Bill Ackman's 2025 Power Moves: Where $4B+ is Actually Going in 2026

Bill Ackman made some bold calls this year through Pershing Square, and they’re worth tracking. Here’s what his biggest 2025 bets tell us about where elite investors see opportunity heading into 2026.

The $2B Mobility Play: Uber’s Hidden Edge

Ackman dropped roughly $2 billion into Uber Technologies back in February—30.3 million shares—betting that the market was sleeping on its long-term positioning. The thesis? Autonomous vehicles need a distribution channel, and Uber owns the best demand aggregator in mobility.

Here’s the interesting part: he wasn’t just buying on sentiment. Uber’s Q3 numbers show 17% growth in monthly active users with 22% more trips booked. That’s real traction, not hype.

The conviction is deep. Ackman expects 30% annual earnings-per-share growth and still sees room at 25x forward earnings. Uber remains Pershing Square’s largest marketable equity bet—that’s how confident he is. The stock’s already up 50% year to date, but if his thesis holds (and Waymo keeps feeding him deals), this could run much longer.

The Turnaround Gamble: Nike Through Options

This one’s trickier. Ackman built up 18+ million Nike shares in 2024, then got creative in 2025. He swapped to deep in-the-money call options, essentially betting he’ll get 2x returns if the turnaround works.

Nike’s down 13% this year. That hurts. But CEO Elliott Hill’s “Win Now” strategy is quietly showing results—wholesale sales up, margins expanding as clearance inventory clears out. The tariff headwind ($1B annually) is real, but not terminal.

The clock’s ticking on those options, and there’s no expiration date on the underlying value question: can Nike’s legendary brand equity translate to margin expansion in a higher-cost environment? Ackman’s still holding, which tells you he thinks the answer is yes before his options expire.

The AI Infrastructure Bet: Amazon’s 20% Opportunity

The $1 billion Amazon purchase in April felt opportunistic (Trump tariff panic sale), but the logic is fascinating. Ackman sees two best-in-class franchises: AWS cloud and retail logistics.

The cloud story is obvious to anyone following AI—AWS grew 20% in Q3 with unprecedented capital spending, and enterprise cloud adoption is still just 20% of total computing. That ratio will flip. The supply constraint (can’t build data centers fast enough) is actually bullish long-term.

Less obvious? Retail logistics. Amazon’s regional fulfillment overhaul cut shipping costs while speeding up one-day delivery. That’s operating leverage in real time. The company’s firing on both cylinders while trading at 25-29x forward earnings—reasonable for that growth profile.

The Real Question for 2026

Ackman’s signaling he believes the US market still has inefficiencies at scale. Whether it’s mobility transformation (Uber), brand-driven margin expansion (Nike), or AI-driven infrastructure consolidation (Amazon), he’s concentrated capital in names where competitive advantages haven’t fully priced in.

What’s worth watching: do these positions pay off because he was right about the thesis, or because the broader market finally catches up to what he already sees?