Key Points
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Apple accounts for 20.1% of Berkshire Hathaway’s total portfolio, while Alphabet is also a major holding.
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Abel continues to buy Alphabet stock, including a $10 billion private placement investment in June.
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Though they are already two of the most valuable companies in the world, Berkshire Hathaway still sees more upside ahead for Apple and Alphabet.
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Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRKA) (NYSE: BRKB) reported its second-quarter results on Aug. 8. As is typical, there was not much commentary on why it did what it did — it let its investments speak for themselves.
In that regard, two of the conglomerate’s top five stock holdings, Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) and Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), are making a statement. Not only is Berkshire signaling a shift regarding its comfort level with tech stocks, but it’s also offering an indication of how new CEO Greg Abel thinks when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI) stocks.
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A value philosophy, extended to tech stocks
Former Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett was known for his preference to largely stay within what he viewed as his circle of competence, which included finding value in traditional industries such as insurance, finance, consumer goods, and railroads. The conglomerate did, however, dabble in tech stocks under Buffett’s watch, investing in Apple — a position that grew to be the portfolio’s largest — and taking an initial position in Alphabet relatively late in his tenure. Still, tech largely remained outside the Oracle of Omaha’s comfort zone.
Abel seems more comfortable with tech stocks, but that doesn’t mean he is abandoning the disciplined investing style that prevailed under his predecessor. In his first letter to shareholders as CEO, Abel emphasized that the values that built Berkshire remain intact: “Berkshire’s culture and values form the basis of our operating framework, which shapes the strategy we pursue and the choices we make as we build Berkshire. As CEO, I use the framework to govern how I lead every day.”
That said, the first half of 2026 has offered some early hints about Berkshire’s future, which may involve more tech investing.
Berkshire was steadily trimming its massive position in Apple while Buffett was still CEO, selling 10.3 million shares in the fourth quarter of 2025. But Abel has kept Apple as Berkshire’s top stock holding, consisting of 20.1% of the equity portfolio.
He also had Berkshire buy more shares of Alphabet in the first quarter of 2026, and took part in Alphabet’s $80 billion equity offering in June, investing $10 billion through a private placement deal. Alphabet’s Class A shares make up 6.8% of Berkshire’s stock portfolio, while Class C shares account for 1.8%.
How the world’s biggest companies could still be values
It may sound odd to describe Alphabet and Apple — two of the world’s most valuable companies by market cap — as undervalued. But Berkshire has always taken a long-term approach to investing.
With the AI data center infrastructure Alphabet is building out, it can be a market leader through the chips it’s developing and its cloud computing business. The client base it has been building for its custom chips includes AI giant Anthropic, and Alphabet held a 14% share of the global cloud computing market as of May.
Apple has taken a different approach to AI, using its popular consumer devices to offer a gateway to the technology rather than developing large language models or massive data centers. In 2025, generative AI apps paid Apple $900 million in fees to list on its App Store, according to a Wall Street Journal article. While that’s a relatively small figure, as more people seek access to things like AI chatbots and become willing to pay subscription fees to get that access, Apple can provide a toll road to those services, collecting a cut of those fees without spending hundreds of billions of dollars on AI infrastructure.
By keeping Apple as a top investment and continuing to add to the Alphabet position, Abel is signaling he does see value in tech and AI. But he’s also staying true to Berkshire’s investment philosophy, and not taking wild swings on unproven companies.
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Jack Delaney has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Apple, and Berkshire Hathaway. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
