Warren Buffett’s Amazon Stock Sale: Why Berkshire Sold

TL;DR

Berkshire Hathaway sold 77% of its Amazon shares in the fourth quarter of 2025, Buffett’s last as CEO, and the rest in the first quarter of 2026.
The stake dated from 2019 and was picked by one of Buffett’s investment managers, not Buffett himself.
Berkshire hasn’t said why. One manager tied to the position left in January 2026, and Berkshire put another $10 billion into Alphabet in the second quarter.
LemonTrades tells you what moved Amazon and the stocks you follow, and why, as it happens.

Amazon was one of Berkshire’s few big tech bets. Now it’s gone. Here’s what happened, step by step.

Stock	Now	Today
Amazon (AMZN)	$–	–
Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B)	$–	–
Alphabet (GOOGL)where some of the money went	$–	–
Apple (AAPL)still Berkshire’s biggest stock	$–	–

Live, updated every minute. Berkshire’s quote and results: Berkshire Hathaway stock price.

The timeline

When	What happened
Early 2019	Berkshire first bought Amazon. Buffett said one of his managers made the call, and that he’d been “an idiot” not to buy sooner.
Q4 2025	Sold 7,724,000 shares, 77% of the stake, leaving 2,276,000 shares worth about $525 million.
January 2026	Greg Abel took over as CEO. Todd Combs, one of the two managers who ran parts of the portfolio, left to join JPMorgan.
Q1 2026	Sold the rest, ending a position held for about seven years.
Q2 2026	Invested $10 billion more in Alphabet and bought back about $4.5 billion of its own stock.

Berkshire reports its stock holdings 45 days after each quarter in a 13F filing, which is how the sales became public.

Berkshire doesn’t explain individual trades, so the reasons are informed guesses:

A change of managers. The stock was a manager’s pick, not Buffett’s, and positions often change when the people behind them leave.
Price. Amazon trades at roughly 27 times expected earnings, not cheap by Berkshire’s standards, while it spends heavily on AI data centers.
Caution. Berkshire was a net seller of stocks for 14 quarters in a row through early 2026, and it still holds about $365 billion in cash.

Not everyone agrees: Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square, a fund run by a self-described Buffett fan, made Amazon one of its biggest holdings.

Probably little. Berkshire’s stake was a small part of Amazon, and the selling is done. What moves Amazon is its own results, AWS growth and AI spending. See Amazon stock price today, and on income, does Amazon pay dividends? Buffett’s view of the whole market: Warren Buffett’s stock market warning.

Education, not financial advice. See our disclaimer.