Greg Abel Built a $31 Billion Berkshire Stake in Alphabet
Berkshire Hathaway CEO Greg Abel has expanded the company's stake in Alphabet to $31.1 billion, representing over 9% of its portfolio. After initially buying shares in Q3 2025 under Warren Buffett, Abel significantly increased holdings in Q1 2026 through open market purchases and a $10 billion private placement at a discount. This aggressive accumulation coincided with Berkshire exiting 16 other positions to streamline its portfolio, reflecting strong confidence in Alphabet's AI growth and core business dominance.
It didn't take Greg Abel long to push his chips to the middle of the table when betting on Alphabet (GOOG 0.88%) (GOOGL 1.02%). The new CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA 0.20%) (BRKB 0.45%) inherited a relatively new position in the AI and tech company when he took over for Warren Buffett at the beginning of 2026. He has since expanded on that investment, while at the same time trimming Berkshire's vaunted portfolio of several unwanted stocks.
Now Berkshire Hathaway has a $31.1 billion stake in Alphabet, a significant investment for a company that it didn't even own a year ago. Alphabet makes up more than 9% of the conglomerate's entire $342 billion investment portfolio.
Here's how he did it -- and where Alphabet appears to be headed next.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
Berkshire's purchases of Alphabet
Berkshire Hathaway first opened its position in Alphabet stock in the third quarter of 2025. It was part of a strategy by Buffett, the legendary Oracle of Omaha, to shed the company's overly heavy position in Apple. The initial purchase was for 17.86 million shares and was valued at $5.18 billion.
The purchase was well timed; Alphabet has been a star in the market. We don't know exactly what day Buffett had Berkshire open its position, but we know that since the end of the third quarter, Alphabet stock is up nearly 50%. That means an investment of $5.18 billion, made at the end of the third quarter, would be worth $7.68 billion today.
But Abel, who took over after Buffett retired, didn't stop there. In the first quarter, he had Berkshire buy another 36.4 million shares of Alphabet. And then he purchased $10 billion in shares in a private placement as Alphabet sought to raise $80 billion to fund its AI build-out.
The private placement had Berkshire Hathaway buying $5 billion in Class A stock at $351.81 per share, and $5 billion in Alphabet's Class C stock at $348.20 per share. Both of those were a 6.5% discount from the closing prices that day. So Berkshire Hathaway now owns 68,462,015 shares of Alphabet Class A stock and 17,944,778 shares of Alphabet Class C stock. The total value of those shares is $31.17 billion.
All this happened as Abel greatly shrank Berkshire's portfolio, exiting 16 positions to reduce the number of holdings to 29.
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Why Alphabet is a buy
I continue to believe it makes a lot of sense for Berkshire Hathaway and Greg Abel to load up on Alphabet. I picked it at the beginning of the year as the best "Magnificent Seven" stock for 2026, and it has had a solid year, gaining 15% despite a recent pullback hurting most of the tech sector.
The company has a great core advertising business, powered by its dominant positions in YouTube, Chrome, and Google Search. Revenue in the first quarter was $109.89 billion, with $77.25 billion of that coming from Google advertising. On top of that, its cloud computing segment has huge potential, growing 63% in the first quarter alone to $20.02 billion.
Alphabet has all the qualities that Berkshire Hathaway covets: strong earnings, an excellent business plan, loyal customers, great products, and a strong economic moat. I won't be surprised if Abel goes back to Alphabet again this year to buy more shares.
