4 Things To Know About Warren Buffett’s Investments in Tech

The Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett, is notorious for avoiding investments he doesn’t fully understand. Over the years, he’s skipped out on investing in tech stocks because of this. Not that this has kept him from building a substantial wealth — he’s got an estimated net worth of $154 billion.

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But there’s something to be said for embracing change. Over the years, Buffett’s investing strategy has transformed in key ways. More recently, he’s invested in certain tech and artificial intelligence (AI)-related stocks.

Here’s Buffett’s specific investments that led to his foray into tech.

According to Columbia Business School, Buffett’s investing strategy has its roots (1941) in the Benjamin Graham school of value investing, which entails picking stocks that are priced lower than their intrinsic worth, based on company fundamentals like their earnings, assets, dividends and prospects.

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He bought his first stock when he was 11 years old for about $38 a share, per CNBC. It was in Cities Service Preferred, a natural gas company that no longer exists.

Buffett’s investments didn’t stop with natural gas, but it wasn’t until much later that he began investing in tech in 1959. When he was 29, he met Charlie Munger, the man who’d later become his business partner at Berkshire Hathaway, per ValueSpreadsheet.com.

From then on, his investments began to vary. Over the years, some major investing moves have included:

• Purchasing shares of Berkshire Hathaway for $8 apiece at age 32 (and beyond)

• Purchasing shares of American Express for $35 apiece at age 34 until he owned 5% of the company

• Investing $4 million in Walt Disney Corp at age 35

Since teaming up with Charlie Munger, he’s also invested in a multitude of companies spanning real estate, media, insurance, railway services and more — to eventually include tech.

The early 2010s is when Buffett began making significant moves in the tech space.

Here’s a timeline:

• In 2011, Buffett invested in IBM (Tech Services).

• Starting in 2012, Buffett began investing in VeriSign.

  • As of 2024, he owned just over 13 million shares of the stock, according to MarketWatch. That’s an estimated $2.7 billion.

• At the start of 2016, he began investing in Apple.

Since the 2010s, Buffett has expanded his portfolio to include AI-related stocks.

Here are some of the big ones:

• Domino’s Pizza: Through Berkshire Hathaway, he owned roughly 1.3 million shares at the end of last year for a total estimated $550 million value, according to the Financial Post. Notably, Domino’s is AI-adjacent as it uses AI in many ways, including through Microsoft’s Azure platform, which helps with efficient and predictive ordering.

• Amazon: Berkshire Hathaway has sold Amazon shares over the past years, but the company still owns roughly 10 million shares worth just shy of $2 billion, per Stockcircle. They began purchasing shares around 2019.

As tech continues to evolve, there’s a good chance that Buffett will continue to invest in the industry — including companies that prominently use AI.

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