Obviously, nobody owns a functioning crystal ball. So, take any predictions about someone else's future actions with a grain of salt. You can make educated guesses, however, based on a person's past patterns and current situations.
With that as the backdrop, what is relatively new Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA +1.14%)(BRKB +0.79%) CEO Greg Abel apt to do with the $397 billion in liquidity he hasn't yet used? Here are three pretty good bets.
Image source: Getty Images.
1. Repurchase more Berkshire stock Previous Berkshire CEO and chief stock picker Warren Buffett wasn't staunchly against stock repurchases; they did happen while he was at the helm. But they certainly weren't always his preferred use of cash, even if that cash was going to sit idle for a while.
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Abel, however, seems to be more willing. In his first quarter as the conglomerate's chief executive, he oversaw the repurchase of more than a couple of hundred million dollars' worth of Berkshire stock, with estimates of a few billion dollars' worth of stock buybacks materializing during the second quarter of this year. We won't know for sure until the company's official Q2 filings are submitted. Given how restless some shareholders have become, though, such a risk-free use of some of this liquidity would at least sate this crowd.
2. Growth and income are clearly converging in one corner of the tech industry Greg Abel isn't simply inflating the value of outstanding Berkshire Hathaway shares by taking some out of circulation, though. His ultimate goal is still investing for long-term growth.
To this end, although he's unlikely to expand the existing stake in Alphabet (GOOG +0.24%) (GOOGL +0.58%) since the technology giant is now Berkshire's fifth-biggest holding, this trade does suggest that Abel isn't nearly as averse to owning tech stocks -- with the exception of Apple -- as Buffett generally was.
This doesn't mean look for a new position in Nvidia to show up in the portfolio anytime soon. However, given their growth potential and reliable dividend income, it's not inconceivable that an artificial intelligence data center REIT like Equinix (EQIX +4.90%) or Digital Realty Trust (DLR +11.01%) could become part of Berkshire's mix.
3. Expand its energy business's capacity Finally, it's an often-overlooked aspect of the company, but Berkshire Hathaway isn't just a collection of individual hand-picked stocks. The conglomerate also owns many privately held companies, including power utility outfit Berkshire Hathaway Energy, which Abel previously ran.
That in and of itself wouldn't normally mean much. Except at the annual shareholder meeting held in May, Abel specifically pointed out that Berkshire Hathaway Energy is already serving the fast-growing AI data center business, adding that he knows this demand could grow by 50% or more in just the next five years.
Were he not this energy arm's former chief, he might not pursue it too aggressively. Given Abel's familiarity with this particular business, don't be surprised to see Berkshire Hathaway make capital investments specifically meant to bolster Berkshire Hathaway Energy's position within this market.
Again, though, these are all just guesses, and far from guarantees.
James Brumley has positions in Alphabet. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, Digital Realty Trust, Equinix, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
BRENTWOOD, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Lauren Ravitz of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties is pleased to offer a distinctive, newly built soft contemporary by Yuna Megre and Maria Mikena, an award-winning team with over 40 years of global design experience. Located in Westwood nearby local shops and restaurants, the residence offers clean modern lines, natural textures and a seamless flow between the interior/exterior spaces, which include a backyard oasis with a pool and spa. “.
Taylor Morrison to unify with Berkshire Hathaway's site-built homebuilding operations
, /PRNewswire/ -- Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and Taylor Morrison today announced the completion of Berkshire Hathaway's acquisition of Taylor Morrison for $72.50 per common share in cash, representing a total equity value for Taylor Morrison of approximately $6.8 billion and total enterprise value of approximately $8.5 billion.
Under Berkshire, Taylor Morrison will continue to be led by CEO Sheryl Palmer, who will oversee the integration of Taylor Morrison's portfolio of brands—including Esplanade, Yardly and Taylor Morrison Home Funding—with Berkshire Hathaway's site-built homebuilding operations that comprise Clayton Properties Group, a collection of 15 established regional and local homebuilders. Combined, the integrated operation will serve renters, entry-level, move-up, and resort lifestyle segments.
"Today marks an important step forward as Taylor Morrison joins Berkshire. This best-in-class national homebuilder will lead our vision for a unified site-built homebuilding operation," said Berkshire Hathaway's Chief Executive Officer Greg Abel. "Together, we will help more Americans achieve their dream of homeownership."
"We have always believed in the strength of our business, and today Berkshire Hathaway has confirmed that belief," said Taylor Morrison Chief Executive Officer Sheryl Palmer. "As we enter this new chapter, the scale and reach we gain by unifying with Berkshire and Clayton's regional site-built homebuilders is transformative. We'll now serve more customers, in more markets, with more choices—while maintaining the specialized local expertise that has made us successful. We're thrilled to build upon that success as we scale to create a combined homebuilding platform unlike anything in the industry."
Combined, Taylor Morrison and Clayton Properties Group delivered nearly 23,000 site-built home closings in 2025, operate in 21 states and 52 housing markets, and serve more than 700 communities nationally—positioning the combined business as the fourth largest homebuilding operation in the United States.
Transaction Details
Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC and Moelis & Company LLC served as financial advisors, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP served as legal advisor, Mayer Brown LLP served as financial services regulatory counsel to Taylor Morrison, and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and Baker McKenzie LLP served as counsel to Berkshire Hathaway.
About Berkshire Hathaway
Berkshire Hathaway and its subsidiaries engage in diverse business activities including insurance and reinsurance, utilities and energy, freight rail transportation, manufacturing, services and retailing. Common stock of the company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, trading symbols BRK.A and BRK.B.
About Taylor Morrison
Headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, Taylor Morrison is one of the nation's leading community developers and homebuilders. It serves entry-level, move-up, and resort lifestyle homebuyers and renters under its family of brands—including Taylor Morrison, Esplanade, and Yardly. Taylor Morrison has been recognized as America's Most Trusted® Builder by Lifestory Research since 2016, was honored as one of Fortune's World's Most Admired Companies in 2026, and on Forbes' Most Trusted and Best Companies in America lists in 2025.
Contacts:
Berkshire Hathaway
Chuck Chang
(402) 346-1400
Taylor Morrison
Media:
Jaclyn Rygg
(480) 376-0641
[email protected]
Warren Buffett might no longer be the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA +0.53%) (BRKB +0.24%), but the business still has the same issue it had under the leadership of the Oracle of Omaha. It has more cash than it knows what to do with.
But this deep liquidity has become a source of meaningful profit. In fact, Berkshire Hathaway earns more from its cash pile in a year than most S&P 500 index companies report in total earnings. Here's the math.
Image source: Getty Images.
A sizable passive income stream As of March 31, the Nebraska conglomerate had $397 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term U.S. Treasuries on its balance sheet. That figure has trended higher in recent years, as the company has been a net seller of stocks.
Instead of simply holding dollars, this huge sum is primarily allocated to U.S. Treasuries. So, Berkshire is able to earn a risk-free return on this capital. During the first quarter of this year, the interest income it collected, coming mainly from its Treasury holdings, was $3.1 billion.
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If rates go up, it's no surprise that this figure also rises. With the federal funds rate currently not far from its highest level in the past 15 years, Berkshire Hathaway's balance sheet benefits.
On an annualized basis, the conglomerate generated $12.4 billion in after-tax profit in the first quarter, funded by its cash pile. This is higher than most companies in the benchmark S&P 500 index. In fact, it's about the same as Walt Disney's trailing-12-month net income.
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Waiting for a better use of capital Buffett, who is still chairman, and CEO Greg Abel certainly wish they didn't have a large cash hoard. The ideal situation is for the business to find ample opportunities to deploy this capital at a higher potential rate of return. That's the ultimate objective that can drive shareholder value for Berkshire Hathaway's investor base.
The fact that there is so much cash on the balance sheet is a clear sign of the lack of opportunities the market is presenting right now. As a company with a value-focused philosophy, Berkshire Hathaway is cautious due to the elevated valuations it's been seeing.
The almost $400 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and Treasuries, however, can still be viewed in a very positive light, even though Berkshire is not earning the returns it could if its cash were actually used to buy stocks or entire businesses. This gives the conglomerate a substantial financial cushion, not only making it a safer company, but also allowing it to act quickly when opportunities eventually present themselves.
Warren Buffett officially retired as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (BRKB +0.30%)(BRKA +0.53%) at the end of 2025 and is now just the chair of the board. At 95 years young, many investors assumed that Buffett would not be making any more investment decisions, delegating his previous capital allocator role to new CEO Greg Abel and the range of leaders at the business.
This is not the case. In an interview with CNBC, Buffett said he personally initiated Berkshire's latest investment in Alphabet (GOOG -6.88%)(GOOGL -7.12%), the parent company of Google, YouTube, and Google Cloud, which is now one of the largest stock positions in the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio.
Here's exactly what Buffett said, and what it means for the future of Berkshire Hathaway.
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Depending on the day, Berkshire Hathaway's investment in Alphabet is worth around $30 billion. This includes its direct stock purchases, as well as a $10 billion private placement in June 2026 as part of Alphabet's capital raise.
Many assumed that Greg Abel made the capital allocation decision for these Alphabet investments. While he still has the final say as the CEO, Buffett was the one who initiated the idea for Berkshire, according to his latest interview with CNBC. He made it clear that he and Abel are on the same page, but Buffett is not sitting on the sidelines entirely when it comes to capital allocation for the conglomerate he spent decades building.
Even though Alphabet is now a Berkshire position worth tens of billions, Buffett said there are still four or five other stocks Berkshire owns that he likes as better businesses. These are likely the conglomerate's largest positions, such as Apple, Coca-Cola, and American Express.
Image source: Getty Images.
Alphabet's AI infrastructure opportunity Berkshire's investment in Alphabet is not necessarily because it is a winning artificial intelligence (AI) stock. Buffett said it was to make up for the mistake of not investing in the owner of Google Search earlier in its life as a publicly traded company, especially when some of Berkshire Hathaway's subsidiaries, like Geico, were heavy users of its advertising services.
Now, Alphabet has the opportunity to deploy hundreds of billions of dollars in capital over the coming years to retain its position as a leading internet platform and, increasingly, an AI player. The company is still seeing strong revenue growth from Google Search while benefiting from spending on its Google Cloud infrastructure services and the Gemini chatbot.
Overall revenue grew 22% year over year last quarter, an astounding rate of growth for a business of Alphabet's size. Similar levels of growth are expected in the upcoming quarterly earnings, which will be released on July 22 after the stock market closes.
GOOG Total Return Level data by YCharts
Is Alphabet stock a buy? Alphabet has extended its growth runway by investing heavily in AI. For example, Google Cloud is now growing revenue at a 60% year-over-year rate, hitting $20 billion in sales just last quarter. This has supercharged Alphabet's share price, which is up 81% in the last 12 months alone. In the last 10 years, Alphabet has produced a cumulative total return of 846%.
Even though it now trades at a market cap of $4 trillion (or higher, depending on the day), the stock still trades at a reasonable multiple of earnings. Alphabet has a price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) of 26, which is below many of the other large technology players, and is actually below the current S&P 500 average of 29.
The company needs to continue growing to justify this valuation, but you might not find a better big-tech stock to buy than Alphabet right now.
Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA +0.53%) (BRKB +0.30%) and the Dow Jones Industrial Average have a lot in common. Berkshire is one of the most well-respected conglomerates in the world, while the Dow is one of the most well-respected market indexes in the world.
Both have a deep-rooted history and own some of the largest, most prominent companies in the U.S. In fact, there's actually quite a bit of overlap, as former Berkshire CEO Warren Buffett and current CEO Greg Abel have steered Berkshire's capital into several Dow companies.
Nearly 59% of Berkshire's stock portfolio sits in five Dow stocks. This is my top pick right now.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
1. Apple -- 21% of portfolio The consumer tech giant Apple (AAPL -1.27%) is a Buffett pick through and through. Buffett allegedly began buying Apple stock after seeing how distraught his friend became when he lost his iPhone, Apple's blockbuster product.
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Buffett began buying Apple in 2016 and at one point built the position to roughly 40% of Berkshire's massive portfolio. While Apple possesses many qualities of a typical Buffett stock, including an incredible brand and tremendously strong moat, one thing that must have stood out to Buffett is the amount of share repurchases the company conducts.
Between the beginning of 2016, when Berkshire first purchased Apple, and 2025, Apple repurchased over $700 billion worth of stock.
2. American Express -- 15% Berkshire's second-largest position, American Express (AXP -2.37%), is one of Buffett's longest holdings.
Berkshire acquired the bulk of its Amex position in the early 1990s and has let it appreciate. It's now collecting hundreds of millions in dividends annually. Amex has also established an incredible brand, and its credit cards have become a symbol of status.
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Plus, the company has an excellent business model. The credit card business, which is often perceived as a higher-risk category by investors, serves an affluent clientele that is typically more resilient during economic downturns. Meanwhile, the company's closed-loop payments network captures fees on every Amex transaction, creating a strong stream of annual recurring revenue.
3. Coca-Cola -- 9.3% Berkshire began purchasing the iconic beverage company Coca-Cola (KO -1.25%) in the late 1980s. Similar to Amex, the position now yields hundreds of millions in annual dividends.
In fact, Coca-Cola is a Dividend King, meaning it has paid and increased its annual dividend for at least 50 years. Coca-Cola is on year 64 and counting. Coca-Cola is viewed as a high-quality consumer staples stock, a category that tends to perform better during market turbulence and economic struggles.
The company has greatly diversified its product line beyond soda and now has many brands in different beverage categories.
4. Alphabet -- 8.6% Buffett initiated Berkshire's Alphabet (GOOG -6.88%) (GOOGL -7.12%) position only last year, but Abel has greatly expanded it. Berkshire purchased over $10 billion in Alphabet Class A and Class C shares in the first quarter of the year, and then followed that up by purchasing another $10 billion in a private placement.
It's an interesting move because Alphabet is a clear bet on artificial intelligence, and the company is expected to spend as much as $190 billion in capital expenditures on AI-related infrastructure.
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Berkshire had seemingly been ignoring these bets in recent years and hoarding cash, but Buffett recently said that Alphabet has a tremendous track record for generating high returns on capital. The company also operates many other strong tech businesses that can thrive even if AI is not as successful as expected.
5. Chevron -- 4.5% Since the pandemic, Buffett and the Berkshire team have loaded up on energy stocks and assets, and Chevron (CVX +0.75%) now accounts for 4.5% of Berkshire's equity portfolio.
Buffett and his team may have realized that oil and gas dependence isn't going anywhere as power demand surges. They may also see U.S. oil as a good hedge against geopolitical risks, which turned out to be a prudent assumption, given what has happened to oil prices this year as a result of the Iran war.
Of these five stocks, I like Apple the best right now. The stock has risen nearly 21% this year, beating the broader market and many of its peers in the "Magnificent Seven."
While the hyperscalers poured hundreds of billions into AI capex, Apple largely stayed on the sidelines, choosing to position its AI strategy differently. At times, it certainly seemed like Apple's AI strategy lagged its peers', but the company is now being rewarded for its patience.
What's more, Apple can still benefit from AI by playing a key role in the AI ecosystem. It will be able to bring AI to consumers through many of its hardware products. People will be able to access large language models and other AI tools through Apple products, likely generating significant referral revenue for Apple.
More AI use on Apple products could also increase iCloud usage, leading to better monetization of Apple's cloud storage.
Warren Buffett built Berkshire Hathaway (BRKB -0.05%) by avoiding things he did not understand, and for the most part, that has kept the company on the sidelines of the AI stock frenzy.
Yet Berkshire may have more AI exposure than it appears, and it comes from an unlikely place: not a chipmaker, but one of its wholly owned subsidiaries, Berkshire Hathaway Energy. This sprawling collection of regulated utilities is quietly turning into a backdoor winner of the artificial intelligence boom.
Image source: Getty Images.
How a utility becomes an AI winner The connection is simple once you see it. AI data centers are astonishingly hungry for electricity, and someone has to generate and deliver that power. Berkshire Hathaway Energy owns utilities across the country, including MidAmerican in Iowa, NV Energy in Nevada, and PacifiCorp in the West, and they are watching demand surge.
In Iowa, a cluster of mega data centers now accounts for roughly 8% of peak electricity load, and management expects data center consumption to keep climbing for years.
Here is why that matters for profits. Regulated utilities make money in two reinforcing ways. They sell more electricity as demand rises, and, more importantly, they earn a regulated return on the capital they invest to serve that demand. Berkshire Hathaway Energy is in the middle of a roughly $34 billion capital plan to build out generation, storage, and transmission, and every dollar of approved investment becomes a base on which it earns steady profits for decades.
Berkshire's own CEO, Greg Abel, who ran this business, told shareholders that about half of its energy operations are now addressing AI-related power needs. That is a striking statement for a company usually associated with power lines and pipelines, not silicon.
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Some things to consider I would keep expectations measured. Utilities grow slowly and swallow enormous amounts of capital, and their returns depend on regulators approving rate increases, which is never guaranteed. Berkshire Hathaway Energy also carries real liabilities, including wildfire exposure at PacifiCorp that has cost it dearly. And because Berkshire is so vast, even a thriving energy unit will not move the overall stock the way a hot chip stock might. This is a slow, steady contributor, not a moonshot.
The lesson here is that AI's beneficiaries extend far beyond the obvious names. Berkshire may have barely touched AI stocks, but through Berkshire Hathaway Energy it owns a genuine stake in the electricity boom powering the entire movement. For shareholders, it is a reminder that Berkshire's famous caution does not mean missing the trend entirely. Sometimes the smartest AI exposure is not in the chips at all, but in the unglamorous business of keeping them running.
The pitch for the VistaShares Target 15 Berkshire Select Income ETF (NYSEARCA:OMAH) is almost too clever to ignore. You get a portfolio built around Warren Buffett’s publicly disclosed equity book, layered with a monthly cash distribution aiming for a 15% annualized yield. Berkshire Hathaway itself famously pays no dividend, so OMAH is essentially promising to bolt an income stream onto Buffett’s stock picks and hand you a check every month. For retirees who love the holdings but hate the zero yield, it sounds like a workaround Buffett himself refused to build.
Look under the hood, and OMAH does mirror the greatest hits. As of the April 2026 filing, the fund held Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL | AAPL Price Prediction) at 9.97% of net assets, Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.B) itself at 8.99%, and American Express (NYSE:AXP) at 8.35%, with meaningful slugs of Occidental Petroleum (NYSE:OXY), Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO), Chevron (NYSE:CVX), Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), Moody’s (NYSE:MCO), and Kraft Heinz (NASDAQ:KHC). That is a recognizable Berkshire silhouette. Total net assets sat near $748.6 million, so this is a real fund with real scale.
Where the 15% Actually Comes From Here is the part the marketing skims over. Those underlying holdings throw off maybe 1% to 2% in cash dividends. The rest of the 15% target has to come from somewhere, and the somewhere is a short-dated call-writing overlay plus, when the math is short, return of capital. The N-PORT snapshot shows 74 derivative positions, structured as call spreads and outright short calls against the biggest names in the book. Selling calls generates premium. It also caps how much you can participate when a stock rips higher.
The VistaShares prospectus is refreshingly blunt about the rest. Distributions “may include amounts classified as return of capital,” which the document defines as “a return of a shareholder’s invested capital rather than income or profits.” It goes further: “To the extent that distributions exceed the Fund’s total returns, such payments will reduce the Fund’s net asset value.” If the strategy does not earn the 15%, the fund fills the gap by handing you back your own money and calling it a distribution. Do that long enough and NAV grinds lower, which means each future 15% target is being calculated off a smaller base.
What OMAH’s Returns Actually Show OMAH launched in March 2025. Since inception, the ETF has paid monthly, most recently $0.23138 per share on June 30, 2026, with trailing 12-month distributions totaling $2.83514. On a total-return basis (dividends reinvested), OMAH is up about 16% since its March 5, 2025 launch, and shares closed recently at roughly $19. Over that same stretch, Berkshire’s own B shares are down roughly 4%, so the income overlay has actually rescued a stretch where owning Buffett directly hurt.
Fine. But zoom out and the mechanics still bite. The 0.98% expense ratio is steep for what is, at its core, a Berkshire clone plus a call-writing program. And the capped upside is not theoretical. When AAPL or GOOGL (NASDAQ:GOOGL) runs past the short strike, OMAH surrenders the difference. Over a normal Buffett-holdings decade, that giveback compounds.
Who This Fits, and Who It Fools OMAH earns a spot in a portfolio only if you truly want monthly cash from a Berkshire-flavored basket and you accept two things. The 15% is a target rather than a guarantee, and part of it is often your own principal being recycled with a nicer label. For a retiree carving out a 5% to 10% income sleeve, that trade can be worth it, particularly in flat years for Berkshire.
For anyone treating the 15% as safe yield or expecting the total return of holding BRK.B outright over a long horizon, look elsewhere. A cheaper large-cap dividend ETF, or simply owning BRK.B and selling shares as needed, will usually get you closer to Buffett’s actual compounding, minus the return-of-capital sleight of hand.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
When Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA 0.15%)(BRKB 0.33%) disclosed a position in tech giant Alphabet (GOOG 1.47%)(GOOGL 1.39%) last year, many people assumed it was a big sign of a changing of the guard at Berkshire, with Greg Abel about to take over as CEO from Warren Buffett (Abel formally took over at the start of 2026).
Ironically, however, it turns out that Buffett was the one who initiated the move to invest in Alphabet, admitting to it in a recent interview. For investors, it may come as a startling revelation, given that Buffett typically avoids tech and instead invests in businesses that he knows and understands very well.
While the move may be a surprising one, it underscores a larger theme, which is that many top tech stocks have become so large and their businesses are so broad that investors don't need to have a strong tech background to understand them and be able to confidently invest in them.
Image source: Getty Images.
Buffett has invested in tech stocks before Tech stocks aren't exactly foreign to Buffett. For years, Apple has been Berkshire's largest holding and a business that Buffett has been fond of. To a lesser and smaller extent, Amazon has also found its way into Berkshire's portfolio.
While these are considered tech stocks, they operate businesses, such as Alphabet, that Buffett and average consumers are highly familiar with. They aren't incredibly complex businesses, such as those involved in quantum computing, where it may be difficult to understand how they work, why they work, or why they're likely to succeed. Businesses like these are more relatable and easier to understand, making them more accessible to average investors.
It's critical for investors to know what they're investing in Buffett says, "Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing." It's important, whether someone's considering investing in one of the "Magnificent Seven" stocks or a highly specialized tech company, to understand the core business and its strengths and weaknesses before buying it. Failing to understand it can expose an investor to risks they weren't aware of.
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Alphabet, a leading tech company, isn't so specialized that people aren't familiar with how it works. Google Search and YouTube generate the bulk of the company's ad revenue. While there are other areas of its business, including cloud computing and robotaxis, its bread and butter centers around those two highly valuable assets. Buffett, recognizing the dominance that Alphabet has in its industry and the strong moat the company possesses, clearly recognized what many tech investors have known for a long time: it's a great growth stock to own.
David Jagielski, CPA has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, and Berkshire Hathaway. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Key Takeaways Berkshire Hathaway held $397.38B in cash and Treasury bills as of March 31, 2026.Insurance float and steady operating earnings help expand Berkshire Hathaway's investable funds.Berkshire Hathaway uses liquidity for acquisitions, equities, buybacks and subsidiary funding. Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B - Free Report) held a massive cash reserve of approximately $397.38 billion as of March 31, 2026, consisting of $58.12 billion in cash and cash equivalents and $339.26 billion in short-term U.S. Treasury bills. Rather than representing idle capital, this liquidity provides strategic optionality, enabling Berkshire to remain resilient, flexible and prepared to act decisively when compelling opportunities arise.
The conglomerate has built this reserve through decades of disciplined capital allocation. Its insurance operations generate substantial “float”—premiums collected before claims are paid—that serves as a relatively low-cost source of capital. Growth in the insurance business continues to expand this pool of investable funds. Meanwhile, steady earnings from wholly owned businesses, including BNSF Railway, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, and its manufacturing and consumer subsidiaries, generate consistent cash flows. Proceeds from selective equity sales and management’s willingness to remain patient when valuations appear elevated have further strengthened Berkshire’s liquidity.
Berkshire uses this cash to maintain a substantial buffer against insurance obligations, pursue acquisitions when high-quality businesses become attractively valued, invest in public equities during market dislocations, repurchase its shares when they trade below intrinsic value and fund the capital requirements of its operating subsidiaries without depending heavily on external financing.
This exceptional financial flexibility represents a durable competitive advantage, strengthening Berkshire’s resilience and enhancing its ability to create value across market cycles.
What About BRK.B’s Competitors?Chubb Limited (CB - Free Report) and The Travelers Companies (TRV - Free Report) are two other notable companies in the insurance space.
Chubb Limited’s disciplined approach to capital deployment emphasizes strong underwriting, prudent reserve practices and selective acquisitions to broaden its global presence and enhance specialty capabilities. Chubb also prioritizes long-term value creation through consistent shareholder returns via dividends and buybacks, while investing in technology and risk management to drive sustainable growth.
The Travelers Companies deploys capital prudently by focusing on disciplined underwriting, accurate risk assessment, and data-informed pricing, ensuring stable profitability and financial resilience. Travelers drives long-term value through continued investments in technology and analytics, while consistently returning excess capital to shareholders via dividends and share buybacks.
BRK.B’s Price PerformanceShares of BRK.B have lost 2.5% year to date, underperforming the industry.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
BRK.B’s Expensive ValuationBRK.B trades at a price-to-book value ratio of 1.45, in line with the industry average. It has a Value Score of C.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
Estimate Movement for BRK.BThe Zacks Consensus Estimate for BRK.B’s second-quarter 2026 EPS has moved 5 cents north in the past 30 days, while that for the third quarter has witnessed no movement in the same time frame. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2026 and 2027 EPS has moved 5 cents and 4 cents north, respectively, in the past 30 days.
Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA 0.36%) (BRKB 0.33%) is not as technology-shy as it once was. Over the past few decades, the holding company, led by Warren Buffett until his retirement in 2025, has increased its exposure to tech stocks.
Currently, this includes not just its large position in Apple (AAPL +0.33%), but also a burgeoning position in Alphabet (GOOG 1.46%) (GOOGL 1.39%), parent company of Google and YouTube. Many would also classify both of these "Magnificent Seven" stocks as artificial intelligence plays.
However, some will debate whether these represent "pure-play" AI stocks in the same sense that names like Nvidia or Palantir do. But Berkshire Hathaway has AI exposure in other ways, namely, through one of its wholly owned operating subsidiaries.
Berkshire bought this company many years ago and, for a while, considered it an unsuccessful acquisition. Yet thanks to the data center proliferation, Berkshire Hathaway's 2016 purchase of Precision Castparts for $37.2 billion is starting to look like a winning move.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
From one specialty market to another Based in Portland, Oregon, Precision Castparts makes specialty metal components for the aerospace and industrial sectors. This aerospace exposure may have been why Buffett and Berkshire saw the company as a buy in 2016, but during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, even Berkshire Hathaway admitted that it was an ill-fated deal.
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That year, Buffett's holding company wrote down nearly $10 billion in goodwill related to the Precision Castparts purchase, citing the subsidiary's diminished value due to the pandemic's impact on air travel and, hence, demand for aerospace.
Now, however, the situation has improved dramatically. Beyond a rebound in aerospace demand, chalk up Precision Castparts' improved performance to another factor: the AI data center boom. As hyperscalers turn to gas-powered turbines to power data centers, and as these turbines use similar components to those in jet engine turbines, Precision Castparts, one of just a few companies in this niche industry, is cashing in big-time.
After generating just $900 million in annual operating cash flow during the pandemic-era slowdown of 2021, last year, Precision reported $2.4 billion in operating cash flow. For reference, the company's annual operating cash flow was around $1.7 billion just prior to its acquisition by Berkshire.
The takeaway for Berkshire and its AI exposure Make no mistake: Precision's indirect AI exposure by no means turns Berkshire Hathaway into a "pure-play" AI stock. The trillion-dollar conglomerate's interests in sectors like insurance dwarf its exposure to the technology sector, let alone to the AI megatrend.
Still, this opportunity didn't emerge from Berkshire chasing trends. Berkshire bought Precision Castparts, sensing that the company had a deep economic moat. Recent developments validate this thesis. Precision's edge in turbine components opened the door to the data center opportunity.
This takeaway can be applied to Berkshire. By purchasing high-quality assets and investments at fair prices and holding them for the long term, Berkshire is well positioned to benefit from emerging economic trends.
Only time will tell whether Greg Abel, Warren Buffett's successor, increases Berkshire's AI exposure. Yet if it continues to prioritize long-term quality over trends, similar situations to those at Precision Castparts could emerge.
Founders often exert a lasting influence on the companies they establish, shaping their strategic direction, culture and long-term goals. Driven by conviction and personal commitment, founder-leaders are typically more willing to accept calculated risks, navigate uncertainty and pursue unconventional opportunities that professional managers may overlook. Their organizations often embody their values and vision, creating a distinctive identity that can support durable growth. Currently, about 11% of large-cap U.S. companies are founder-led.
Despite representing less than 5% of the S&P 500, founder-led businesses exert considerable influence on the global economy. Visionary leaders such as Elon Musk, Warren Buffett, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates have reshaped industries and built some of the world’s most valuable enterprises. Companies such as NVIDIA (NVDA - Free Report) , Amazon (AMZN - Free Report) , Meta Platforms, Tesla, Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B - Free Report) , Alphabet and Netflix illustrate the enduring strength of founder-driven leadership. Together, these businesses account for nearly 15% of the S&P 500’s market capitalization, with technology firms dominating the group.
Many founder-led companies originate from innovative ideas centered on technological progress and long-term market relevance. During their early stages, founders often confront investor skepticism and depend on personal savings or bootstrapping before securing external funding. Even after their businesses expand, many retain substantial ownership stakes, keeping their interests closely aligned with those of shareholders.
However, founder-led companies also carry risks. Founders may be reluctant to delegate authority and often take on multiple responsibilities to maintain control over their vision. While this hands-on leadership can preserve strategic consistency, it may constrain scalability and limit access to specialized expertise. Nevertheless, research suggests that founder-led businesses often outperform their peers. According to The Motley Fool report, publicly traded companies still managed by their founders delivered average annual returns of 25% over the past decade, compared with 14% for the S&P 500.
Our Founder-Run Companies Screen makes it easy to identify high-potential stocks. Currently, stocks like NVIDIA, Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, Palantir Technologies (PLTR - Free Report) and Dell Technologies (DELL - Free Report) look appealing.
Ready to uncover more transformative thematic investment ideas? Explore 39 cutting-edge investment themes with Zacks Thematic Screens and discover your next big opportunity.
5 Founder-Run Companies to Add to Your PortfolioNVIDIA, with a market capitalization of approximately $5 trillion, is a global leader in visual computing and the pioneer of the graphics processing unit (GPU). NVIDIA, once best known for its dominance in PC graphics, has successfully expanded into artificial intelligence-driven technologies powering high-performance computing, gaming, and immersive virtual environments.
CEO Jensen Huang emphasizes that accelerated computing and generative AI are reshaping not only the tech sector but industries across the globe. The company has leveraged this transformation to build multiple billion-dollar businesses in areas such as gaming, healthcare, automotive and robotics. Its Hopper 200 architecture, along with the forthcoming Blackwell GPU platform, is specifically designed to support the demanding workloads of large language models, recommendation systems, and other generative AI applications.
A key driver of NVIDIA’s growth is its data center segment. As enterprises increasingly adopt cloud-based infrastructure, demand for data centers continues to surge worldwide. Major cloud providers like Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet are rapidly expanding their capacity, fueling strong and sustained demand for NVIDIA’s cutting-edge GPU technologies.
NVDA currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
Amazon, with a market capitalization of approximately $2.3 trillion, is one of the largest e-commerce providers, with sprawling operations in North America, now spreading across the globe. Its online retail business revolves around the Prime program, well-supported by the company's massive distribution network. Jeff Bezos, the founder, serves as the executive chairman.
Continued investments in AI, logistics automation and cloud infrastructure position Amazon to capitalize on secular growth across industries. Its vast ecosystem strengthens customer retention and network effects, creating significant competitive barriers.
Expansion into emerging international markets offers additional e-commerce growth opportunities, while diversification across AWS, advertising and streaming broadens revenue sources and reduces dependence on retail. Improving operating efficiency and a growing contribution from higher-margin businesses should support margin expansion, earnings growth and attractive long-term shareholder returns. It carries a Zacks Rank #2.
Berkshire Hathaway, with a market capitalization of $1.1 trillion, is one of the largest property and casualty insurance companies with diverse business activities. Warren Buffett, after stepping down as CEO, still serves as the chairman of this conglomerate. Greg Abel is the CEO presently.
