Berkshire Hathaway spent three years hoarding cash, and in the second quarter of this year, it started spending. The conglomerate was a net buyer of stocks for the first time in 14 quarters, and the single biggest reason was Alphabet: Berkshire added about $17 billion of the Google parent, vaulting it into the three largest holdings in a portfolio long defined by Apple, American Express, and Coca-Cola.
Berkshire’s First Net-Buying Quarter Since 2022
Berkshire bought about $23.5 billion of stocks in the quarter while selling roughly $3.7 billion, according to the SEC filing, ending 14 consecutive quarters in which it had been a net seller of equities. The cash pile, which had swelled to a record $397.4 billion at the end of March, fell to $365.5 billion by June 30.
The buying went beyond Alphabet as Berkshire also increased its Delta Air Lines stake by 44%, or about $1.6 billion, and lifted its Macy’s position by 142%, though that was only about $100 million given its small size. It added roughly $280 million to homebuilder Lennar and, in the same quarter, completed a $6.8 billion acquisition of homebuilder Taylor Morrison. Berkshire also repurchased $4.5 billion of its own shares, the first significant buyback in two years.
Alphabet Becomes a Top Holding
Berkshire owns almost 106 million Alphabet Class A and Class C shares, worth around $36.6 billion at recent prices, according to CNBC’s Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker. That places Alphabet about $1.5 billion ahead of Coca-Cola’s $35.1 billion and behind only Apple’s $69.7 billion and American Express’ $51.9 billion. The position jumped 83% in a single quarter.
Warren Buffett, now Berkshire’s chairman, has made clear the bet started with him. “I initiated it,” he told CNBC in July, though Abel now serves as CEO and oversees capital allocation alongside Berkshire’s investment managers. That division of labor is the subtext of the whole filing: the idea was Buffett’s, and the scale is Abel’s.
The $10 Billion Private Placement
The mechanics of the Alphabet buy are what make it unusual. Of the 48.1 million shares Berkshire added, roughly 60% were purchased directly from Alphabet in a $10 billion private placement the two companies announced in early June, split evenly between $5 billion of Class A and $5 billion of Class C stock and bought at a discount to the market. That implies Berkshire picked up only around $7 billion of Alphabet on the open market.
Alphabet has said it plans to raise about $80 billion to help fund the computing infrastructure behind its AI products, so Berkshire’s check was direct capital for the AI buildout, not just a portfolio trade. This indicates that the placement was part of something larger. For a firm that rarely buys newly issued stock straight from a company, writing a $10 billion check into an AI capital raise is a notable departure.
Investor Takeaway
The buy funds Alphabet’s $80 billion AI infrastructure push, so a BRK.B holder is now indirectly underwriting exactly the kind of heavy capital spending that has pressured Alphabet’s free cash flow.
What Berkshire Sold
The buying was funded partly by more of the financials selling that has run for two years. Berkshire trimmed Ally Financial by 7% and cut Capital One by 58%. Bank of America was reduced by a modest 5.9%, but because the stake is so large, that was about $1.7 billion, the biggest dollar cut of the quarter. Berkshire has now reduced its Bank of America position by 53% across eight consecutive quarters of selling. It also exited Constellation Brands entirely.
Buffett sold four airline stocks at a loss in early 2020 as the pandemic grounded air travel, and he had long been skeptical of the industry. In his 2007 letter to shareholders, he wrote that if a “farsighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk, he would have done his successors a huge favor by shooting Orville down.” Berkshire raising its Delta stake 44% to 57.3 million shares is a small sign that the Abel-era portfolio is willing to revisit ground Buffett had written off.
Abel’s First Signature Move Draws a Skeptic
Michael Burry, whose bet against the 2008 housing market was chronicled in “The Big Short,” used the filing to explain why he has turned on the stock. In a Substack post, Burry wrote that his “biggest fear” was that Buffett’s successor would lack the legendary investor’s “patience for the fat pitch,” and, “I believe this fear has come true.” He does not, he wrote, find Berkshire an attractive investment going forward, calling Abel’s first steps “more framing moves than investment moves.”
He acknowledged that “not too much of the cash pile has been spent” and that the remaining roughly $360 billion is a lot of money, and in the comments he clarified he is not recommending anyone short Berkshire. The critique cuts at the heart of Berkshire’s identity: Buffett built his record on the discipline to wait for the rare, obvious opportunity, and Burry’s charge is that deploying billions into an AI capital raise looks like the opposite of waiting.
That framing is the real question for the stock. FinanceFeeds has covered Alphabet’s slide as Wall Street punished its AI spending and, separately, how that spending pushed Alphabet to its first-ever negative free cash flow. Buying a name in that condition is either classic Buffett contrarianism, paying a fair price for a dominant franchise while others flee, or the discipline slipping, exactly as Burry argues.
What to Watch
The one-quarter picture is a value house making a growth-tech bet through its first CEO transition in six decades, and the market meeting it with a shrug. What settles the debate is whether this is a reallocation or a new posture. If Abel keeps deploying the cash pile into large, actively negotiated positions like the Alphabet placement, the “patience for the fat pitch” era is genuinely over and BRK.B becomes a more active, more concentrated vehicle than the one Buffett handed him, covered here since Buffett concluded his 60-year tenure as CEO.
If the buying stops and the cash rebuilds, this quarter reads as opportunistic rather than a doctrine change. The number to watch next quarter is the cash balance: $365.5 billion is the line, and which direction it moves will say more about Abel than any single stock.
Investor Takeaway
Berkshire broke a 14-quarter selling streak and still holds about $365.5 billion in cash, so the pivot is real but early, and next quarter’s cash figure will show whether it is a trend or a one-off.
