Warren Buffett and Greg Abel inspect Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting held in Omaha, Nebraska on May 3, 2025.
David A. Grogen | CNBC
At the final stage of his term at the top Berkshire HathawayWarren Buffett was still chasing that elusive elephant.
The 95-year-old legendary investor, who handed over the CEO reins to Greg Abel in early 2026, revealed that deal size was not a constraint, but a lack of opportunity.
“This is an external situation. Trust me, if you say, ‘I have a great new idea for $100 billion,’ after we’re done talking, I’d say, ‘Let’s talk,'” Buffett told Becky Quick in a special interview in May, after saying he would step down at the end of the year.
This never-before-seen interview is part of the special “Warren Buffett: Life and Legacy,” which airs Tuesdays at 7 p.m. ET. On CNBC.
This statement highlights a central contradiction at Berkshire today. Although the company is brimming with liquidity, with cash holdings at a record $381.6 billion at the end of the third quarter, Buffett doesn’t see an opportunity big enough in 2025 to make a big move at a price he thinks is prudent.
“I mean, when you look at the stock market, when you look at companies that are big enough to impact our totals, you don’t see anything. Well, we’ve bought one or two, but it’s peanuts. But this afternoon, I’m going to spend $100 billion,” Buffett, now chairman, told CNBC.
In October, Berkshire signed a deal to buy Occidental Petroleum’s chemical business Oxychem for $9.7 billion in cash, making it the company’s biggest acquisition since 2022, when it paid $11.6 billion for insurance company Alleghany.
Berkshire’s cash pile has increased significantly as Buffett has aggressively sold large sums of his two largest holdings, Apple and Bank of America.
Buffett doesn’t want to hold on to this much cash. He has long warned that cash is a poor long-term asset, even as he advocates holding sufficient reserves to withstand unexpected shocks.
“I’d rather have $100 billion and do a really good business at a sensible price than have $100 billion in cash,” he said. “At a certain level, you need cash, but cash is not a good asset.”
He compared liquidity to oxygen, which is cheap to maintain but can be depleted at the wrong time, with devastating effects.
“People always want to have enough,” Buffett said. “You don’t have to pay a lot of money, but you do need oxygen, and that’s what cash is like. You never know what’s going to happen, so you have to have it available at all times. You don’t know what the stock market is going to do, you don’t know what the business is going to do.”
As a longtime deputy, Abel played a key role in several of Berkshire’s acquisitions, particularly in the energy sector, and helped transform Berkshire Hathaway Energy into a powerhouse.
Mr. Abel’s qualifications to close a deal have been established, but Berkshire shareholders may not be able to extend him the same patience they have given Mr. Buffett over the years. The conglomerate has mountains of cash and underperforming stock, and the pressure to deploy capital could quickly become a defining challenge for the new CEO.