The company’s insurance operations serve as the cornerstone of its business model and remain a key growth engine. Continued insurance business growth fuels an increase in float, which effectively serves as an interest-free source of capital that can be invested elsewhere.
Beyond insurance, Berkshire’s diverse portfolio generates steady cash flows and supports resilience against sector-specific volatility. The company adheres to a disciplined, value-oriented investment philosophy focused on acquiring undervalued assets with durable long-term potential. The company has increased investments in Japanese trading houses, reduced stakes in select payment companies and expanded its airline-related investments. Its planned $6.8 billion acquisition of Taylor Morrison Home Corp. further underscores confidence in the long-term growth potential of the U.S. housing market.
This Zacks Rank #2 company has also been actively reshaping its equity portfolio, emphasizing management’s focus on stable, cash-generating assets that support future share buybacks and reinvestment.
Palantir Technologies, currently valued at roughly $318.6 billion, develops advanced software platforms for intelligence, defense, and enterprise operations. Founded in 2003 by Alex Karp, Peter Thiel, Stephen Cohen and Joe Lonsdale, the company has become a key technology partner for the U.S. intelligence and defense communities. Karp currently serves as executive chairman.
Palantir’s AI strategy is built around its core platforms, Foundry and Gotham, which support mission-critical operations and advanced analytics. Unlike many AI competitors still operating in pilot phases, Palantir has focused on delivering scalable, production-ready solutions. Its emphasis on practical AI deployment—including autonomous agents and integrated operational systems—has helped establish a strong competitive edge in both government and commercial markets.
The company has also strengthened its standing through close alignment with U.S. defense priorities, reinforcing its reputation as a trusted national security partner. Its modular sales model allows customers to adopt individual platform components before committing fully, reducing implementation barriers and supporting growth in the U.S. commercial sector. Additionally, this Zacks Rank #2 company promotes enterprise AI adoption through AIP boot camps that provide hands-on demonstrations and training for prospective clients. For 2026, Palantir projects revenues between $7.65 billion and $7.66 billion.
Dell Technologies, with a market capitalization of approximately $249.5 billion, is a global leader in servers, storage systems, and personal computers. Founded by Michael Dell, the company is well-positioned to benefit from renewed demand tied to the ongoing PC refresh cycle.
Dell serves enterprise customers across on-premise, cloud, and edge environments with a broad portfolio of infrastructure solutions. Its advanced storage offerings, including PowerProtect Data Domain and PowerScale, incorporate AI-driven ransomware detection capabilities that enhance cybersecurity and operational resilience. The company has also emerged as a major supplier of AI-optimized servers and data center infrastructure, supported by rising enterprise demand for AI training and inference workloads.
This Zacks Rank #1 company continues to benefit from accelerating digital transformation and increasing adoption of generative AI technologies. Its expanding lineup of AI-focused servers, combined with strategic partnerships with NVIDIA and AMD, further strengthens its position in the AI infrastructure market. Strong cash generation and disciplined capital allocation also reflect the company’s healthy financial profile.
Management raised fiscal 2027 revenue guidance to $165-$169 billion and lifted expected AI server revenues to about $60 billion.
One of the wealthiest people in America is about to give away (almost) his entire fortune. Warren Buffett, legendary investor and longtime CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA 0.34%)(BRKB 0.42%), announced on Tuesday that he will donate his entire $140 billion of Berkshire stock to charity.
Let's look at why Buffett's stock donations are a big deal, and whether they could affect Berkshire shareholders.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
How will Warren Buffett's stock donations work? In a news release on July 14, Buffett announced that he was converting 8,000 Berkshire Hathaway Class A shares into 12 million Berkshire Hathaway Class B shares. That's a ratio of about 1,500 Class B shares per Class A share.
Out of those 12 million Class B shares, he donated:
9 million shares to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation (named for his late wife) 1 million shares to the Sherwood Foundation (managed by his daughter, Susie) 1 million shares to the Howard G. Buffett Foundation (managed by his son, Howard) 1 million shares to the NoVo Foundation (managed by his son, Peter) Based on the July 13 closing prices of $496.85 per Berkshire Hathaway Class B share and $744,850 per Class A share, Buffett's donation of 12 million Class B shares was worth about $5.96 billion. Following those donations, Buffett still owns 1,162 Class B shares (worth about $577,340) and 188,290 Class A shares (worth about $140.25 billion).
In the news release, Buffett also announced, "My goal is to dispose of all of my Berkshire shares within about eight years" -- by Dec. 31, 2034.
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Will Buffett's donations hurt Berkshire's stock price? Buffett deciding to donate his Berkshire shares should not be considered a bullish or bearish signal for the future of the company's stock price. He's not selling the shares; he's just transferring them to a new owner. Buffett's philanthropic donations are unlikely to cause any major changes in Berkshire's share price.
And even if Buffett were selling all 12 million of those Class B shares, that would amount to only about 0.85% of the company's 1.4 billion shares outstanding. That's not a big enough shift in volume to drive down the share price.
Berkshire Hathaway shareholders ought to be more concerned about the company's long-term underperformance compared to the S&P 500 index. In the past 10 years, the S&P 500 has delivered total returns of 314%, while Berkshire has delivered gains of about 235%.
BRK.B Total Return Level data by YCharts
Buffett is one of the most successful investors of all time, and his philanthropy is a generous capstone to his career. But it's not necessarily bad news for Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. Instead of worrying about the effects of Buffett's $140 billion of stock donations, shareholders should hope that new CEO Greg Abel can deliver some stronger future gains.
Warren Buffett has a confession: He missed the boat on Alphabet (GOOG 2.17%)(GOOGL 2.05%).
The 95-year-old chairman of Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA 0.34%)(BRKB 0.42%) told CNBC on Wednesday that he personally initiated his company's investment in the Google parent. He also admitted he should have bought in years ago, back when Alphabet was "asset-light and a markets darling."
So, Buffett is making up for lost time. Berkshire now holds roughly $31 billion in Alphabet stock: about $21 billion in public shares, plus a $10 billion private placement that was part of Alphabet's $80 billion equity raise in June. At this point, it's the fifth-largest holding in Berkshire's portfolio, behind Apple, American Express, Coca-Cola, and Bank of America.
Close-up photo of Berkshire Hathaway chairman, Warren Buffett. Image source: The Motley Fool.
A trillion dollars here, a trillion dollars there The timing is notable. Bond markets are getting nervous about artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure spending. Tech titans spent roughly $1 trillion on data centers last year, and a Motley Fool research report shows construction plans totaling $4 trillion from now to 2030.
According to Apollo Global Management, coverage ratios for hyperscaler bonds dropped from nearly 5x in February to under 2x in July.
In other words, investor appetite for AI-related bonds has cooled significantly; back in February, buyers wanted 5 times as many bonds as were offered, but by July, that ratio had dropped to less than double. The mood is still bullish, but significantly less than before.
The "who holds the risk if AI returns are delayed" question is getting louder. It's like a trillion-dollar game of hot potato.
Why Alphabet's approach to funding AI is different Buffett's answer, apparently, is that Alphabet won't be the one left holding the bag.
Unlike competitors leaning on bonds, private credit, and off-balance-sheet structures to fund data centers, Alphabet raised equity. That's dilutive to shareholders, but it doesn't saddle the company with debt service. Buffett isn't lending money to the AI build-out. He's buying an ownership stake in a company he thinks will outlast most of the competition as the AI boom plays out.
"They're more likely to be a winner based on their record than probably 90% or 95% of what gets merchandised through Wall Street," Buffett said.
That's not exactly a ringing endorsement of the broader AI financing boom, but a clear vote of confidence for Alphabet.
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Fifth place in Berkshire's portfolio is still pretty good Still, Buffett tempered expectations. "I would say that I don't like it as well as at least four or five other businesses that we own," he said.
Even so, the Google parent is in great company. Berkshire's larger holdings are all world-class companies with long histories of wealth creation.
Alphabet's fundamentals support Buffett's confidence. Alphabet posted $110 billion in first-quarter 2026 revenue, up 22% year over year. Google Cloud grew 63%, and its backlog nearly doubled to more than $460 billion.
Buffett's bet suggests he thinks Alphabet can spend more than $180 billion on data centers in 2026 and still come out ahead. Not everyone financing the AI race will be able to say the same. Warren Buffett is buying Alphabet in 2026, and you should consider following his lead.
American Express is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. Bank of America is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. Anders Bylund has positions in Alphabet and American Express. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, American Express, Apple, and Berkshire Hathaway. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Last year, Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA 0.34%) (BRKB 0.42%) made a big investment that seemed out of place to many investors who follow the company and its chairman, Warren Buffett, closely. The company bought about $4 billion worth of Alphabet (GOOG 2.06%) (GOOGL 2.05%).
The size of the investment suggested Buffett, who historically avoids technology stocks, was behind the purchase. Since Greg Abel took over as CEO at the start of the year, he has made Alphabet one of Berkshire's largest investments, putting another $23 billion (or more) into the stock. So, it was reasonable to think Abel had used his influence to initiate the position last year.
But Buffett put any speculating to rest. "I initiated it," he disclosed in a recent interview with CNBC. And while he dodged further questions on his investment thesis on Alphabet, he provided an indication of what he's looking for in an investment. Here's what he likes about Alphabet.
Former Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett. Image source: The Motley Fool.
What is a good business, according to Warren Buffett? Warren Buffett's investment strategy boils down to buying wonderful businesses at a fair price. There are two key components to that: 1. identifying a wonderful business, and 2. determining a fair price.
Buffett shared exactly what he thinks makes a good business. "The trick is ... to find businesses that are going to earn high returns on capital for an extended period of time."
Buffett calls out several of Berkshire's longtime holdings as examples. American Express earns a much higher return on equity (which is often what Buffett's referring to when he says "return on capital") than other banks. Buffett points out that Amex achieves its 34% ROE without taking on additional risk relative to other banks that generate returns in the low teens on average.
Why Alphabet fits that definition now For a long time, Buffett and his longtime vice chairman, Charlie Munger, said they wouldn't buy Google, as the company was known before it changed its name to Alphabet. The two explained at Berkshire's 2012 shareholder meeting that they just didn't understand the business well enough to invest in it.
"I made a mistake," Buffett said with a wry smile when asked why he didn't like the company back then. "But Charlie ... he just pounded the idea that it wasn't a good business just because it was doing sexy things or whatever it might be but it wasn't earning real cash or be expected to do it in a very short period of time."
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But Alphabet has blossomed into a massive cash-generating machine. Even after accounting for the large amounts of stock-based compensation, Alphabet is generating substantial cash from its operating activities: about $150 billion over the last 12 months. Alphabet had been using significant amounts of cash to offset stock-based compensation and return excess cash to shareholders through share repurchases, but a major change in the business over the last few years makes it even more appealing to Buffett.
A company generating high cash returns is great, but what's even better is if "it could redeploy it as a business," Buffett said. "It was even better than one that had the ability to earn high returns, but you couldn't deploy the excess capital of those returns."
Today, Alphabet has the opportunity to deploy hundreds of billions of capital into AI data centers. And Buffett believes it's better positioned than any of its competitors to achieve high returns on that investment.
Why Alphabet is set to achieve above-market returns Alphabet could spend more cash than it generates this year for the first time in a long time. Management expects full-year capital expenditures to be between $180 billion and $190 billion, driven by unprecedented demand for AI compute.
What might give Buffett the confidence that Alphabet can generate strong returns on that investment? Alphabet's full-stack approach to its cloud business.
Alphabet isn't just providing infrastructure for AI developers to run their models. It offers a whole platform with a software layer that makes it easy to create, manage, and deploy new AI-based software. That provides a significant level of differentiation, especially considering its Gemini family of models is among the best in the industry.
What's more, Alphabet designs its own chips, TPUs, which have gained significant traction over the last year or so. It signed a deal with Anthropic to use its chips and plans to sell them directly to select third-party customers in the near future. Using TPUs instead of more traditional GPUs gives Alphabet greater control over its supply chain and one of its highest costs, enabling it to scale faster and achieve better margins.
On top of all that, Alphabet has a massive and fast-growing backlog of contracted revenue. As of the end of the first quarter, Alphabet's remaining performance obligations totaled $462 billion, nearly doubling from the previous quarter. Management expects to realize over 50% of that backlog within the next 24 months, which will push the scale of its Google Cloud business beyond $100 billion in annual revenue.
Alphabet looks poised to produce very strong returns on its invested capital within short order. The opportunity for it to deploy all of its excess capital (and then some) in such an opportunity makes it very attractive to an investor like Buffett.
Warren Buffett has a new plan to dispose of all his Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA 0.18%) (BRKB 0.45%) shares. The legendary investor and former CEO of Berkshire owns about 188,000 Class A shares of the conglomerate he built over five decades, as well as more than 1,100 Class B shares. Those shares mean Buffett's net worth is approximately $150 billion, making him one of the world's wealthiest individuals.
Image source: Getty Images.
In 2006, Buffett pledged to gradually give away all his Berkshire stock to philanthropic foundations. This week, he announced a plan to accelerate that process and also changed the recipients of all that wealth, saying in a Berkshire news release dated July 14, "My goal is to dispose of all of my Berkshire shares within about eight years."
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Buffett said his remaining shares will be donated to four foundations, three of which are run by his children and one dedicated to his late wife, Susan Thompson Buffett.
In addition, Buffett is skipping his annual donation to the Gates Foundation. According to reports in The Wall Street Journal, the change to that charity is due to Microsoft founder Bill Gates' interactions with the disgraced late financier Jeffrey Epstein. Buffett is awaiting the Gates Foundation's review of its past interactions with Epstein before he resumes any additional gifts to the charity.
Matthew Benjamin has positions in Berkshire Hathaway and Microsoft. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Berkshire Hathaway and Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Since Greg Abel took over as Berkshire Hathaway's (BRKA 0.34%)(BRKB 0.42%) CEO at the start of the year, investors have been watching to see what he does with the conglomerate's war chest. Filings with Japanese regulators gave an early answer last quarter.
Berkshire disclosed that its stake in trading house Mitsubishi (MSBHF 1.14%) climbed to 11.1% as of April 30. Its stake in Sumitomo (SSUMY 3.31%) reached 10.3% as of May 12, up from 9.3%. And Marubeni (MARUY 0.35%) is on the list, too.
Berkshire's buying has pushed its holdings in both Sumitomo and Marubeni above 10%, cementing the conglomerate's position as the largest shareholder of both companies.
These are three of the five Japanese trading houses (Itochu and Mitsui are the other two) that Berkshire began buying in 2019 under Warren Buffett, who remains chairman. The original thesis has already paid off handsomely. So why does Berkshire keep adding? To me, the numbers make the case better than any story could.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
1. Mitsubishi Mitsubishi is Berkshire's largest Japanese position. The trading houses (Japan calls them sogo shosha) are conglomerates in their own right, each owning interests in a vast array of businesses in Japan and around the world.
At the end of 2025, Berkshire owned 10.8% of Mitsubishi, a stake that cost $4.2 billion and was worth $9.2 billion, according to Berkshire's annual report. The position also paid Berkshire $273 million in dividends last year, the largest payout of the five. And the April filing shows the conglomerate kept buying anyway.
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2. Marubeni Marubeni has been Berkshire's best performer of the group. The stake cost about $1.6 billion and had grown to about $4.5 billion by the end of 2025 -- nearly a tripling. It added another $105 million in dividends last year.
Berkshire owned 9.8% of Marubeni at year-end. The latest buying lifted that above 10%.
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Abel's newest dollars, in other words, went to Berkshire's biggest winner.
3. Sumitomo Sumitomo rounds out the trio. Berkshire's position cost $1.9 billion and stood at $4.0 billion at the close of 2025, and it paid $102 million in dividends last year. The May filing put Berkshire's ownership at 10.3%, up a full percentage point.
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Impressive gains Add it all up, and Berkshire's five trading house stakes cost $15.4 billion and were worth $35.4 billion at the end of 2025. The five companies paid Berkshire a combined $862 million in dividends last year. That works out to a yield of about 5.6% on Berkshire's original cost.
The trend is worth noting, too. A year earlier, the same five positions had cost $13.8 billion and were worth $23.5 billion. So in 2025, Berkshire put about $1.6 billion of new money in, and the market value of its stakes grew by nearly $12 billion. The gap between what Berkshire paid and what it owns keeps widening.
