Warren Buffett: I initiated Berkshire Hathaway's investment in Alphabet

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버핏은 버크셔가 알파벳 지분 310억 달러 이상을 보유하며, 3분기 2025부터 매집하고 올해 그레그 아벨 CEO 체제에서 크게 늘렸다고 설명. 최근 100억 달러 사모 배정 포함. 좋은 사업은 자본수익률이 높고 장기간 현금을 창출하는 기업이며, AI 기업들의 대규모 자본지출은 월스트리트가 싫어하는 요인이라고 언급. 기술주 투자 변화에 대해서는 명확한 전망을 내놓지 않음.

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01. Berkshire Hathaway now owns a stake in Alphabet worth more than $31 billion. It's a position the conglomerate began building in the third quarter of 2025, but has significantly increased this year after Greg Abel became Berkshire's CEO. In fact, just last month, the company added $10 billion in private placements of Alphabet shares.

02. There is now much speculation about who exactly decided to purchase these shares, and many point to this stake as a sign of how Greg Abel will leave his mark on the Berkshire portfolio. I asked Buffett whose idea it was to buy shares in a tech giant. I don't know if it was his idea, but let's just say, I would n't normally give you that answer to a question like this, but I will now, because but we I don't do anything that he wouldn't approve of.

03. He doesn't do anything that I don't approve of. We are constantly communicating . He, you know, he, uh, well, every day. I mean, he's the one who makes the decisions. And, uh, going back to, uh, Alphabet or Google, uh , it's probably fifth or sixth. Well, I thought it was third place, if you factor in the $10 billion private placement, as that would raise the amount to over $31 billion .

04. Yes, but we have Burlington Northern Railroad, which is certainly worth a lot more. like Absolutely. I mean, we always make a choice between buying marketable securities or the entire company. We look at it the same way. Yes, there are certain minor exceptions to this. We can't, we can't determine the dividend policy, for example, if we don't own the company, but the chances are that it will be significant...It's important to buy a good business.

05. And buy it on the right terms, and then find the right person to manage it. Okay, but you quickly increased your investment in Alphabet to over $30 billion. This puts it among the companies you own shares in, after Apple and American Express. Express. So Coca-Cola will be smaller, Bank of America will be smaller.

06. It's not close. It's, uh, but But if you take Coca-Cola, which we've owned for, you know, 45 years, or whatever it is . Uh, you know, we have nothing to do with the management of this business, but it's a very good business. When I say "good business," I mean a company from which you can expect a high return on capital over a long period of time.

07. So the point is, when you invest in Google or any other AI company, you are investing huge amounts of money. And I can invest a lot of money in government bonds and get, you know, 20, 30, or 40 billion dollars a year in payments. So, a good business is one that earns significantly more and has the potential to continue earning significantly more than the interest on risk-free investments, which can be considered Treasury bonds.

08. But if you take, for example , American Express, most banks receive 13-14% on capital. If I asked everyone to guess how much Berkshire Hathaway makes, they would give roughly the same number, but it's completely different. The company earns over 30% on capital without being exposed to more risk than banks, which have 13-14%.

09. The whole secret to investing is to find a business that will generate high income over a long period of time. This is exactly what has been happening to Berkshire for many years. A long period of time becomes very important because these doublings eventually turn into very large sums. But Charlie Munger, my partner for decades, always emphasized: a business is n't good just because it does something popular.

10. It must generate real cash flow or demonstrate that it is capable of doing so in the near future, and be able to distribute it. Even better if the profits could be reinvested in the business. It happens that a company is capable of generating high profits, but you cannot effectively use this excess capital.

11. Okay, let me ask. Everyone always thought of you as someone who doesn't invest in technology. By the way, you yourself described yourself as someone who does not invest in the technology sector . Obviously, the largest position in Berkshire's portfolio is Apple, which you once called a consumer company.

12. And you just called Google an AI company. So what has changed? What? The real question about Google and all its competitors right now is that they are spending hundreds of billions. So , I think they are capital expenditures. The biggest ones do , and that's real money. I mean, if our railway had spent 300 million or a billion or 200 billion, that kind of money wouldn't even be invested in the railway, you know, from a development perspective.

13. So, this is the game they are playing now. They won't play this game with computer software. No, so when they were light on assets, you didn't like them, but the markets loved them. Now that they are wrong. spend huge amounts of money on capital investments, many shareholders like them less because they are not likely to be winners, judging by experience.

14. More than 90% or 95% of what's going on Wall Street. Because Wall Street is only interested in whether something can be sold. And I can't recall a single Wall Street report that really addresses the internal rate of return that a business actually earns. What could be more important than what a business earns?

15. But they ask all these questions about what's going to happen next quarter, or, you know, it's just funny. But investing is about finding...well, probably the closest thing to the most successful long-term investor was Rockefeller. And look what oil and gas have done in 150 or a couple hundred years.

16. So, he continued to capitalize the profits at a very good rate. Not as good as GEICO in the early years because it's easier to do it when you're small. Doing it when you're big... the whole world is looking at you , trying to understand why these guys are doing it and we're not. Why do you prefer Alphabet over others and what prompted you to open this position?

17. I would say I don't like it as much as at least four or five other businesses that we own. Besides Apple, railroads, well, you know American Express Yeah, you're going to take my entire portfolio out of me right now , but AND of course you like her enough to make her a huge position. I like Berkshire just like that.

18. I mean, Berkshire was making high returns on capital without...I'm not talking about using leverage tricks or anything like that . I'm in all of this . But I'm talking about why Alphabet and not the other "big seven" or other hyperscalers who are doing the same thing and spending a lot of money. Amazon, Microsoft, whoever it is.

19. To try to win this fight for AI. Well, I don't want to sit around and criticize others. They have no choice. Yes. You know, they are now forced to spend like this . Yes, in many cases they are playing a game they themselves do not want to play. IBM would happily continue playing the game it played in the 30s, 40s, 50s, or 60s.

20. But someone else came along and said, “We will achieve better results in achieving your clients’ goals,” because ultimately, clients have to be satisfied or you’ll lose them, and the client isn’t stupid. Wall Street can be very stupid . In the sense that they can dream. But a grocery store owner can't dream .

21. I worked in my grandfather's grocery store, and we saw how we had one store in 1869, and one store in 1969, while others were making high returns on capital, some even on a national scale. A&P, which no one associates with anything anymore. In the 1930s, they were number one, and I mean number one, on the list of targets for antitrust officials in Washington.

22. They had very, very, very strong positions. And these positions disappeared. So, this is a different game, and you like this game , you understand it better than the one they played before, right ? There are many games I don't understand, of course. But this game... Why should I expect to profit from things I don't understand?

23. Mhm. And... But that's exactly what I'm leading up to . What do you understand about this game now? Because most people will say that you would never buy a tech stock, and it seems like you've said the same thing yourself in the past. Yes, but I did, and in fact one of the most successful companies I've been associated with since 1958...

24. Yes. ...there was a company called Data Documents. We founded Data Documents because a few of my friends read in the newspaper that IBM had settled an antitrust lawsuit by divesting assets. They had to give up 50 % of the capacity of their best business. And everyone knew that this was their best business.

25. Now, it just so happens that it runs out after 10 or 15 years, and I've known a few people who have had that happen, but if you have a great business, you're going to get attacked . So the question is not whether he was great yesterday, but how long he will remain great.