{"id":1094337,"date":"2026-07-17T06:39:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T06:39:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1094337\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T06:39:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T06:39:20","slug":"buffett-says-ai-giants-are-playing-a-game-they-dont-want-to-play-to-compete-in-the-ai-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1094337\/","title":{"rendered":"Buffett says AI giants are ‘playing a game they don’t want to play’ to compete in the AI race"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Oracle<\/a> of Omaha is finally investing in tech stocks, and that\u2019s purely because they\u2019ve changed their capex spending model to stay competitive in the AI race.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe real question with Google and all of its competitors now, because they\u2019re all laying out hundreds of billions, and\u2026 that\u2019s real money,\u201d Warren Buffett told CNBC<\/a>. \u201cThat\u2019s the game they\u2019re playing now. They weren\u2019t playing that game with computer software.\u201d<\/p>\n

Buffett, who has long steered clear of technology companies<\/a> because he didn\u2019t understand them, revealed that he was the one behind Berkshire\u2019s $31 billion investment in Alphabet<\/a>, not incoming Berkshire CEO Greg Abel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI initiated it,\u201d Buffett said. \u201cHe\u2019s not doing anything I don\u2019t approve of. We talk all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Buffett, who admitted, \u201cI made a mistake\u201d when asked why he passed on Google for years, said he finally became attracted to Google and its hyperscaler rivals when they began spending like railroads and utilities\u2014pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into data centers and chips, the kind of capital-intensive buildout Buffett understands because it looks like the businesses he\u2019s owned for decades.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is decidedly different from how they spent their capex in the past, and it\u2019s primarily because they\u2019re trying to stay competitive in the ever-changing AI race.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t have any choice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked why he\u2019d picked Alphabet over Amazon<\/a>, Microsoft<\/a> or the rest of the Magnificent Seven, Buffett demurred\u2014\u201dI don\u2019t want to sit around knocking the others\u201d\u2014before framing the AI spending race between the hyperscalers as something closer to a trap than a clear victory.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re now playing a game, in many cases, or in some cases, where they\u2019re playing a game they don\u2019t want to play,\u201d Buffett said, while referring to IBM\u2019s historic revenue miss this week<\/a>. \u201cIBM<\/a> would have loved it if they just kept playing the game that IBM was playing in the 30s or the 40s or the 50s or the 60s.\u201d<\/p>\n

Google\u2019s stock surge\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alphabet shares surged nearly 4% on Wednesday, pushing Google co-founder Larry Page\u2019s net worth above $300 billion for just the second time ever, according to Forbes<\/a>\u2014and the stock was still climbing Thursday. Berkshire now holds a $31 billion stake in Alphabet after it began building it up in the third quarter of 2025. The buying accelerated this year with an additional $10 billion spent just last month. Buffett said Alphabet was \u201cnumber five or six\u201d in Berkshire\u2019s holdings, and his CNBC comments added $8 billion to Page\u2019s fortune.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Still, Buffett explained Google is \u201cmore likely to be a winner based on the record than probably 90% or 95% of what gets merchandised through Wall Street\u201d\u2014a rare vote of confidence in a company doubling its AI spending up to $185 billion on AI, a spending spree that even keeps <\/a>CEO Sundar Pichai up at night.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On Google\u2019s Q4 earnings call in February, Pichai reflected<\/a> on the AI capex surge and his concern about converting those billions of dollars of investment into data centers and overcoming compute bottlenecks, but struck an optimistic tone nonetheless.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are in a very, very relentless innovation cadence, and I think we are confident about keeping that momentum as we go through 2026,\u201d Pichai said on the call.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Oracle of Omaha is finally investing in tech stocks, and that\u2019s purely because they\u2019ve changed their capex…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1094338,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3163],"tags":[323,1942,867,53,16,15,35854],"class_list":["post-1094337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-google","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-warren-buffett"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1094337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1094337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1094337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1094338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1094337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1094337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1094337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}