Canadian Greg Abel's first major moves target housing and artificial intelligence
Warren Buffett's successor spent more in two days than Berkshire Hathaway had deployed in any single year under its former chief executive in recent memory.
Greg Abel committed US$16.8bn across a homebuilder acquisition and a major bet on artificial intelligence infrastructure.
Abel, who took over as chief executive in January, agreed to acquire Taylor Morrison Home Corp for US$6.8bn, Reuters reported.
He also committed US$10bn to Alphabet Inc through a private placement tied to the Google parent's US$80bn AI equity fundraising drive.
The back-to-back deals come as Berkshire sits on a record US$397.4bn cash pile as of March 31, which many investors and analysts have said has weighed on the conglomerate's share price.
Berkshire shares have fallen 13 percent from their record high in May 2025, while the S&P 500 has risen 34 percent over the same period, according to Reuters.
Adam Crisafulli, founder of Vital Knowledge, told CNBC the figures are small relative to Berkshire's cash hoard, but said Abel appears to be deploying the firm's balance sheet more aggressively than his predecessor.
That shift, he noted, addresses "one of the main knocks against the stock."
Buffett, who remains chairman at 95, praised Abel's handling of the transactions.
"[Abel] did that faster than I could have done it, smoother than I could have done it, and I never talked to the CEO. He has launched," he told CNBC's Becky Quick.
Berkshire received a 6.5 percent discount to market price on the Alphabet placement, a structure the outlet described as reminiscent of Buffett's crisis-era deals.
"The Google discount is reminiscent of Berkshire's investments in 2008 in Goldman Sachs and other companies," David Kass, a finance professor at the University of Maryland and Berkshire shareholder, told CNBC.
Berkshire first bought into Alphabet in the third quarter of 2024 and held US$16.6bn in shares as of March 31, according to Reuters.
The latest investment is expected to make Alphabet one of Berkshire's five largest common stock holdings, a list led by Apple Inc.
The move also signals a broader shift in investment strategy.
Buffett had long avoided technology stocks and framed Apple as a consumer-products bet rather than a technology wager.
At the 2019 annual shareholder meeting, both Buffett and late vice chairman Charlie Munger acknowledged missing their chance to invest in Google sooner.
"We screwed up," Munger said.
Berkshire agreed to pay US$72.50 a share in cash for Taylor Morrison, representing a 24 percent premium to its closing price on May 29 and valuing the homebuilder at approximately US$8.5bn including debt, CNBC reported.
Taylor Morrison shares rose 22 percent on the news; Class B Berkshire shares fell less than 1 percent.
The Taylor Morrison deal's price-to-tangible book value multiple of approximately 0.9 times sits below the roughly 1.2 times paid for Tri Pointe Homes and the approximately 1.3 times for MDC Holdings, Citizens analysts told the outlet, calling the valuation modest against comparable deals.
Abel said he expects to unify Berkshire's site-built homebuilding operations into a single platform over time.
According to UBS analysts cited by CNBC, combining Taylor Morrison, which delivered nearly 13,000 homes in 2024, with Clayton Homes' site-built business, which closed more than 10,000, could create one of the five largest homebuilders in the US by volume.
At US$6.8bn, the Taylor Morrison deal consumes less than 2 percent of Berkshire's available cash and ranks among the conglomerate's largest recent acquisitions, following the US$9.7bn purchase of OxyChem in January 2026.
"They are betting the housing cycle will turn and that there is pent-up demand," Bill Stone, chief investment officer at Glenview Trust and a Berkshire shareholder, told CNBC.
