Alphabet, Apple, UnitedHealth: Buffett's most notable deals in 2025

The outgoing year was the last for Warren Buffett, the "Oracle of Omaha," as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway: on December 31, he will officially step down , handing over control of the investment company to his successor, Greg Abel. Shortly before his resignation, the legendary guru managed to surprise the market at least twice: the main surprise of the second quarter was the purchase of the stagnating insurance company UnitedHealth, and the third was Buffett's rare bet on the technology sector in the form of Alphabet. Here are Berkshire's most notable deals of 2025.

The main event of the second quarter was the purchase of more than 5 million shares of the struggling insurance company UnitedHealth Group for approximately $1.6 billion. At that time, its value had halved since the beginning of the year. After the publication of the report disclosing this investment, the insurer's quotes jumped more than 10% during extended trading. By the end of 2025, the shares had managed to recoup some of their losses — at the close of trading on December 26, they were still down by about 35%.

The largest private health insurer has become a symbol of Americans' dissatisfaction with the rising cost of healthcare, CNBC wrote. This became particularly evident in December when the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, a division that handles the Medicare program, was shot dead by a disgruntled customer. Because of this reputation, Berkshire's decision to invest in UnitedHealth came as a surprise to the market, the TV channel noted, but it was understandable given Buffett's history of buying assets with strong fundamentals at a discount. Analysts suggest that Buffett himself may not have been behind the deal, but rather his investment managers Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, CNBC noted.

At the end of the third quarter, Berkshire disclosed another new position—Class A shares of Google Alphabet's holding company. As of September 30, the investment holding company owned approximately 17.9 million shares of the tech giant, with a total value of $4.3 billion at that time. These shares became the tenth largest position in Berkshire's portfolio. On the day the report was published in mid-November, Alphabet's share price rose 3% , and over the past three months, it has gained nearly 28%.

This bet is an unexpected move for Berkshire, given that Buffett prefers to invest in traditional "value stocks" and is cautious about fast-growing technology companies, CNBC wrote. Even Apple, whose shares the famous financier has been buying for many years, he sees more as a consumer market player, he explained. In 2018, Buffett admitted that he "missed" the opportunity to invest in Google at an early stage, even though he understood the potential of the company's advertising model. "I saw how the product worked and knew what their margins were," the billionaire said. "But I didn't know enough about technology to understand whether this company would really stop the competitive race."

During the second and third quarters of 2025, Buffett sold a total of approximately 60 million Apple shares for approximately $14.6 billion. Berkshire has been aggressively reducing this position since the end of 2023: the investment company reported a decrease in its stake in every report, except for the fourth quarter of 2024 and the first quarter of 2025. As a result, the number of Apple shares in Berkshire's portfolio has fallen from 900 million to 238 million, yet it remains the largest position in the portfolio at 22.7%. This stake is now worth $65 billion, based on the closing share price on December 26. Since the beginning of the year, they have risen in price by approximately 9%.

Between 2018 and 2022, Berkshire increased its investment in Apple approximately fourfold. It paid about $36 billion for a five percent stake, which was worth more than $170 billion at the beginning of 2023. Buffett has admired the iPhone maker for years, calling it "probably the best business in the world" and one of the four pillars on which Berkshire Hathaway is based. If he had not started selling Apple shares, they would have been worth more than $240 billion at the end of the third quarter — six times the initial investment, according to Barron's calculations.

Another company whose shares Buffett continued to steadily divest this year was Bank of America. At the end of 2024, Berkshire's portfolio included 680 million shares of the country's second-largest bank; by the end of the third quarter of 2025, only 568 million remained.

Berkshire has been investing in Bank of America since 2011, when it bought $5 billion worth of preferred shares. And starting in mid-2024, Buffett started taking profits on this position, which by then had grown to be the second largest in his investment company. As of September 30, BofA was already in third place, and Berkshire's stake in the bank was 7.7%, according to Bloomberg . At that time, it was worth about $30 billion, and over the past three months, the value of the credit institution has increased by another 8.3%. In total, BofA shares have risen in price by almost 28% this year.

In October, Berkshire Hathaway agreed to purchase Occidental Petroleum's petrochemical business for $9.7 billion in cash. The parties expected to close the deal in the fourth quarter of 2025, but its completion has not yet been officially announced. The agreement was Berkshire's largest since its $11.6 billion purchase of insurance company Alleghany in 2022, CNBC noted.

OxyChem, in which Berkshire is investing, is a global producer of bulk chemicals used in water treatment, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, and construction. This is the second time Berkshire has bet on petrochemicals: in 2011, the company acquired specialty chemicals manufacturer Lubrizol for nearly $10 billion, MarketWatch recalls. Berkshire is already the largest shareholder in Occidental itself, owning about 28% of the oil company. The value of this stake is nearly $13 billion.

Berkshire's latest transactions under Buffett's leadership will be disclosed later — large hedge funds are required to submit Form 13F portfolio reports to regulators within 45 days after the end of the relevant quarter. Documents for the third quarter show that Berkshire's largest positions at the end of September remained Apple , American Express, Bank of America, Coca Cola, and Chevron. Together, these securities accounted for almost 70% of the investment company's portfolio.

At the same time, Berkshire continued to sell more shares than it bought throughout most of the year, and by the end of the third quarter, it had increased its cash reserves to a record $381.7 billion. At the annual meeting in May, Buffett said that "just recently" Berkshire had almost invested $10 billion, but in the end, the deal fell through. He did not disclose what investment was being considered. "We are prepared to spend $100 billion. It's not difficult to make such decisions when an opportunity arises that we understand, that makes sense to us, and that offers good value," Buffett said. But opportunities do not arise in a clearly defined order, he explained.

As of the end of the third quarter, Berkshire Hathaway had invested approximately $267 billion in 41 American stocks.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor