Berkshire’s $41 Billion Alphabet Bet Mirrors Its Apple Playbook

Berkshire Hathaway’s stake in Alphabet has grown from $4.3 billion to nearly $41 billion in nine months. The position now outweighs the Coca-Cola stake Warren Buffett spent decades building, trailing only Apple and American Express in size. It happened in three moves: a first purchase last fall, a near-tripling by spring, and a $10 billion check written directly to Google’s parent company in June.

That pace reads as conviction. It also retraces, almost exactly, the early shape of Berkshire’s Apple trade, the position that compounded for a decade before Berkshire spent the last two years quietly selling off three-quarters of it.

From $4.3 Billion to Nearly $41 Billion in Three Quarters

Berkshire disclosed the original Alphabet position in a 13F filing, the quarterly ownership disclosure large institutional investors must file with the SEC, on November 14, 2025, covering holdings as of September 30. Berkshire said it owned 17.85 million Alphabet shares as of September 30, worth about $4.3 billion, which made it the firm’s 10th largest equity holding at the time. Alphabet shares gained 3.1%, bucking the weakness in most technology shares to start the week once the filing became public.

The position held at 17.85 million shares, valued at $5.6 billion at year-end, as Alphabet’s rally lifted the value without any new buying.

Then Greg Abel’s first full quarter running the portfolio without Buffett as CEO changed the trajectory entirely. Berkshire’s Alphabet share count rose from 17.85 million at the end of 2025 to nearly 58 million by the end of March, a 224% increase in roughly three months, a stake valued at approximately $16.6 billion when the filing reached the SEC’s site in mid-May.

Ten weeks later, Alphabet announced plans for an equity financing program of up to $80 billion to expand its artificial intelligence (AI) computing infrastructure. Berkshire Hathaway agreed to subscribe to $10 billion of the shares through a private placement, meaning it bought new shares directly from Alphabet rather than on the open market. Berkshire subscribed to $5 billion in Class A common shares at $351.81 per share and $5 billion in Class C capital shares at $348.20 per share, roughly 28.6 million new shares in total. The purchase of $10 billion worth of Alphabet stock through a private placement was Berkshire Hathaway’s biggest deal since Greg Abel took over as CEO, and the move came just a day after Berkshire agreed to acquire homebuilder Taylor Morrison Home in a $6.8 billion cash deal.

With a total position of nearly $41 billion in Alphabet, this is now a bigger position than Coca-Cola, though still smaller than Apple and American Express.

1. September 30, 2025: Berkshire discloses a new 17.85 million share stake in Alphabet, worth about $4.3 billion.
2. December 31, 2025: The position holds steady at 17.85 million shares, now valued near $5.6 billion.
3. March 31, 2026: Berkshire’s first 13F filed under Greg Abel shows the stake nearly tripled to close to 58 million shares.
4. June 1, 2026: Alphabet announces an $80 billion equity raise; Berkshire agrees to buy $10 billion of it directly.
5. Early July 2026: The combined position approaches $41 billion, bigger than Berkshire’s Coca-Cola stake.

Add the open-market shares to the private placement and Berkshire now holds roughly 86 million combined shares across Alphabet’s two share classes, up from 17.85 million shares nine months earlier.

Berkshire Already Ran This Play with Apple

Buffett’s aversion to tech stocks was legendary, and even Apple got a workaround. Buffett famously characterized Berkshire’s investment in Apple as a consumer bet, not a technology one. It worked for years. Berkshire’s position in Apple was once equal in value to all its other equity holdings combined, built up to more than 900 million shares at its peak.

Then the selling started. Berkshire cut its Apple stake to 238.2 million shares from 280 million in the third quarter of 2025, having sold nearly three-quarters of the more than 900 million shares it once held. Apple remained Berkshire’s largest stock holding at $60.7 billion even after the cuts, and it was the twelfth straight quarter Berkshire had been a net seller of stocks overall. The selling paused in the first quarter of 2026: Berkshire still held about 228 million Apple shares, a roughly $58 billion position that remained untouched in the quarter, a departure from the selling trend that had continued for nearly two years under the previous management.

Coca-Cola and American Express never saw that kind of drawdown, and Berkshire’s patience with both stretches back decades, including stakes far outside the United States. In 2020, Berkshire’s National Indemnity Company subsidiary notified Japanese regulators that it had acquired slightly more than 5% of the outstanding shares in five leading Japanese trading companies, a passive stake disclosed through an SEC filing that Berkshire still holds today. Apple was sold to shareholders the same way Alphabet is being sold now. The three-quarter cut is the part of that story getting left out.

The Moat Behind the Math

The bull case starts with Alphabet’s own numbers. First-quarter 2026 results showed Alphabet generating $109.9 billion in revenue, representing 21.8% annual growth, while Google Cloud’s contracted backlog surged to $460 billion, nearly double the previous quarter. The stock jumped 9.96% the next session on that report, with Cloud revenue up 63% year over year.

Sundar Pichai, Alphabet’s chief executive, has framed the spending as a response to demand the company cannot fully meet. On the earnings call, he said the company is “compute constrained in the near term,” noting Cloud revenue “would have been higher if we were able to meet the demand.” At a June 3 special call, he sharpened the point, saying demand for Alphabet’s AI products is “meaningfully exceeding our available supply.”

None of that addresses search, still the profit engine underneath everything else. Google’s search engine benefits from a wide moat built on network effects, since increased usage provides more data to refine and improve the product, which in turn boosts search volume. Morningstar equity analyst Malik Ahmed Khan, who covers the stock for the research firm, said “the entire narrative was that search was dying and Alphabet was not equipped to defend its turf, but the data never supported that” in a recent analysis of Alphabet’s rally.

