Warren Buffett spent decades avoiding tech stocks. Now he’s sitting on a $31 billion bet on the company that owns Google, and he’s explaining exactly why he changed his mind.

On July 15, 2026, Buffett told CNBC’s Squawk Box that he personally initiated Berkshire Hathaway’s investment in Alphabet, a position that has grown to become the conglomerate’s third-largest equity holding, trailing only Apple and American Express.

How a $4.3B starter position became a $31B headline

Berkshire began accumulating Alphabet shares in Q3 2025, picking up roughly 17.8 million shares for approximately $4.3 billion. In June 2026, Berkshire wired $10 billion into Alphabet through a private placement, as part of Alphabet’s broader $80 billion equity raise designed to accelerate its AI infrastructure buildout.

Following Buffett’s public disclosure of the stake, Alphabet’s stock climbed 3.65% to around $370 per share.

Buffett’s framing of the investment is worth reading carefully. “The real question with Google and all of its competitors now, because they’re all laying out hundreds of billions, and that’s real money,” he told CNBC. “That’s the game they’re playing now. They weren’t playing that game with computer software.”

The numbers that convinced a skeptic

Alphabet’s capital expenditure ambitions for 2026 are not subtle. The company has estimated its full-year capex at between $175 billion and $185 billion. It spent $35.67 billion in the first quarter of 2026 alone, more than double the figure from the same period the prior year.

Buffett himself acknowledged that Alphabet’s capital-intensive model is less attractive to him than many other businesses in Berkshire’s portfolio. He also expressed some regret over not investing earlier.