Billionaire Ken Fisher Goes All In on These 2 AI Stocks

Billionaire Ken Fisher Goes All In on These 2 AI Stocks

TipRanks

Mon, September 7, 2026 at 8:59 PM GMT+3 9 min read

Back in 1979, Ken Fisher started his investment firm, Fisher Investments, with $250 and faith in his own competence. He used the money, and his confidence was justified; today Fisher Investments and its affiliates manage more than $441 billion in assets, and Fisher's personal fortune stands at approximately $15 billion. While wealth alone does not confer wisdom, the ability to accumulate wealth can signal a clear-eyed view of the prevailing financial currents.

Which makes it interesting to read what Fisher has to say about AI. Follow the headlines, and you might fear an apocalypse: AI will destroy a vast array of office jobs, while the data centers and power generators will wreak havoc on our environment and water supplies. Fisher points out the obvious refutation: that we have heard this song before.

Industrialization, assembly lines, personal computing – they were all feared in their early days, and while they all went through growing pains, they all brought tremendous economic gains in the long term, and our lives are more comfortable for it.

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Fisher has that in mind when he writes, in a recent New York Post column, "Are you all in on AI, or are you bracing for an AI-pocalypse? AI's future remains largely unknown – even to supposed 'experts.' AI cassandras warn of fast, vast and tough-to-stomach changes – among them the widely broadcasted 'jobpocalypse.' Doomsters crucial mistake? Wrongly supposing that innovation destroys but doesn't at the same time create – an age-old error… Thus far, the evidence shows that AI often spurs retraining and expanded hiring, not mass unemployment… AI will change some industries greatly – others, less so. Optimists also overrate the speed of big change… So expect big changes… AI's strength isn't cutting headcount but augmenting it."

And he's not just talking up AI. In the second quarter of this year, Fisher bought big into two AI stocks, staking out large positions that are valued at $1 billion-plus each. We've opened up the TipRanks database to look at Fisher's Q2 AI purchases; here are the details.

Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO)

The first stock on our list of Fisher's buys is Cisco, a well-known name in the tech world. This company is a leader in networking, connectivity, and, more recently, in AI; Cisco's $430 billion market cap places it firmly among the mega-caps, and its wide-ranging portfolio of tech hardware provides digital security, cloud management, and critical infrastructure to power the fast-growing AI sector.

Some numbers will show the scale of Cisco's operations. The company has more than 39 million networking devices connected to its platform, and connects more than 1 billion clients every month. And every day, Cisco's networks observe some 750 billion security events. By handling digital collaboration and fusion at this scale, the company makes it possible for people and tech to work together, reaping the very best from human intuition and artificial intelligence.

On the AI side, Cisco is bringing the advantages of artificial intelligence to the cutting edge of networked computing, providing enhanced connections and higher levels of security oversight. The company is also working to expand AI infrastructure, developing scalable systems to meet the changing demands of processing and throughput; creating new approaches to AI-related security issues; and accelerating AI initiatives to meet the evolving needs of today's digital businesses.

Cisco has been a leader in online and digital tech for more than 40 years, and shows no indication of slowing down. The company announced last month that it is working with both Nvidia and Supermicro to develop rack-scale AI computing solutions, creating an architecture that will work with the latest neoclouds and sovereign clouds.

The company's strengths can be seen in its last quarterly report, which covered its fiscal 4Q26 – the period that ended on July 25, 2026. In the fiscal fourth quarter, Cisco saw high demand for its technology and products, with fourth-quarter product orders up 35% year-over-year. Networking orders, specifically, were up 40%, a gain that marked eight consecutive quarters of double-digit growth for Cisco's networking segment.

Getting to the quantifiable results, we find that Cisco generated $17.3 billion in revenue for fiscal Q4, a figure that was up 18% from the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025 – and that beat the forecast by $424.73 million. At the bottom line, Cisco's non-GAAP EPS of $1.22 was up 23% year-over-year, and was a nickel better than had been expected.

So, Cisco is a strong player on the AI scene. The company has seen steady gains in revenue and earnings over the past several quarters, and the stock is up approximately 48% for the year-to-date. Against that backdrop, we'll note that Ken Fisher bought 16,111,142 shares of CSCO during the second quarter of calendar year 2026, increasing his stake in the company by 94%. He now controls 33,412,725 shares of CSCO, a holding that is worth over $3.648 billion.

