and social media, they also have their hands in AI, cloud services, and edge computing. And some of Wall Street’s top analysts are saying that it’s time to pounce on them. Let’s see why.
Amazon
We’ll start with a look at Amazon, the world’s leader in online retail, and a major force in the cloud computing market. Amazon’s market cap, at $2.42 trillion, makes it the world’s fifth-largest publicly traded company; its dominance in e-commerce backs up its leading position and allows it to expand into other areas.
The scale of that dominance is clear from Amazon’s last earnings report, which covered 2Q25. The company brought in $167.7 billion in net sales – and of that total, $136.9 billion, or ~82%, came from its North American and International segments. The company’s cloud service, AWS, brought in $30.9 billion in revenue during the quarter.
Now, Amazon is channeling its vast scale and technical expertise into the next frontier: AI. The company has been weaving AI into its retail ecosystem, enhancing search capabilities to deliver more accurate, personalized results and creating a more interactive shopping journey. Its AI-powered assistant, Rufus, has been guiding customers since last year, and with the recent rollout of Amazon Lens in September, shoppers can now search for products using images rather than words – bringing a new level of convenience and engagement to the online experience.
AWS has also benefited from AI tech. The cloud service is rapidly morphing into an AI subscription service, with AI-powered tools for everything from graphic design to app development. This side of Amazon’s business has also benefited from the company’s investments in Anthropic, the AI development startup that launched the various Claude models. Amazon has put ~$8 billion into Anthropic, and its AWS is working with the startup to create a network of AI supercomputer clusters.
Amazon will report its Q3 results this Thursday (October 30), and Wall Street expects revenue of about $177.7 billion on the top line, a year-over-year gain of about 12%. Analysts also forecast EPS of $1.57, which would represent a ~10% increase compared with the $1.43 EPS reported in Q3 2024.
Ahead of the print, KeyBanc’s 5-star analyst Justin Patterson sees plenty of potential in Amazon’s retail and cloud businesses and believes now is the time to take action.
“We believe advertising is fueling gains in the retail business, which provides a path forward for grocery becoming more material over the medium term. Further, we believe investors have become too pessimistic on the Cloud business, and we see potential for improving growth into 2026E. With shares trading well below historical levels at 22.9x 2027E P/E, we believe this screens as an attractive entry point,” Patterson opined.
These comments support Patterson’s Overweight (i.e., Buy) rating on AMZN, while his $300 price target points toward a one-year gain of 32% for the shares. (To watch Patterson’s track record, click here)
Overall, AMZN stock carries a rare Strong Buy consensus rating, based on 41 unanimously positive analyst reviews. We’re not aware of any other stock that enjoys such broad, positive coverage. It currently trades at $224.21, and its average target price of $269.03 implies a potential gain of 18.5% over the coming year. (See AMZN stock forecast)
Meta Platforms
Next up is Meta, another company that hardly needs an introduction and remains one of the most dominant forces in the digital economy. Meta’s ecosystem – spanning Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger – connects nearly 40% of humanity on a daily basis. As of June, its “daily active people” count reached 3.48 billion, up 6% from a year earlier.
That massive reach is the engine behind Meta’s multibillion-dollar advertising empire. The company’s social apps serve as the stage, but the real show is in digital ads, where Meta has turned global attention into one of the most powerful monetization machines in modern business.
In its 2Q25 earnings results, the last reported, Meta’s revenue came to $47.5 billion, for a 22% year-over-year increase, and beat the forecast by $2.68 billion. The company reported that its average price per ad, a key metric in the digital ad business, was up 9% year-over-year, and that the ad impressions delivered across its full family of apps increased by 11% year-over-year. The company realized an EPS of $7.14 in Q2, beating the forecast by $1.28 per share.
In addition to social media, Meta has also become an important name in AI development. The company approaches the AI field with a built-in asset: its database of online social activity, posts, and advertising movements – exactly the sort of data needed to train advanced AI models. Meta started its AI work several years ago, and this work is yielding results in the form of infrastructure, model training, and product integration. The company’s long-term goal is to integrate augmented reality tech with AI to create an immersive “metaverse” experience for online users. In the meantime, Meta is using AI in the more mundane ways that we are all becoming familiar with: in online search technology, in advertising targeting, and in social media engagement.
Meta will take the earnings stage this Wednesday (October 29), and Wall Street is bracing for another strong showing. Analysts expect revenue to come in at $40.3 billion, a 17% growth from last year’s third quarter, while earnings per share are projected to climb to $5.19, up about 19% from the $4.36 reported in Q3 2024.
Meta shares have surged 28% this year, pushing its market cap to $1.88 trillion – a reflection of investor confidence in its twin strengths of advertising scale and AI innovation. Among the optimists is Mizuho’s 5-star analyst Lloyd Walmsley, who argues that Meta’s unique position at the intersection of these two high-growth arenas makes it one of the most compelling plays in the tech space today.
“Our favorite name is Meta Platforms… We see META as best positioned to benefit from leveraging AI across the themes we like in the online advertising space broadly. We expect AI/ML to drive incremental improvements in engagement, ad targeting, and monetization. Shares do not fully reflect the sustainability of top line growth and optionality of new product, in our view. We look for ad rev growth +18% / 16% in 2026 / 2027, ahead of consensus for 16%/15%. We see new GenAI products, such as Meta AI, as fully loaded investments with little to no revenue embedded in shares today, creating significant potential upside over the long-term,” Walmsley noted.
Walmsley goes on to rate META shares as Outperform (i.e., Buy), and he sets a $925 price target that suggests a one-year upside potential for the stock of 23%. (To watch Walmsley’s track record, click here)
Overall, Meta holds a Strong Buy rating from the analysts’ consensus, based on 46 analyst reviews that break down to 40 Buys and 6 Holds. The stock is priced at $750.82, and its average price target of $878.09 implies that it will gain 17% by this time next year. (See META stock forecast)
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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the featured analysts. The content is intended to be used for informational purposes only. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment.