{"id":64929,"date":"2026-06-07T03:30:49","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T03:30:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/64929\/"},"modified":"2026-06-07T03:30:49","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T03:30:49","slug":"abel-goes-his-own-way-with-new-berkshire-investments-including-billions-for-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/64929\/","title":{"rendered":"Abel goes his own way with new Berkshire investments, including billions for AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

(This is the Warren Buffett Watch newsletter, news and analysis on all things Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. You can sign up here<\/a> to receive it every Friday evening in your inbox.)<\/p>\n

ABEL GOES HIS OWN WAY WITH NEW INVESTMENTS\u00a0IN HOME BUILDING … AND AIBuffett praises new CEO for ‘fast’ and ‘smooth’ acquisition<\/p>\n

Warren Buffett tells CNBC’s Becky Quick new Berkshire Hathaway CEO Greg Abel has “launched” with\u00a0his first major deal<\/a>, the $6.8 billion acquisition of\u00a0Taylor Morrison Home<\/a>, a\u00a0residential homebuilder and developer<\/a>\u00a0with operations in 12 states.<\/p>\n

On Monday’s “Squawk Box,”\u00a0Becky quoted Buffett<\/a>\u00a0from a phone conversation the day before when the deal was announced:<\/p>\n

“Greg did this faster than I could have done it, smoother than I could have done it, and I never talked to the CEO.<\/p>\n

“He has launched.”<\/p>\n

\"Berkshire<\/p>\n

Becky noted that when Buffett wanted to do a deal, he would move quickly, and “this is basically what Greg has picked up and done, too.”<\/p>\n

She reports Abel went to Arizona and spent around five hours with Taylor Morrison CEO Sheryl Palmer, but when he came back, he did not think he had a deal.<\/p>\n

Then, a few days later, Palmer called to say the price was fair and her board was ready to proceed.<\/p>\n

Becky says Abel spoke with Buffett and Berkshire lead director Sue Decker but didn’t tell the rest of the board until after the deal had been completed.<\/p>\n

“That’s kind of the Berkshire way, to try and move quickly on these things,” she added.<\/p>\n

\"Taylor<\/p>\n

Appearing on Monday’s “Squawk on the Street” later that morning<\/a>, Palmer said joining Berkshire is a “once in a lifetime opportunity for the company, for the brand, and for team members across the country.” (The entire interview<\/a>\u00a0is available to\u00a0CNBC Pro<\/a>\u00a0subscribers.)<\/p>\n

She started speaking with Abel “probably just a number of weeks ago,” and his “pitch” was that Berkshire “has this wonderful collection of on-site builders, and they build generally around the first-time buyer … and if you think about the Berkshire eco-system, and what they’ve build for decades, I think what Greg saw was the opportunity, on a national scale, to build a platform.”<\/p>\n

Berkshire housing and home improvement subsidiaries include\u00a0Clayton Homes<\/a>,\u00a0Shaw Industries<\/a>,\u00a0Johns Manville<\/a>, and\u00a0Benjamin Moore<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A home under construction stands behind a “sold” sign in a new development in York County, South Carolina, U.S., February 29, 2020.<\/p>\n

Lucas Jackson | Reuters<\/p>\n

In a\u00a0joint news release<\/a>\u00a0on the deal, Abel echoed Palmer, saying, “Over time, we expect to unify our site-built homebuilding operations into a combined platform enabling us to deliver the dream of homeownership to more Americans.”<\/p>\n

Christopher Davis at Hudson Value Partners\u00a0points out to\u00a0Bloomberg<\/a>\u00a0the goal of unifying operations is a “notable departure” from Berkshire’s long-standing practice of letting subsidiaries run independently, but he thinks investors “will welcome that evolution in approach.”<\/p>\n

CFRA Research analyst Cathy Seifert\u00a0tells the\u00a0AP<\/a>, “Given Greg’s strength as an operator it will be interesting to see if he does consolidate these units to get some greater scale and efficiencies.”<\/p>\n

Reuters\u00a0reports<\/a>\u00a0UBS analyst John Lovallo is telling clients a combination of Taylor Morrison with Clayton would create one of the country’s five largest homebuilders.<\/p>\n

He calls the acquisition “a strong vote of confidence in the mid-long term outlook for the homebuilding industry,” which has a shortage of around 7 million homes.<\/p>\n

Abel adds to big bet on Alphabet’s AI ambitions<\/p>\n

And in what appears to be a vote of confidence in the future of artificial intelligence, Berkshire will invest $10 billion in Alphabet, helping to fund that company’s big spending on its “world-class AI compute infrastructure to meet its unprecedented customer demand<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

As part of a larger plan to raise around\u00a0$80 billion from stock sales<\/a>, Google’s parent will use a\u00a0private placement<\/a>\u00a0to sell $5 billion of its\u00a0Class A shares (GOOGL)<\/a>\u00a0to Berkshire for $351.81 each and another $5 billion of\u00a0Class C shares (GOOG)<\/a>\u00a0for $348.20 each.<\/p>\n

According to\u00a0Bloomberg<\/a>, the purchase was the result of a “stealthy weekend call” to Berkshire by Goldman Sachs, the firm putting together Alphabet’s enormous equity offering, and a “rapid signoff” from Abel, offering “fresh reassurance that Warren Buffett’s investing conglomerate remains the first port of call for companies in need of a big check or a vote of confidence.”<\/p>\n

