Berkshire adds $17 billion of Alphabet in Q2, lifting the stake to $37.8 billion

Berkshire Hathaway added roughly $17 billion to its stake in GOOGL during the second quarter, lifting its position to nearly 106 million Class A and Class C shares worth about $37.8 billion, a roughly 83% increase from the prior quarter . The addition, revealed in Berkshire's Q2 13F filing, made Alphabet the third-largest holding in Berkshire's equity portfolio and its biggest single addition of the period.

CEO Greg Abel, who has led Berkshire's day-to-day operations since Warren Buffett stepped back to become president of the board in early 2026, said the move reflects visibility into how Berkshire's own operating companies are already using AI. "Google looked like a significant player," Abel said, addressing the buildup directly . Buffett is reported to have initiated the decision himself, with Abel continuing to oversee the broader conglomerate, a split that Fool.com framed as Buffett still calling the shots on major equity bets while Abel runs the businesses .

The 6.5% discount that has circulated around this story applies to a separate, earlier transaction: roughly $10 billion of Alphabet shares Berkshire acquired directly from the company in a private placement that closed about 15 months before this disclosure, not to the Q2 addition itself. That original deal, negotiated at Abel's recommendation, is the piece of the position that carries the discount; the newer $17 billion in purchases came through a mix of that placement structure and open-market buying.

Berkshire's press has framed this as "two-front" AI exposure, but the two fronts are not both captured in the $37.8 billion figure. That number is the Alphabet equity stake alone. The second front is Berkshire Hathaway Energy, whose utilities supply power to AI data centers, most notably in Iowa, where data-center demand made up roughly 8% of the utility's load last year. The two exposures behave differently: Alphabet's stock carries market volatility tied to AI sentiment, while BHE's returns are infrastructure-driven and steadier.

Even at $17 billion, the addition is a modest slice of Berkshire's balance sheet: the company held about $365 billion in cash as of June 30, down 8% from the prior quarter. Investors watching for signs of Berkshire's post-Buffett direction may read more into who initiated the trade than into its size relative to the cash pile. What happens next, whether Berkshire adds further to Alphabet or spreads into other AI-adjacent names, will say more about how the Buffett-Abel split actually works in practice than this single filing does.

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