The new CEO of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway just spent an incredible $17 billion in a few days in an audacious attempt to establish his mark on the business.
Berkshire CEO Greg Abel took the reins at the beginning of 2026, and the two megadeals announced this week help him satisfy investors who have demanded that he start spending down the company’s giant $400 billion hoard of cash.
They are exactly the kinds of actions that Buffett would have taken, according to experts.
Berkshire expanded its beachhead in the US housing sector on Sunday by announcing a $6.8 billion acquisition of homebuilder Taylor Morrison.
Then on Monday, the company disclosed it would invest $10 billion in Alphabet, the tech juggernaut that owns Google and Waymo, and is angling to beat AI leaders Anthropic and OpenAI.
‘Greg did that faster than I could have done it, smoother than I could have done it, and I never talked to the CEO. He’s taken off.Buffett said to CNBC.
Abel’s huge deals this week continue his strategy of overhauling Berkshire’s approach, most recently seen in his move to sharply reduce the number of holdings in the company’s legendary stock portfolio and doubling down on winners.
‘Investors have been eagerly awaiting Greg’s first merger move since succeeding Buffett as CEO,’ CFRA analyst Catherine Seifert wrote.
Berkshire Hathaway CEO Greg Abel greets shareholders during the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders’ meeting
Berkshire announced a deal to buy homebuilder Taylor Morrison for $6.8 billion, expanding the company’s beachhead in the US housing market
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Berkshire paid $72.50 a share in cash for Taylor Morrison, for a total price of $6.8 billion.
Housing has been a big part of the conglomerate’s core business for decades: It owns Clayton Homes, the biggest manufactured housing company in the US, plus a real estate brokerage and companies involved in flooring, paint and insulation.
‘Over time, we expect to unify our site-built homebuilding operations into a combined platform, enabling us to deliver the dream of homeownership to more Americans,’ Abel said in a press release announcing the acquisition.
Analysts seized on the comment as a sign that Abel may depart from Buffett’s longtime model of leaving Berkshire’s operating companies alone after acquiring them.
However, purchasing businesses that are worth more inside the Berkshire than they would be outside of it is also a defining feature of Buffett’s approach.
The Alphabet acquisition triples Berkshire’s current stake in the tech behemoth, which is probably currently valued at about $30 billion and is one of the biggest holdings in its stock portfolio.
Last November, it revealed that it had acquired 18 million shares of the company in the third quarter of 2025. By the first quarter of 2026, it had more than tripled its holdings to around 58 million shares.
Buffett acknowledged in 2017 that he had “blew it” by not purchasing Google shares years earlier, saying, “Greg did that faster than I could have done it, smoother than I could have done it, and I never talked to the CEO.” He’s taken off.Buffett stated to CNBC
As the self-driving behemoth intensifies its plans to inundate US communities with robotaxis over the course of the next year, Alphabet’s Waymo has debuted its enormous new autonomous vehicle, known as the Ojai.
Berkshire’s cash on hand has increased by an additional 6% to $397 billion since the end of 2025.
According to several Wall Street analysts, Berkshire has been accumulating cash reserves in anticipation of a market collapse.
Abel informed shareholders at the annual meeting that all of the money was “dry powder” to make sure Berkshire was prepared to make unbeatable investments at any time.
All in all, Abel oversaw $16 billion in purchases and $24 billion in sales in the first quarter of the year – sharply reducing the overall number of holdings – an unprecedented level of activity for Berkshire.
After the first-quarter adjustments, Berkshire now has a much more concentrated portfolio of 29 stocks, down from 41 before.
