Greg Abel lifts Alphabet sixfold; AI trio hits 41.7% of Berkshire portfolio

Warren Buffett spent 60 years assembling Berkshire Hathaway, turning a struggling textile maker into a $1 trillion conglomerate with a stock portfolio and cash pile each exceeding $350 billion. His strategy favored strong growth, reliable profits, and experienced management, and he largely avoided momentum-driven AI bets. Yet as he stepped back from the CEO role at the end of 2025, three of Berkshire's largest positions were already companies leaning heavily on AI in their core operations.

The Coca-Cola stake, accumulated between 1988 and 1994 for $1.3 billion and now worth $35.1 billion, is being paired with $1.1 billion of Azure cloud spending over five years. Alphabet, first bought in the third quarter of 2025, has grown into a $36.3 billion position as Google Cloud revenue rose 82% year over year and its order backlog reached $514 billion. Apple, once about half the portfolio and still the largest holding after a three-quarters sale, is positioned around its installed base of more than 2.5 billion active devices. Greg Abel's 2026 sixfold increase in Alphabet suggests the new CEO may be willing to lean further into AI-linked names than Buffett did, though the concentration this creates — 41.7% of the $357 billion portfolio in three holdings — means Berkshire's returns now hinge on whether these businesses keep converting AI investment into advertising, cloud, and consumer revenue.