For over a year, Warren Buffett has been sitting on the sidelines with a pocket flush with cash.
But on Friday, the world’s most famous investor broke his silence — snapping up shares to finally cash in on the AI frenzy he’s long avoided.
Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway disclosed a new $4.3 billion stake in Google’s parent company Alphabet, making it the conglomerate’s tenth most most valuable holding.
The move surprised analysts who have long known Buffett for building his $154billion fortune backing backing dependable, unglamorous companies like Occidental Petroleum, BNSF Railway, GEICO, Dairy Queen, and UnitedHealth.
Buffett has largely steered clear of tech investments. Even though Berkshire has owned Apple for years, Buffett has said he sees the iPhone-maker as a consumer-products company, not a true tech play.
This year, as Wall Street has surged to record highs, driven by AI giants like Nvidia, Buffett has sat on a $344billion pile of cash.
Alphabet has surged 46 percent this year as artificial-intelligence demand fuels its cloud business and strengthens its dominance over search and YouTube.
Buffett has in the past even admitted he ‘blew it’ by not buying Google years ago.
Warren Buffet, the most iconic investor on Wall Street, revealed a surprising stake in a tech company on Friday
Ivanka Trump and Google CEO Sundar Pichai arrive at El Centro College in Dallas in 2019 for a White House workforce roundtable
He had deen its huge potential when Geico — which he owns — paid $10 per click for early search ads.
Alphabet’s shares were down around 0.8 percent at the bell on Friday. It’s risen more than 1.5 percent since Buffett’s announcement.
The Alphabet purchase was almost certainly made by Buffett’s lieutenants Todd Combs or Ted Weschler, who handle most of Berkshire’s tech bets.
Even as he bought into Alphabet, Buffett continued trimming elsewhere — cutting another 15 percent of Berkshire’s massive Apple position, now worth $60.7billion.
Berkshire also reduced stakes in Bank of America, Verisign and DaVita, marking the 12th straight quarter the firm has been a net seller of stocks as tech valuations soar.
The surprise announcement comes days after Buffett released his final annual letter as CEO.
In it, he wrote he’s ‘going quiet’ after nearly 60 years at the helm of Berkshire Hathaway.
The 95-year-old billionaire stunned Wall Street when he announced this summer that he will step down as CEO at the end of the year, handing control to his long-time deputy Greg Abel.
Buffett taught at the University of Omaha in the 1950s and early 1960s
Buffett said he won’t write Berkshire’s famous annual letter anymore, a tradition that began in 1965 and made him one of the most closely watched voices in business.
But the ‘Oracle of Omaha’ isn’t disappearing completely.
He plans to keep in touch with shareholders through an annual Thanksgiving message — and says he’ll ramp up his philanthropy, giving away his remaining $149 billion stake in Berkshire Hathaway.
‘As the British would say, I’m going quiet. Sort of,’ Buffett wrote in a letter released Monday, which is his final as CEO of Berkshire.
