Berkshire Hathaway added $17 billion in Alphabet shares during the second quarter, making the Google parent its third-largest equity holding, as CEO Greg Abel also warned of growing community resistance to data center construction across the U.S.
Berkshire Hathaway CEO Greg Abel used a Wednesday appearance at the G20 Innovation Ministerial in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to defend the conglomerate's deepening bet on artificial intelligence — disclosing a $17 billion addition to its Alphabet position in the second quarter while warning that community opposition to data center construction is intensifying across the United States.
The Alphabet purchases made it the third-largest holding in Berkshire's equity portfolio, according to the company's Q2 snapshot filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in August. As of that filing, Berkshire holds approximately 106 million of Alphabet's Class A and Class C shares, valued at around $36.6 billion.
Abel told CNBC's Becky Quick that Berkshire's original entry into the Google parent came 15 months ago, when the conglomerate took a $10 billion stake at a 6.5% discount. "They hadn't set the size, but recommended that we consider 10 billion. And Warren and I discussed the size. We discussed the size of discount, and I'd recommended 6.5% discount, and we were comfortable with that," Abel said. "Then ultimately consummated the transaction."
Abel attributed the decision to expand the position to visibility Berkshire gains through its own operating subsidiaries. "We have a lot of visibility from within our companies as to how we're using AI, what type of benefits it's delivering, so that brought incremental interest, and then we saw Google as a significant player," he said.
Berkshire also increased its Delta Air Lines position by 44%, or roughly $1.6 billion, during the same quarter.
Beyond the investment disclosures, Abel flagged a structural challenge confronting the broader AI infrastructure build-out: local resistance to new data centers. "There is a lot more pushback in the communities across the U.S.," he told Quick.
Abel said Berkshire's interest in serving data center operators is tied to power and electricity generation, and comes with conditions. "We are interested in serving these hyperscalers ... if there was no impact to the rates of our other customers," he said.
His comments arrived alongside a Mizuho note to clients in which analyst Vikram Malhotra wrote that the issue has moved into the political arena. "This is clearly an evolving situation as some investors question the set-up with upcoming mid-term elections and validity of claims around resource consumption and limited long-term job creation," Malhotra wrote on Tuesday. New York State has already enacted a moratorium on data center construction, and several other states have pending restrictions of varying scope.
There are approximately 4,700 data centers currently operating across the country, according to the source material, with the number continuing to climb.
The Alphabet stake expansion also comes at a moment of extraordinary capital outlay across the technology sector. Global hyperscaler capital expenditure for 2026 is estimated at roughly $1 trillion, according to Goldman Sachs, though the bank's researchers noted in an August analysis that the commonly cited forecast of $794 billion likely understates total global AI capital spending by around $200 billion, while simultaneously overstating U.S.-specific investment by a similar margin.
Alphabet is one of five companies Goldman Sachs classifies as hyperscalers — alongside Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and Oracle — each executing large-scale infrastructure expansions to support AI workloads.
The question of when those investments translate into returns remains open. Goldman Sachs researchers noted in May that "a prolonged training-dominant phase extends the ROI timeline as CapEx and R&D continue to be deployed in advance of broad monetization," underscoring the tension between the scale of current commitments and the pace of commercial realization.
For Berkshire, the Alphabet position now represents one of the clearest signals yet that Abel — who assumed the CEO role from Warren Buffett — is willing to concentrate capital in AI-adjacent infrastructure at a scale the conglomerate had historically avoided, even as community resistance and uncertain return timelines complicate the sector's near-term outlook.
Jay Goldberg is a staff writer at TechEchelon covering technology, markets, and policy. He files the breaking news and deal coverage that move the publication's core desks.
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