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The funding makes the math even better. Berkshire has borrowed in Japan an amount roughly equivalent to the yen it has invested, at an average interest cost of just 1.2%. Put another way, the dividends cover the borrowing costs several times over before counting a penny of share-price appreciation.
And the strategy is still very much in use. Berkshire issued another 272.3 billion yen of senior notes in April.
There's also room to keep going. Berkshire originally agreed to keep its ownership of each company below 10%, but Buffett wrote in his February 2025 shareholder letter that as Berkshire approached the limit, the five companies agreed to relax the ceiling moderately.
"I expect that Greg and his eventual successors will be holding this Japanese position for many decades," Buffett wrote in the same letter.
And in his first annual letter as CEO, Abel put the positions on equal footing with the company's flagship stock holdings. He wrote that Berkshire views its Japanese investments as "comparable to our major U.S. holdings in importance and long-term value creation opportunity."
For Berkshire shareholders, I think the buying is an encouraging early signal. Abel's first notable moves weren't a splashy acquisition or a chase after the market's artificial intelligence (AI) trade. They were more of what already works: profitable conglomerates bought at low prices, paying growing dividends, funded with cheap fixed-rate debt.
Berkshire Hathaway's biggest stock holdings have added more than $20 billion in value this quarter, but Warren Buffett's decision to slash the Apple stake continues to weigh on the portfolio's upside.
Warren Buffett gave away about $6 billion of Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA 0.22%)(BRKB 0.38%) stock this week: 9 million Class B shares to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation and 1 million each to three foundations run by his children. The bigger number is what remains -- a stake worth about $138 billion that the 95-year-old chairman says he wants fully donated by Dec. 31, 2034.
Image source: Getty Images.
The mechanics matter here. Buffett's fortune sits in Class A shares, each convertible at any time into 1,500 Class B shares, and the conversion only works in that direction. This week's gift of 12 million B shares took 8,000 A shares to create. Buffett owned 196,317 Class A shares as of Berkshire's March proxy statement, so the roughly 188,000 that remain are worth about $138 billion at the current Class A price of about $733,000, as of this writing.
Gifts like this have been an annual event since 2006. Buffett has donated more than $47 billion of Berkshire stock to the Gates Foundation alone over that stretch. This year's shares, though, went entirely to the four family foundations.
For shareholders, the scheduled supply is smaller than it sounds. Spread over eight years, $138 billion works out to something like $17 billion of stock a year finding new owners -- at an insurance-anchored conglomerate valued around $1.1 trillion. And Berkshire can absorb some of it directly. The company repurchased $234 million of its own shares in the first quarter, and it entered the year with about $373 billion in cash and Treasury bills.
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The bigger change is control. A Class B share carries 1/10,000th of an A share's vote, so every conversion shrinks Buffett's voting power, which stood at 30.2% of the company as of the proxy. As the A shares convert and disperse, the block that has anchored Berkshire's governance for decades gradually dissolves.
The gifts don't change what Berkshire owns or earns. They change who votes. By the mid-2030s, the company Greg Abel runs will likely be one where no single shareholder holds a controlling grip -- and shareholders will have had about eight years of notice. As transitions of power go, a slow, pre-announced handover is about as gentle as it gets.
Daniel Sparks and his clients have positions in Berkshire Hathaway. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Berkshire Hathaway. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Former Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett may no longer run the company he helped build into one of the world's largest conglomerates over more than six decades. But he will still occasionally appear on CNBC to discuss the market and Berkshire's business, which he remains involved in as executive chairman. Though he's now 95 years old, the market is always eager to hear any insights offered by the Oracle of Omaha, widely considered the greatest investor of all time.
In his most recent interview on CNBC, Buffett said three words that could add some serious fuel to the artificial intelligence trade.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
Who initiated Berkshire's Alphabet position? Greg Abel began his tenure as Berkshire Hathaway CEO at the start of this year, and didn't waste much time setting his mark on things. One notable move he made was to significantly increase the conglomerate's position in Alphabet (GOOG 2.09%)(GOOGL 2.01%).
In the first quarter, Berkshire added over $10 billion to its Alphabet position. Then the company bought another $10 billion through a private placement. Across both Class A and Class C shares, Alphabet is now the fourth-largest position in Berkshire's massive equity portfolio.
Most investors, myself included, assumed Abel had chosen Alphabet as his horse, much as Buffett had made the decisions to load up on Apple over the past decade.
When Berkshire initiated its Alphabet position in 2025, when Buffett was still CEO, but many had assumed the decision was made by another Berkshire investment manager, given that Buffett and Berkshire have been very conservative in recent years.
Buffett has also hinted on numerous occasions about the market being overvalued. But during his recent CNBC interview, when asked about Berkshire's Alphabet position, he revealed, "I initiated it." He added that he regrets not buying the stock earlier.
Alphabet, of course, is making enormous bets on AI. An investment in its stock is inherently an investment in the technology.
While Alphabet is by no means the highest-valued AI stock in the market, and the company has many other successful businesses, Buffett saying he initiated this investment must mean he has some belief in the future of AI.
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Still, he referred to his core investing principles when explaining why he made that move.
"The trick in life is to find -- I mean investing -- is to find businesses that are going to earn high returns on capital for an extended period of time," Buffett said.
That's exactly what Alphabet has done, which isn't surprising given the company's success. By my calculations, Alphabet earned returns on equity (net income/shareholder equity) of roughly 31% and 32% in 2024 and 2025, respectively.
I also estimate that it earned returns on invested capital (ROIC) of roughly 39% and 32% in 2024 and 2025, respectively, assuming invested capital is equity plus net debt.
These are quite strong results, and if Alphabet continues to perform consistently, the stock should be a strong winner from here.
Buffett likes Alphabet but has concerns about AI Buffett suggested that he has confidence in Alphabet due to its strong track record. It operates an array of businesses -- cloud, search, content, and autonomous driving among them -- that all had tremendous potential before the AI revolution.
However, Buffett did say he has concerns about where the broader AI sector is heading.
"The real question with Google and all of its competitors now, because they're all laying out hundreds of billions, and that's real money," Buffett said, referring to the capital expenditures that hyperscalers are pouring into building more AI data center infrastructure. "That's the game they're playing now. They weren't playing that game with computer software."
Buffett is certainly not the only one with these concerns, and it's evident with Alphabet. ROIC declined from 39% in 2024 to 32% in 2025, largely because Alphabet took on significant debt to fund capex in 2025.
The question is, can Alphabet generate significant ROIC from these investments down the line? Only time will tell.
Ultimately, Buffett's support for Alphabet is certainly good news for the AI trade. However, this doesn't mean he has thrown his full support behind it.
My guess is Buffett and Abel see a safety buffer built into Alphabet, given how many other strong tech businesses it operates. A significant setback to the AI trend would not be good for Alphabet, but the tech giant would likely be able to navigate it.
On Dec. 31, arguably the most renowned investor of our generation, billionaire Warren Buffett, hung up his work coat for the final time. In his more than half-century as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA +0.75%)(BRKB +0.82%), the Oracle of Omaha led his company's Class A shares (BRKA) to a nearly 6,100,000% gain, outperforming the benchmark S&P 500 (^GSPC 0.51%) by well over 6,000,000%!
Even though Buffett is no longer overseeing Berkshire's day-to-day operations or its $356 billion investment portfolio, his wisdom and investing philosophies still echo through Wall Street -- and with good reason.
Although you'd struggle to find someone more steadfastly optimistic about America's future than Buffett, his views on today's stock market are less than encouraging.
Warren Buffett retired as Berkshire's CEO on Dec. 31. Image source: The Motley Fool.
Casino culture is ruining Wall Street Berkshire's now-former boss relied on a laundry list of unwritten rules when putting his money to work on Wall Street. He sought out businesses with experienced management teams, favored companies with sustainable moats, and appreciated businesses that delivered robust capital-return programs.
But above all else, he focused on the long-term and demanded value from his investments (whether he was buying pieces of a company or acquiring it). In Buffett's eyes, both of these key pieces needed for success in the stock market are currently missing.
Warren Buffett on the markets: "Since humans love to gamble so much, there's more money in actually cultivating gamblers than there are cultivating investors." https://t.co/yf0a04TmKJ pic.twitter.com/xtO2c6oX2Y
-- CNBC (@CNBC) July 15, 2026 In an exclusive CNBC interview with Becky Quick on July 15, Quick probed Buffett about his views on finding opportunities in today's market, to which he responded:
Since humans love to gamble so much, there's more money in actually cultivating gamblers than there are cultivating investors.
These final 12 words, "there's more money in actually cultivating gamblers than there are cultivating investors," are a sad but inescapable reality for today's stock market. Same-day option contracts volume has soared, courtesy of retail investors, and shades of irrational exuberance 2.0 are prevalent as investors pile into anything related to artificial intelligence infrastructure.
Image source: Getty Images.
Irrational exuberance 2.0 has taken hold While history firmly supports Buffett's long-term optimism -- the S&P 500 hasn't had a single negative rolling 20-year total return -- it also backs up his wariness of short-term gambling culture and sky-high valuations.
In a 2001 interview with Fortune magazine, Buffett referred to the market-cap-to-GDP ratio as "probably the best single measure of where valuations stand at any given moment." This ratio, arrived at by dividing the cumulative value of all public companies by U.S. gross domestic product (GDP), is now known as the Buffett indicator.
Warren Buffett Indicator hit an all-time high of 239% last week, the most expensive stock market valuation in history 🚨🚨 pic.twitter.com/NoIMxNRGkP
-- Barchart (@Barchart) June 10, 2026 On June 1, the Buffett indicator reached an all-time high of 238.5%. For context, the market-cap-to-GDP ratio has averaged closer to 88% since December 1970.
Likewise, the S&P 500's Shiller Price-to-Earnings (P/E) Ratio nearly hit 43 in early June. The other two occasions in which the Shiller P/E topped 40 were followed by declines in the S&P 500 of 49% and 25%, respectively. Value is virtually nonexistent today, and Buffett knows it!
Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
Buffett on Stock Market ValuationsThat $397 billion continues to sit on the sidelines as stocks hit record highs across many sectors.
Buffett said he fails to see value in many investments and thinks the stock market is getting closer to a casino.
"It’s tough to find values when everybody is preferring gambling," Buffett told CNBC Wednesday.
The legendary investor said the market today is driven more by speculative trading and not long-term investing.
"There are times when opportunities are just thrown at you so fast you can’t, you know, it’s unbelievable. There’s other times when you’re very, very lucky if you find one thing in a couple of years. And it should always be that the, the latter is what prevails."
Buffett said that humans like to gamble, which means there’s more money in "cultivating gamblers than there are cultivating investors."
In the first quarter, Berkshire Hathaway took new positions in three stocks, believing there was value upside in companies like Delta Air Lines, Alphabet and Macy’s. The company also sold off many old positions and took the overall investment portfolio from 42 positions to 29.
The company’s continued bet on holding cash and looking for value has the stock underperforming (-1.4%) against the S&P 500 (+10.0%) once again in 2026.
Buffett vs. Stock Market TrendsBuffett has become more outspoken about the recent stock market trends and shifting investor appetite.
In May, he compared the stock market to "a church with a casino attached." The legendary investor was critical of new investment instruments like one-day options, which he called "gambling" rather than investing.
"Robinhood has become a very significant part of the casino aspect of the casino group that has joined into the stock market in the last year or year and a half," Buffett said at the time.
Buffett said what Robinhood is doing isn’t immoral or illegal but cautioned that it is capitalizing on investors who are gambling on the stock market.
"I think the degree to which a very rich society can reward people who know how to take advantage, essentially, of the gambling instincts of the American public, the worldwide public — it’s not the most admirable part of the accomplishment."
Whether Buffett’s value discipline pays off again — or leaves Berkshire trailing a momentum-driven market — remains the open question for the rest of 2026.
Photo Courtesy: Photo Agency on Shutterstock.com
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Berkshire Hathaway first bought Alphabet Class A (GOOGL) shares in the third quarter of 2025, and later increased the position in the first quarter of 2026.
Today, Berkshire Hathaway owns 54,249,798 GOOGL shares, which were worth $15.6 billion at the end of the first quarter and the company’s seventh largest stock investment.
Berkshire also took an initial stake in Alphabet Class C shares (GOOG) in the first quarter, a position worth $1 billion at the end of the first quarter, ranking 19th in the investment portfolio.
Asked about who made the Alphabet play first between Buffett and his successor Greg Abel, the Oracle of Omaha didn’t hold back.
"I initiated it," Buffett told CNBC’s Becky Quick on Wednesday.
Buffett said he talks all the time with Abel, including since his retirement.
"I am not doing anything that he doesn’t approve of. He’s not doing anything I don’t approve of."
As the CEO, Abel is the "decider," Buffett clarified Wednesday.
Along with investing in Class A and Class C shares, Berkshire Hathaway also participated in a private placement of $10 billion from Alphabet, helping to fund the company’s future growth.
"The trick in life is to find – I mean investing – is to find businesses that are going to earn high returns on capital for an extended period of time."
Finally taking a position in Alphabet stock in 2025, Buffett has previously expressed regret for not buying the Magnificent Seven stock sooner. Berkshire Hathaway owns the Geico insurance brand and recognized early the success of Google’s advertising business through Geico ads.
While he’s a fan of Alphabet stock going forward, Buffett remains cautious on the large amount of spending being done to compete in the AI sector.
"The real question with Google and all of its competitors now, because they’re all laying out hundreds of billions, and that’s real money. That’s the game they’re playing now. They weren’t playing that game with computer software."
Buffett also said that Alphabet is not his favorite Berkshire Hathaway position or owned business.
"I would say that I don’t like it as well as at least four or five other businesses that we own."
Buffett on Apple StockAnother stock covered in his interview with CNBC was Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL), which is the largest holding in the Berkshire Hathaway investment portfolio.
Even with Tim Cook stepping down as CEO, Apple is one of Buffett’s favorite stocks.
"I know more about Apple than I knew many years ago," Buffett told CNBC.
Berkshire Hathaway holds 227,917,808 AAPL shares as of the end of the first quarter, a position tat was worth $57.8 billion at the end of March and represented 22% of the investment portfolio.
"If you’re Apple, you’ve got very, very smart people all over the world shooting and trying to figure out how to make sure that, that Apple’s future, the future is as bright as the past."
Image via Shutterstock
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ToplineLarry Page’s fortune swelled above $300 billion on Wednesday following a rise in Alphabet shares, after Warren Buffett took credit for Berkshire Hathaway’s multibillion-dollar investment in the Google parent, which has more than quadrupled over the last year.
Berkshire Hathaway disclosed its first investment in the Google parent last year.
Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Key FactsShares of Alphabet jumped 3.9% to around $373 as of Wednesday afternoon, extending a nearly 2% rise from Tuesday.
That boost in Alphabet’s stock price added $8 billion to Page’s net worth, valued at $301.7 billion, and $7.3 billion to fellow Google cofounder Sergey Brin’s net worth, estimated at $278.2 billion.
An uptick in Alphabet shares follows Buffett’s comments in a CNBC interview Tuesday morning, during which Buffett said he “initiated” Berkshire Hathaway’s first bet in Alphabet last year and admitted he “made a mistake” by not investing in the company earlier.
Buffett, 95, pointed to the growing competition Alphabet faces in the AI market and said even though Berkshire Hathaway’s Alphabet stake has grown, Apple remained one of his favorite stocks and that its “future is as bright as the past” (Apple shares rose 4% by Wednesday afternoon).
how much has berkshire hathaway invested in alphabet?Berkshire Hathaway disclosed the purchase of just over 17.8 million Alphabet shares in November, valued at $4.3 billion at the time. The investment firm expanded its bet earlier this year, adding 36.4 million more of Alphabet’s Class A shares and 3.6 million Class C shares, bringing its total holdings to about 58 million shares. That investment is now worth roughly $21 billion, but Alphabet also announced last month that Berkshire agreed to purchase $10 billion of newly issued stock to help fund Alphabet’s AI infrastructure expansion.
forbes valuationBuffett, who served as Berkshire Hathaway’s CEO before stepping down after 2025, is the 10th-richest person in the world with a fortune valued at $139.1 billion, according to Forbes’ estimates. Page and Brin rank the second- and third-wealthiest people in the world, respectively, behind Elon Musk, whose net worth exceeds $866 billion.
key backgroundAlphabet shares have outpaced the Nasdaq so far this year, rising just under 18% compared to the tech-heavy index’s 12% growth. The Google parent, like its megacap competitors, has accelerated spending to match booming demand for AI products over the last year. The firm reported annual revenue above $400 billion for the first time, citing “strong momentum” for its Google Services and Google Cloud products, including a 48% surge in cloud revenue. Spending is expected to hit as high as $185 billion for fiscal year 2026, Alphabet said, as growing demand for AI required $105 billion in capital expenditures the previous year.
further readingForbesBuffett Calls Gates’ Epstein Ties ‘Distasteful’—But Found Nothing ‘Beyond What I Could Picture Myself Doing’By Ty Roush
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In 1958, Warren Buffett paid $31,500 for a house in Omaha. Sixty-seven years later, he still lives in it. In 2025, a 43-year-old real estate professional named Matthew Rodriguez paid $50,000 for a signed book about Warren Buffett. One of those two purchases was made by the greatest investor in American history, and the cheaper one belonged to Buffett.
