Berkshire's Alphabet Buy: Why Share Classes Trip Up 13F Readers

Berkshire Hathaway's Q2 2026 13F produced one of the quarter's biggest headlines: a much larger Alphabet position. But depending on which article you read, the size of the increase varies wildly. The reason is a quirk of 13F reporting that trips up even experienced readers: Alphabet trades under two tickers, and the filing lists them as separate lines.

The Numbers Depend on the Line You Read

According to Q2 roundups, Berkshire's Class A holding (GOOGL) rose from roughly 54.25 million shares to about 78.79 million, an increase of around 45%. Yet one summary describes the overall Alphabet stake as up 83%. Both can be true, because the Class C line (GOOG) grew even faster than the Class A line, and combining the two gives a different percentage than either alone.

If you only skim the top line of a filing, or a single ticker on a screener, you can badly understate or overstate what a manager actually did. Any time a company has multiple share classes, add them together before drawing conclusions.

Why Alphabet Has Two Lines

Alphabet's GOOGL shares carry voting rights, while GOOG shares carry none. Economically they are nearly identical, so most investors treat them as one exposure. Filers, however, report each CUSIP separately, and managers often shift between the classes for reasons unrelated to conviction: liquidity, index weighting, or tax lots.

Other companies with the same issue include Berkshire itself (BRK.A and BRK.B), Under Armour, and many media and family-controlled companies. A "new position" in one class can simply be a swap from the other.

How to Read Multi-Class Positions

A simple checklist helps:

1. Combine all classes of the same company into one economic position.

2. Compare the combined change quarter over quarter, not each line in isolation.

3. Check whether one class shrank while another grew, which suggests a rebalance rather than fresh buying.

4. Look at portfolio weight, not just share counts, since a large share increase in a small position may matter little.

On InvestorLens you can see consolidated holdings across managers on the overlap page, which is useful for spotting how many top investors hold a name regardless of the share class they picked.

What the Alphabet Move Signals

With that caveat, the direction is clear: Berkshire added meaningfully to Alphabet during the quarter. That fits a broader pattern visible across the investors we track, where several large value-oriented managers have been drawn to mega-cap technology trading at reasonable multiples relative to their cash generation. When a manager historically famous for avoiding technology adds to one of its largest names, it is worth taking seriously, though it is still one data point.

It is also worth remembering what a 13F cannot tell you. The filing is a snapshot of the last day of the quarter, filed up to 45 days later. Berkshire could have kept buying or trimmed since. The flow page helps show how positions have shifted across filings over time, which gives better context than any single quarter.

Other Q2 Headlines Worth Comparing

The same roundups noted Stanley Druckenmiller's Duquesne opening new positions tied to digital assets, including Bitdeer and Hyperliquid-related exposure, and described several managers trimming Big Tech elsewhere. Placing those moves next to Berkshire's Alphabet purchase illustrates how varied positioning was: some of the best-known allocators were adding to a mega-cap while others rotated toward newer themes.

For a wider view of where managers agree, the macro consensus page aggregates positioning themes across the funds in our data set.

The Takeaway

Before you repeat a percentage change from a 13F headline, ask which line it describes. For companies with more than one share class, the honest answer is often "part of it." Combine classes, compare weights, and treat any single-quarter snapshot as a starting point for research rather than a trading signal.

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