Baillie Gifford’s Alphabet stake rose by 44% in the second quarter of 2026, as regulatory filings show the Edinburgh-based manager bought 862,000 shares in the Google owner across the period. The purchase, disclosed in the firm’s 13F filing dated 8 August 2026, arrived alongside a wave of institutional buying from some of the world’s most-watched investment names.
Baillie Gifford Alphabet Stake in Context
Baillie Gifford’s 13F portfolio stood at approximately $110.2 billion across 277 holdings at the end of Q2 2026, per data tracked by 13f.info. Space Exploration Technologies Corp remained its largest single position at 7.97% of the portfolio, followed by NVIDIA at 7.6% and Amazon at 5.82%, according to Yahoo Finance.
The Alphabet position, by contrast, is modest in scale. At end of Q2 2026, Baillie Gifford held roughly 2.8 million Class A shares (GOOGL) worth approximately $1.0 billion and around 3.1 million Class C shares (GOOG) worth approximately $1.1 billion, per Stockzoa aggregated 13F data. The stock represented about 1% of its US holdings. Large in percentage terms, the move is not a concentrated bet.
Berkshire, Druckenmiller and a Crowded Trade
Baillie Gifford was far from alone. Berkshire Hathaway’s Q2 2026 13F showed it held a combined approximately 106 million Alphabet shares worth $37.77 billion, making it the firm’s third-largest holding, behind Apple at $65.95 billion and American Express at $51.28 billion, according to BBAE. Its Class A holding rose 45% to 78.79 million shares, while its Class C position grew more than sevenfold, per Hedge Fund Alpha.
Part of that Berkshire build came through a direct deal with Alphabet itself. An issuer free writing prospectus filed with the SEC on 1 June 2026 disclosed that Alphabet announced equity offerings totalling an expected $80 billion to fund AI compute infrastructure. Separately, Alphabet agreed to sell $10 billion of stock to Berkshire Hathaway in a private placement: $5 billion of Class A shares at $351.81 each and $5 billion of Class C shares at $348.20 each.
Stanley Druckenmiller’s Duquesne Family Office made the sharpest about-turn. The fund sold its entire Alphabet position in Q1 2026, then reversed course and opened a fresh stake of 336,000 Class A shares valued at approximately $120 million in Q2, representing around 2.3% of its $5.21 billion portfolio, per its 13F filing. UK-based Blue Whale Capital boosted its position by 230% in the same period.
The buying was not unanimous. Li Lu’s Himalaya Capital held Alphabet as 47.9% of its entire portfolio but made no change to the position. Duan Yongping cut his GOOG stake by 47% and Atreides reduced its GOOGL holding by 12%, according to a cross-fund analysis by Bit.com Research.
The Investment Case and Its Caveats
The institutional interest reflects a view that Alphabet is priced conservatively relative to its breadth. The company now spans search, cloud computing, AI infrastructure, video streaming via YouTube, and autonomous vehicles through Waymo.
On the valuation, the snippet’s author points to analyst consensus earnings per share of $20.60 for 2026, which would put the forward price-to-earnings ratio below 17, under the US market average. There is a material caveat, however: 2026 earnings are likely to include gains from the SpaceX and Anthropic initial public offerings, in which Alphabet holds stakes. Stripping those out, 2027 earnings could be lower year on year, making the forward multiple less straightforward than it appears.
Advertising revenue concentration and cloud market share pressure from rivals remain the primary structural risks. Berkshire’s private placement at $351.81 per Class A share gives one concrete marker for where a large, price-sensitive buyer was willing to commit $5 billion in early June 2026. That price level is now a reference point for how the stock is positioned heading into the second half of the year.
