Greg Abel starts spending Berkshire Hathaway’s record cash pile

Warren Buffett spent years letting Berkshire Hathaway’s cash pile grow until critics called it embarrassing. His successor appears to have gotten the memo that the money was supposed to be spent eventually. Greg Abel, who took over as CEO in January 2026 after Buffett’s 64-year run at the helm, is putting the company’s capital to work at a pace that suggests he has no intention of letting the reserves sit idle. Berkshire ended the first quarter of 2026 with $397.4 billion in cash and equivalents, the highest figure in the company’s history, up from roughly $373 billion at the close of 2025. Then Abel started writing checks. The deals taking shape The headline move is Berkshire’s all-cash acquisition of Taylor Morrison Home Corporation, finalized on July 24, 2026, at a price of roughly $6.8 billion. That represents a 24% premium to where Taylor Morrison’s shares were trading before the announcement. Abel is using the deal to deepen Berkshire’s footprint in housing, intended to consolidate and enhance Berkshire’s current subsidiaries like Clayton Homes. US housing construction has lagged household formation for more than a decade, and homebuilders with strong land positions and opera...