Berkshire Hathaway Nearly Doubled Its Alphabet Stake Last Quarter, Buying $10 Billion Straight From the Company

Berkshire Hathaway just posted its biggest stock-buying quarter in years, and the star of the show is a company Warren Buffett spent decades avoiding: Google parent Alphabet.

According to a regulatory filing made public Friday, August 14, and reported by Business Insider and Forbes, Berkshire increased its Alphabet stake by 83% during the second quarter, bringing its holdings to about 106 million shares worth nearly $38 billion as of June 30. That makes Alphabet Berkshire's third-largest publicly traded holding, trailing only Apple at roughly $66 billion and American Express at roughly $51 billion, per Business Insider. Forbes contributor Bill Stone pegged the Alphabet stake at $36.6 billion using the filing.

Some of that growth came the normal way, through purchases on the open market. Business Insider reported Berkshire bought 19.6 million additional shares that way last quarter. But a big chunk of it came through a private placement, a direct purchase from Alphabet itself rather than through public exchanges.

The $10 Billion Side Deal

Yahoo Finance, citing the filing, reported the private placement was $10 billion, split evenly: $5 billion in Class A shares at $351.81 apiece, and $5 billion in Class C shares at $348.20 apiece. Business Insider reported the deal was struck at a discount to the market price and was tied to Alphabet's broader $84.75 billion equity sale in June, a detail also confirmed by The Motley Fool.

Buying stock directly from a company, bypassing the stock exchange entirely, is not how Berkshire typically builds positions. It signals Alphabet wanted a large, stable anchor investor for its capital raise, and Berkshire was willing to be that investor at a negotiated price.

Buffett Says He's Behind It, Not Abel

Greg Abel took over as CEO at the start of the year, ending Warren Buffett's run atop the company. But on the Alphabet trade specifically, Buffett has been explicit that it was his call. Forbes quoted Buffett telling CNBC on July 15, "I initiated it," referring to Berkshire's original Alphabet purchase. The Motley Fool separately cited a June CNBC interview in which Buffett said the same thing, dating the original purchase to the third quarter of 2025.

That timeline matters. Berkshire took its first Alphabet position in Q3 2025, expanded it in Q1 2026, and then nearly doubled it again in Q2 2026, according to The Motley Fool and Forbes. Breitbart's report, sourced to the Associated Press, put the Q1 numbers at nearly 58 million shares worth almost $17 billion, up from just 17.8 million shares worth $5.6 billion three months earlier. Buffett remains Berkshire's chairman, and multiple outlets, including Forbes and The Motley Fool, describe him as still actively shaping the biggest portfolio decisions even after handing off day-to-day control to Abel.

Buffett's move marks a departure from his decades-long tech skepticism. He avoided Google and Amazon for years, saying he didn't understand the categories well enough. At Berkshire's 2018 shareholder meeting, per Yahoo Finance's account, Buffett admitted he'd watched Google "skip past the competition" and wondered if anyone could catch up. He eventually made an exception for Apple, which he considered more of a consumer products company than a tech company.

What Else Moved, and What Got Cut

The Alphabet buy wasn't the only aggressive move. Forbes reported Berkshire was a net buyer of $19.8 billion in equities for the quarter, ending 14 straight quarters as a net seller. Business Insider put the net figure at $20 billion, with $23.5 billion in purchases against just $3.7 billion in sales, plus $4.5 billion in stock buybacks, the highest quarterly buyback total since 2021.

Berkshire also increased its Delta Air Lines stake by 44% to $5.4 billion, established a new position in homebuilder D.R. Horton, and added to Lennar and Macy's, according to Business Insider and Forbes. Breitbart's AP-sourced report noted Berkshire dumped Visa, Mastercard, Domino's Pizza, Amazon, and UnitedHealth after the departure of portfolio manager Todd Combs late last year. Business Insider reported Berkshire roughly halved its Capital One and Nucor stakes and trimmed Bank of America and Kroger.

Forbes also noted Berkshire separately acquired homebuilder Taylor Morrison for $6.8 billion, a deal outside the public equity portfolio, and that the cash pile, once a record $380 billion under Buffett's late tenure, has come down to $365 billion.

One Caution From the Market Itself

Not everyone treated the Alphabet news as a big deal. The Epoch Times, relying on AP market data from August 17, reported Alphabet shares actually dipped 0.5% that day even after Berkshire's increased stake became public, while the broader S&P 500 and Dow each fell 0.5% amid rising oil prices and inflation pressure. The market's shrug is a reminder that Berkshire's conviction doesn't automatically move the stock, and that Alphabet, now valued around $4.2 trillion according to The Motley Fool's market data, is priced for a lot of AI optimism regardless of who's buying in.

Whether Alphabet's paid-click growth, the metric The Motley Fool flagged as central to Buffett's thesis, holds up against AI-driven search competition from OpenAI and others is the open question investors will be watching when Alphabet reports its next quarterly results.