For Evercore's Amit Daryanani, an analyst ranked among the top 1% on Wall Street, the key point here is Cisco's ability to deliver at scale, in an environment that is highly supportive for AI and networking. The 5-star analyst writes, "CSCO continues to see secular benefits from the start of a networking super-cycle across Enterprise, Telco and Hyperscale markets… We think CSCO is poised to benefit from a host of tailwinds including repatriation of workloads on prem and the continued decommoditization of the tech stack. We see a path to $6.50+ EPS in FY28 and stock should work to $150 in that scenario."

The $150 price target that Daryanani has noted above implies a one-year upside potential here of 37%, nicely in-line with his Outperform (Buy) rating on the shares. (To watch Daryanani's track record, click here.)

Overall, Cisco gets a Moderate Buy from the Wall Street analysts, based on 18 recent reviews that include 12 Buys and 6 Holds. The shares are priced at $109.20, and the $140.80 average price target suggests that CSCO will gain 29% by this time next year. (See CSCO stock forecast.)

Palo Alto Networks, Inc. (PANW)

The next 'Fisher pick' on our list is a leader in the global cybersecurity sector, Palo Alto Networks. Like Cisco above, this is another of the 'smaller' mega-cap tech firms, boasting a market cap valuation of $271 billion.

The company's core products are security platforms. Palo Alto is known for offering advanced firewalls, as well as cloud-based security that extends that capability well beyond the base level of cybersecurity. Recently, Palo Alto has been incorporating AI features and capabilities into its product lines. The company's Precision AI, a proprietary technological system, underlies the core architecture of Palo Alto's security platforms, Strata, Cortex, and Prisma.

Together, these platforms form the core of Palo Alto's global ecosystem, a security network that gathers data and uses it to identify attacks – and stops more than 30 billion attacks every day. Using the Precision AI tech, Palo Alto firewalls can analyze malicious traffic patterns and stop threats cold. The analytical engine behind the platforms can take data fragments, covering network, endpoint, and cloud logs, and put together a complete narrative of the event – making the next attack easier to detect and prevent. Finally, the company can map cloud-native code to detect hidden problems – and, the AI can even police large language models, the LLMs used to train AIs, to prevent data leaks or prompt injection attacks.

All of that is a mouthful, but the upshot is that Palo Alto Networks has, in its 21 years of operations, built itself into one of the tech field's essential companies, a leader in the AI-powered digital security sector that is growing more and more important to today's increasingly networked economy.

On financial performance, Palo Alto Networks saw revenue of $3.41 billion in its fiscal 4Q26, the last period reported. That figure was up 34% year-over-year, and beat the forecast by more than $58 million. The company reported a bottom line of $1.02 per share, by non-GAAP measures – this was up from $0.95 in fiscal 4Q25, and was 4 cents per share better than had been anticipated.

Given all of that, we should not be surprised that Ken Fisher drastically increased his holdings in PANW during calendar 2Q26. He bought 5,499,328 shares during the second quarter, boosting his total holding to 5,755,989. His stake in the company is now valued at $1.918 billion.

This stock has caught the attention of Oppenheimer's 5-star analyst Ittai Kidron, who bases his upbeat outlook on the company's strength in AI and the growth potential of its platforms and their AI tech. Kidron says of PANW, "Palo Alto delivered a strong quarter on broad-based demand, including acceleration across multiple product areas. The strong results reinforce our confidence in management's execution and bullish stance on the shares. We continue to believe the company's platformization strategy/product breadth puts it in an advantageous position as AI accelerates the need for enterprises to modernize and automate security. Management noted growing AI tailwinds, which are evident across the company's stack. New Frontier AI Defense services are gaining steam, Prisma AIRS is building momentum, agentic AI traffic driving acceleration in NetSec, observability saw record results with OpenAI ramping, traction in AI SOC is noted through XSIAM growth, and CyberArk's growth accelerated as demand for machine identity security rose."

Kidron puts an Outperform (Buy) rating here, along with a $450 price target on the shares, suggesting that PANW will gain 35% over the next 12 months. (To watch Kidron's track record, click here.)

Like many leading-edge tech firms, Palo Alto has picked up plenty of Wall Street reviews – 40 of them, with a 34 to 6 split favoring Buy over Hold and supporting the Strong Buy consensus rating on the shares. The stock's $333.26 trading price and $405.41 average target price together indicate room for a 22% gain by this time next year. (See PANW stock forecast.)

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.

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