Sometimes the investing gods smile in ways that leave even the pros speechless.
Picture this: a legendary conglomerate quietly builds a multi-billion-dollar position in one of the biggest tech names on the planet. Then, almost on cue, that company drops its most important AI announcement in years and the stock rockets higher. Seventy percent higher, to be exact, in a single calendar year. That’s not a hypothetical. That’s exactly what just happened with Berkshire Hathaway and Alphabet.
And the timing? Almost too perfect to believe.
The Trade That Raised Every Eyebrow on Wall Street
When Berkshire’s latest 13F landed a few weeks ago, the investing world did a collective double-take. There it was, buried among the usual suspects: a brand-new $4.3 billion stake in Alphabet, instantly making Google the tenth-largest holding in the entire Berkshire empire.
Now, for most funds that wouldn’t even be headline material. But this is Berkshire Hathaway. The same Berkshire that spent decades avoiding high-growth tech stocks like the plague. The same Berkshire whose largest position by a mile is still Apple—and even that one took years of convincing for the Oracle himself.
So when Alphabet suddenly shows up? People notice.
And then the stock started moving. Hard.
From Filing to Fireworks: The Timeline That Defies Coincidence
Let’s line up the dates because they’re almost comical.
Berkshire’s position was built sometime in the third quarter—meaning July through September. The 13F only shows the snapshot at quarter-end, but the buying almost certainly happened in the weeks leading up to it. Fast forward to mid-November: Google unveils Gemini 3, its most advanced AI model yet. The market loses its mind. Alphabet shares jump 13% in the weeks that follow and never really look back.
By early December, the stock is up roughly 70% year-to-date in 2025—on pace for its best annual performance since the early YouTube days. I’ve been doing this a long time, and I can’t remember a major institutional stake looking this perfectly timed since… well, maybe ever.
The rally isn’t just noise. This is real fundamental momentum driven by AI adoption that most people still don’t fully appreciate.
Who Actually Pulled the Trigger?
Here’s the part everyone wants to know: was this Warren himself finally warming up to big tech again?
Almost certainly not.
Buffett has been crystal clear for years—he leaves the fast-moving tech calls to his two portfolio managers, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler. These guys have been given billions to invest and have shown a real knack for technology names. Remember Chubb? That surprise stake earlier in the year? Widely attributed to one of them. Same story here.
Warren still gets the final sign-off on big positions, but the day-to-day stock picking in tech? That’s Combs and Weschler’s playground. And honestly, they’ve been crushing it.
The Regret That Still Lingers in Omaha
Maybe the most fascinating angle is that Buffett has actually kicked himself—publicly—for missing Google the first time around.
Back when Geico (a Berkshire subsidiary) was one of Google’s earliest and most profitable advertising customers, Warren saw firsthand how the search engine printed money. He knew the margins were insane. He understood the moat. He just couldn’t pull the trigger.
I blew it.
– Warren Buffett, 2018
Those three words have haunted value investors ever since. Missing Google in the early 2000s is probably the single biggest regret of his career—bigger than missing Amazon, bigger than passing on Microsoft. So when his team finally brings a massive Alphabet position to the table decades later, you can almost feel the redemption arc writing itself.
Why Alphabet Suddenly Looks Like a Classic Value Stock
Here’s where things get really interesting.
Among the Magnificent Seven, Alphabet has somehow become the value play. Lower forward P/E than Microsoft, Nvidia, or Meta. Massive cash pile. Profitable cloud business finally hitting scale. YouTube growing like it’s 2009 again. And oh yeah, the leading search engine on planet Earth.
- Trades at a discount to the S&P 500 on some metrics
- Generates absurd free cash flow
- Pays a dividend now (small, but growing)
- Still owns the default gateway to the internet
In a world obsessed with 100x moonshots, Google suddenly feels… boring. And boring, as every value investor knows, is where the real money hides sometimes.
The Michael Burry Reality Check
Not everyone is popping champagne, though.
Michael Burry—the guy who saw the housing crash coming—recently went on a podcast and basically said: be careful what you wish for with all this AI excitement.
Google had searches down to fractions of a penny. AI changes that. AI is expensive.
Michael Burry
His point is simple but brutal: search was the greatest business model ever invented. Low cost, high margin, network effects on steroids. If generative AI starts eating into search volume—or worse, forces Google to spend tens of billions keeping up—the golden goose could take a serious hit.
Fair concern? Absolutely. But markets aren’t pricing in disaster. They’re pricing in a company that still controls 90%+ of search and now has multiple ways to monetize AI. Waymo, DeepMind, Gemini—these aren’t side projects anymore.
What This Says About the Next Chapter at Berkshire
Zoom out for a second.
Warren Buffett is stepping down as CEO at the end of 2025. We all knew this day was coming, but seeing a bold tech bet like Alphabet land right as the transition looms feels symbolic somehow.
It’s a passing of the torch in real time. The old guard—who avoided tech for decades—quietly greenlighting his successors to swing big on the most important trend of our generation: artificial intelligence.
And they didn’t just dip a toe. They took a $4+ billion position at what might turn out to be the ideal moment.
Luck? Skill? A bit of both?
Warren has spent a lifetime telling us market timing is a fool’s game. Yet here we are, watching his firm execute what looks an awful lot like the perfect entry.
Sometimes the investing gods really do have a sense of humor.
In my view, this Alphabet stake will be studied for years—not just for the returns (which are already ridiculous), but for what it signals about the future of one of the greatest investing machines ever built.
Berkshire without Warren at the helm is uncharted territory. But if Combs, Weschler, and Greg Abel keep making calls like this?
Maybe the best chapters are still ahead.
