Greg Abel's First Quarter: Berkshire Hathaway Triples Its Alphabet Bet

A New Era at Berkshire Hathaway

Warren Buffett stepped back. Greg Abel stepped in. And Wall Street got its first real look at what a post-Buffett Berkshire Hathaway looks like — courtesy of the Q1 2026 13F filing released in May.

The verdict: Abel wasted no time putting his stamp on the portfolio. He slashed the number of holdings from roughly 40 to just 26, trimmed total 13F assets from ~$274 billion to ~$263 billion, and made one of the boldest moves in Berkshire's recent history — tripling down on Alphabet.

The Alphabet Trade

The headline number is hard to miss. Berkshire increased its Alphabet stake by approximately 225%, from around 17.8 million shares to roughly 57.8 million shares — a position now worth an estimated $16.6 billion. That vaults Google's parent company into Berkshire's top holdings, a remarkable ascent for a company Buffett long passed on because he thought he'd missed the window.

Then came the exclamation point: on June 1, 2026, Berkshire announced it had agreed to purchase an additional $10 billion in Alphabet shares directly from the company — a deal that deepens the bet even further and signals this isn't just a passive allocation shift. This is a conviction call.

The business case isn't hard to make. Alphabet's Q1 2026 results were exceptional: EPS of $5.11 against a $2.63 consensus, revenue of $109.9 billion (up 21.8% year-over-year), and Google Cloud growth of 63% with a backlog nearly doubling quarter-over-quarter to over $460 billion. Free cash flow over the trailing twelve months hit $64.4 billion. For a value investor looking for durable compounders at reasonable prices, Alphabet in 2026 checks nearly every box.

You can track Berkshire's current holdings — and see how they've shifted over time — on InvestorLens.

What Got Cut

Equally telling is what Abel sold. The exits included:

• Amazon — fully liquidated after a position that never quite fit the Berkshire mold
• Domino's Pizza — closed out entirely
• UnitedHealth Group — a full exit from a healthcare name that had been a controversial pick given Berkshire's stated frustration with healthcare costs

Chevron, once a major position reflecting Buffett's late-career energy thesis, was also meaningfully trimmed. The pattern is clear: Abel is concentrating. He's running fewer bets with higher conviction, not a sprawling equity portfolio that could have been a mutual fund.

Delta Joins the Book

One genuinely surprising new addition: Delta Air Lines. Buffett famously torched Berkshire's airline holdings during COVID-19, declaring he'd been wrong about the sector and selling everything at a loss. That was 2020. Abel's decision to add Delta in Q1 2026 is either a full rehabilitation of the airlines thesis or a calculated bet on Delta's specific positioning — its premium cabin focus, loyalty program economics, and co-brand credit card revenues make it a structurally different business than the commodity carriers of the past.

Whether this is a small exploratory position or the start of something larger will be visible in subsequent 13Fs. Check back at InvestorLens as Q2 2026 filings drop later this year.

What This Means for the "New Berkshire" Thesis

Observers have debated for years what Berkshire would look like once Buffett stepped away. Two competing theories emerged: (1) Abel would be a faithful steward, making minimal changes and managing what Buffett built, or (2) Abel would use the transition as a chance to reshape the portfolio around his own views and the world as it exists in 2026, not 1996.

Q1 2026 answers that question. Abel is reshaping. The concentration into Alphabet, the airline re-entry, the wholesale elimination of a dozen positions — these aren't maintenance moves. They reflect a deliberate portfolio philosophy: fewer names, cleaner thesis, higher stakes.

Berkshire's cash position and equity book still dwarf most institutional peers, so even "concentrated" Berkshire is immensely diversified in absolute terms. But the direction of travel is unmistakable.

The Broader 13F Signal

Berkshire isn't alone in the concentration trend. Across Q1 2026 13F filings, major funds trimmed their name counts while doubling down on high-conviction positions — particularly in AI infrastructure, cloud, and semiconductors. Druckenmiller built out his tech book. Cohen at Point72 deepened AI hardware exposure. Loeb at Third Point leaned into cloud.

Berkshire's Alphabet bet lands in that same macro stream: institutional capital is flowing toward the companies building and owning the infrastructure of the next decade. Google Cloud's 63% growth isn't a fluke — it's validation of a structural shift, and Abel appears to have read that clearly.

Explore how Berkshire's moves line up with other major funds using InvestorLens' overlap tool, or see where institutional money is flowing in aggregate at /flow.

Bottom Line

Greg Abel's first quarter as Berkshire CEO produced a sharper, more concentrated, more tech-forward portfolio than most expected. The Alphabet triple-down — capped with a $10 billion direct purchase — is the defining move. Whether it proves as prescient as Buffett's Apple bet remains to be seen, but the conviction is clear.

The next 13F will tell us whether this is a new trend or a one-time repositioning. Either way, the era of the new Berkshire has begun.

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Data sourced from public SEC 13F filings. Educational research only — not investment advice.