According to CITIC Securities, the preference for large U.S. tech stocks is in the following order: Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft

CITIC Securities International published a report indicating that the recommended ranking for large U.S. tech stocks is as follows: Alphabet (GOOGL.US), Meta (META.US), Amazon (AMZN.US), and finally Microsoft (MSFT.US).

The firm believes that this year, AI-enabled shopping capabilities will significantly proliferate, benefiting the monetization process of AI. The top stock picks are Alphabet, Meta, and Netflix (NFLX.US).

The firm pointed out that by early 2026, large U.S. tech companies will accelerate their layout of AI-enabled shopping, with clear trends of capability enhancement and intensified competition. Google has released a universal e-commerce agreement to address the data quality issues of shopping agents; Microsoft is collaborating with Copilot Checkout; and Amazon is using AI to expand the range of unauthorized third-party merchant products.

The firm noted that competition for consumer-facing shopping agent entry points is intensifying. Google’s UCP competes with OpenAI’s ACP through more optimized inventory data collection, alleviating the burden on merchants to connect with each AI platform individually via open-source standards. Microsoft’s Copilot Checkout is positioned against OpenAI’s ChatGPT in-app purchases, while Amazon's unauthorized scraping of external product listings is significant—previously, it had sued Perplexity for implementing shopping agents on its platform without permission.

Although such chatbot-enabled shopping poses a significant competitive threat to Amazon, the firm believes that Amazon's vertically integrated fulfillment capabilities and Prime member loyalty have created a strong moat for the company