One more thing on Google.
Warren Buffett has been clear about two types of great businesses.
The first is See's Candies. The dream. A business that grows earnings year after year with virtually no reinvestment. Returns on invested capital are almost infinite because the invested capital is so small. You take the cash out and deploy it elsewhere. Beautiful.
The second is what Buffett calls a great business that can absorb large amounts of capital at attractive returns. BNSF. Berkshire Hathaway Energy. Not as elegant as See's. You have to keep putting money in. But if the returns are good and the runway is long, the total wealth created can actually exceed See's — because you can keep compounding at scale.
Buffett has said the second type can be the better business. Most people miss this because they're anchored on the beauty of the asset-light model.
Google was See's Candies for twenty years. A toll booth on the world's information. Near-zero marginal costs. Every additional search query was almost pure profit. Returns on capital were incalculable.
Now Google is becoming BNSF. $75 billion in capex last year. $175-185 billion guided for 2026. The market sees this and worries. The beautiful asset-light model is getting heavy.
But here's what I think the market is missing.
Google isn't just transitioning from See's to BNSF. It's transitioning to a BNSF with a longer runway and potentially higher returns — because the demand driving the capital deployment is the Intelligence Invariance. Every person, business, institution, and government will want cheaper, more accessible, better intelligence. That demand doesn't saturate. It deepens.
And unlike a railroad, where the capital buys track that serves one route, Google's capital buys vertically integrated AI infrastructure — custom TPUs, frontier models, inference optimization — that deploys across the largest distribution surfaces on earth and monetizes through the highest-margin advertising engine in history.
See's couldn't absorb more capital. That was its limitation.
Google can absorb $185 billion a year. And every dollar goes into a system where Google captures value at every layer — from silicon to consumer surface to ad revenue.
The question isn't whether the capex is scary. The question is whether the returns are attractive and the runway is long. The Intelligence Invariance says the runway may be the longest in the history of technology investing.
#google $googl
🧵 1/6 CFA confirma: Balance Estructural 2025 cerró en -3,6% del PIB. Desvío de 2,5 pp vs meta original (-1,1%). TERCER año seguido que no le achuntan. Casi triple del promedio histórico en años sin crisis. La regla fiscal reforzada (Ley 21.683) se la pasaron por el *.
Chile vive días difíciles y es una tarea de Estado enfrentar esta emergencia con toda la celeridad posible. Acabamos de tener una importante reunión de trabajo con el presidente electo, José Antonio Kast, en la que hemos detallado el despliegue que las distintas instituciones han tenido desde el primer momento, tanto para el control del fuego, como para ir en ayuda de las personas afectadas.
Agradezco la disposición del presidente electo y de todo su equipo, porque hacerle frente a esta emergencia y llevar adelante la posterior reconstrucción, es una labor compartida que debemos enfrentar con la mejor coordinación posible.
Chilenos y chilenas, el Estado de Chile en su conjunto está poniendo todos los esfuerzos, todos los recursos, para que quienes han sido víctimas de esta tragedia estén en el centro de nuestro quehacer. Reiteramos el llamado a la responsabilidad, cuidémonos entre todos. Prevenir un incendio es mucho más fácil que combatirlo.
🇺🇸 WARREN BUFFETT HAS OFFICIALLY STEPPED DOWN, LEAVING BEHIND A $382 BILLION EMPIRE AND A FINAL WARNING
Buffett officially signed off as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, closing a sixty year chapter that certainly reshaped American capitalism and did turn a struggling textile mill, which was Berkshire Hathaway, into a $1.1 trillion financial powerhouse.
At 95, Buffett handed day to day control to Gregory Abel but made clear he is not vanishing.
He does plan to remain chairman and stay involved, offering guidance while the next era begins.
Buffett exits with a message louder than any farewell speech.
Berkshire is sitting on roughly $381.7 billion in cash, a deliberate signal that he sees few worthwhile opportunities in today’s inflated markets.
That massive war chest now belongs to Abel, a longtime lieutenant who built Berkshire’s energy business into a global force and earned Buffett’s trust as a steady operator.
Berkshire now spans around 90 companies, avoids short term noise, and trades Class A shares near $750,000.
The system was designed to survive succession.
Buffett may be stepping away from the CEO title, but the philosophy remains unchanged.
Buy great businesses.
Hold them patiently.
Let discipline and integrity do the work.
Sources: Quartz, Morningstar, The Street, Business Standard
Warren Buffett, the 95-year-old chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, started his annual Thanksgiving letter by saying: “I’m ‘going quiet.’ Sort of.”
He weighs in on Berkshire’s future, succession plans, philanthropy and aging. https://t.co/TGkDVw7hyD