Berkshire Hathaway has started spending down the largest cash pile in its history. After 14 consecutive quarters of net stock sales that built its cash position to a record $397.4 billion, the conglomerate reversed course in the second quarter of 2026, becoming a net buyer of equities with roughly $19.8 billion in net purchases. Berkshire's net profit for the quarter doubled to $25.67 billion.
The company also stepped up its own share repurchases, buying back approximately $4.5 billion of Berkshire stock during the quarter — the second period of buybacks under CEO Greg Abel, who took over from Warren Buffett at the start of the year. Between the equity purchases and the buybacks, Berkshire's cash position declined to $365.5 billion by the end of June, down from the $397.4 billion peak three months earlier.
Buffett is still picking stocks, even after stepping back
One detail from the quarter has drawn particular attention: Buffett revealed in an interview that Berkshire's significant investment in Alphabet was a position he initiated personally, not Abel. Buffett said Abel retained final sign-off authority on the trade, and that the two maintain close, ongoing communication that keeps each aware of the other's moves — a description that suggests Buffett's influence over capital allocation hasn't disappeared with the CEO transition, even if the day-to-day decisions increasingly run through Abel.
Why the timing matters
Berkshire's shift from net seller to net buyer arrives at a moment when equity markets have been hitting record highs and traders are pricing in a more aggressive Federal Reserve rate-cutting path following a weak July jobs report. A firm known for holding cash when it sees few attractive opportunities choosing to deploy nearly $20 billion into stocks during a record-high market is the kind of signal investors watch closely, even though Berkshire's own commentary has historically cautioned against reading too much directional intent into any single quarter's activity. For a look at how institutional capital allocation is shifting more broadly across asset classes, see Bitwise's case for a decade-long wave of institutional money moving into Bitcoin.
Related: Bitwise CIO: Institutions Could Push Bitcoin to $1.3M by 2035
The 13F will fill in the details
Berkshire's official 13F filing, which discloses the specific US equity positions behind the quarter's net purchases, is due August 14 — five days after this deployment was reported. Berkshire's holding pattern has typically been to disclose selectively ahead of the mandated filing, so the full picture of exactly where the $19.8 billion went, beyond the Alphabet position Buffett has already confirmed, will remain incomplete until that filing lands.
