Berkshire Hathaway's Greg Abel is tripling down on Alphabet, betting that Google will win the AI race—and the company's $80 billion（約13兆円） funding raise may give it the edge over rivals OpenAI and Anthropic.

What happened

Berkshire Hathaway more than tripled its investment in Alphabet in the first quarter under Greg Abel's control, and subsequently committed to buy another $10 billion（約1.6兆円） worth of Alphabet's $80 billion（約13兆円） equity raise announced on June 1. Berkshire's combined stake of 86.7 million shares now amounts to about a $30.9 billion（約4.9兆円） position, making Alphabet Berkshire's fourth-largest public equity holding.

Why it matters

Alphabet faces competition from private rivals OpenAI and Anthropic—both with advanced AI models—yet Alphabet's $160 billion（約26兆円） in net income over the past 12 months far exceeds their financial resources. Crucially, Alphabet builds its own data centers and designs its own chips (Tensor Processing Units), allowing it to serve AI tokens to customers at lower cost than OpenAI and Anthropic, which rent computing capacity from others at a margin. Berkshire's investment suggests confidence that these cost advantages will help Alphabet win the generative AI market.

What to watch

Alphabet's $80 billion（約13兆円） raise, made before OpenAI and Anthropic file to go public later in the year, positions it to lock in semiconductor and memory commitments ahead of competitors. Memory and chips are currently in short supply, so larger early commitments could restrict what rivals can access or raise their costs—a potential strategic turning point in the AI race.