The $50,000 Book At the Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK-B | BRK-B Price Prediction) annual shareholders meeting on May 2-3, 2025, a silent auction offered signed copies of “60 Years of Berkshire Hathaway,” a commemorative book packed with photos, quotes, and stories from Buffett and the late Charlie Munger. Rodriguez, an Omaha native and self-described Buffett “fan boy,” watched the online leaderboard and struck about 15 minutes before close, winning a copy for $50,000. “It’s going to be a pretty priceless artifact in my library,” he told CNBC. The highest bid hit $100,000 during the online pre-meeting phase, and during the in-person Berkshire Bazaar of Bargains, more than 50 bids rolled in, some reaching $60,000. Twenty signed copies were available. During that same meeting, Buffett announced he would step down as CEO at year-end, turning the books into instant historical artifacts.
The $31,500 House Buffett bought his home at 5505 Farnam Street in 1958 for $31,500, after he and his late wife Susan had rented it for $175 a month starting in 1956. Adjusted for inflation, that purchase is roughly $318,000 to $336,700 in today’s dollars. The home is now estimated to be worth about $1.4 to $1.5 million, a roughly 4,300% nominal return. Buffett has called it his “third-best investment,” behind only his two wedding rings. “I’m happy there,” he has said. Rodriguez paid more for a signed book about Buffett than Buffett paid for the house where most of the Buffett story happened.
The Most Extraordinary Lifestyle in American Business Buffett’s fortune recently topped $140 billion, yet his base salary as Berkshire CEO sat at $100,000 for decades. His daughter buys his cars, often with cosmetic damage, to get a better price, and he logs about 3,500 miles a year. He eats breakfast at McDonald’s most mornings, spending somewhere between $2.61 and $3.17 depending on how Berkshire’s stock is doing. He used a flip phone until Tim Cook personally talked him into an iPhone in 2020. Home is a five-bedroom, two-bath Dutch Colonial on a tree-lined street in the Dundee-Happy Hollow neighborhood. No gates. No helipad.
What the House Actually Teaches The Farnam Street purchase embodies Buffett’s philosophy: buy quality at a reasonable price, hold indefinitely, and let compounding work. The 4,300% nominal return is excellent. The larger payoff was 67 years of stable, low-cost housing that freed him to compound his portfolio without distraction. As he wrote in his 2010 shareholder letter, “A house can be a nightmare if the buyer’s eyes are bigger than his wallet. I bought the right house when I bought the modest one on Farnam Street.” Omaha’s median home price today is about $275,000, per Redfin, nearly nine times what Buffett paid. The $50,000 signed book is a collectible whose value rests on continued demand for Buffett memorabilia rather than any underlying business or cash flow.
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The Most Buffett Detail of All The whole auction was for charity. Every dollar went to the Stephen Center, a homeless shelter and addiction-recovery campus in Omaha, and Buffett matched every dollar donated, turning $1.3 million in proceeds into $2.6 million of impact. Wire transfers arrived from Singapore. Checks showed up unexpectedly in the mail. “Did I ever think that we would be doing wire transfers from Singapore? I did not,” the Stephen Center’s director marveled. One Buffett mention turned an obscure local shelter into a global destination.
The same dynamic scaled up this week. On Tuesday, July 14, Buffett committed to giving away his entire remaining $140 billion Berkshire stake to four family foundations by 2034, more than twice everything he’s given in 60 years of philanthropy.
The Lesson The most valuable thing Buffett ever signed may be the 1958 check for $31,500 that bought the modest house where he quietly compounded $140 billion, then pledged nearly all of it away. Buy quality at a reasonable price. Hold it. Let compounding do the work. Avoid stretching for more house than you need. Know the difference between a collectible and an investment.
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Famed investor Warren Buffett was known for his value-investing approach, which influenced the selection of Berkshire Hathaway's investments. When Buffett's hand-picked successor, Greg Abel, took over at the start of 2026, he made significant changes to the portfolio.
Abel dumped many positions and added big names in tech and artificial intelligence, such as Google parent Alphabet. Traditionally, Buffett shied away from the technology sector. But one holdover from Buffett's days remains in the portfolio, and it sports an impressive dividend yield of more than 6% as of July 13. That stock is the Kraft Heinz Company (KHC 0.59%).
The meaty dividend makes owning shares attractive. Even so, weighing an investment in Kraft Heinz is not straightforward and requires unpacking what's going on with the company.
Image source: Getty Images.
Kraft Heinz's shortcomings Kraft Heinz was once the king of the grocery store. Iconic products, such as its Heinz ketchup and Kraft mac and cheese, were household staples. In fact, Buffett and his company helped orchestrate the 2015 merger between Heinz and Kraft.
Yet after more than a century of success, the combined company was ill-prepared for shifting consumer preferences. Shoppers are moving away from its ultra-processed foods in favor of healthier alternatives.
At the same time, the company underinvested in research and development (R&D) that could have helped it adapt to these changes, and instead opted for cost-cutting. Adding fuel to the fire, Kraft Heinz raised prices amid persistent inflation, prompting consumers to switch to cheaper supermarket private-label brands. This confluence of factors contributed to steadily declining sales.
KHC Revenue (TTM) data by YCharts.
The company originally decided the solution was to break apart its businesses. This maneuver was vehemently opposed by Buffett and Abel, prompting them to threaten to sell Berkshire Hathaway's substantial holdings.
The Kraft Heinz turnaround Fortunately for shareholders, the packaged food giant replaced its CEO with Steve Cahillane in December, who scrapped the separation plan in favor of a new strategy to galvanize growth. Kraft Heinz is injecting $600 million into R&D and marketing to win back customers. It's also adding natural ingredients to its products and streamlining operations to maximize supply chain efficiency and accelerate product rollouts.
In the short term, these changes will eat into margins. Over the long haul, this year lays the groundwork for a reversal of fortunes in 2027 and beyond. Since the strategy is new, buying its stock now is a leap of faith that a revenue rebound will eventually arrive. However, you benefit from the dividend's passive income while you wait.
Currently, the company can support dividend payouts thanks to its robust free cash flow (FCF). In its fiscal first quarter ended March 28, Kraft Heinz grew FCF by nearly 60% year over year to $0.8 billion. FCF provides insight into a company's available cash to invest in its business, pay down debt, repurchase shares, and fund dividends.
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Kraft Heinz's revitalization effort has Abel's support, which is why Berkshire Hathaway retains its holdings. The new direction under Cahillane helped the stock gain 4% year-to-date through July 13.
Yet the stock's valuation remains lower than a year ago, as indicated by its price-to-sales ratio of 1.2. This makes now a good time to purchase Kraft Heinz stock if you believe its turnaround efforts can revitalize the business over the long run.
Few investors have shaped the stock market the way Warren Buffett has. For six decades, Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK-A | BRK-A Price Prediction)(NYSE:BRK-B) transformed from a struggling textile manufacturer into a conglomerate worth well over $1 trillion, rewarding shareholders with one of the greatest long-term investment records in history. As Buffett has handed leadership of Berkshire to Greg Abel, investors have asked whether Berkshire Hathaway without the Oracle of Omaha at the helm is still worth investing in.
This week, Buffett provided another piece of that answer. In a note accompanying Berkshire Hathaway’s latest charitable donations, he revealed that all of his remaining Berkshire shares will be gone by Dec. 31, 2034. That sounds dramatic. Yet surprisingly, it says far more about Buffett’s estate planning than it does about Berkshire’s investment prospects.
Buffett Left Berkshire — Not His Faith In It According to Berkshire Hathaway’s news release yesterday, Buffett converted 8,000 Class A shares into 12 million Class B shares and donated them to four charitable organizations. The largest recipient was the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation with 9 million shares, while the Sherwood Foundation, Howard G. Buffett Foundation, and NoVo Foundation each received 1 million shares. After the donation, Buffett still owned 188,290 Class A shares and 1,162 Class B shares.
More importantly, Buffett laid out his long-term plan. He wrote that his goal is to dispose of all his Berkshire shares “within about eight years” and that, regardless of what happens, every remaining share will be donated to those four foundations by Dec. 31, 2034.
Buffett isn’t selling because he expects Berkshire to struggle. He’s donating shares as part of a philanthropic strategy he has discussed for years. Ownership is changing hands — not because Berkshire is broken, but because Buffett intends to give away nearly his entire fortune.
Greg Abel is now leading Berkshire, while the conglomerate owns dozens of operating businesses spanning insurance, energy, railroads, manufacturing, retail, and services. It also maintains one of the strongest balance sheets in corporate America, with $397.4 billion in cash.
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Berkshire’s enormous cash position gives management unusual flexibility during recessions and market panics. Historically, Buffett has used those periods to acquire businesses and invest at attractive prices. That playbook doesn’t disappear simply because ownership gradually shifts to charitable foundations.
Conversely, investors should expect those foundations to sell shares over time to fund their charitable work. That creates periodic supply, but it won’t happen all at once. Buffett’s timeline stretches through 2034, allowing distributions to occur gradually rather than flooding the market with stock.
Key Takeaway In short, Buffett’s announcement should not be mistaken for a sell signal. The legendary investor is 95 years old and exiting ownership because of philanthropy, not because he believes Berkshire’s best days are behind it. The company remains a diversified collection of high-quality businesses, backed by hundreds of billions of dollars in liquidity and a leadership team Buffett planned for years.
That said, Berkshire now trades more on Abel’s execution than Buffett’s reputation. Investors should continue monitoring his capital allocation, acquisitions, and operating performance over the coming years.
Ultimately, though, Buffett’s decision to give away every remaining share says more about his legacy than Berkshire’s future. For long-term shareholders, that’s an important distinction — and one that argues for evaluating Berkshire on its fundamentals rather than on the name at the top of the shareholder register.
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Warren Buffett, the most famous investor of all time, has announced plans to completely divest his stake in Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK) via share donations by December 31, 2034.
The 95-year-old billionaire said in a news release published on July 14 that his remaining holdings will be donated over the next eight years to four charitable foundations.
What made the announcement notable is that Buffett excluded the Gates Foundation from his annual midyear donations for the first time in two decades.
Instead, Buffett will donate 1 million Class B Berkshire shares to the Sherwood Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, and the NoVo Foundation, each run by one of his three children.
In addition, he is also donating 9 million Class B shares to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named after his late wife.
“My goal is to dispose of all of my Berkshire shares within about eight years. I have every hope that the three of them are able to carry out the disposal of my shares by December 31, 2034,” Buffett said.
Last year, the ‘Oracle of Omaha’ said he intended to accelerate charitable giving so his children could more easily manage and distribute his estate after his death. Accordingly, he donated roughly $320 million in Berkshire shares to each of his children’s foundations before pledging additional gifts of about $200 million to each later in the year.
“The goal is to have the grants grow annually to each of the three foundations managed by each of my children and the annual grant to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation grow at a somewhat greater rate,” he added.
As mentioned, however, Buffett skipped the Gates Foundation in this year’s donations after supporting it for decades. The move apparently follows renewed public scrutiny of Bill Gates’ past association with Jeffrey Epstein.
According to reports by The Wall Street Journal, the Gates Foundation commissioned a review of Gates’s interactions with Epstein and is examining future philanthropic partnership policies, with Buffett reportedly waiting for the outcome.
In a statement, the Gates Foundation also thanked Buffett for his decades of support, saying his contributions have ‘helped expand and deliver on the foundation’s mission to improve health and opportunity for people around the world.’
Featured image via Shutterstock
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For more than 130 years, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI +0.02%) has served as one of Wall Street's most-watched health barometers. It's expanded from an industrial-dominated 12-stock index to one that now houses 30 diverse, multinational businesses.
It's also an index built around change. Since May 1896, there have been 54 instances in which companies were added to or removed from the Dow. We're likely on track for another adjustment, with Nike (NKE 1.87%) primed to get the boot, and trillion-dollar conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA 0.99%)(BRKB 1.07%) ideally positioned to replace it.
Image source: Getty Images.
Nike has failed to step up as a Dow component S&P Dow Jones Indices considers several factors when adding or removing companies from the iconic Dow. Chief among them is a company's share price.
Unlike the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite, which are market-cap-weighted indexes, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is a share-price-weighted index. For example, even though Nvidia is the largest publicly traded company, it ranks 20th in influence among the 30 Dow stocks, thanks to its roughly $211 share price.
Nike closed out July 10 at $44.37 per share -- far and away the lowest share price in the Dow.
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In addition to its minimal influence, Nike has vastly underperformed since joining the index in September 2013. Whereas Wall Street's timeless index has rallied 242% since Nike's addition, the footwear and apparel specialist has gained (drum roll)... only 29%.
Nike's direct-to-consumer strategy fizzled and damaged previously profitable wholesale relationships. While this damage is fixable, S&P Dow Jones Indices is unlikely to keep Nike in the Dow as it attempts a multiyear turnaround.
Warren Buffett transformed Berkshire Hathaway into a trillion-dollar company. Image source: The Motley Fool.
It may be time for Berkshire Hathaway to shine Removing Nike from the Dow Jones Industrial Average doesn't mean a retailer necessarily has to replace it. But with six tech stocks already represented in the index, something consumer-facing would make sense.
Although Berkshire Hathaway is a financial company by nature (it's the parent of insurer GEICO) and has a nearly $349 billion investment portfolio, it also owns roughly five dozen businesses. These wholly owned assets give Berkshire exposure in retail, railroad, insurance, manufacturing, restaurants, and energy, among other industries and sectors.
Several years ago, adding Berkshire Hathaway to the Dow wouldn't have made sense. The company's lower-priced Class B shares (BRKB) were always a bit too pricey for an index that historically didn't have too many components with triple-digit price tags. Today, there are only three Dow components trading below $114 per share and just 10 below $211. Berkshire's Class B shares, which are trading at $494 as of July 10, would fit right in.
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The company that the now-retired Warren Buffett built into a trillion-dollar conglomerate also has a history of handily outperforming the S&P 500. Under Buffett's six-decade watch, Berkshire appreciated by approximately 6,100,000%!
The only hurdle I can see for Berkshire joining the Dow is its aforementioned $349 billion investment portfolio. Berkshire is already invested heavily in several Dow components, including Apple, American Express, and Alphabet. Adding it to the Dow would, essentially, concentrate the index even further in these names.
Despite these investments, it may be the logical replacement for Nike if/when S&P Dow Jones Indices gives it the boot.
Warren Buffett just made the largest trade of his life, and it has nothing to do with the stock market. On Tuesday, July 14, 2026, the 95-year-old Berkshire Hathaway chairman committed to giving away every remaining share he owns, currently worth more than $140 billion, to four family foundations by December 31, 2034. He backed it up by donating roughly $6 billion in Berkshire Class B stock (NYSE:BRK-B | BRK-B Price Prediction) the same day. For the first time since 2006, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, recipient of nearly $48 billion from Buffett over two decades, got nothing.
The $140 Billion Plan “My goal is to dispose of all of my Berkshire shares within about eight years,” Buffett said. “Of course, mortality is unpredictable, but my remaining shares will be donated to the four foundations one way or the other by December 31, 2034.” The new plan sets a hard date regardless of when he dies, replacing the old plan that left his three children to distribute his fortune within 10 years of his death.
Buffett currently holds 188,290 Class A shares and 1,162 Class B shares, worth roughly $140-150 billion. Clearing that by 2034 implies at least $17 billion in donations per year, more than double the roughly $7 billion he gave in 2025. He has pledged 99.5% of his estate to philanthropy: “My will provides that about 99.5% of my estate is destined for philanthropic usage. Nothing will go to endowments; I want the money spent on current needs.”
