---
title: "Berkshire Hits New Highs as the AI Trade Craters Around It"
description: "October’s 8.9% gain masks a $10bn Alphabet bet now underwater and a DaVita stake trimmed by contract"
author: "Luis Goa"
published: 2026-10-31T12:26:00Z
modified: 2026-10-31T13:18:56Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/berkshire-hits-new-highs-as-the-ai-trade-craters-around-it-cf4ef4
language: en
tags: ["buffett", "berkshire", "stocks", "ai", "alphabet", "business"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# Berkshire Hits New Highs as the AI Trade Craters Around It

*October’s 8.9% gain masks a $10bn Alphabet bet now underwater and a DaVita stake trimmed by contract*

By Luis Goa · October 31, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/berkshire-hits-new-highs-as-the-ai-trade-craters-around-it-cf4ef4

## In brief

- Berkshire B shares hit an intraday record $550.47 Friday; October gain of 8.9% vs S&P -0.9%, Nasdaq -5.3%
- Nasdaq fell 2.86% Friday, its worst day since June 5, now 7.8% below its October 6 record
- Berkshire’s Alphabet stake fell about a quarter from a $40bn August peak to $29.6bn by October 30
- Berkshire sold $69 million of DaVita stock October 27 under a 2024 deal capping its stake at 45%
- Berkshire closed a further $330 million Bending Spoons investment, for a total $930 million and 4% stake

Berkshire Hathaway’s Class B shares closed at a record $548.56 on Monday, beat that with an intraday high of $550.47 on Friday, then slipped back to close the week at $542.49. Across October the stock still rose 8.9%, against a 0.9% decline in the S&P 500 and a 5.3% decline in the Nasdaq Composite, according to CNBC’s Warren Buffett Watch newsletter, which tracks the conglomerate’s price and portfolio weekly. It is the kind of month that keeps recurring since Greg Abel took over Berkshire’s stock-picking: the company erased 17 months of post-Buffett losses and hit a record only a week earlier. Berkshire is still outrunning the S&P 500 by more than two percentage points over the trailing twelve months, even as it trails the index by 2.8 points for the year to date — down from a 3.5-point gap a week ago.

The month’s split between Berkshire and the rest of the market is a rotation story. Friday’s session wiped 747.73 points off the Nasdaq Composite and 140.32 points off the S&P 500 — the Nasdaq’s worst one-day percentage drop since June 5, down 2.86% to 25,437.00, as Yahoo Finance’s market report tallied. Intel fell 30.1%, its worst day since 1974, on weak guidance; Amazon disclosed negative free cash flow of $42.4 billion over the trailing twelve months, a figure that fed the question running through the week — whether the capital being spent on AI data centers will show a return on anything like the timetable the market has been pricing in. Alphabet had already taken its own hit earlier in the week, falling 12.6% in a single session after its earnings report, its worst day on record, erasing close to $500 billion of market value. The Nasdaq is now 7.8% below the record it set on October 6 and closed out its worst month since March 2025. The Nasdaq 100 alone is on pace to lose more than $2 trillion in value this month, by one running tally.

**October's split: value vs AI** Price change, October 2026

|  | October return (%) |
| --- | --- |
| Berkshire Class B | 8.9 |
| S&P 500 | -0.9 |
| Nasdaq Composite | -5.3 |

Source: [CNBC, Warren Buffett Watch](https://cnbc.com/2026/10/31/berkshire-ekes-out-some-new-highs-but-october-rally-stalls.html)

## A $10 billion stake that’s underwater

Berkshire’s own exposure to the AI trade is sized exactly for a week like this one. The position started small — a roughly 17.8 million-share stake initiated in the third quarter of 2025, as reported in [the Motley Fool](https://www.fool.com/investing/2026/08/25/berkshire-hathaway-bought-10-billion-of-alphabet/) — then grew sharply in June 2026 when Berkshire put $10 billion directly into Alphabet’s balance sheet: $5 billion of Class A stock at $351.81 a share and $5 billion of Class C stock at $348.20, as part of an $80 billion capital raise Alphabet ran to fund its own AI buildout. Buying stock straight from the company rather than on the exchange let Berkshire lock in a fixed price instead of moving the market itself by bidding for $10 billion of anything.

That stake’s value doesn’t move in step with Berkshire’s own disclosures. The 13F Berkshire filed with the SEC on August 14 reports only the share count and valuation as of June 30, and later mark-to-market estimates apply that same share count to the current price. On that basis the stake hit $40 billion in early August, then lost a quarter of its value as the AI selloff deepened, falling to $29.6 billion by Friday — still Berkshire’s fourth-largest disclosed equity position. Barron’s estimates Berkshire paid more than $300 a share on average, “perhaps close to $320,” which would put the position in the red for now. Coca-Cola moved the other way, climbing almost 16% from a $32.5 billion low in late July to $37.6 billion, enough to pass Alphabet into third place among Berkshire’s holdings.

