Warren Buffett told CNBC’s Becky Quick in a Wednesday interview that he personally initiated Berkshire Hathaway’s more than $31 billion investment in Alphabet, clarifying earlier speculation about whether his successor Greg Abel had made the decision.
The interview, conducted on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on July 15, covered sweeping changes to Buffett’s philanthropic strategy and his confidence in the company’s future direction under new leadership. “I initiated it,” Buffett said of the Alphabet stake, which Berkshire began building in the third quarter of 2025 before ramping up significantly after Abel became CEO, including a $10 billion private stock purchase last month.
Buffett also disclosed a major shift in his charitable giving. He announced he is accelerating his annual donations of Berkshire Hathaway shares to four family foundations and excluding the Gates Foundation from any further gifts. “My goal is to dispose of all of my Berkshire shares within about eight years,” Buffett said, according to a news release issued the day before the interview. That timeline means annual donations of at least $17 billion, more than double the $7 billion he gave away last year.
The decision to cut off the Gates Foundation ends what Buffett called in 2006 a “lifetime pledge” to the charity. Over two decades, his gifts to the foundation totaled almost $48 billion. In this year’s round of donations, the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation—named for his late first wife—is receiving $4.5 billion, a tenfold increase from last year. His three children’s foundations are each receiving about $500 million.
When Quick asked directly why he was no longer giving to the Gates Foundation despite saying in March that he had not spoken to Bill Gates since the Epstein allegations emerged, Buffett said he had reevaluated his overall philanthropic strategy. He confirmed he met with Gates about three weeks before the interview and that Gates was not surprised by the decision. “He came by almost, I don’t know, three weeks ago,” Buffett said. “He’s the one that initiates calls just generally. And as you can see, I’m available any time.”
Buffett emphasized that his shift toward family foundations reflected his long-held view that his children are now ready to manage significant wealth. “I don’t think they were ready for it” decades ago when he began his Gates Foundation pledge, he said. Now, at 95, with his daughter approaching 80 and another son nearing 70, he believes they can handle the responsibility. He said he plans to continue making additional gifts at Thanksgiving, as he has done for the past four years.
On Berkshire’s Alphabet investment, Buffett said the decision reflected his evolving view of technology companies. For years he had avoided tech stocks, but he explained that Google’s shift to heavy capital expenditure on artificial intelligence infrastructure changed his calculus. “When they were asset-light, you didn’t like them, and the markets loved them,” Quick noted. “I made a mistake,” Buffett replied. He said Alphabet is now “more likely to be a winner based on the record than probably 90 percent or 95 percent of what gets merchandised through Wall Street.”
Buffett also reaffirmed his confidence in Greg Abel, saying he feels “100 percent” certain about Abel as his successor. “I have seen him in a lot of situations,” Buffett said, comparing his faith in Abel to his long-standing trust in his late partner Charlie Munger and former ABC chairman Tom Murphy. He noted, however, that no one is immortal, and mortality remains an unpredictable factor in succession planning.
On the broader market, Buffett struck a cautious note, saying it is “tough to find values when everybody is preferring gambling.” He criticized Wall Street’s focus on short-term quarterly results rather than internal rates of return, and he praised Kevin Warsh, Trump’s pick for Federal Reserve chair, as “a good choice” despite acknowledging the Fed’s dual mandate of 2 percent inflation and maximum employment is “so complicated.”
Sources
- CNBC — Full interview transcript with Buffett on Squawk Box, July 15, 2026, covering Alphabet investment, charitable donations, succession planning, and market views
- CNBC — News release and article on Buffett’s accelerated charitable giving and eight-year timeline to dispose of Berkshire shares by 2034
