Some Very Smart Money Can't Agree On What to Do With Alphabet's Soaring Stock

Key Takeaways

• Bill Ackman's Pershing Square slashed its stake in Google-parent Alphabet last quarter, while Berkshire Hathaway tripled its stake before shares took flight last month.

• Ackman over the weekend explained the Alphabet sale was "not a bet against the company," but a decision made to fund a $2 billion investment in software giant Microsoft.

Alphabet's stock has been on a torrid run. Some big investors don't agree about what to do with it now.

Industrial conglomerate and investment giant Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) revealed in a regulatory filing on Friday that it tripled its stake in Google’s parent company during the first quarter. The value of Berkshire’s Alphabet (GOOG) investments stood at more than $16.6 billion at the end of March, making it the firm’s seventh-largest holding.  Meanwhile, Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square revealed it sold 95% of its Alphabet stock during the quarter. The stake, Pershing Square’s fourth largest—and worth more than $2.1 billion at the end of 2025—totaled $99 million at the end of March, making it the firm’s second-smallest position.

To clear one thing up: Pershing Square’s Alphabet sale, Ackman said in an X post on Saturday, “was not a bet against the company. We are very bullish long term on Alphabet. But at current valuations and in light of our finite capital base, we used [Alphabet] as a source of funds" to buy another Big Tech company. Pershing Square on Friday revealed a new stake in Microsoft worth about $2.1 billion at the end of the quarter.

Why This Matters To You

Shares of Nvidia, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Tesla were moving nearly in lock-step when the tech giants were christened the Magnificent Seven in 2023. Over the past year, concerns about tariffs, AI infrastructure spending, and software industry disruption have led their shares to diverge, creating opportunities for investors to buy high-growth stocks at low-growth valuations.

Alphabet stock has soared over the past year, buoyed by the popularity of its Gemini chatbot, investments in custom AI chips, and its booming cloud computing business. Shares have risen about 140% over the past 12 months and about 30% so far this year, making it is the best-performing stock in the Magnificent Seven across both timeframes. As of Monday, it was America’s second-most valuable company, with a market capitalization of nearly $5 trillion.

Microsoft (MSFT), on the other hand, has been the laggard of the Mag 7 this year. The stock is down more than 12% since the start of the year, underperformance that Ackman, in a post early Friday, attributed to two erroneous investor concerns.