Berkshire Hathaway’s Alphabet stake grew 83% during the second quarter of 2026, rising to roughly 106 million shares worth nearly $38 billion at the end of June, as the conglomerate participated in one of the largest equity capital raises in corporate history.
The position now sits as Berkshire’s third-largest US stock holding, behind a $66 billion Apple stake and a $51 billion position in American Express.
The Private Placement Behind the Berkshire Alphabet Stake
The bulk of the move came through a private deal struck on 1 June 2026. According to Alphabet’s Form 8-K filed with the SEC, a Berkshire affiliate agreed to purchase 14,212,035 shares of Alphabet Class A Common Stock at approximately $351.81 per share and 14,359,656 shares of Class C Capital Stock at approximately $348.20 per share, generating gross proceeds of $10 billion for Alphabet. The transaction relied on the exemption provided by Section 4(a)(2) of the Securities Act of 1933.
On top of the private placement, Berkshire bought a further 19.6 million shares on the open market during the quarter, bringing total additions to around 48.1 million Alphabet shares across both channels, according to Qz.com.
The $10 billion private placement was part of a far larger fundraising effort. An Alphabet free writing prospectus filed with the SEC on 1 June 2026 set out proposed equity offerings totalling $80 billion, comprising the Berkshire private placement, $30 billion in underwritten offerings and a $40 billion at-the-market programme for Class A and Class C shares expected to begin in the third quarter. The purpose was to fund investments in AI compute infrastructure, including a full-year capital expenditure target CNBC reported as high as $190 billion.
The raise was subsequently upsized. Exhibit 99.2 to the Alphabet 8-K confirms the aggregate equity capital raise grew from the original $80 billion to $84.75 billion, incorporating the $10 billion Berkshire private placement, the $40 billion at-the-market programme and additional underwritten offerings.
Abel’s Most Active Quarter for Stock Buying Since 2022
The Alphabet purchases came during what was by some distance Greg Abel’s busiest quarter as chief executive for deploying capital. Berkshire spent $23.5 billion on stocks in the three months ended 30 June while selling only $3.7 billion, a net outlay of $20 billion that represented its largest quarterly stock-buying figure since 2022 and ended a run of 14 consecutive quarters as a net seller.
Abel took the chief executive role from Warren Buffett at the turn of the year. Buffett, who remains chairman, has said he made the original call to invest in Alphabet. Reuters has reported that investors and analysts have been watching how Abel’s capital-allocation approach differs from Buffett’s, who had struggled to find value for cash during roughly 60 years running the conglomerate, which Reuters valued at $1.12 trillion.
The appetite for buybacks also sharpened sharply under Abel. Berkshire deployed $4.5 billion in share repurchases during the second quarter, the highest quarterly buyback figure since 2021, compared with approximately $235 million in the first quarter of 2026, according to Yahoo Finance. Reuters reported that Berkshire repurchased a further $3.3 billion of its own stock in July 2026 alone.
Together, the stock purchases and buybacks helped trim Berkshire’s cash pile. Reuters puts the end-of-June figure at $364.7 billion, down from $380.2 billion at the end of the first quarter; other sources, including Yahoo Finance and CNBC, cite slightly different figures of $365.5 billion and $397.4 billion for the same two periods, reflecting differences in how cash and equivalents are defined. All versions show a meaningful drawdown from what had been a record high.
Beyond Alphabet, Berkshire increased its stake in Delta Air Lines by 44% to 57.3 million shares, giving it a $5.4 billion position in the airline as of 30 June, according to aggregator data corroborated across multiple tracker sources. The firm also established a fresh position in D. R. Horton and added significantly to its Lennar and Macy’s holdings. On the other side of the ledger, it roughly halved its stakes in Capital One and Nucor, trimmed Bank of America and Kroger, and closed a small bet on Constellation Brands.
Buffett’s longstanding reluctance to buy technology stocks, Apple aside, makes the scale of the Berkshire Alphabet stake all the more arresting. Alphabet’s share price has risen around 170% over the past three years, driven by investor confidence that the search-and-advertising group will be among the primary beneficiaries of the AI infrastructure buildout it is now partly funding through the very equity raise in which Berkshire participated.
Berkshire’s next 13F filing, covering the third quarter, will show whether Abel continues to build the position or locks in what has already become one of the portfolio’s defining bets.