The hardest mistakes to fix are the ones you spent years explaining away.
For most of us, that means the job we should have taken, the house we should have bought, or the 401(k) match we let roll past unclaimed.
For Warren Buffett, it was Google.
The Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) co-founder spent nearly two decades telling shareholders he understood Alphabet’s (GOOGL) business well enough through GEICO’s ad spending to call it “an extraordinary business” with “some aspects of a natural monopoly,” according to Fortune.
He simply refused to buy the stock.
His late partner Charlie Munger went further at the 2019 annual meeting, saying he felt “like a horse’s ass for not identifying Google better,” according to 24/7 Wall St.
I have read enough Berkshire transcripts to know the regret was real, but the discipline was real too. Tech sat outside Buffett’s circle of competence, and he kept watching from the sidelines while AI rewired the rest of the economy.
That stance officially ended this quarter. Berkshire’s first 13-F filing under new chief executive Greg Abel showed the conglomerate more than tripled its Alphabet position in the first three months of 2026, building a roughly $17 billion stake as of March 31, according to a regulatory disclosure reviewed by Yahoo Finance.
Photo by Bloomberg on Getty Images
What Berkshire’s new boss did with $17 billion
The disclosure covers stock activity through March 31, the first full quarter with Abel officially in the corner office. He succeeded Buffett on January 1, 2026.
Berkshire’s Alphabet share count rose from 17.85 million at the end of 2025 to nearly 58 million by the end of March, a 224% increase in roughly three months, according to a 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Fund manager buys and sells
- Cathie Wood buys $2.5 million of tumbling megacap stock
- Warren Buffett dumped 77% of Amazon to buy surging media stock
- Cathie Wood buys $11 million of tumbling megacap tech stock
The position now ranks among Berkshire’s seven largest equity holdings, according to The Motley Fool.
At current prices, the same stake is worth closer to $23 billion, said The Motley Fool.
For context, Berkshire still holds about 228 million Apple (AAPL) shares, a roughly $58 billion position that remained untouched in the quarter, “a departure from the selling trend that had continued for nearly two years under the previous management,” reported Yahoo Finance.
Abel did not just buy Alphabet. He also stopped trimming Apple. Both moves point toward a willingness to hold large tech bets in a portfolio Buffett spent years pulling back from equities.
Related: Berkshire’s stunning slide spells trouble for new CEO Greg Abel
Why Greg Abel sees opportunity in Alphabet right now
The simplest explanation is that the numbers caught up to the thesis.
Alphabet’s first-quarter 2026 results, released April 29, showed consolidated revenue up 22% year over year to $109.9 billion, marking the company’s highest quarterly growth rate since 2022, according to CNBC. Google Cloud revenue rose 63% to $20 billion in the same period, beating Wall Street estimates of $15.3 billion, said CNBC.
Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of Alphabet and Google, told analysts on the earnings call that the company’s “AI investments and full-stack approach are lighting up every part of the business,” according to a regulatory filing from Alphabet.
Pichai added that Gemini Enterprise paid users grew 40% quarter over quarter and Google Cloud backlog nearly doubled to more than $460 billion.
When I ran my analysis against the cloud, search, and YouTube segment numbers, the AI cannibalization fear that hung over the stock for two years simply did not show up in the data. Search and Other ad revenue grew 19% year over year, per Alphabet’s earnings filing with the SEC.
Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives said Alphabet “further validates” its position as a leading AI beneficiary, with “tangible results across advertising and cloud,” according to Stocktwits. Oppenheimer’s Jason Helfstein raised the stock’s price target to $445 from $425 and kept an Outperform rating, said Stock Analysis.
Here is how Berkshire’s Alphabet position has built up over four quarters:
- Q3 2025: Initial stake of 17.85 million shares worth roughly $4.3 billion, according to CNBC.
- Q4 2025: Position held at 17.85 million shares, valued at $5.6 billion at year-end, according to Yahoo Finance.
- Q1 2026: Stake rose to nearly 58 million shares, a 224% jump in three months, said Yahoo Finance.
- Current value: Roughly $23 billion at recent market prices, said The Motley Fool.
What this Berkshire move means for your portfolio
The reason this filing matters for the average investor is conviction, not size.
Berkshire is sitting on $397.4 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term Treasuries as of March 31, eliminated 16 stock positions outright in the quarter, and trimmed banks, industrials, and consumer-facing names. Abel cleared out everything from Visa (V) to UnitedHealth (UNH) to Domino’s (DPZ).
He chose to add aggressively to one name. That name is Alphabet.
For a typical 401(k) holder, the practical takeaway is simpler than the trade. If the cheapest of the Magnificent Seven at roughly 26 times forward earnings is also the one stock Abel is buying with both hands, said CNBC, then existing index exposure through a broad S&P 500 fund or QQQ ETF is doing more work in the portfolio right now than most readers realize.
Alphabet’s annual revenue crossed $400 billion in 2025 for the first time, said Alphabet. Annual earnings hit $132.17 billion, a 32% increase, per Stock Analysis.
The deeper signal is what Abel is not doing. He is not parking cash and waiting for a recession. He is not following the previous regime’s playbook of pulling capital out of stocks. He is making a single concentrated bet on the AI infrastructure leader that Buffett spent two decades wishing he had bought.
For a chief executive whose career was built running utility companies, that is the kind of move that announces a new chapter.
What to watch next is whether Berkshire keeps buying through Q2, whether Abel adds another Magnificent Seven name, and whether GOOGL holds the gains that put it within reach of the highest analyst price target on the Street, $515 from Citizens, according to Benzinga.
If Abel keeps buying, the most discussed missed opportunity in modern investing has officially been corrected, and the new Berkshire is willing to pay for AI exposure at a scale the old one never would.
Buffett would probably tell you he should have done it himself.
Related: Berkshire CEO has sobering message for tech stock investors