Greg Abel Puts Berkshire’s AI Bet on Power and Google

Greg Abel has already placed Berkshire Hathaway’s artificial intelligence equity bet, and it is not a basket of chip stocks. Alphabet is now the third-largest holding when both share classes are counted, 106 million shares worth $37.8 billion at June 30.

The other half of the trade sits in the utility Abel used to run. Berkshire Hathaway Energy will sell power to the same data-center boom only if other customers do not pick up the bill.

The $10 Billion Block Abel Negotiated on a Sunday

Warren Buffett stepped down as chief executive on December 31, 2025, stayed on as chairman, and still takes credit for starting the Google parent position. Berkshire first disclosed 17.85 million Alphabet shares worth $4.3 billion in the third quarter of 2025. Abel, who became CEO in January, then enlarged it in a hurry.

The first-quarter filing showed Berkshire adding 36,403,656 Class A shares and opening a 3,585,215-share Class C stake. In late May, Abel took a Sunday-morning call about an Alphabet equity offering that still had no size and no terms. He rang Buffett, pushed a large block, and recommended the discount.

I received a call on a Sunday morning to see if we wanted to participate in their upcoming equity offering. Really no terms or amount were set, and I said, well, I’d get back to them right away. I called Warren and I said we had a significant opportunity to continue to invest in Google, but with a significant block. I’d recommended 6.5% discount, and we were comfortable with that.

Greg Abel, CEO, Berkshire Hathaway, speaking to Becky Quick

The company took a $10 billion private placement, $5 billion of Class A at $351.81 and $5 billion of Class C at $348.20, inside Alphabet’s $80 billion raise for AI compute. Open-market buying in the same quarter pushed the combined holding to 78.8 million Class A shares and 27.2 million Class C shares. Counted together, that book outranks Coca-Cola’s $32.5 billion stake and sits behind only Apple and American Express.

Abel walked through the call and the energy side of the same trade on September 2 from Tokyo.

THE ALPHABET STAKE, QUARTER BY QUARTER

1. Third quarter 2025: Berkshire discloses 17.85 million Class A shares worth $4.3 billion, its first reported Google parent position.
2. First quarter 2026: Class A shares rise 204 percent and a new Class C line opens, taking combined Alphabet exposure to about $16.6 billion.
3. Late May 2026: Abel takes the Sunday call on Alphabet’s equity offering and recommends a $10 billion block at a 6.5 percent discount.
4. June 30, 2026: The 13F shows 106 million shares across both classes, valued at $37.8 billion, or 12.6 percent of the $299.3 billion U.S. stock book.

Buffett has said he initiated the position and that Abel is “the decider.” The June block is the first large AI-related check that clearly carries Abel’s pricing fingerprints.

The 13F Still Omits Nvidia and Microsoft

Form 13F for June 30, filed August 14, lists 29 U.S. equity names and $299.3 billion of long stock. Nvidia is not on the list. Microsoft is not on the list. The only new ticker in the quarter is a token D.R. Horton line. The AI-adjacent mega-cap on the sheet, besides Apple, is Alphabet.

BERKSHIRE’S TOP 10 STOCKS AT JUNE 30

The first quarter was the purge. Sixteen names left the book, Amazon among them, shrinking the U.S. list toward 29. The second quarter flipped the cash-flow sign: Berkshire bought $23.5 billion of stock and sold $3.7 billion, a net $19.8 billion, after 14 quarters as a net seller. Almost all of that net buying is the Alphabet add. Anyone waiting for a scatter of semiconductor tickets is reading a different firm than the one that just filed.

How Berkshire’s Own Companies Flagged Google

Abel did not describe a conversion to growth-stock picking. He described an internal feed. Berkshire owns insurers, a railroad, retailers, a housing builder, and a large energy company, and those units are already paying for software, cloud, and automation. That usage, he said, is what put Google on the shortlist.

We all are seeing and feeling the impact of AI, so we knew it was going to have a significant impact on America and businesses. We have a lot of visibility from within our companies as to how we’re using AI, what type of benefits it’s delivering, so that brought incremental interest. And we saw Google as a significant player.

Greg Abel, CEO, Berkshire Hathaway, September 2, 2026

He added that there is “a lot more to Google” than the AI line, which is the old Berkshire habit of buying a tollbooth once the product is a habit. Search still takes about 90 percent of its market. YouTube, cloud, and the Gemini stack sit on top of that. The $10 billion check also went straight into Alphabet’s own AI build, so Berkshire is both a shareholder and a supplier of capital to the same expansion its utility hopes to electrify.

Iowa’s Grid Is Already an AI Customer

Abel’s sharper comments were about electrons, not chatbots. “I’ve sort of always had the strong view that energy would be the constraint,” he said. Generation, in his telling, is not the scarce piece. Site preparation and interconnection are. “We can produce the energy. It’s how long would it take to get the sites prepared.”