Alphabet also pays a modest dividend, a feature Berkshire has long favored because it demonstrates both financial strength and a willingness to return capital to shareholders. That habit looks different next to Micron’s approach following its own record quarter, where blowout earnings did nothing to move a token payout. Not every AI-cycle winner treats its shareholders the same way.

Why Did Alphabet Stock Fall on the News?

Alphabet’s own shareholders didn’t cheer the private placement. Shares fell more than 2% in after-hours trading to approximately $363 after the $80 billion financing announcement, before falling more than 2.5% again during pre-market trading the next day. The plan adds equity dilution on top of more than $100 billion in debt raised over the past year, and estimates from data provider TIKR show free cash flow margin falling to around 5% in 2026 from about 18% in 2025 as the spending lands.

But the raise carries a wrinkle bears tend to skip past. The $40 billion at-the-market portion, the largest piece of the raise, is earmarked mostly for covering taxes tied to employee stock awards, not the AI buildout. Alphabet ended the first quarter with $127 billion in cash and marketable securities and could fund much of the buildout internally. The equity raise accelerates the timeline rather than rescuing the balance sheet.

Wall Street split on what all of that means.

• Bill Ackman, the Pershing Square founder: sold more than 95% of his Alphabet shares to reallocate funds into Microsoft, which has fallen approximately 20% this year.
• Bears cited by TIKR: see real dilution on top of a capital plan already squeezing free cash flow.
• Berkshire and Bridgewater Associates: both accumulated Alphabet shares in the same stretch Ackman was selling, alongside disclosed purchases by Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi.

Alphabet’s spending guidance explains the split. The company is guiding for capital expenditures of as much as $190 billion this year, and chief financial officer Anat Ashkenazi said the figure will “significantly increase” next year. A backlog growing this fast is the counterweight, and it helps explain why Abel was willing to write a $10 billion check on top of the open-market buying.

Abel Is Rewriting the Rest of the Portfolio Too

Alphabet isn’t the only piece moving. Confidence in a handful of names is now high enough that Abel is comfortable with just five Dow stocks accounting for 59% of the conglomerate’s stock portfolio’s total value, and the top 10 holdings account for approximately 90.72% of total assets in a portfolio Seeking Alpha pegs near $263 billion.

The rest of the moves came fast:

• Exited long-held positions in Amazon, Visa, Mastercard, and UnitedHealth, along with a full exit from Domino’s Pizza.
• Re-entered the airline sector with a large stake in Delta Air Lines, plus a new position in Macy’s.
• Made a large reduction to the long-held Chevron position.

Even after all of that, Berkshire sat on more than $390 billion in cash and Treasury bills at the end of the first quarter, so the buying spree hasn’t come close to draining the reserve. It offers an early glimpse into Greg Abel’s capital allocation approach, suggesting Buffett’s successor is willing to commit significant sums to tech companies rather than spreading bets thin, the same instinct that once built the Apple position before it built the case for trimming it.

Does Alphabet Even Need Berkshire’s Money?

Alphabet is not raising this money out of need. An investor known for avoiding capital-heavy tech bets does not write a $10 billion check into a dilution it expects to regret, and that logic seems to be winning on Wall Street too. The vast majority of analysts currently rate Alphabet a strong buy, with a consensus target of $435.83, about 20% above the ticker’s recent price. Alphabet’s shares have roughly doubled over the past 12 months, since the start of the third quarter of 2025, when Berkshire first bought the stock.

Every step so far, the first stake, the tripling, the private placement, has come through a regulatory filing rather than a public declaration of permanence. Berkshire’s next 13F, due by mid-November, will show whether Abel kept adding or started trimming, the same choice Buffett eventually made with Apple.

Frequently Asked Questions

Did Warren Buffett or Greg Abel Build the Alphabet Position?

Buffett was still CEO when Berkshire first disclosed the Alphabet stake in November 2025, though the investment likely came from one of Buffett’s lieutenants, Todd Combs or Ted Weschler, who increasingly influence Berkshire’s stock portfolio. The far larger moves, the near-tripling in the first quarter and the $10 billion private placement, both happened after Abel formally took the CEO title.

Why Did Alphabet Raise $80 Billion If It Already Had $127 Billion in Cash?

The company wasn’t raising the money out of need. The financing actually pointed at AI is the underwritten tranche plus Berkshire’s check, since most of the rest covers tax obligations rather than data centers. Alphabet ended the quarter with $127 billion in cash and marketable securities, and executives framed the raise as a way to move faster, not a sign of strain.

Is Alphabet Part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average Now?

Yes. When Alphabet joined the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the financial press couldn’t stop talking about it, and the addition landed in the same stretch that Berkshire’s buying pushed the stock into the conglomerate’s largest holdings.

What Regulatory Risks Still Hang Over Alphabet?

Two fronts stand out. A final decision on remedies in Google’s ad-tech antitrust case, including the possibility of breaking the company into separate entities, is still working through the appeals process. Separately, an EU antitrust investigation into Google’s use of web publishers’ content for AI training has raised concern over a potential fine of up to 10% of revenue if regulators find the company at fault.

How Does Alphabet’s Valuation Compare with Apple’s?

Alphabet trades at about 28 times earnings even after its run, while Apple sits at roughly 31 times forward earnings. Both trade above the S&P 500’s average multiple, but analysts generally treat Alphabet as the cheaper of Berkshire’s two technology holdings relative to its growth rate.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Stock prices, portfolio values, and filing figures involve risk and can change quickly; consult a licensed financial advisor before making investment decisions. Figures cited are accurate as of publication.