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Google CEO Sundar Pichai
Google CEO Sundar Pichai (Jakub Porzycki/Getty Images)

Google jumps as Berkshire Hathaway reveals $5.1 billion stake, search giant announces $40 billion investment in Texas data centers

A double dose of big news after the close on Friday.

Luke Kawa

Google popped at the end of last week and is building on those gains in premarket trading on Monday thanks to a double dose of news after the close on Friday. The firm announced plans to bolster its data center footprint and got a long overdue seal of approval from Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.

The search giant announced plans to invest $40 billion through 2027 to build three data center campuses in Texas, its largest investment in any US state.

That’s another hefty chunk added to the huge and growing pile of AI capital expenditure by the hyperscalers that dominate the S&P 500. And it’s the latest addition to a number of AI-linked investment dollars going to the Lone Star State, with Meta, Anthropic, Fermi, IREN, and Oracle all recently outlining fresh spending commitments or progress on projects in the pipeline.

“Googles $40 billion investment in new data centers in Texas is a further sign of the geographic diversification of Alphabets data-center infrastructure, where its lower token cost advantage stands to aid market share in both enterprise APIs and consumer applications,” wrote Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Mandeep Singh and Robert Biggar. “Increased availability of its TPU chips, both through its own data centers and neoclouds, can hasten the Google Cloud segments share gains in AI workloads vs. hyperscale cloud peers including Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS.”

In addition, Berkshire Hathaway’s 13F filing showed that the conglomerate amassed a significant position in Alphabet at the end of the third quarter, worth about $5.1 billion after the stock’s jump in after-hours trading on Friday.

Warren Buffett and his since deceased vice chairman, Charlie Munger, lamented on multiple occasions missing out on Google’s meteoric rise, with the Oracle of Omaha noting that its insurance subsidiary Geico was contributing to its ad business success in Google’s early days. At Berkshire’s 2017 annual meeting, Buffett said he “blew it” by passing on Google shortly after its IPO.

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Amazon just matched its longest losing streak in 20 years

Amazon shares marked their ninth straight day of losses — the company’s longest losing streak since 2006.

The milestone follows a fourth-quarter earnings miss, downbeat guidance, and a plan to spend a whopping $200 billion on capital expenditure this year.

Amazon is hoping that by spending big on AI infrastructure now, it will reap rewards from the technology later. Investors aren’t so sure.

Interestingly enough, the current situation sounds quite similar to the one Amazon was in two decades ago. Back then, Amazon endured a similar stretch as it was upping spending on tech and an online toy store — moves that would eat into its profits.

At the time, an asset manager told Bloomberg, “They want to capture as many eyeballs as they can on the Internet and be the go-to place on the Internet, but thats costing them earnings, at least right now.”

Sound familiar? In case you’re wondering, Amazon stock has risen 14,849% since that quote.

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Rivian is on pace for its best-ever trading day as analysts dig into Q4 results

EV maker Rivian is on track to log its best trading day on record Friday, as investors pour in following its fourth-quarter earnings report and 2026 guidance and analysts issue bullish appraisals of the shares.

Rivian shares are up more than 30% on Friday afternoon, easily surpassing its previous best trading day, which came in January 2025.

“We continue to remain confident in the long-term vision that RIVN is amid a massive transformation,” Wedbush Securities’ Dan Ives wrote in a fresh note on Friday. The firm maintained its $25 price target and “outperform” outlook and said that the launch of Rivian’s upcoming lower-cost SUV, the R2, is “crucial.”

Rivian received upgrades from Deutsche Bank (to “buy” from “hold”) and UBS (to “neutral” from “sell”) following its results.

On its Thursday earnings call, Rivian said it expects its delivery volume of its existing vehicle lineup to land “roughly in line with... 2025 total volumes.” Given the automaker’s full-year delivery guidance, that statement implies 2026 R2 deliveries to land between 20,000 and 25,000 units.

Self-driving features also appear to be boosting investor optimism. On Thursday’s earnings call, CEO RJ Scaringe said the company would enable “point-to-point” driving in its vehicles later this year. In a podcast interview released Thursday, Scaringe predicted that by 2030, it will be “inconceivable to buy a car and not expect it to drive itself.” Rivian is targeting “a little sooner than that,” he added.

Rivian shares are also likely benefiting from something of a snapback: before the release of its Q4 results, Rivian shares had been hammered recently, down 38% since their recent high in December.

“We continue to remain confident in the long-term vision that RIVN is amid a massive transformation,” Wedbush Securities’ Dan Ives wrote in a fresh note on Friday. The firm maintained its $25 price target and “outperform” outlook and said that the launch of Rivian’s upcoming lower-cost SUV, the R2, is “crucial.”

Rivian received upgrades from Deutsche Bank (to “buy” from “hold”) and UBS (to “neutral” from “sell”) following its results.

On its Thursday earnings call, Rivian said it expects its delivery volume of its existing vehicle lineup to land “roughly in line with... 2025 total volumes.” Given the automaker’s full-year delivery guidance, that statement implies 2026 R2 deliveries to land between 20,000 and 25,000 units.

Self-driving features also appear to be boosting investor optimism. On Thursday’s earnings call, CEO RJ Scaringe said the company would enable “point-to-point” driving in its vehicles later this year. In a podcast interview released Thursday, Scaringe predicted that by 2030, it will be “inconceivable to buy a car and not expect it to drive itself.” Rivian is targeting “a little sooner than that,” he added.

Rivian shares are also likely benefiting from something of a snapback: before the release of its Q4 results, Rivian shares had been hammered recently, down 38% since their recent high in December.

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