Wall Street just gave Warren Buffett an early birthday gift: Berkshire Hathaway is now worth $1 trillion

By Elisabeth Buchwald, CNN

New York (CNN) — There’s a new member of the $1 trillion company club in the US — and for the first time, it isn’t a technology company.

On Wednesday, shares of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) (BRK.B) closed high enough to give the conglomerate holding company a market value above $1 trillion. Topping the list of the most valuable companies are Apple and Microsoft, which are both worth more than $3 trillion. Other companies trading above $1 trillion include Nvidia, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta.

Among those companies, Microsoft, which was founded in 1975, is the oldest. Berkshire Hathaway, meanwhile, was founded in 1839 as a textile manufacturing company. Its current CEO, Warren Buffett, took a majority stake in the company in 1965.

At the start of the year, Buffett, who will turn 94 on Friday, warned in his annual letter to investors that more skyrocketing performances are likely a thing of the past.

“Berkshire should do a bit better than the average American corporation and, more important, should also operate with materially less risk of permanent loss of capital,” he wrote. “Anything beyond ‘slightly better,’ though, is wishful thinking.”

In the letter, he also said, “we have no possibility of eye-popping performance.”

However, since his February 24 letter was published, shares of the company are up more than 14%, and year to date they’re up a whopping 29%.

In recent months, Berkshire Hathaway has been in selling mode. It cut its stake in Apple (AAPL) by 50% last quarter. Then on Tuesday, the company disclosed it had sold nearly 25 million shares of Bank of America (BAC) worth close to $1 billion.

But the company has also made some new purchases. It recently acquired stakes in cosmetics store chain Ulta Beauty (ULTA) and aircraft parts maker Heico (HEI).

Berkshire Hathaway continues to maintain many of its top holdings, including a 21.3% stake in American Express (AXP), a 9.3% stake in Coca-Cola (KO) and a 6.5% stake in Chevron (CVX), as of June 30. It also owns Geico, BNSF Railway and Dairy Queen, among several other companies.

This story has been updated with additional context.

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