Berkshire Tripled Its Alphabet Stake in Greg Abel's First Quarter. Warren Buffett Spent Years Calling It One of His Mistakes.

By Kresmion Research, June 22, 2026

For two decades, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger openly described their failure to buy Google as one of the clearest mistakes of their investing careers. In Berkshire Hathaway's first quarterly filing under new chief executive Greg Abel, the firm did the opposite of sitting still: it added about 36.4 million Alphabet shares, roughly tripling a position it had only opened the prior autumn. The stock Berkshire bought at the quarter end mark of 208 dollars and change has since run sharply higher, which means anyone reading the filing today is reading it well above the price the most famous value shop in the world actually marked.

This is not a recommendation, and it is not a forecast. It is a description of what one closely watched institution disclosed it bought last quarter, what it paid, where the stock has gone since, and which other large funds were moving the other way.

Key takeaways

A regret, closed under new management

A 13F is the quarterly filing that large institutional managers must submit to disclose their United States equity and options positions as of the last day of a quarter. Berkshire filed its first quarter report on May 15, 2026, the first such filing prepared under Greg Abel, who took over as chief executive from Warren Buffett. Kresmion's filing data shows Berkshire more than tripled its Alphabet holding in the quarter, adding about 36.4 million shares to lift the position from roughly 17.8 million shares to 54.2 million. IndMoney's filing breakdown places the resulting stake near 16.6 billion dollars, ranking among Berkshire's seven largest disclosed equity holdings.

The narrative weight here is unusual. Buffett told CNBC in 2017 that he had been wrong on Google, and Munger, speaking around the same time, called the pair's failure to buy it one of the firm's worst mistakes in technology, a business they understood well as a customer yet watched compound for years without owning. The position was not a sudden lurch. Kresmion's data shows Berkshire first opened the Alphabet stake in the third quarter of 2025, near 4.3 billion dollars, and the first quarter of 2026 is the quarter it pressed that initial bet into a major holding.

The price it reported, and where it is now

Every filer in Kresmion's data that held the GOOGL share class reported it at exactly 287.56 dollars. That is not coordination. It is the closing price of Alphabet on March 31, 2026, the last trading day of the quarter, which is the standard reference price every institution uses to value a position in a 13F. Independent price history from stockanalysis.com confirms the 287.56 dollar March close. The uniform mark across filers is also a quiet data integrity check: it tells us the share counts and dollar values reconcile cleanly, with none of the price errors that can corrupt a single filing or fabricate a phantom cluster.

Since that mark, the stock has moved a long way. Alphabet last closed at 368.03 dollars on June 18, 2026, according to stockanalysis.com, about 28 percent above the 287.56 dollar quarter end mark. United States equity markets were closed on June 19 for the Juneteenth holiday, so June 18 is the most recent close. The practical consequence is the one a 13F always carries, only larger than usual here: the filing shows a position and its quarter end value, not the price Berkshire actually paid as it built the stake across two quarters, and the stock today sits well above the level at which the filing is marked. A reader treating the disclosure as a fresh entry point would be chasing a move that has already happened.

The quarter was not unanimous

Concentration, not consensus, is the accurate frame. In the same quarter that Berkshire was pressing into Alphabet, several other high profile managers went the other way. In Kresmion's data, Coatue Management reduced its Alphabet stake about 37 percent, from roughly 6.84 million to 4.31 million shares. Bill Ackman's Pershing Square cut its position roughly 95 percent, a near total exit across both share classes. Viking Global and Soros Fund Management each trimmed by about 10 percent. That is the evidence that cuts against reading Berkshire's add as a market wide signal: in the very quarter Berkshire was tripling in, several closely watched books were stepping back from the same name.

So the honest reading is not that institutions piled into Alphabet. It is that the most famous long term holder on Wall Street finally committed to a name it had publicly regretted missing, in the first quarter of a leadership transition, while a set of equally watched managers were cutting. The disagreement is the point. When the buyer is Berkshire and a manager as concentrated as Bill Ackman's Pershing Square is heading almost entirely the other way, the divergence itself is more informative than any one side of it.

How current is this, and how Kresmion reads it

A 13F is a snapshot as of the last day of a quarter, and it can be filed up to 45 days later. These positions are dated March 31, so they are roughly twelve weeks old, and the Berkshire filing itself has been public since mid May. The reported dollar values are quarter end marks, not the prices any fund actually paid. A 13F tells you where money was, not where it is going.

What Kresmion adds to a story that made headlines in May is the structure around it: the exact reconciling mark that confirms the data is clean, the precise move since that mark, the two quarter build that shows this was a deliberate position rather than a single dabble, and the cross fund tape that places Berkshire's conviction against named peers who were selling the same name at the same time. Reading one filing tells you Berkshire likes Alphabet now. Reading the set tells you the buy was contested, that it sits more than a quarter behind the current price, and that it closed a regret two of the most quoted investors of their generation had carried for twenty years.

The clearest thing to watch is the next filing. Berkshire's second quarter 13F, due by mid August, will show whether Abel keeps adding to Alphabet above the much higher current price, which would read as conviction, or lets the position ride, which would read as an opportunistic add caught at a good mark. Until then, the disclosure is history with a clean price tag on it, not a live trade.

This note is part of Kresmion's daily Research Notes. Kresmion's Alphabet research page tracks the filings behind these positions, and the Kresmion learning library collects the methodology primers.

Frequently asked questions

What is a 13F, and how recent is this data?

A 13F is a quarterly filing that institutional investment managers with more than 100 million dollars in United States equities must submit to the Securities and Exchange Commission, disclosing their long stock and options positions as of the last day of the quarter. The filing can be submitted up to 45 days after the quarter ends. The positions described here are dated March 31, 2026, so they are roughly twelve weeks old, and Berkshire's filing has been public since May 15, 2026.

How large is Berkshire's Alphabet position now?

Kresmion's filing data shows Berkshire added about 36.4 million Alphabet shares in the first quarter of 2026, lifting the stake from about 17.8 million to 54.2 million shares and roughly tripling a position it first opened in the third quarter of 2025. IndMoney places the resulting position near 16.6 billion dollars, among Berkshire's seven largest disclosed equity holdings.

Does the identical 287.56 dollar mark mean the funds coordinated?

No. Every institution values its holdings in a 13F at the closing price on the last trading day of the quarter. Alphabet closed at 287.56 dollars on March 31, 2026, so every filer holding that share class reports the same price. The uniform mark is a sign that the data reconciles cleanly across funds, not a sign of coordinated trading.

Did every large fund buy Alphabet last quarter?

No, and that is part of the story. While Berkshire was tripling its stake, Kresmion's filing data shows Coatue cut its Alphabet position about 37 percent, Pershing Square cut roughly 95 percent of its stake in a near total exit, and Viking Global and Soros each trimmed by about 10 percent in the same quarter. It was a divided quarter, not a one way move, which is why the Berkshire add is best read as one prominent manager's conviction rather than a market wide signal.

Is this a trade recommendation?

No. Kresmion surfaces what large institutions disclosed and what the stock has done since, drawn from public filings and price history. It does not advise any action on Alphabet or any other security. A 13F is backward looking, the data is roughly twelve weeks old, the stock now trades about 28 percent above the reported mark, and past positioning is not a forecast.