Warren Buffett bet on Alphabet to tap into the AI boom, and he’s still helping to call the shots at Berkshire Hathaway, Greg Abel says.
The legendary investor was succeeded by Abel at the start of this year after nearly six decades as Berkshire’s CEO. During a rare on-air interview with CNBC on Wednesday, Abel shed light on Buffett’s surprising tech bet and his ongoing role as chairman.
The Berkshire CEO explained why Buffett built a nearly $38 billion stake in Alphabet from scratch in under a year. Google’s parent company was the third-largest position in Berkshire’s stock portfolio at the end of June.
Abel pointed to AI’s material impact on businesses and beyond, Berkshire having a “lot of visibility” into AI and its benefits through its myriad subsidiaries, and Alphabet being a “significant player” in the space.
“Now there’s a lot more to Google than what I just said in why we like it, but those were the fundamental reasons as to why we took a serious look at Google, and now have a significant investment in it,” Abel said.
Berkshire bolstered its Alphabet stake earlier this year by participating in a private placement. Abel said Berkshire was invited in late May to take part, and he promptly called Buffett to discuss the opportunity. Consulting with his predecessor was “very much consistent with how we manage Berkshire,” Abel said.
The pair agreed on a $10 billion investment at a 6.5% discount to Alphabet’s market price, Abel said, and the transaction went ahead.
Buffett has eschewed tech companies for most of his career, preferring to invest in more predictable, attractively valued businesses he understands deeply.
But Alphabet and Berkshire have some shared DNA. Alphabet’s bosses modeled it on Berkshire and its web of decentralized, autonomous subsidiaries after visiting Buffett in Omaha in the mid-2000s. In addition to Google, Alphabet is the parent company of YouTube, Android, Waymo, and others.
Google’s cofounders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, also said that Buffett’s essays and “owner’s manual” for Berkshire shareholders were the main inspirations for the shareholder letter they included in Google’s 2004 IPO prospectus.
Buffett previously broke from tradition when he bought into Apple in 2016. The iPhone maker has proven to be one of his most successful investments, and remains Berkshire’s biggest stock position.
Buffett and Abel
The Alphabet position is one of many topics of discussion for Berkshire’s chairman and its CEO, Abel said.
He and Buffett have a “great working relationship,” he told CNBC, and speak regularly as “we love talking business, we love talking about what we’re seeing across our portfolio.”
Berkshire owns scores of businesses, including See’s Candies and Geico, and holds multibillion-dollar stakes in public companies such as American Express and Coca-Cola.
Abel, speaking from Japan during a visit to Berkshire’s business interests there, told CNBC that he stopped by Buffett’s 96th birthday celebration in Omaha on Sunday, and sensed some FOMO from the business icon.
“Warren absolutely loves the Japanese investments,” Abel said, “so I could tell it wasn’t easy for Warren that off I went to Tokyo.”
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