Berkshire Hathaway spent 14 consecutive quarters selling more stock than it bought. That streak ended in the second quarter of 2026, and the reason was almost entirely one company: Alphabet. The conglomerate's 13F filing, submitted to the SEC after market close on Friday, August 14, showed Berkshire added roughly $17 billion to its Google parent stake, transforming what had been a relatively modest position into one of the firm's largest holdings within the span of about a year and a half.

A position that grew from zero to $37 billion astonishingly fast

Berkshire first disclosed an Alphabet position back in 2025, reporting a $4.3 billion stake as of that September, itself notable at the time given Warren Buffett's traditional wariness toward high-growth technology stocks. By the end of the second quarter of 2026, that position had ballooned to nearly 106 million shares across Alphabet's Class A and Class C stock, worth approximately $36.6 billion to $37.9 billion depending on the exact valuation date used across different reports. That trajectory, from an initial stake to nearly $38 billion in roughly a year and a half, represents an unusually fast scaling pace by Berkshire's historically deliberate standards.

The new position pushed Alphabet into Berkshire's third-largest equity holding, ahead of Coca-Cola's $35.1 billion stake, though still trailing American Express at $51.9 billion and Apple at $69.7 billion, which itself has been steadily reduced over recent quarters even as Alphabet has grown.

How Berkshire actually built the position

The mechanics behind the second-quarter increase reveal an unusually direct relationship between the two companies. Approximately 60% of the roughly 48.1 million shares Berkshire added during the quarter, worth about $10 billion, came through a private placement purchased directly from Alphabet itself, part of a capital-raising arrangement the two companies announced in early June 2026. The remaining shares, worth roughly $7 billion, were acquired through ordinary open-market purchases during the same period.

That private placement detail matters considerably for how the investment should be understood. Rather than simply accumulating shares gradually on the open market the way Berkshire has historically built most of its equity positions, a substantial majority of this specific increase came through a negotiated, direct transaction with Alphabet, suggesting a level of coordination between the two companies that goes beyond a typical arm's-length stock purchase.

Buffett himself claims credit for the move

Despite having formally ceded the CEO role to Greg Abel at the start of 2026, Warren Buffett made clear the Alphabet investment was his own initiative. "I initiated it," Buffett told CNBC on July 15, 2026, addressing the Alphabet position directly. That statement carries real significance given the broader leadership transition underway at Berkshire; Buffett stated at the company's annual meeting that he remained actively engaged in identifying investment opportunities even after stepping back from day-to-day operational control, and the Alphabet bet stands as the clearest public evidence yet of that continued personal involvement in Berkshire's stock-picking decisions under the new leadership structure.

A broader shift beyond just one tech stock

The Alphabet increase was the headline item in a 13F filing that showed meaningfully different portfolio behavior across the board. Berkshire became a net buyer of approximately $19.8 billion to $19.9 billion in equities during the quarter, formally ending a streak of 14 consecutive quarters in which the firm had sold more stock than it purchased, a pattern that had persisted through much of Buffett's final stretch as CEO and had left many investors wondering whether Berkshire's enormous cash reserves would remain parked in low-yield instruments indefinitely.

Beyond Alphabet, the filing showed Berkshire added a new position in homebuilder D.R. Horton, increased its stake in Delta Air Lines by 44%, worth approximately $1.6 billion, and grew existing positions in Lennar and The New York Times. The company also separately announced a $6.8 billion acquisition of homebuilder Taylor Morrison during the same period and repurchased more than $4.5 billion of its own stock, signaling a broader willingness to deploy capital across multiple channels simultaneously rather than concentrating purely on one strategy.

Where the money came from: financial and consumer sector trims

Berkshire funded much of this new buying by reducing positions elsewhere in its portfolio, most notably continuing to trim its long-held Bank of America stake, which fell by more than 30 million shares during the quarter, alongside a roughly 58% reduction in Capital One Financial and an approximately 22% cut to its Kroger holding. The firm also fully exited one previously held position, Constellation Brands, according to the filing. That combination, buying aggressively into technology and homebuilding while continuing to reduce financial and consumer holdings, reflects a portfolio composition shift that several analysts have described as Berkshire's new leadership steering the firm's public equity strategy toward growth-oriented sectors, even as roughly 76.5% to 88.74% of the total portfolio value remains concentrated in the top five to ten holdings.

Not every prominent investor is convinced

The move drew pointed criticism from at least one well-known market figure. Michael Burry, the investor who famously predicted the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, wrote critically about Berkshire's direction under Abel just days before the 13F filing's release. "My biggest fear for Berkshire Hathaway was that when Warren finally stepped down, the successor would be too old and otherwise not Warren, so would not have his patience for the fat pitch. I believe this fear has come true," Burry wrote, characterizing some of the quarter's spending decisions as what he termed "framing moves" rather than genuinely disciplined value investing.

Burry's criticism arrives despite Berkshire still holding a substantial cash reserve, which stood at a record $397 billion in the first quarter before declining to roughly $360 billion to $365.5 billion by the end of the second quarter as the firm's buying activity accelerated. Burry acknowledged Abel has deployed only a portion of that enormous reserve so far, even while maintaining his broader skepticism about the direction Berkshire's capital allocation has taken since Buffett's formal departure from the CEO role.

Why 13F filings carry outsized influence despite their limitations

Berkshire's quarterly 13F disclosures have long drawn intense market attention as a window into Buffett's and, increasingly, Abel's investment thinking, even though the filings only capture the firm's publicly traded U.S. equity portfolio and arrive with a built-in reporting lag, reflecting positions as they stood 45 days earlier rather than current holdings. That lag means the market's read on Friday's filing reflects Berkshire's thinking as of June 30, not necessarily its current portfolio positioning, a caveat that applies to every 13F filing but carries particular weight when a single position, like the Alphabet stake, has moved as dramatically and rapidly as this one has over such a short window.

What this signals for the post-Buffett transition period

Beyond the specific dollar figures, this filing offers one of the clearest data points yet for how Berkshire's investment approach is evolving during its leadership handoff. A firm long associated with skepticism toward expensive, high-growth technology stocks has now built a nearly $38 billion position in one of the world's largest tech companies within roughly eighteen months, doing so partly through an unusually direct, negotiated transaction rather than gradual market accumulation, all while Buffett himself continues personally claiming credit for the underlying decision even after stepping back from the CEO title.

Whether that pattern continues as a defining feature of Berkshire's post-Buffett era, or whether this quarter's Alphabet-driven buying spree proves to be a more isolated, Buffett-specific bet rather than a broader strategic pivot under Abel's operational leadership, will likely become clearer only through the next several quarters of 13F disclosures, as markets continue parsing every subsequent filing for signals about how much continuity, and how much genuine change, Berkshire's investment philosophy is actually undergoing.

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*Sources cited in this article include Berkshire Hathaway's official Q2 2026 13F filing submitted to the SEC on August 14, 2026, and reporting from CNBC, Forbes, CryptoBriefing, KuCoin, BeInCrypto, and Yahoo Finance covering the filing's disclosure and market reaction. All figures reflect reporting available as of August 15, 2026.*