In Iowa, where MidAmerican Energy sits, data centers accounted for about 8% of load last year. The November 2025 EEI deck for Berkshire Hathaway Energy is more specific on the contracted pipeline. The utilities already have more than 9,000 megawatts of data-center load signed, in service or under construction. Peak use in 2024 was nearly 1,800 megawatts, and customer ramp schedules point to 4,000 to 5,000 megawatts by 2030.

BHE’S DATA-CENTER PIPELINE

• Contracted load: More than 9,000 megawatts of data-center demand is in service or in construction across the utilities.
• 2024 peak in use: Data centers hit nearly 1,800 megawatts, about 7 percent of system peak that year.
• 2030 ramp: Requested schedules imply 4,000 to 5,000 megawatts of data-center peak if those contracts fill in.
• Capex plan: The group plans $34.0 billion of growth and operating capital spending from 2025 through 2027.

As of September 30, 2025, BHE owned 37,893 megawatts of generation in operation and under construction. MidAmerican’s 2024 weighted retail rate was $0.0753 per kilowatt-hour, 44 percent below the $0.1346 U.S. investor-owned average, which is why Iowa shows up first in Abel’s examples. Energy operating revenue at the subsidiary was $5.41 billion in the second quarter, up from $5.13 billion a year earlier. The U.S. electric utilities serve about 5.3 million customers.

Three Conditions Before a Hyperscaler Gets Power

The opportunity is not an open tap. Abel said Berkshire is interested in serving hyperscalers “if there was no impact to the rates of our other customers,” and that the working rule is a net benefit for those customers. He also wants the buildings welcomed in town, with water use handled, because “there is a lot more pushback in the communities across the U.S.” He said no specific Berkshire energy site has been rejected so far.

That stance matches what the energy group already tells regulators. The 2025 shareholder letter said hyperscalers must pay for their own infrastructure and carry the risk of a step-change in long-term demand. The 2026 corporate overview is blunter still: large industrial customers, including data centers, have to fund the kit that serves them, so those costs are not shifted onto households. In practice, data centers fund substations and transmission upgrades before they get the load.

THE THREE GATES FOR A DATA CENTER HOOKUP

• Ratepayers: New load is welcome only when it does not raise bills for existing customers and, Abel said, delivers them a net benefit.
• Who writes the check: The hyperscaler pays for the extra generation, substations, and lines tied to its campus.
• The town: The site has to be a welcomed member of the community, including on water, or Berkshire does not want the fight.

That is a slower, smaller AI trade than a blank check to every campus that wants Iowa wind. It is also the one Abel can underwrite, because he spent years running this business and still talks like an operator who has to face a rate case.

Apple’s Playbook Shows Up in the Google Stake

Berkshire’s first large tech holding was Apple, bought from 2016, after Buffett had spent decades saying he did not understand the sector. He recast the iPhone as a consumer product with a brand moat, then let the position run until it was half the stock book. The firm once held more than 900 million Apple shares. It now holds 227.9 million, still the largest line at $66.0 billion.

Alphabet is the same late, large entry, with one twist. Apple was framed as a consumer staple. Alphabet is being framed as a company Berkshire’s own units already pay, plus a capital-raise partner on AI infrastructure. Buffett has said he waited too long on Google. Abel’s job is to avoid repeating that pause without turning Omaha into a semiconductor fund. The 13F is the evidence he has not done the latter.

A $365.5 Billion Cash Pile Barely Moved

Berkshire’s second-quarter filing still reads like a company hunting for uses of money rather than sources of it. Insurance cash, short-term Treasury bills, and railroad and utility cash together put June 30 cash and Treasury bills at $365.5 billion. Equity securities on the same balance sheet were $323.8 billion. The 13F captures only the U.S. listed slice of that.

Net earnings attributable to shareholders were $25.67 billion in the quarter, against $12.37 billion a year earlier. Operating earnings were $12.98 billion, against $11.16 billion. Berkshire spent $4.5 billion on its own shares in the quarter and more than $3.3 billion more in July, and it closed the $6.8 billion purchase of Taylor Morrison Home on July 24. Those checks, plus the Alphabet block, are the first real dent in a pile that had been compounding in T-bills.

A $10 billion discounted slice of Alphabet and a utility that already has thousands of megawatts of data-center contracts are a coherent pair. They are also a pair that still leaves hundreds of billions undeployed. Abel has not had a data-center energy site rejected, construction is still moving, and the last full U.S. stock snapshot still lists 29 names without Nvidia in the mix.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of Berkshire Hathaway’s public filings and of remarks by CEO Greg Abel. It is informational only and is not investment advice, a recommendation to buy or sell Berkshire Hathaway, Alphabet, Apple, or any other security, and it is not a forecast of future 13F holdings or utility returns. Readers should consult a licensed financial adviser or other qualified investment professional who can consider their own objectives and risk limits before acting. Share counts, dollar values, and operating figures reflect the cited filings and interviews as of the dates given and will change with later reports, market prices, and regulatory outcomes.