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

(This is the Warren Buffett Watch newsletter, news and analysis on all things Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. You can sign up here to receive it every Friday evening in your inbox.)

Just one week after Berkshire Hathaway’s revelation last Friday that it purchased 17.8 million Class A shares of Google’s parent, Alphabet, in the third quarter (July-September), that position has increased in market value by $415 million to almost $5.35 billion.

GOOGL gained 8.4% this week while its biggest tech rivals fell significantly as Nvidia’s strong earnings failed to overcome fears of an “AI bubble.”

Alphabet shares started the week with a 3.1% boost on Monday, apparently in reaction to the news of Berkshire’s purchase.

Wednesday’s release of Google’s new Gemini 3 AI model, which is receiving positive reviews, gave the stock another push higher.

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

While the full evaluation of the move obviously can’t be made until months or years from now, someone in Omaha is probably smiling right now.

Warren Buffett is getting the credit in a lot of headlines, as he usually does, with many publications assuming he is responsible for everything Berkshire does.

We know that’s not the case, however, since portfolio managers Ted Weschler and Todd Combs are able to act as “free agents.”

As I noted last week, Alphabet doesn’t feel like Buffett’s “kind of stock.”

CNBC.com’s Yun Li writes the investment “likely” was the work of Weschler or Coombs, noting they have been behind many of Berkshire’s “tech-leaning” investments, including its Amazon stake, now worth $2.2 billion.

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

Bloomberg Opinion columnist Nir Kaissar recalls Buffett’s famous refusal to invest in a business he doesn’t fully understand, which kept him out of the internet bubble in the late 1990s, calling AI “orders of magnitude more complicated than selling books or pet food online.”

He adds, “Combine opaque technology with premium valuations, and you’re sure to lose Buffett.”

Kaissar says he has the impression CEO-designate Greg Abel may have just shown us a “very different approach than Berkshire’s shareholders are used to – notably, a new willingness to pay more now for potentially higher growth down the road, a chance Buffett rarely took, if ever.”

Berkshire has not responded to my midday email asking for clarification on who decided to make the Alphabet purchase. The company almost never reveals who bought what.

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

AUDIENCE MEMBER: In terms of these tech stocks, you say that you don’t understand them… I can’t imagine you not understanding something.

WARREN BUFFETT: Oh, we understand the product. We understand what it does for people. We just don’t know the economics of it 10 years from now.

That, I mean, you can understand all kinds — you can understand steel. You can understand home building. But if you look at a home builder and try and think where it’s going to be in five or 10 years, the economics of it, that’s another question.

I mean, it’s not a question of understanding the product they turn out or the means they use to distribute it, all of those sort of things. It’s the predictability of the economics of the situation 10 years out. And that — that’s our problem.

BRK.A stock price: $755,320.00

BRK.B stock price: $504.04

BRK.B P/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 Rail Cash and Subtracting T-Bills Payable: $354.3 billion (Up 4.3% from June 30)

No Berkshire stock repurchases since May 2024.

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

Berkshire’s top holdings of disclosed publicly traded stocks in the U.S. and Japan, by market value, based on today’s closing prices.

Holdings are as of September 30, 2025, as reported in Berkshire Hathaway’s 13F filing on November 14, 2025, except for:

The full list of holdings and current market values is available from CNBC.com’s Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker.

Please send any questions or comments about the newsletter to me at alex.crippen@nbcuni.com. (Sorry, but we don’t forward questions or comments to Buffett himself.)

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Also, Buffett’s annual letters to shareholders are highly recommended reading. There are collected here on Berkshire’s website.

— Alex Crippen, Editor, Warren Buffett Watch