Berkshire’s $38 Billion Alphabet Stake Came From Google Itself

Berkshire Hathaway nearly doubled its Alphabet stake in the second quarter, to about 106 million shares worth $37.8 billion as of June 30. Reuters, working from the 13F filed August 14, put the holding at 83% above the 57.8 million shares Berkshire reported three months earlier, which lifts Google’s parent to the conglomerate’s third-largest U.S. stock, behind only Apple and American Express.

Most of the new paper did not come off the open market. Alphabet sold Berkshire $10 billion of stock in June as the anchor slice of an $80 billion equity raise to fund AI compute, then Berkshire bought still more shares in public trading.

Alphabet Is Now Berkshire’s Third-Largest Stock

CNBC’s Alex Crippen, reading the same August 14 filing, counted almost 106 million Class A and Class C shares and said Berkshire added 48.1 million of them in the quarter. About 60% of that add came from the June sale by Alphabet, which implies roughly $7 billion of open-market buying on top of the $10 billion block.

On CNBC’s August 14 prices, with holdings still as of June 30, Alphabet sat around $36.6 billion, just ahead of Coca-Cola and well behind the two names that still tower over the book.

ValueSider’s cut of the 13F put Class A alone at 78,791,167 shares, or 9.41% of the reported $299.3 billion U.S. equity book, which means a large minority of the combined 106 million sits in no-vote Class C. Apple remains more than twice Alphabet even after the jump.

Google Sold Berkshire $10 Billion Directly

On June 1 Alphabet said it had agreed to sell $5 billion of Class A shares at $351.81 each and $5 billion of Class C at $348.20, a split that produces about 14.2 million A shares and about 14.4 million C shares, or roughly 28.6 million of the 48.1 million Berkshire added. Reuters noted both prices sat below that Monday’s close. Goldman Sachs acted as placement agent.

That structure is how a private placement works when a company wants a single buyer at a fixed price. A $10 billion bid from the most watched investor in Omaha, done in public tape, would have moved the stock; this one did not have to.

CNBC, citing Bloomberg, later described a weekend call from Goldman Sachs to Berkshire and a fast signoff from Greg Abel, who became chief executive in January. The placement added to a position Berkshire had been building since the third quarter of 2025.

• $10 billion private placement: Sold straight to Berkshire in Class A and Class C at those fixed prices.
• $30 billion underwritten offerings: $15 billion of A and C common, split evenly, plus $15 billion of depositary shares over mandatory convertible preferred, with $2.25 billion over-allotment options on each side.
• $40 billion at-the-market program: A and C shares over time, slated to start in the third quarter of 2026.
• Use of proceeds: The underwritten stock and the Berkshire sale were earmarked for general purposes including AI infrastructure; about $30 billion of the ATM was described as a way to fund employee equity-award taxes.

Alphabet’s second-quarter 10-Q shows the common and preferred legs landed. For the six months ended June 30, 2026, the company recorded $30.499 billion of proceeds from common stock and $19.063 billion from mandatory convertible preferred, and it listed new GOOGM and GOOGN depositary shares on Nasdaq at a 6.25% coupon.

Why Alphabet Raised $80 Billion in Equity

The company is still a cash machine. In the free writing prospectus it said operating cash flow over the 12 months ended March 31, 2026, was $174 billion, and that it had raised more than $85 billion of debt across six currencies in the prior year, taking total debt above $100 billion. The June 30 10-Q puts long-term debt at $98.165 billion, up from $46.547 billion at year-end 2025.

Capex is now in the same zip code as that cash. On the first-quarter call Alphabet guided 2026 capital spending to $180 billion to $190 billion and said 2027 would rise again. Google Cloud revenue grew 63% in the first quarter, with backlog more than $460 billion after nearly doubling quarter over quarter. Search and other revenue grew 19%. Group revenue was $110 billion, up 22%. Paid Google subscriptions hit 350 million.

The raise is the company’s attempt to fund that build “in a balanced way,” in its phrase, after already tapping the bond market. Stock buybacks tell the other half. Share repurchases were $28.306 billion in the first half of 2025 and $0 in the first half of 2026. Alphabet is issuing paper for AI and for payroll taxes on equity awards, not retiring it.

That is the part the 13F headline skips. A firm that generated $174 billion of operating cash still sold stock to Berkshire, sold more to the public, and lined up a $40 billion ATM. AI data centers have become a bill that even Google’s ad business will not cover alone. Names with thinner cash flow cannot copy the Berkshire backstop, which is why the placement also reads as a weapon: Google can raise equity because the old business still prints money, and rivals still have to spend as if they can too.

Buffett Told CNBC He Started the Alphabet Buys

Warren Buffett stepped down as chief executive in January and stayed on as chairman. Coverage of the June deal treated the $10 billion check as Abel’s first stamp. Buffett himself did not.

I initiated it.

We talk all the time, but he is the decider.

Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, speaking to CNBC

Investopedia and Reuters both carried those lines from a CNBC interview last month. Abel, Buffett said, has the last word. The original Alphabet buys, disclosed from the third quarter of 2025, were Buffett’s idea. CNBC also reported that Abel was the one who more than tripled the stake in the first quarter, to almost 58 million shares from about 18 million.

Michael Burry, the investor whose 2008 housing bet later became The Big Short, used a Substack note to argue the other way. CNBC quoted him saying his “biggest fear” was that Buffett’s successor would lack “patience for the fat pitch,” and that “this fear has come true,” so he no longer found Berkshire “an attractive investment going forward.” He added that not much of the cash had actually been spent. Both classes of Berkshire stock still dropped more than 3% in the week of the earnings, Crippen wrote, even with the first large buybacks in two years.