Tuesday’s $6 Billion and Where It Went The immediate donation totaled 12 million Class B shares, roughly $5.9-6 billion, split four ways. The Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation received 9 million shares, about $4.4-4.5 billion, by far the largest allocation. The Sherwood Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, and the NoVo Foundation each received 1 million shares, about $496-500 million. All shares were converted from Class A stock. Buffett keeps his remaining A shares, which carry nearly all of Berkshire’s voting power, preserving effective control even as his economic stake shrinks.
Who Got Left Out The Gates Foundation’s absence stands out. Buffett had donated every year since 2006, nearly 20 consecutive years and more than $47-48 billion. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that Buffett was holding back the scheduled Gates donation pending a law firm’s review. The stated reason: Bill Gates’ disclosed connections to Jeffrey Epstein. Department of Justice documents released earlier in 2026 revealed Epstein spent a decade cultivating people close to Gates, including foundation advisers.
Gates has not been accused of participating in Epstein’s illegal actions. He has said he only met Epstein because he thought it might help raise money for charitable causes, and told the House Oversight Committee he regretted the meetings. Buffett said: “He found their weakness. It might have been sex. It might be power.” The Gates Foundation responded: “The Gates Foundation is grateful to Warren Buffett for his decades of support. His gifts, totaling more than $47 billion, have helped us. The foundation continues from a position of financial strength to advance our work through 2045, supported by Bill’s $200 billion commitment.”
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What It Means for Berkshire Shareholders If you own Berkshire and just read “$140 billion in stock being distributed,” the structure matters. Buffett is transferring shares directly to foundations rather than selling them on the open market, so there is no sudden supply flood pressuring the price. The foundations will sell gradually over years to fund operations, the same pattern the Gates Foundation followed.
Governance is the real question. Greg Abel became CEO at the end of 2025, but Buffett as chairman retains effective control through his A shares. The pivotal long-term issue is who controls those A shares after Buffett departs. Berkshire’s cash pile hit a record $380 billion in Q1 FY2026 per the company’s 8-K filing, and shares are down 2.3% year to date, trading near $491.09. Given the direct-transfer structure, Tuesday’s announcement should carry no immediate negative price impact.
The Largest Philanthropic Act in History Buffett has now given more than $60-61 billion in his lifetime, with roughly $140 billion still to come, a combined commitment near $200 billion, the largest philanthropic pledge in American history. He co-founded the Giving Pledge with Bill and Melinda Gates in 2010, alongside signatories including Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, and MacKenzie Scott, which makes the Buffett-Gates rupture all the more striking in the pledge’s 16th year.
He is 95, turning 96 next month, and the deadline he set himself is eight years away. The world’s greatest investor has made one final trade, and the return he is chasing is not measured in dollars.
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In the latest trading session, Berkshire Hathaway B (BRK.B - Free Report) closed at $491.09, marking a -1.16% move from the previous day. The stock fell short of the S&P 500, which registered a gain of 0.38% for the day. Meanwhile, the Dow experienced a rise of 0.02%, and the technology-dominated Nasdaq saw an increase of 0.9%.
Heading into today, shares of the company had gained 0.27% over the past month, lagging the Finance sector's gain of 2.89% and the S&P 500's gain of 1.27%.
The investment community will be paying close attention to the earnings performance of Berkshire Hathaway B in its upcoming release. The company is expected to report EPS of $5.24, up 1.35% from the prior-year quarter. Alongside, our most recent consensus estimate is anticipating revenue of $95.3 billion, indicating a 3.01% upward movement from the same quarter last year.
For the entire fiscal year, the Zacks Consensus Estimates are projecting earnings of $20.87 per share and a revenue of $385.6 billion, representing changes of +1.21% and +3.81%, respectively, from the prior year.
Investors should also pay attention to any latest changes in analyst estimates for Berkshire Hathaway B. These revisions typically reflect the latest short-term business trends, which can change frequently. With this in mind, we can consider positive estimate revisions a sign of optimism about the business outlook.
Empirical research indicates that these revisions in estimates have a direct correlation with impending stock price performance. We developed the Zacks Rank to capitalize on this phenomenon. Our system takes these estimate changes into account and delivers a clear, actionable rating model.
The Zacks Rank system, which varies between #1 (Strong Buy) and #5 (Strong Sell), carries an impressive track record of exceeding expectations, confirmed by external audits, with stocks at #1 delivering an average annual return of +25% since 1988. Over the past month, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has shifted 0.26% upward. Currently, Berkshire Hathaway B is carrying a Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy).
Looking at valuation, Berkshire Hathaway B is presently trading at a Forward P/E ratio of 23.8. This represents a premium compared to its industry average Forward P/E of 12.02.
The Insurance - Property and Casualty industry is part of the Finance sector. This industry, currently bearing a Zacks Industry Rank of 97, finds itself in the top 40% echelons of all 250+ industries.
The Zacks Industry Rank gauges the strength of our industry groups by measuring the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks within the groups. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.
Make sure to utilize Zacks.com to follow all of these stock-moving metrics, and more, in the coming trading sessions.
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Warren Buffett is the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. Johannes EISELE / AFP via Getty Images Warren Buffett plans to donate virtually all of his remaining wealth by 2034.
The famed investor and Berkshire Hathaway chairman, who turns 96 next month and holds more than 99% of his net worth in his company's stock, shared his target in a news release on Tuesday.
"My goal is to dispose of all of my Berkshire shares within about eight years," Buffett wrote. He currently owns nearly $150 billion worth of Berkshire stock, including $6 billion of shares he intends to donate to four of his family's foundations.
Buffett, who has given away more than half of his wealth since 2006, left the Gates Foundation off his list of recipients this year for the first time in two decades. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Buffett would do so pending a review of the foundation's ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
Buffett's latest gift comprises 12 million Class B shares — 9 million to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation and 1 million each to the Sherwood Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, and the NoVo Foundation.
Last summer, Buffett donated 12.4 million Class B shares worth about $6 billion, with 9.4 million shares going to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust, 943,000 shares to the foundation named after his late first wife, and around 660,000 shares to each of his three children's foundations.
Buffett said in the news release that he hopes his kids — Susan, Howard, and Peter — can distribute all of his shares to good causes by December 31, 2034.
He added that "mortality is unpredictable," so "one way or the other," he'll donate all of his remaining 188,290 Class A shares and 1,162 Class B shares to the four foundations by that date.
"The goal is to have the grants grow annually to each of the three foundations managed by each of my children and the annual grant to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation grow at a somewhat greater rate," Buffett said.
Buffett wrote in his latest Thanksgiving letter that he would "step up" his pace of giving as his children are in their late 60s and early 70s, and he wanted them to be able to disburse "what will essentially be my entire estate" during their lifetimes.
The legendary investor, one of the world's 10 wealthiest people, retired as Berkshire CEO at the end of last year after 60 years in charge, making way for Greg Abel.
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Theron Mohamed You're currently following this author! Want to unfollow? Unsubscribe via the link in your email.
Theron Mohamed is a London-based correspondent on the Trending team at Business Insider. His coverage spans finance, investing, wealth, markets, and the economy.Theron joined BI in 2019 as a reporter at Markets Insider and rose to the rank of correspondent before moving to the Trending team in 2024. He previously covered tech, media, and telecom stocks for Investors Chronicle magazine and had a brief stint on the Financial Times' Data team. He interned at the Wall Street Journal in New York where he primarily wrote for Heard on the Street.Theron has freelanced for The Independent, The Telegraph, WIRED, and several smaller publications. He holds an undergraduate degree in geography from the London School of Economics, and a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University.Theron often covers Warren Buffett, Michael Burry, Jeremy Grantham and other top-flight investors. He also writes about the world's wealthiest people and shares financial advice from all manner of rich and successful people.Email Theron at [email protected] and follow him on X @theron_mohamed.Expertise
Corporate financeStocks and investingWealth and philanthropyBusiness historyUS economyWarren Buffett and Berkshire HathawayPopular articlesAl Pacino says he went from $50 million to broke, joining a long list of stars who've experienced money troublesAn oil tycoon sold his company for $26 billion this year — but died before the deal closedWarren Buffett drinks 5 cans of Coke a day — here's why he switched from Pepsi after nearly 50 yearsMeet the 16 people in the $100 billion club — who are jointly worth more than Amazon or Google'Big Short' investor Michael Burry kept quiet, piled into China tech, and won big with a stock bet in 2024Bill Gates' former assistant is worth $154 billion — and could soon be richer than the Microsoft cofounderHoward Schultz talked about Steve Jobs, trademarking the latte, and Starbucks' problems in a marathon interviewWarren Buffett just made a rare trip to Tokyo. Here's the story of a disastrous sushi dinner that made him swear off Japanese food forever.21 states where recession bells are ringing after unemployment jumpsWarren Buffett is building the Noah's Ark of rainy-day funds. Here's why he's stacked up more than $300 billion.The 'Shark Tank' star Kevin O'Leary warns couples not to combine finances: 'I don't care how in love you are'The Waltons are once again the world's wealthiest family, beating out Gulf royalty and fashion dynasties
(This is a special breaking news edition of the Warren Buffett Watch newsletter, news and analysis on all things Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. You can sign up here to receive it every Friday evening in your inbox.)
BUFFETT ACCELERATES DONATIONSSETS GOAL TO 'DISPOSE OF ALL' HIS SHARES IN EIGHT YEARSGIVES $6B TO FOUR FAMILY FOUNDATIONSGATES FOUNDATION CUT OFFBUFFETT ON CNBC'S 'SQUAWK' WEDNESDAY MORNINGWarren Buffett is speeding up the pace of his annual donations of Berkshire Hathaway shares to four family foundations, giving them a total of almost $6 billion now.
In a news release this morning, Buffett says, "My goal is to dispose of all of my Berkshire shares within about eight years."
CNBC's Becky Quick is sitting down with Buffett in Omaha and we will bring you that interview starting at 6 am ET tomorrow (Wednesday) on "Squawk Box."
Buffett, who will be celebrating his 96th birthday next month, now owns stock in the company with a market value of more than $140 billion.
Even without taking into account potential increases in Berkshire's stock price, that implies gifts of at least $17 billion each year, more than double the $7 billion in stock he donated last year.
In the release, Buffett says, "Of course, mortality is unpredictable, but my remaining shares will be donated to the four foundations one way or the other by December 31, 2034."
That excludes the Gates Foundation from any further donations, ending what Buffett said in 2006 would be a "lifetime pledge" of annual gifts to the charity established by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his then-wife, Melinda Gates.
Based on the schedule he set out at that time in which the number of shares decreased by 5% each year, he was due to donate almost $4.5 billion to the Gates Foundation this month.
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Last year around this time, Buffett gave the four family foundations around $1.4 billion in gifts, so it appears this year they are also getting the donation originally earmarked for the Gates group.
In this round, Buffett is giving the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named for his late first wife, 9 million Class B shares with a current value of around $4.5 billion.
The three foundations run by his children, Susie Buffett's Sherwood Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, and Peter Buffett's NoVo Foundation, will each get 1 million Class B shares worth just under $500 million.
The release does not say whether he will also be making gifts to the family foundations at Thanksgiving as he has done in the last four years, but it seems likely given his new eight-year goal.
Last year those contributions totaled around $1.3 billion.
Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal reported Buffett was holding back his scheduled donation to the Gates Foundation pending a law firm's review of the charity's ties to Jeffrey Epstein, with the results expected this summer.
In 2006, Buffett said he was "irrevocably committing to make annual gifts of Berkshire Hathaway 'B' shares throughout my lifetime" for the Gates Foundation's benefit as long as either Bill or Melinda Gates "remain alive and active in [its] policy-setting and administration."
But cracks in what had been a strong personal friendship with Bill Gates began to appear in 2021, when Buffett resigned as a foundation trustee two months after Bill and Melinda announced they had decided to end their 27-year marriage.
In 2024, Buffett told the Journal, "The Gates Foundation has no money coming after my death," following a revision of his will that made his three children the trustees of a charitable trust that will hold "99%-plus" of his wealth.
This year, revelations in the Jeffrey Epstein files about the notorious pedophile's connections to Gates put even more strain on Buffett's relationship with Microsoft's co-founder.
In March, Buffett told CNBC he has not talked to Gates "at all since the whole thing was unveiled" and "until it gets cleared up ... I just don't think it makes sense to do a lot of talking."
Asked whether we will continue to give money to the Gates Foundation, Buffett replied, "I'll wait and see what unfolds ... I don't have to make that decision today. And I haven't made it today."
"I've learned things I didn't know about something for all these years."
Over the last two decades, Buffett's Gates Foundation gifts have totaled almost $48 billion, based on the value of the shares when they were donated.
The current value of the almost 321 million shares donated to the charity is around $159 billion.
It has sold the vast majority of them over the years to help fund its operations.
QUESTIONS OR COMMENTSPlease send any questions or comments about the newsletter to me at [email protected]. (Sorry, but we don't forward questions or comments to Buffett himself.)
If you aren't already subscribed to this newsletter, you can sign up here.
Also, Buffett's annual letters to shareholders are highly recommended reading. There are collected here on Berkshire's website.
Warren Buffett omitted the Gates Foundation from his annual charitable stock gifts, directing all of this year's donations to four family-linked foundations.
Berkshire Hathaway said the 95-year-old chairman will donate 9 million Class B shares of Berkshire to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation and 1 million shares each to the Sherwood Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and the Novo Foundation.
"My goal is to dispose of all of my Berkshire shares within about eight years," Buffett said in a statement announcing the gifts. "As I explained last year, my children are unfortunately growing older. I have every hope that the three of them are able to carry out the disposal of my shares by December 31, 2034."
Buffett did not include the Gates Foundation, which for years was the largest recipient of his annual Berkshire donations. Since 2006, the Berkshire chairman has donated more than $47 billion worth of Berkshire stock to the philanthropic organization founded by Bill Gates and his former wife, Melinda French Gates.
The omission comes after the Wall Street Journal reported that Buffett has held off on his customary donation to the Gates Foundation while awaiting the outcome of a review into the foundation's ties to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
In a March interview with CNBC's Becky Quick, Buffett said he had not spoken with Gates "at all since the whole thing was unveiled."
Asked whether the two remained close friends, Buffett said they had shared "great times together," but added: "Until it gets cleared up ... I just don't think it makes sense to do a lot of talking."
The decision marks a break from the pledge Buffett made two decades ago. In a 2006 letter to Bill and Melinda Gates, Buffett wrote that he was "irrevocably committing" to make annual gifts of Berkshire shares to their foundation "throughout my lifetime," provided that at least one of them remained actively involved in the organization.
Buffett will discuss his annual donations in an exclusive appearance on CNBC's "Squawk Box" Wednesday.
SummaryThe Dividend Income Accelerator Portfolio emphasizes high-quality companies with sustainable dividends, strong balance sheets, and attractive valuations to optimize risk-adjusted returns.I prioritize a diversified mix of ETFs and individual stocks across sectors, balancing dividend income, growth, and capital appreciation while mitigating downside risk.Key metrics include a 3.75% weighted average dividend yield, low payout ratios, and low beta factors, supporting long-term portfolio resilience.Financials, Consumer Staples, and Healthcare sectors dominate the allocation, reflecting a focus on stability and superior risk-reward profiles. MoMo Productions/DigitalVision via Getty Images
Investment Thesis The current market environment is characterized by high geopolitical uncertainty, relatively high valuations of companies in relation to their growth profile and overall risk-reward profile, and a relatively high inflation rate.
The
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U.S. airstrikes on Iran kept markets on edge last week, even as stocks near record highs mostly held their ground. For anyone wondering how the market's most disciplined capital allocator is set up for a moment like this, Berkshire Hathaway (BRKB 0.35%)(BRKA +0.00%) offers a clear answer.
It is holding more cash than at any point in its history.
Famous investor Warren Buffett handed the chief executive job to Greg Abel at the end of 2025 and stayed on as chairman. But the cautious posture he spent years building hasn't changed. At the end of the first quarter, Berkshire's cash and short-term Treasury bills reached a record of about $397 billion.
This raises the question: What does a hoard this size from a disciplined conglomerate with a storied history of making good investments say about where prices stand today?
Warren Buffett. Image source: The Motley Fool.
A record pile, and a steady seller Berkshire's balance sheet at the end of March held about $58.1 billion in cash and equivalents, plus roughly $339 billion in short-term U.S. Treasury bills. Together, that is close to $397 billion sitting in the safest assets around, equal to more than a third of the entire company's market value. By Berkshire's own measure, cash has never stood so high as a share of the company.