The reshuffling hasn’t loosened Berkshire’s grip on a handful of names. Apple, American Express, Coca-Cola, Alphabet and Bank of America made up about 69% of the value of Berkshire’s disclosed US stock portfolio as of the Q2 filing, by the Motley Fool’s reading of it — even as the number of positions shrank to 29 from 42 at the end of 2025 while the total value of the disclosed portfolio grew 9%, to $299 billion. Abel has been consolidating, not diversifying.

## The DaVita ratchet

Berkshire also sold 382,563 shares of DaVita on Tuesday at $180.43 each, for $69.03 million, according to [the Form 4 it filed with the SEC](https://www.investing.com/news/insider-trading-news/berkshire-hathaway-sells-6903-million-of-davita-nysedva-stock-93CH-4985673) on October 29. That leaves it with 28,314,666 DaVita shares, worth $5.3 billion at Friday’s price. It isn’t a verdict on the dialysis company. Under a [2024 agreement disclosed to the SEC](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1067983/000119312524241941/d840653d8k.htm), Berkshire committed to hold its DaVita stake at 45% of the company or below.

**Why Berkshire keeps selling DaVita** The mechanics behind a routine quarterly sale

| From | To | How |
| --- | --- | --- |
| DaVita buys back its own stock | Share count outstanding shrinks |  |
| Share count outstanding shrinks | Berkshire's stake rises above 45% |  |
| Berkshire's stake rises above 45% | Berkshire sells enough DaVita stock |  |
| Berkshire sells enough DaVita stock | Stake returns to 45% or below |  |
| Stake returns to 45% or below | DaVita buys back its own stock | repeats quarterly |

Based on [2024 Berkshire–DaVita agreement, SEC filing](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1067983/000119312524241941/d840653d8k.htm)

DaVita has been buying back its own stock all year, which shrinks the share count Berkshire’s percentage is measured against even though Berkshire hasn’t touched a share — so every quarter Berkshire trims just enough to bring the ratio back under the cap. DaVita’s stock is up roughly 65% to 70% so far this year, including a one-week drop of more than 23% in August after weak earnings landed days before Berkshire’s previous scheduled sale under the same mechanism.

## Bending Spoons, by the numbers

On October 29 Berkshire closed the $330 million piece of a Bending Spoons investment it had announced two weeks earlier — 10 million shares of the Milan-based software consolidator at $33 each, the company said in [its closing announcement](https://www.morningstar.com/news/business-wire/20261014147189/berkshire-hathaway-invests-further-330-million-in-bending-spoons-following-600-million-ipo-investment). That brings Berkshire’s total commitment to $930 million: $600 million at Bending Spoons’ July IPO plus the new placement, for a stated 4% stake — arithmetic that implies the deal values the whole company at roughly $23 billion. The announcement itself moved the stock more than the money did: Bending Spoons shares jumped 40% within hours of the October 14 news, and, [as reported here at the time](https://rews.cc/a/berkshire-buys-bending-spoons-at-33-and-its-name-sends-the-s-c83ef9), touched $53 — 60% above the $33 a share Berkshire itself was paying — on the Berkshire name alone.

All of this sits on top of $365.5 billion in cash and equivalents as of June 30 (down 8.0% from March 31; $359.2 billion excluding railroad cash and T-bills payable, down 3.8%), against $4.5 billion of its own stock Berkshire bought back in the second quarter. At Friday’s close the company was worth $1.162 trillion, or 13.64 times trailing earnings. None of that cash has gone toward a data center, a chip maker or a hyperscaler’s capital raise beyond the Alphabet stake Abel built before the market turned on the trade. The next 13F, due in mid-November, will show whether Abel added to Alphabet while it was cheaper or sat on his hands.

## See also

- [Alphabet $80bn stock offering prospectus](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000119312526251733/d160205dfwp.htm) — sec.gov · SEC filing detailing Alphabet's capital raise, including Berkshire's $10bn tranche
- [Bending Spoons closing announcement](https://investors.bendingspoons.com/newsroom/berkshire-hathaway-invests-further-in-bending-spoons) — investors.bendingspoons.com · Company's own release confirming the $330m investment closed
- [Berkshire Hathaway's Stock Holdings: Full Portfolio Analysis](https://www.kiplinger.com/investing/stocks/warren-buffett-stocks-berkshire-hathaway-portfolio) — kiplinger.com · Breaks down every disclosed position in Berkshire's 13F
- [Warren Buffett Portfolio Tracker](https://stockcircle.com/portfolio/warren-buffett) — stockcircle.com · Live tracking of Berkshire's 13F-disclosed stock positions