Bank of America sees 2026 as the year of autonomous AI agents. The analysts have identified five technology stocks that could particularly benefit from this change.
• Bank of America sees 2026 as the year of “Agentic AI”
• Amazon is the bank’s top pick for the first quarter of 2026 with a price target of $303
• Amazon’s new Trainium3 chip offers 4.4 times the computing power and four times the energy efficiency of its predecessor
Agentic AI: The next phase of the AI boom
The past two years have been dominated by chatbots and large language models. But 2026 could be the year of “Agentic AI” – software that can carry out tasks autonomously. This emerges from a Bank of America report published on January 8, 2026, which MarketWatch reports on.
Analyst Justin Post argues that the AI boom will only peak when major AI startups like OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI go public. Until then, the bank sees the greatest opportunities in companies that can use autonomous agents – i.e. software that purchases, books trips or carries out other tasks independently. Post names five stocks as the top beneficiaries of this development: Amazon, AppLovin, Wayfair, Expedia and Roblox.
Amazon as a top pick for the first quarter of 2026
Among the big technology stocks, Amazon is Bank of America’s favorite for the first quarter of 2026. The analysts are betting on continued acceleration of the cloud business Amazon Web Services (AWS) as well as improvements in retail efficiencies. According to the MarketWatch report, Wall Street expects AWS to grow by 21 percent in 2026, although Post believes these estimates are too conservative.
Amazon has made progress on its in-house Trainium chip. According to Bank of America, the latest version, Trainium3, offers 4.4 times the computing power and four times the energy efficiency of its predecessor. Post believes future generations of chips could be integrated with NVIDIA technology, making AWS the most cost-effective provider for AI workloads. In retail, the operating margin is expected to rise from 6.1 percent in 2025 to 8.3 percent in 2027 – supported by over a million robots and more efficient logistics centers. Post sets the price target at $303. Compared to the last closing price of $241.73, the price target corresponds to a potential increase of around 25 percent (as of January 29, 2026).
Travel, advertising and gaming as battlegrounds for AI agents
In addition to Amazon, Bank of America highlights four other companies. As the MarketWatch report shows, analyst Post sees the travel industry as a key area for autonomous AI in 2026. Expedia is successfully transforming itself from a classic booking platform to an infrastructure provider for new AI-powered travel agents. The company has partnered with OpenAI for an app in ChatGPT as well as Google Gemini for agent-based bookings.
Furniture retailer Wayfair is an early partner for Google’s Agentic Checkout feature and has developed an autonomous AI assistant for customer queries. In the advertising sector, according to Bank of America, AppLovin and Roblox are benefiting from advertisers increasingly investing in closed platforms as traffic on the open web is expected to decrease due to the use of AI. AppLovin’s AI-supported product Axon, which delivers advertising specifically to users who are ready to buy, has seen strong acceptance among online retailers. Roblox, with its approximately 150 million daily active users, could accelerate game development through AI tools such as Studio Assistant and develop into a significant advertising platform.
D. Maier / editorial team finanzen.net
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