And Berkshire keeps adding to it. In the first quarter, the company sold about $24 billion of stocks while buying only about $16 billion. That extends a net-selling streak that now runs more than three years.
The cash is hardly idle, either. At recent Treasury yields near 3.7%, the pile earns something like $12 billion a year in interest, more than many companies in the S&P 500 report in annual profit.
This isn't necessarily a market call. Buffett has long framed cash as optionality, the ability to move decisively when something cheap comes along, and Berkshire simply hasn't found enough it wants to buy at today's prices. After all, the company has to put tens of billions to work to move its own needle, so it can afford to wait for a pitch that smaller investors might swing at sooner.
Still, when the most famous value investor of the past century would rather collect a risk-free 3.7% than buy more of what's on offer, that itself says something. Personally, I take it as a quiet comment on valuations.
Today's Change
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What the cash has signaled before This isn't the first time Berkshire has let cash pile up. In the late 1990s, as technology stocks soared, Buffett sat out the mania and took plenty of criticism for it, until the dot-com bust vindicated the patience.
Cash climbed again ahead of the 2008 financial crisis. And when prices finally cracked, Berkshire deployed aggressively, most famously with a $5 billion investment in Goldman Sachs in September 2008 that paid a 10% dividend, on terms an ordinary investor could never get.
The pattern is fairly consistent. Berkshire tends to accumulate cash when it finds few bargains, then spend it when fear creates them.
Of course, that doesn't mean a crash is coming. Buffett himself has warned against treating his cash position as a market forecast, and Berkshire has held plenty of cash through stretches when stocks just kept climbing.
What's new this time, however, is who decides when the money gets spent. Abel, not Buffett, now largely controls when this war chest gets put to work. How he deploys it may be the single biggest factor in Berkshire's returns over the next several years, and so far he has stuck to the same disciplined script. Yes, he's bought some Alphabet stock and even agreed to acquire Taylor Morrison Home. But as of the end of Q1, Berkshire remained a net seller of stocks.
So what does all of this tell investors? Not that a crash is around the corner. Buffett would likely be the first to reject that conclusion. What it does say is that patience is reasonable when prices are this high, and that Berkshire has quietly positioned itself to act if the mood sours.
(This is the Warren Buffett Watch newsletter, news and analysis on all things Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. You can sign up here to receive it every Friday evening in your inbox.)
Berkshire gains ground but still trails S&P as '26 enters second halfWith 2026 a bit more than half over, Berkshire Hathaway's B shares are down 1.8% year-to-date and 12.4 percentage points behind the S&P 500's 10.7% gain. (Including dividends, the S&P is up 11.4% giving it a 13.1 percentage point lead).
A strong June for Berkshire erased almost a third of its 17.5 percentage point deficit as of June 1, its biggest losing margin of the year so far.
Even with that June bump, however, it's been a tough Q2 (+ 10 days) for Berkshire with a gain of a bit more than 3% versus the benchmark's strong tech-driven 16% advance, totally erasing what was a slim 1.8 percentage point Berkshire lead at the end of March.
Last year, Berkshire underperformed the S&P by 5.5 percentage points excluding dividends. The deficit was 7.0 percentage points with dividends included.
Berkshire execs spotted at exclusive Sun Valley conferenceBerkshire Hathaway CEO Greg Abel and portfolio manager Ted Weschler aren't featured in the Forbes article on "Sun Valley's Billionaire Summer Camp" now underway in Idaho.
But they are on the magazine's list of attendees and photos from CNBC's David Grogan and Brendan McDermid of Reuters provide visual evidence they are present at the annual Allen & Co. invitation-only gathering of moguls, along with names like Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sam Altman.
Warren Buffett went to Sun Valley for decades but has not attended the last few years.
In 1999, at the height of the dotcom craze, he gave a notable speech at the conference warning that while the internet would be transformative, investors were expecting too much and were bound to be disappointed.
BUFFETT & BERKSHIRE AROUND THE INTERNETHIGHLIGHTS FROM CNBC'S BUFFETT ARCHIVEAI could make financial scams a 'growth industry' (2024)Warren Buffett describes seeing a convincing AI-generated video of himself that has him worried the technology will make financial scams much more effective.
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AUDIENCE MEMBER: How do you think about the role of technological advances, especially generative AI, on more traditional industries? Thank you...
WARREN BUFFETT: I don't know anything about AI. But I do — I do have — I don't — that doesn't mean I deny its existence or importance or anything of the sort.
And last year I said, you know, that we let the genie out of the bottle when we developed nuclear weapons, and that genie has been doing some terrible things lately.
And the power of that genie is what, you know, scares the hell out of me. And on, the other hand, I don't know any way to get the genie back in the bottle.
And AI is somewhat similar. It's out — it's part-way out of the bottle. And it's enormously important, and it's going to be done by somebody...
Now AI, I had one experience that does make me a little nervous. And I'll just explain it.
Very recently — fairly recently — I saw an image in front of my eyes on the screen, and it was me, and it was my voice and wearing the kind of clothes I wear. And my wife or my daughter wouldn't have been able to detect any difference. And it was delivering a message that no way came from me.
So — it — when you think of the potential for scamming people, if you can reproduce images that I can't even tell, that say, I need money, you know, it's your daughter, I've just had a car crash. I need fifty thousand dollars wired.
I mean, scamming has always been part of the American scene. But this would make me, if I was interested in investing in scamming, it's going to be the growth industry of all time.
And it's enabled in a way — you know, obviously AI has potential for good things, too, but I don't know how you — based on the one I saw recently, I practically would send money to myself over in some crazy country. (Laughter)
So I don't have any advice on how the world handles it because I don't think we know how to handle what we did with the nuclear genie.
But I do think, as someone who doesn't understand a damn thing about it, that it is — it has enormous potential for good and enormous potential for harm, and I just don't know how that plays out.
Berkshire Cash as of March 31: $397.4 billion (Up 6.5% from Dec. 31)
Excluding Rail Cash and Subtracting T-Bills Payable: $380.2 billion (Up 3.0% from Dec. 31)
Berkshire repurchased $234 million of its shares in Q1 2026.
BERKSHIRE'S TOP EQUITY HOLDINGS - Jul. 10, 2026Berkshire's top holdings of disclosed publicly traded stocks in the U.S. and Japan, by market value, based on the latest closing prices.
Holdings are as of March 31, 2026, as reported in Berkshire Hathaway's 13F filing on May 15, 2026, except for:
Alphabet, which includes the $10 billion in shares that Berkshire agreed to buy directly from the company, as announced on June 1, 2026. Berkshire has not yet formally disclosed whether the transaction has been completed. The entry is a combination of Class A and Class C Alphabet shares. The market price is a weighted average of the prices of the two classes.Mitsubishi, which is as of April 30, 2026The full list of holdings and current market values is available from CNBC.com's Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker.
QUESTIONS OR COMMENTSPlease send any questions or comments about the newsletter to me at [email protected]. (Sorry, but we don't forward questions or comments to Buffett himself.)
If you aren't already subscribed to this newsletter, you can sign up here.
Also, Buffett's annual letters to shareholders are highly recommended reading. There are collected here on Berkshire's website.
Abel Shows Bold MovesWoods said the relationship with Alphabet is surprising.
"Here’s a company that’s been around for 25 years. Took them forever to really get involved in Apple and it became a major holding and they made a lot of money off of it. They see the potential here in Alphabet," Woods tells Benzinga.
Woods said that the recent 13F shows that Abel isn’t just "looking at the old traditional Warren Buffett investments."
"They’re broadening their scope and they are getting involved."
The market expert cites a recent purchase of UnitedHealth Group (NYSE:UNH) stock by Berkshire Hathaway that was sold shortly after.
"That was something you didn’t see very often from Warren."
Woods said Berkshire is showing quicker exits in some of its positions.
"They’re looking for opportunities not just for long-term great companies to fit the Berkshire mold, but they’re looking for opportunities for their shareholders where they think something is ridiculously overdone and looking for money to invest."
Along with changes to the main investing portfolio, Woods highlighted insurance stocks that he’s bullish on going forward.
"Insurance is a sector that’s breaking out that I like for the second half of the year."
What’s Next for Berkshire HathawayWoods said it "will take some time" for Abel to fully put his stamp on Berkshire Hathaway.
The market expert said he hopes that Buffett is alive for another 15 or 20 years, but thinking about the inevitable outcome for the 95-year-old legendary investor, Woods says there will be a buying opportunity for Berkshire Hathaway shares.
"It’s a great company."
Berkshire Hathaway stock is down 1.1% year-to-date and up 2.8% over the last year.
Compare that to the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSE:SPY), which is up 10.1% year-to-date in 2026 and up 20.2% over the last year.
Berkshire Hathaway outperformed the S&P 500 many years during Buffett’s leadership. The gap is now widening and Abel may need to make more moves to catch up.
A second-quarter 13F filing is expected on Aug. 14, which will reveal what moves Abel made during April, May and June.
Image via Shutterstock
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As he retired as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA 0.96%) (BRKB +0.13%), Warren Buffett appointed Greg Abel his successor. Yet while Abel may be captain of the ship, don't assume that makes him the sole allocator for Berkshire's stock portfolio.
As you may recall, up until late 2025, the same time Buffett retired, Berkshire had two investment managers overseeing portions of the portfolio: Todd Combs and Ted Weschler. Combs has since left for a role at JPMorgan, but Weschler has remained in his position. Moreover, two stocks selected by Weschler personally for the Berkshire portfolio have performed extremely well over the past year: DaVita (DVA 0.54%) and Sirius XM (SIRI +1.42%).
With this, Weschler's recent success and continued presence could clue us in on Berkshire's long-term prospects during the post-Buffett era.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
Analyzing Weschler's winners Admittedly, Berkshire Hathaway provides zero details on investment ideas from Buffett, Abel, Weschler, or Combs. However, Berkshire's exit from certain positions in the first quarter suggests that those stocks, including Mastercard, UnitedHealth Group, and Visa, were from the Combs-managed portion of the portfolio.
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As for Weschler, who built a strong track record on his own as a hedge fund manager prior to joining Berkshire Hathaway in 2012? As company filings indicate that he personally owns shares of both DaVita and Sirius XM, it's highly likely that Weschler selected these for the Berkshire portfolio.
So far in 2026, both of these Buffett investments have performed extremely well. DaVita shares are up by over 102% year to date. Both Berkshire and Weschler have long held shares in the kidney dialysis center operator, but the stock hasn't really taken off until recently. Thanks to strong results, plus greater appreciation among investors for the company's aggressive share repurchase efforts, a bullish wave has sent the stock to multi-year highs.
SiriusXM is up over 50% year to date. Like DaVita, SiriusXM is another name that has started to surge after a period of underperformance. But this year, thanks to factors such as better-than-expected results and bullish guidance updates, shares rebounded. Still one of the value stocks, with a valuation of less than 10 times forward earnings, SiriusXM could have more room to run from here.
The reassuring takeaway for long-term investors Buffett is longer running Berkshire Hathaway's day-to-day operations, but it's not as if the post-Buffett era marks a dramatic change in investing approach and philosophy. Make no mistake: Abel now holds the most sway over investing decisions.
Since taking over, he's even made a sharper pivot toward technology stocks, as seen in Berkshire's participation in a $10 billion private placement of Alphabet shares. However, with Weschler still managing a portion of the portfolio, Berkshire Hathaway is not abandoning traditional value investing entirely. Berkshire's positions in DaVita, SiriusXM, and perhaps some of Berkshire's smaller equity positions are a testament to this.
While Abel's approach may differ slightly from Buffett's, he's not necessarily throwing away what has historically worked for the company: long-term positions in reasonably priced stocks with strong economic moats. Artificial intelligence mania notwithstanding, Alphabet fits within this mold to some degree. An exit by Weschler, or a further pivot toward tech by Abel, could be cause for concern. For now, though, Berkshire Hathaway stock appears well-positioned to stay a long-term compounder in the post-Buffett era.
JPMorgan Chase is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. Thomas Niel has positions in UnitedHealth Group. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Berkshire Hathaway, JPMorgan Chase, Mastercard, and Visa. The Motley Fool recommends UnitedHealth Group. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
The number in this article’s headline highlights just how massive Berkshire’s real cash hoard has become, and its size raises questions about what the company can still do with it.
The Number $397.4 billion. That is Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK-B | BRK-B Price Prediction) cash and short-term investments as of Q1 2026 (March 31), per its balance sheet. I’m of the view that this number has likely already eclipsed $400 billion (given the clip at which the company has been selling assets, and choose to not reinvest).
Notably, this figure has kept climbing, with Berkshire’s cash pile a year earlier standing at $347.7 billion. Three years earlier (at the end of 2022), it was $128.6 billion.
What It Means Cash of this scale is a statement. Berkshire’s total assets reached $1.22 trillion at the end of 2025, and long-term equity investments grew from $536.3 billion in 2023 to $657.0 billion in 2025. So, capital is being deployed. However, the company’s total cash receipts are simply being stockpiled faster than it is being spent. Berkshire pays no dividend, so cash is not being returned to shareholders through payouts. Insider ownership sits at 0.261% while institutions hold 67.252% of the float, a structure that concentrates the deployment decision at the very top.
The pattern of holdings reinforces the caution. Filings show systematic reduction of Bank of America across eight separate transactions in September and October 2024, ongoing sales of DaVita including a 1,220,376 share disposition on May 5, 2026, and a complete exit from Liberty Media positions in September 2024. New buying has been narrower – sustained accumulation of Sirius XM from late 2024 through August 2025, and Occidental Petroleum additions in December 2024 and February 2025. Sellers, on balance, are moving more money than buyers.
Market Reaction Shares of BRK.B stock closed at $507.78 on July 2, 2026, up 1.61% on the day. The one-week gain is 4.09% and the one-month gain 7.69%, but the year-to-date figure is 1.02% and the trailing one-year is 5.68%. The five-year gain of 81.92% and ten-year gain of 252.72% flatter the long history, but the recent price action is muted next to a broad market that has led with growth.
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Bear Case A cash pile this large that keeps growing signals one thing. That is, the people running the money cannot find enough assets they want to own at current prices. That is a warning for long-term holders, not a comfort.
Valuation reinforces the point. Trailing P/E sits at 15, but the forward P/E is 24, implying earnings power is expected to compress. Quarterly revenue growth year over year was only 4.4%. Return on equity is 10.5% and return on assets 5.39%, respectable, though the more capital that sits in cash and short-term instruments, the harder it will be to hold those returns up.
The analyst consensus price target of $520.33 sits within striking distance of the current $507.78 quote, offering limited implied upside. The 52-week range of $455.19 to $516.85 confirms the stock is already near the top of its band. Beta of 0.617 means it moves less than the market in both directions, which cuts both ways for retirement holders who want the defense but also participation in upside.
Bottom Line Berkshire’s $397.4 billion in cash and short-term investments is a fortress. It is also a question mark.
Long-term investors owning the stock for compounding must ask whether a portfolio with roughly a third of its balance sheet parked in cash equivalents can still deliver the returns that built the legend. With a book value per A share of $505,559.44, no dividend, and net insider deployment tilted toward selling, the case for patience must now compete with the case for opportunity cost. The next quarterly filing will be the tell.
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Something changed at Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA 1.02%) (BRKB 1.70%) this year, and the clearest sign of it is not a line in a filing. It is the arrival of a new company in a position near the top of its stock portfolio. For decades, Coca-Cola (KO 0.77%) held a place of honor as Warren Buffett's signature forever holding. It supplied the drinks he sipped on stage at annual meetings and was the business he used to teach investors about brands and moats.
In 2026, a technology company built on search and artificial intelligence passed it in the Berkshire portfolio.
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Greg Abel took over as Berkshire's chief executive on Jan. 1, and he moved with purpose. Across the first quarter, Berkshire more than tripled the size of its Class A holding in Alphabet (GOOG 1.25%) (GOOGL 1.32%) and opened a new Class C position. On June 1, Alphabet announced an $80 billion equity raise to fund its AI infrastructure, and Berkshire stepped in as an anchor investor with a $10 billion private placement, split between Class A and Class C shares. That deal, disclosed in Alphabet's own SEC filing, pushed the combined stake past $40 billion -- a mark that clears the Coca-Cola position Buffett spent a career defending.
Image source: Getty Images.
