Alphabet Shares Climb as Berkshire Hathaway Discloses Surprise Stake

Alphabet Inc. shares surged in premarket trading on Monday following the revelation that Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway had taken a significant position in the Google parent company. The disclosure, made in a regulatory filing on Friday, showed Berkshire owned 17.85 million shares valued at approximately $4.93 billion as of September 30, 2025.

This marks a notable shift for the investment conglomerate, which has traditionally steered clear of high-growth technology stocks, and comes as Buffett prepares to step down as CEO at year-end after six decades at the helm.

Why Berkshire Took a $4.9 Billion Position in Alphabet

The investment represents a departure from Buffett’s traditional value investing approach, though it remains unclear whether the 95-year-old investing legend personally made the purchase or if it was executed by portfolio managers Todd Combs or Ted Weschler, who have historically been more active in technology names. Buffett typically oversees larger investments himself.

The stake makes Alphabet Berkshire’s 10th largest equity holding at the end of September, a significant addition to a portfolio that has been reducing positions for 12 consecutive quarters.

The timing is particularly noteworthy given Buffett’s past regrets about missing early investment opportunities in Google. At Berkshire’s 2019 annual shareholder meeting, Buffett and late Vice Chairman Charlie Munger openly lamented not investing sooner. “We screwed up,” Munger admitted at the time.

Buffett had acknowledged in 2018 that he “blew it” despite having insight into Google’s advertising potential through Berkshire’s Geico subsidiary, which was an early Google advertising customer paying approximately $10 per click.

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GOOG Rallies as Investors React to Berkshire’s Multi-Billion-Dollar Buy-In

Alphabet shares jumped to $291.42 in premarket trading at 5:22 AM EST on Monday, representing a gain of $14.44 or 5.21% from Friday’s closing price of $276.98. The stock had declined 0.77% during regular trading on Thursday, November 14, closing at 4:00 PM EST.

Year-to-date, Alphabet has delivered impressive returns of 45.91%, significantly outperforming the S&P 500’s 14.49% gain over the same period. The one-year return stands at an even more robust 56.86% compared to the benchmark’s 13.19%.

The market’s enthusiastic response reflects growing confidence in Alphabet’s business fundamentals, particularly strong demand for artificial intelligence capabilities that has driven solid momentum in the company’s cloud computing division. With a market capitalization of $3.364 trillion and analyst price targets averaging $311.69, the stock trades at a trailing price-to-earnings ratio of 27.34.

The company’s most recent quarterly earnings showed revenue of $102.35 billion and earnings of $34.98 billion, with actual Q3 FY25 earnings per share of $2.87 beating estimates of $2.26.

Disclaimer: The author does not hold or have a position in any securities discussed in the article. All stock prices were quoted at the time of writing.