It has emerged that Berkshire Hathaway (hereinafter ‘Berkshire’), led by Chairman Warren Buffett (95), has bought tens of trillions of won worth of shares in Alphabet, Google’s parent company.

According to the holdings report (Form 13F) that Berkshire disclosed on the 14th (local time), Berkshire reported that as of the end of September it held $4.33 billion (about 6.3 trillion won) worth of Alphabet shares.

Buffett, often called the ‘guru (teacher) of investing,’ has upheld ‘value investing’ as his investment philosophy and has remained cautious about investing in technology stocks other than Apple.

On Wall Street, attention is focusing on the fact that Buffett and Charlie Munger, Berkshire’s vice chairman who passed away in 2023, had said they regretted missing an opportunity to invest in Google in the past. At the 2017 annual shareholders meeting, Vice Chairman Munger said, “If you ask me what the worst mistake we made in the tech-stock arena was, I think it was failing to recognize Google.” At the time, Chairman Buffett also said that people who had prepared Google investment prospectuses had come to see them, adding, “We had every chance to ask questions and understand Google, but we missed it.”

U.S. broadcaster CNBC analyzed that Todd Combs or Ted Weschler, Berkshire’s portfolio managers, may have led the Alphabet investment. They had previously led Berkshire’s purchase of an Amazon stake in 2019.

Berkshire also reported that it reduced its Apple stake by 15% in the third quarter. Even after the sale, the value of its Apple holdings came to $60.7 billion (about 88 trillion won), still ranking first among Berkshire’s listed-stock investments by valuation.

At the annual shareholders meeting in May, Chairman Buffett surprised investors by announcing plans to retire at the end of 2025. After Buffett’s retirement, Berkshire will be led by Vice Chairman Greg Abel, who has been designated as his successor.