When the deal was announced after Monday’s close of trading, Berkshire’s GOOGL purchase price was 5.5% below the stock’s market value and GOOG was a 6.5% bargain.<\/p>\n

Now the discounts are down to 4.5% and 4.8%.<\/p>\n

Zoom In IconArrows pointing outwardsZoom In IconArrows pointing outwards<\/p>\n

Berkshire already owns $21.3 billion of Alphabet’s Class A shares, making it the fifth largest position in its\u00a0equity portfolio<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It was apparently Abel’s decision to more than triple the stake in the first quarter to almost 58 million shares from the close to 18 million shares Berkshire purchased in last year’s third quarter.<\/p>\n

Zoom In IconArrows pointing outwards<\/p>\n

When the new shares are added, Alphabet will probably become Berkshire’s third or fourth biggest stock holding, rivaling its long-held\u00a0Coca-Cola<\/a>\u00a0stake, which is currently worth almost $32 billion.<\/p>\n

Abel’s enthusiasm for Alphabet is a marked contrast to Buffett’s great reluctance to invest in tech.<\/p>\n

He felt he didn’t have the ability to predict which companies would prosper in the long term, so he was “perfectly willing to trade away a big payoff for a certain payoff<\/a>” in areas he better understood, especially during what turned out to be a\u00a0dot-com bubble<\/a>\u00a0in the late 1990s.<\/p>\n

So far, Buffett hasn’t said anything publicly about Berkshire’s Alphabet investments.<\/p>\n

BUFFETT & BERKSHIRE AROUND THE INTERNET<\/p>\n

Some links may require a subscription:<\/p>\n

HIGHLIGHTS FROM CNBC’S BUFFETT ARCHIVEBuffett missed the boat on Google (2017)<\/p>\n

In a 2017 interview with CNBC,\u00a0Warren Buffett says<\/a>\u00a0he should have known about Google’s profit potential because GEICO had been a major customer of the company.<\/p>\n

WARREN BUFFETT: Google I should have had some insight into, because GEICO was a heavy user very early on.<\/p>\n

So here we saw value in something. At \u2014 at that time \u2014 I have no idea what we’re paying for a click now, but \u2014 but we were paying $10 or $11 a click for something that had no cost of goods sold, and we were going to keep doing it. I mean we could see that.<\/p>\n

So \u2014 I should have had more insight into that.<\/p>\n

Now, whether Bing was going to come along or other people were going to take away the market, that’s another question.<\/p>\n

Whether you had sort of a \u2014 first user advantage that would be \u2014 would prevail \u2014 and there is a lot of technology to it.<\/p>\n

So \u2014 so somebody could have come along with a better technological product that I would not have had any insights into that.<\/p>\n

I certainly had insights into the benefit for the user.<\/p>\n

BERKSHIRE STOCK WATCHZoom In IconArrows pointing outwardsZoom In IconArrows pointing outwards<\/p>\n

BRK.A stock price: $733,550.00<\/p>\n

BRK.B stock price: $488.13<\/p>\n

BRK.B P\/E (TTM): 14.53<\/p>\n

Berkshire market capitalization: $1,053,525,726,365<\/p>\n

Berkshire Cash as of March 31: $397.4 billion (Up 6.5% from Dec. 31)<\/p>\n

Excluding Rail Cash and Subtracting T-Bills Payable: $380.2 billion (Up 3.0% from Dec. 31)<\/p>\n

Berkshire repurchased $234 million of its shares in Q1 2026.<\/p>\n

(All figures are as of the date of publication, unless otherwise indicated)<\/p>\n

BERKSHIRE’S TOP EQUITY HOLDINGS – Jun. 5, 2026Zoom In IconArrows pointing outwards<\/p>\n

Berkshire’s top holdings of disclosed publicly traded stocks in the U.S. and Japan, by market value, based on the latest closing prices.<\/p>\n

Holdings are as of March 31, 2026, as reported in\u00a0Berkshire Hathaway’s 13F filing<\/a>\u00a0on May 15, 2026, except for:<\/p>\n

The full list of holdings and current market values is available from CNBC.com’s\u00a0Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker<\/a>.<\/p>\n

QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS<\/p>\n

Please send any questions or comments about the newsletter to me at\u00a0alex.crippen@nbcuni.com<\/a>. (Sorry, but we don’t forward questions or comments to Buffett himself.)<\/p>\n

If you aren’t already subscribed to this newsletter, you can sign up\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Also, Buffett’s annual letters to shareholders are highly recommended reading. There are collected\u00a0here on Berkshire’s website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

— Alex Crippen, Editor, Warren Buffett Watch<\/p>\n

Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(This is the Warren Buffett Watch newsletter, news and analysis on all things Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,131,135,25,28365,1095,148,13568,2605,36731,286,15484,36730,33924,214],"class_list":["post-64929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-alphabet-class-a","tag-alphabet-class-c","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-berkshire-hathaway-inc","tag-breaking-news-markets","tag-business-news","tag-coca-cola-co","tag-goldman-sachs-group-inc","tag-ishares-u-s-home-construction-etf","tag-markets","tag-mitsubishi-ufj-financial-group-inc","tag-spdr-sp-homebuilders-etf","tag-taylor-morrison-home-corp","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}