Move Over, Warren Buffett! Alphabet Might Be Wall Street's Most Successful Investor.

For decades, Berkshire Hathaway's now-retired CEO, Warren Buffett, was often viewed as one of the greatest investment minds of our generation. He could find value hiding in plain sight and was responsible for overseeing a nearly 6,100,000% return in Berkshire's Class A shares (BRKA) under his watch.

But there's a new sheriff in town, and its name is Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL)(NASDAQ: GOOG).

Image source: Getty Images.

Alphabet is much more than just ads and AI

When most investors think about Alphabet, internet search engine Google probably comes to mind. Google holds a virtual monopoly in internet search traffic, with an approximate 90% global share as of March 2026.

It's also the parent company of streaming platform YouTube, the second-most-visited social site on the planet behind (drum roll) Google. The billions of internet search queries and YouTube views it garners affords Alphabet substantial ad pricing power.

Investors view Alphabet as a key player in cloud infrastructure services and the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, too. Google Cloud is the world's No. 3 cloud infrastructure service platform by total spend. The integration of generative AI solutions and large language model (LLM) capabilities into Google Cloud accelerated its sales growth to a scorching-hot 48% in the fourth quarter.

But Alphabet is also a magnificent investment company. Although not every public and private investment made by Alphabet has turned into a diamond, quite a few have been absolute gems.

Image source: Getty Images.

Alphabet's investing prowess might be unmatched

The majority of Alphabet's investments in the public and private arena are with companies it's collaborating with. In other words, it's a strategic investor whose portfolio can grow in lockstep with its own operations.

Arguably, the crown jewel of Alphabet's investment portfolio is the roughly $900 million investment made in privately held SpaceX in 2015. SpaceX confidentially filed for an initial public offering on April 1 and is seeking a valuation of $1.75 trillion to $2 trillion. Based on a regulatory filing that listed Alphabet as having a 6.11% stake in SpaceX, as of the end of 2025, its position could be worth $107 billion to $122 billion. We're talking about a $106 billion to $121 billion windfall and an increase of 19,400% to 22,200% from its initial investment over 11 years.

Alphabet's investment team also put capital to work early in LLM giant, Anthropic. In October 2023, Google invested $2 billion in the developer of the Claude LLMs. In January 2025, Google agreed to an additional $1 billion investment in Anthropic.

Altogether, more than $3 billion has been invested in this AI start-up over the last three years, with Alphabet holding approximately a 14% stake in Anthropic. Recently, Anthropic has received venture capital offers valuing the business at $800 billion. This means Google's initial investment of more than $3 billion may be worth $112 billion (a return of more than 3,000%!).

Alphabet's public portfolio is no slouch, either. Its investment team purchased over 8.9 million shares of satellite-based cellular broadband services provider AST SpaceMobile (NASDAQ: ASTS) in the March-ended quarter of 2025. Though we don't know the exact cost basis of Alphabet's position, AST SpaceMobile stock has skyrocketed from around $25 per share in the first quarter of 2025 to a close of $85.53 on April 17 (a likely gain of well over 200%).

Suffice it to say, investors would be wise to pay close attention to which public and private companies Alphabet is putting its capital to work in.

Sean Williams has positions in Alphabet. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends AST SpaceMobile, Alphabet, and Berkshire Hathaway. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.