The private placement deal is the part I keep returning to. Berkshire did more than buy Alphabet stock on the open market. It supplied growth capital directly to one of the largest companies on Earth at a discount to the market price to help fund the build-out of data centers and compute infrastructure. Buffett wrote very few checks like that for public companies. Abel did it in his first six months.
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The business behind Berkshire's Alphabet bet The results give Abel cover. In Q1, Alphabet reported revenue of $109.9 billion, and Google Cloud revenue crossed $20 billion in a single quarter for the first time. Its cloud backlog -- future contracted revenue the company has yet to record -- climbed above $460 billion.
For newer investors, that backlog matters because it represents demand for AI infrastructure that customers have signed and paid for in advance. That's not a forecast. The search segment carries the business, and it commands most of the world's query traffic. That is the durable advantage Buffett and Charlie Munger admired, even as they confessed, for years, that they had missed out on investing in Google.
The bull case for this move has holes worth naming. Concentration cuts both ways. A bigger Alphabet position means a bigger dependence on one stock and one AI thesis. Alphabet plans to spend $180 billion or more on capital expenditures this year, and that spending will reward shareholders if AI demand holds. Regulators continue to circle the search and advertising business. A discounted private placement helps Berkshire, yet it dilutes existing Alphabet holders.
For investors, the takeaway is less about Alphabet's chart and more about what Abel is telling you. He will concentrate, act quickly, and buy into technology companies that Buffett largely avoided. Watch for Berkshire's next move. With its cash stockpile near $400 billion, this may just have been the opening one.
Berkshire Hathaway B (BRK.B - Free Report) closed at $494.79 in the latest trading session, marking a -1.83% move from the prior day. This move lagged the S&P 500's daily loss of 0.28%. Meanwhile, the Dow experienced a drop of 1.09%, and the technology-dominated Nasdaq saw an increase of 0.2%.
The company's stock has climbed by 3.33% in the past month, falling short of the Finance sector's gain of 5.35% and outpacing the S&P 500's gain of 1.64%.
Market participants will be closely following the financial results of Berkshire Hathaway B in its upcoming release. The company's upcoming EPS is projected at $5.53, signifying a 6.96% increase compared to the same quarter of the previous year. In the meantime, our current consensus estimate forecasts the revenue to be $95.3 billion, indicating a 3.01% growth compared to the corresponding quarter of the prior year.
For the annual period, the Zacks Consensus Estimates anticipate earnings of $20.82 per share and a revenue of $385.6 billion, signifying shifts of +0.97% and +3.81%, respectively, from the last year.
It is also important to note the recent changes to analyst estimates for Berkshire Hathaway B. Such recent modifications usually signify the changing landscape of near-term business trends. Consequently, upward revisions in estimates express analysts' positivity towards the business operations and its ability to generate profits.
Research indicates that these estimate revisions are directly correlated with near-term share price momentum. To benefit from this, we have developed the Zacks Rank, a proprietary model which takes these estimate changes into account and provides an actionable rating system.
The Zacks Rank system, which varies between #1 (Strong Buy) and #5 (Strong Sell), carries an impressive track record of exceeding expectations, confirmed by external audits, with stocks at #1 delivering an average annual return of +25% since 1988. Over the past month, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has remained steady. At present, Berkshire Hathaway B boasts a Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy).
In terms of valuation, Berkshire Hathaway B is currently trading at a Forward P/E ratio of 24.21. For comparison, its industry has an average Forward P/E of 12.17, which means Berkshire Hathaway B is trading at a premium to the group.
The Insurance - Property and Casualty industry is part of the Finance sector. With its current Zacks Industry Rank of 112, this industry ranks in the top 46% of all industries, numbering over 250.
The Zacks Industry Rank evaluates the power of our distinct industry groups by determining the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks forming the groups. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.
Don't forget to use Zacks.com to keep track of all these stock-moving metrics, and others, in the upcoming trading sessions.
It's a year of new beginnings for the trillion-dollar conglomerate that Warren Buffett helped build, Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA 0.13%)(BRKB 0.43%). Following the Oracle of Omaha's retirement as CEO on Dec. 31, Berkshire has its first new leader in more than half a century.
Buffett's protégé, Greg Abel, is now at the helm -- and he's wasted no time making his presence felt. Since taking over, Abel has completely exited 16 positions and amassed a mammoth stake in Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL +0.25%)(GOOG 0.25%). When combined with Berkshire's largest position, Apple (AAPL 0.48%), Abel has 30% of Berkshire's $343 billion investment portfolio tied up in two foundational artificial intelligence (AI) stocks.
Warren Buffett retired as Berkshire Hathaway's CEO on Dec. 31. Image source: The Motley Fool.
Alphabet: 9.1% of invested assets There's no stock that Greg Abel has purchased more aggressively since taking over as CEO a little over six months ago than Alphabet.
During the first quarter, he more than doubled Berkshire's stake in Alphabet's Class A shares (GOOGL) and opened a position in its Class C shares (GOOG). More recently, Berkshire committed to buy a $10 billion private placement from Alphabet ($5 billion of each share class).
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Alphabet checks an important box for both Abel and his predecessor, Warren Buffett. Namely, it offers a sustainable moat. The Google search engine accounted for approximately 91% of global internet search traffic in June. When coupled with streaming platform YouTube, the second-most-visited site on the planet, it's easy to see how Alphabet commands such incredible ad pricing power.
But Alphabet's growth engine is powered by cloud infrastructure services platform Google Cloud and its AI integration. Since Google Cloud began offering clients access to generative AI and large language model solutions, sales growth for this high-margin segment has reaccelerated from 28% in the first quarter of 2025 to 63% in the comparable quarter ending in March 2026.
Image source: Apple.
Apple: 20.5% of invested assets Although Warren Buffett sold 75% of Berkshire Hathaway's Apple stake over the nine quarters leading up to his retirement, the remaining stake still accounts for more than a fifth of invested assets.
When Buffett began selling a substantial number of Apple shares, he framed the decision as being tax-driven at Berkshire Hathaway's annual shareholder meeting in 2024. But in Greg Abel's first letter to shareholders, he alluded to Apple as a multidecade compounder. Despite being sold off heavily by Buffett, Apple isn't going anywhere.
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For well over a decade, physical devices such as iPhone, Mac, and iPad have made Apple tick. However, CEO Tim Cook has charted a new course. He's transforming Apple into a platform-driven company, led by high-margin subscription services that'll keep customers loyal to the Apple ecosystem, and the integration of AI solutions.
In June 2024, at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, the company unveiled Apple Intelligence. Apple's generative AI tool was introduced into its physical devices in late 2024/early 2025. It aims to assist users with text summarization and substantially enhance Siri's onscreen awareness.
While Apple remains dependent on sales of its physical devices, its subscription services and AI integration are expected to improve customer loyalty and bolster the company's margins.
If there was ever any question that Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA 0.13%)(BRKB 0.51%) believes in buying and holding high-quality blue chip stocks, this will wipe away any doubt: Over half of Berkshire's current stock portfolio consists of stocks that are also one of the 30 tickers that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
Indeed, confidence in these names is so high that -- like his predecessor Warren Buffett -- current Berkshire CEO Greg Abel is OK with just five Dow stocks accounting for 59% of the conglomerate's stock portfolio's total value. That's a vote of confidence worth noting.
And one of these five names is a particularly compelling prospect to consider buying this month.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
Five good ones, but one great one The table below provides the details, with a precise apportionment for each position. Although any Berkshire pick is arguably worth a look, the confident concentration in just these five names speaks volumes.
Among these five tickers right now, however, one is an especially scintillating prospect for July. That's the Dow Jones Industrial Average's newest addition, Alphabet.
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Yes, the tech stock's relative weakness since early May is a key part of the bullish argument, though certainly not the only or most important part. The crux of the reason Alphabet is a great addition to almost any growth portfolio remains its dominant role as a gatekeeper to the World Wide Web.
Numbers from Statcounter indicate that Google Search's market share is still an incredible 91%, while its free-to-use email service, Gmail, remains the world's most-used email app of its kind. Its mobile operating system, Android, is installed on nearly 70% of the world's mobile devices, again according to Statcounter.
It matters simply because Google and all of its interrelated offerings -- including YouTube -- still account for more than 80% of the company's total top line, as well as the bulk of its bottom line.
That being said, Alphabet is in an enviable position right now. While its core businesses continue to crank out plenty of cash, it's also building a new one with explosive potential without borrowing or breaking the bank.
This business is cloud computing, of course, and the development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology in particular. Google Cloud's revenue grew 63% year over year in the first quarter, more than tripling operating income as a result, now that significant scale has been achieved.
That's still just the beginning. Alphabet is also now designing and manufacturing (through third-party contract manufacturers) its own AI processors. This is mostly to serve its cloud customers who need such solutions, although it can certainly use this technology for its own purposes too. For example, Alphabet could use artificial intelligence to predict how worldwide web traffic might change over time in response to world events, while Google's AI chatbot assistant Gemini is powered by the company's own in-house Tensor Processing Units (TPUs).
Google's Gemini, by the way, is slowly chipping away at ChatGPT's dominance of the artificial intelligence assistant space. It's still well behind ChatGPT on this front, to be clear. Being able to penetrate a space largely established by a name with a huge head start, however, is impressive to say the least. It suggests Alphabet will be able to compete when AI chatbots become the primary way people work with technology. To this end, Precedence Research expects the global chatbot market to grow at an average annualized pace of nearly 19% between now and 2035.
Best bet among the Dow's growth blue chips right now This isn't to suggest the other four Dow stocks that make up a prominent part of Berkshire Hathaway's portfolio, like Coca-Cola and American Express, aren't also solid at this time. There's even a case to be made for scooping up Chevron shares right after their recent setback stemming from the weakening price of crude oil.
If you've only got room for one blue chip growth stock in your portfolio right now, Alphabet appears to be the market's most underestimated and undervalued name of its ilk.
Analysts think so anyway. The vast majority of them currently rate Alphabet a strong buy, with a consensus target of $435.83, which is 20% above the ticker's recent price. That's not a bad way to start out a new trade.
SummaryBerkshire Hathaway Inc. is poised for an upward breakout after a multi-year consolidation, supported by recent technical and fundamental catalysts.Optimism about BRK.B stems from a strong 2026 P/C insurance market outlook, elevated treasury yields, and renewed capital deployment under Greg Abel, including the $6.8B Taylor Morrison acquisition.Technical signals—such as a breakout above key resistance levels, rising RSI, and bullish price-volume action—reinforce the near-term upside potential.Despite a premium forward P/E of 24.41x, BRK.B trades at a discount on EV-based metrics, supporting a favorable risk/reward profile toward reclaiming its $540 record high.Looking for a helping hand in the market? Members of Envision Early Retirement get exclusive ideas and guidance to navigate any climate. Learn More » HYWARDS/iStock via Getty Images
BRK stock has been in a multi-year consolidation I have been feeling lukewarm about Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK.A) (BRK.B) and rated it as a Hold in the past year or so. For example, my
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Under the leadership of new CEO Greg Abel, Berkshire Hathaway is making a splash in the technology space. Based on its most recent 13F filing, the conglomerate owned 68,462,015 Class A shares and 17,944,778 Class C shares of Alphabet (GOOGL 0.23%) (GOOG 0.37%) as of March 31, which today is valued at $30.7 billion. These two positions combined make up Berkshire's fourth-largest holding in a single company's equity.
On June 1, however, the Omaha enterprise announced a $10 billion private placement into the "Magnificent Seven" stock. With a total position of nearly $41 billion in Alphabet, this is now a bigger position than Coca-Cola. But it's still smaller than Apple and American Express.
Investors might view these decisions as uncharacteristic of the strategy Berkshire and Warren Buffett have long operated with. This bet makes sense, though.
Here are three possible reasons why the conglomerate is so bullish on Alphabet.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
1. Alphabet is an exceptional business Berkshire's portfolio consists of high-quality names. Alphabet might be the best business among all the holdings.
It operates from a position of financial strength. Revenue rose 22% year over year to $110 billion in the first quarter (ended March 31), an unbelievable gain for a company of this size. Operating income climbed 30% during that period, resulting in a superb 36% operating margin.
Alphabet is a cash machine. In 2025, it raked in $73 billion in free cash flow. Management uses the windfall to pay a small dividend, with capital also directed toward sizable share buybacks.
Buffett coined the phrase "economic moat." Alphabet's moat has proven to be durable over time, protecting its competitive position. The most notable contributor is a network effect. This shows up in the crown jewel Google Search segment. As a two-sided platform, YouTube also benefits from the same attribute.
2. The valuation isn't excessive "It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price," Buffett wrote in Berkshire's 1989 shareholder letter. These words, drafted nearly four decades ago, are still being applied by the conglomerate today. It's almost as if the team at Berkshire read these words before it made the purchases for Alphabet.
Alphabet is an outstanding business, but the valuation hasn't been excessive. Berkshire first bought shares in the third quarter last year. And over the past 12 months, the stock's average price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio is 26.6.
The S&P 500 currently trades at a P/E multiple of 25. Alphabet's slight premium is easily justified.
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3. Berkshire is bullish on AI In the past, Berkshire has shied away from allocating significant capital to technology enterprises. It has owned Apple for more than a decade, to be fair. But the market would agree that Alphabet, a dominant internet business, is a pure tech play, given its different operating segments compared to Apple's focus on consumer products and services.
Now that it owns $41 billion in shares, Berkshire is clearly bullish on artificial intelligence (AI). This is obvious, although it might come as a surprise to market observers. The amount of AI-related spending is unprecedented.
The conglomerate must believe that Alphabet will earn a satisfactory return on the $180 billion to $190 billion in capital expenditures it has planned just in 2026, which will "significantly increase" next year, according to chief financial officer Anat Ashkenazi. The company is involved in many layers of the AI industry, from chips and cloud computing to model development, advertising tools, and user-facing apps. Therefore, it's in a position to monetize all cash outlays.
Berkshire prefers owning stocks forever. Knowing how stringent the filter is for what gets added to the portfolio, the average investor can buy Alphabet shares right now with confidence.
Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA +1.14%)(BRKB +1.40%) is widely followed for its investment approach, which includes buying companies outright and buying shares of publicly traded companies. However, holding cash is also an investment decision, and at the end of the first quarter of 2026, Berkshire Hathaway had nearly $400 billion in cash. It would be better if CEO Greg Abel could find attractive investment opportunities for that cash, but that cash isn't dead money anymore.
The good and the bad of cash Former Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett had a pretty simple concept around cash: If he couldn't find anything worth buying, he would hold cash. Buffett would rather wait than buy something just to buy something. Abel, his hand-picked successor, appears to have a similar mindset, noting that the cash balance rose in the single quarter that he was at the helm.
Image source: Getty Images.
That cash will be valuable during the next bear market, providing the business with a cushion. It will also give Abel the wherewithal to step in and buy while others are fearful and selling, effectively allowing the CEO to buy attractive assets while they are on sale. From this perspective, noting that the S&P 500 index (^GSPC +0.00%) is trading near all-time highs, investors should be pleased with the balance sheet positioning of Berkshire Hathaway.
The flip side of that argument is that the cash would likely yield higher returns if invested. That's true, but only if it is invested wisely. If Buffett and now Abel couldn't find anything worth buying, it is better for the money to sit in cash. A few years ago, while interest rates were near historical lows, holding cash was a real burden. But today, interest rates are higher, and cash is providing reliable low single-digit returns, with the Fed's target range for the federal funds rate currently set at 3.5% to 3.75%.
The news could get better on this front, as well. Although the new Fed chief, Kevin Warsh, had been talking about cutting rates before his appointment, the rate was held steady after his first Fed meeting. And the indication appears to be that rates will remain at current levels or perhaps rise. So Berkshire Hathaway's huge cash hoard could actually generate more income in the future, noting that the company largely holds short-term U.S. Treasury Bills ($339 billion at the end of the first quarter).
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As those government bonds roll over, Berkshire Hathaway buys new ones at the current rate. That step up in yield should happen fairly quickly, as Treasury Bills have durations that range from four weeks to a year. So the company's cash is a safety valve, a source of capital, and, increasingly, a valuable source of income. Getting paid more to wait for the right investment to come along is hard to complain about.
Berkshire Hathaway could be attractive if you are worried about the market Berkshire Hathaway is a very unique and complex company. However, if you are worried about the market's lofty levels, Berkshire Hathaway's huge cash pile could actually be a reason to buy the stock. That cash isn't the drag it once was, and it sets CEO Abel up to buy when others, perhaps including you, are fearful.