Delta Returns After Buffett’s Kitty Hawk Warning

The same 13F that made Alphabet famous again also put Berkshire back in the airline business it dumped in 2020. CNBC said the Delta Air Lines stake rose 44%, or about $1.6 billion, to 57.3 million shares valued at $5.1 billion on then-current prices. Forbes, using a slightly different mark, called it a $5.4 billion holding and 8.7% of the airline, enough to make Berkshire the second-largest owner. Delta first reappeared in the first quarter.

Buffett sold four airline stocks at a loss in the first quarter of 2020 when travel collapsed. In his 2007 letter he had already joked that a farsighted capitalist at Kitty Hawk would have done successors a huge favor by shooting Orville down. Abel’s Berkshire is ignoring that line, at least on Delta, in the same quarter it underwrote Google’s AI raise.

Housing ran in parallel. Berkshire added about $280 million of Lennar in the quarter it had already agreed to buy Taylor Morrison for about $6.8 billion, a deal WSJ said closed in July, and it opened a tiny $580,000 re-entry in D.R. Horton, Investopedia reported. It exited Constellation Brands, the Corona and Modelo seller. Bank of America was cut 5.9%, about $1.7 billion, the eighth straight quarter of sales and a 53% reduction over that stretch. Macy’s rose 142%, which CNBC noted was only about $100 million because the position is small.

Fourteen Selling Quarters End With Cash Still High

Q2 was the first quarter in 14 that Berkshire bought more listed stocks than it sold. Later write-ups of the filing put purchases near $23.5 billion and sales near $3.7 billion; CNBC called the net add about $20 billion and noted that figure includes the $10 billion Alphabet block. Abel also spent about $4.5 billion on Berkshire buybacks, up from $235 million in the first quarter.

$365.5 billion of cash still sat on the June 30 balance sheet, CNBC said, down 8.0% from $397.4 billion at March 31. Strip rail cash and T-bills payable and the figure was $359.2 billion. Yahoo Finance and others tied part of the drop to the Taylor Morrison close. The pile is smaller. It is not small.

1. Q3 2025: Berkshire discloses its first Alphabet shares, a position Buffett later said he initiated.
2. January 2026: Abel becomes chief executive; Buffett remains chairman.
3. Q1 2026: The Alphabet stake more than triples to almost 58 million shares; Delta re-enters the book.
4. June 1, 2026: Alphabet announces the $80 billion raise and the $10 billion sale to Berkshire.
5. June 30, 2026: Nearly 106 million Alphabet shares, cash at $365.5 billion, first net-buying quarter in 14.
6. July 2026: The $6.8 billion Taylor Morrison purchase closes.
7. August 14, 2026: The 13F is filed after the closing bell.

Abel put a dent in the cash, as the Wall Street Journal put it, and still left Omaha with a Treasury hoard that would fund several more Alphabet-sized checks. The net-buyer label is real. The constraint is no longer “can they spend.” It is whether the next block shows up as another weekend call from a bank that needs an anchor.

$40 Billion of ATM Stock Is Still Unsold

The 13F closes the June purchase. It does not close Alphabet’s raise. In the 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, the company said it had not sold any shares under the ATM program and that the full $40.0 billion remains available for future issuance. The prospectus said those sales were not expected to start until the third quarter, and that they are not tied to the underwritten deals.

THE ATM SLICE STILL ON THE SHELF

• Program size: Up to $40 billion of Class A and Class C stock, sold over time rather than in one print.
• Status on June 30: Zero shares sold, the entire $40.0 billion still listed as available.
• Stated use: About $30 billion was meant to cover 2026 calendar-year tax bills on employee equity awards, with any extra going to general purposes.
• Timing: Expected to begin in the third quarter of 2026, subject to markets.

So the Berkshire 13F is a snapshot of a buyer who took the off-market slice and then kept purchasing, and of a seller that has finished the underwritten common and preferred, booked tens of billions of proceeds, and still has a $40 billion ATM hanging over the tape. As of the last 10-Q, that last slice had not printed.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is the Difference Between Alphabet Class A and Class C Shares?

Class A shares trade as GOOGL and carry one vote each; Class C shares trade as GOOG and carry no vote, which is why Berkshire paid $351.81 for A and $348.20 for C in the June placement. Class B is the super-voting stock held by founders and is not part of the Berkshire sale or the ATM.

What Is an At-the-Market Equity Offering?

An ATM lets a company sell new shares into the market in drips through designated banks instead of pricing one giant follow-on. Alphabet named Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, and Morgan Stanley as managers on the $40 billion program and said those sales are not conditioned on the underwritten offerings.

When Did Greg Abel Become CEO of Berkshire Hathaway?

Abel took over in January 2026 when Buffett retired as chief executive after six decades in the job and stayed on as chairman. Fortune and Reuters both dated the handoff to the start of the year, with Abel already signing the Taylor Morrison and Alphabet checks by June 1.

Why Did Berkshire Sell Its Airline Stocks in 2020?

Buffett sold four airline holdings at a loss in the first quarter of 2020 as the pandemic crushed air travel, a retreat CNBC tied to that crash in flying. The 2026 Delta stake is a new position opened in the first quarter under Abel, not a leftover from the old four-airline book.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of Berkshire Hathaway’s Q2 2026 13F and Alphabet’s June 2026 equity offerings, and it is for information only. It is not investment advice, a recommendation to buy or sell Berkshire, Alphabet, Delta, or any other security, and it is not tax or legal advice. Readers should consult a licensed financial adviser or registered investment professional who knows their circumstances before acting on any holding or trade. Share counts, market values, cash figures, and the ATM’s unsold balance reflect the filings and coverage cited here as of August 23, 2026, and those numbers change with prices, later 10-Qs, and later 13Fs.