An investment advisor says he’s impressed by technology giants incorporating artificial intelligence and that a digital transformation is getting started for the “Magnificent Seven.”
“It’s really the beginning of a multi-year cycle,” said Hatem Dhiab, managing partner of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth & Investment, in an interview with BNN Bloomberg on Wednesday. “I think this quarter, we saw the halo effect of all the AI spend that is happening across all these Mag 7 companies.”
The Magnificent Seven refers to a group of influential U.S. technology companies, Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Tesla, Google parent Alphabet and Facebook parent Meta Platforms, whose stocks have significantly driven market growth in recent years.
‘Apple is a company to watch’
While Apple’s Siri product has been out for over a decade, Dhiab said results have been lackluster. However, he said Apple has been changing its strategy by spending more money to make Siri a top AI companion in the market.
“If you looked at their R&D (research and development) spend this quarter, you’ve seen that they spent almost US$9 billion,” said Dhiab. “I think Apple is a company to watch, but it’s not there yet. I think what’s exciting, though, is the fact that their iPhone sales are back up, which means that Apple is coming back to growth.”
Apple, which has struggled due to U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs, has recently highlighted plans for more AI tools, making products more intuitive. It also plans to release an iOS 26 upgrade in September around the same time Apple traditionally rolls out the next iPhone models.
Dhiab said that while there was a hit to demand from customers buying iPhones in late spring due to tariffs, the company has a brand affinity with users.
“In my firm, we just upgraded all of our devices, and nobody wanted to buy anything but Apple devices,” said Dhiab. “I think people have a huge affinity to the product. We love our iPhones. We can’t live without them.”
'Superintelligence’ for AI
Dhiab said he was impressed by Meta’s second quarter financial results. The tech company reported that 3.48 billion people used one or more of its applications (Facebook, WhatsApp or Instagram) in June, up six per cent year over year. In the earnings release, Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Meta, emphasized his ambitions for developing what he calls “personal superintelligence for everyone in the world” with AI systems.
“Meta is really about engagement,” said Dhiab. “If you look at the engagement numbers, it’s up 20 per cent for Instagram, for example. It’s really impressive. I think what Meta has done is incorporate AI into a lot of its products already, and it’s showing into the bottom line.”
The company’s revenue also grew by 22 per cent to $47.52 billion in the second quarter.
Microsoft to benefit from AI: advisor
Microsoft, which recently soared past a $4 trillion valuation, is already seeing strong results from its AI spending spree, Dhiab noted. The companies’ suite of applications, including Azure, Outlook and Microsoft 365, highlighting the $30 billion capital expenditure to meet AI demand, he said.
“If you look at the numbers from Microsoft, you’ve seen the halo effect of AI through other products,” said Dhiab. “Azure was up almost 35 per cent and outlook is up. Every product that they have is up quite a bit, and simply because they’re incorporating their AI processes around their whole software stack. I think if you think about that, just that technology upgrade that’s happening over the next few years, Microsoft is probably the best position to benefit from it, because they are really an enterprise.”
Microsoft says it’s building a full-stack AI app and agent factory that “empowers every developer not just to use AI, but to create with it”.
Azure AI Foundry will reportedly provide a unified platform for building, fine-tuning, and deploying intelligent agents with confidence while Foundry Local brings open-source models to the edge enabling flexible, on-device inferencing across billions of devices, according to a company memo.
Windows AI Foundry will build on the foundation, integrating Foundry Local into Windows 11 to “support a secure, low-latency local AI development lifecycle deeply aligned with the Windows platform”
