Does Berkshire’s big tech bet signal a new appetite for risk in Omaha?

(This is the Warren Buffett Watch newsletter, news and analysis about Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. Sign up here to receive it in your inbox every Friday night.)

Just a week after Berkshire Hathaway disclosed last Friday that it had purchased 17.8 million shares of Google’s parent company’s Class A stock. alphabetin the third quarter (July-September), the market value of that position increased by $415 million to almost $5.35 billion.

GOOGL is up 8.4% this week, while its biggest technology rival has fallen significantly. Nvidia’s Despite strong financial results, concerns about an “AI bubble” could not be overcome.

Alphabet stock started the week up 3.1% on Monday, apparently in response to news of the Berkshire acquisition.

Google’s new Gemini 3 AI model, released on Wednesday, has been well-received, pushing the stock price higher.

(Google’s AI momentum is reportedly starting to worry OpenAI’s Sam Altman.)

Obviously we won’t be able to fully evaluate this move in the months and years to come, but someone in Omaha is probably smiling right now.

Warren Buffett, as always, gets the credit in the headlines, and many publications assume he is responsible for everything Berkshire does.

But we know that’s not the case, as portfolio managers Ted Weschler and Todd Combs can operate as “free agents.”

As I pointed out last week, Alphabet doesn’t seem like a “stock” to Buffett.

CNBC.com’s Yun Lee wrote that the investment was likely the work of Weschler or Coombs, noting that either Weschler or Coombs is behind many of Berkshire’s “technology-oriented” investments. Amazon The stock is currently worth $2.2 billion.

(Even before that position was first made public in 2019, Buffett went out of his way to tell CNBC’s Becky Quick that it was not his decision and that “no personality change has taken place.”)

Bloomberg Opinion columnist Nir Kaisar, recalling Buffett’s famous refusal to invest in businesses he didn’t understand, which led him to stay away from the internet bubble of the late 1990s, said AI is “an order of magnitude more complex than selling books or pet food online.”

“The combination of opaque technology and high valuations is a surefire way to lose Mr. Buffett,” he added.

Kaiser said he had the impression that incoming CEO Greg Abel “may have demonstrated a very different approach than Berkshire shareholders are accustomed to, particularly a renewed willingness to pay more now for the potential for higher future growth,” an opportunity Buffett has rarely had.

Berkshire did not respond to my midday email seeking clarification on who made the decision to buy Alphabet. The company rarely reveals who buys what.

Some links may require a subscription.

Warren Buffett explains that when he says he doesn’t understand tech stocks, he means he doesn’t understand what the tech industry will be like in 10 years.

Audience: When it comes to these tech stocks, you said you don’t understand…I can’t imagine you don’t understand something.

Warren Buffett: Yeah, I understand the product. We understand what it does to people. We don’t know what the economic situation will be 10 years from now.

That is, you can understand all kinds of steel materials. Understand how to build a house. But when you look at a homebuilding company and think about the economics of where that company will be in five, 10 years, that’s a different question.

So it’s not a question of understanding the product they produced, the means they used to distribute it, things like that. It is the predictability of the economic situation 10 years from now. And that is our problem.

BRK.A stock price: $755,320.00

BRK.B stock price: $504.04

BRK.BP/E (TTM): 16.12

Berkshire Market Capitalization: $1,085,818,736,612

Berkshire Cash as of September 30: $381.7 billion (up 10.9% from June 30)

Excluding railroad cash and outstanding Treasury bills: $354.3 billion (4.3% increase from June 30)

There have been no repurchases of Berkshire stock since May 2024.

(All figures are as of the date of publication, unless otherwise noted)

The top U.S. and Japanese publicly traded stocks held by Berkshire by market capitalization, based on today’s closing prices.

Holdings are as of September 30, 2025, as reported in Berkshire Hathaway’s November 14, 2025 13F filing. However, the following cases are excluded.

A complete list of holdings and current market value is available on CNBC.com’s Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker.

If you have any questions or comments about the newsletter, please send them to alex.crippen@nbcuni.com. (Sorry, we do not forward questions or comments to Mr. Buffett himself.)

If you haven’t subscribed to this newsletter yet, you can sign up here.

I also highly recommend Buffett’s annual letter to shareholders. It’s collected here on Berkshire’s website.

— Alex Crippen, Warren Buffett Watch Editor