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Comment by marc__1 | Hacker News Reader

Interesting that there are no comments on the 750m investment in Snowflake made last year, which is now valued at 1.7b

https://whalewisdom.com/filer/berkshire-hathaway-inc#tabhold...

What kind of commentary would you expect on such a small position?

Its their first pure tech play, surely deserves a mention of this major shift of their attitude towards 1. unprofitable 2.tech stocks? Surely their investors are anxious to know where they stand on it

They were notoriously for buying $10.7b worth of IBM shares in 2011 and selling in 2018 for a loss north of 30% [0]. In retrospect it was an obvious mistake, but these investment decisions always are.

SNOW is unique in their portfolio because it is the only investment in tech. What comes to mind is:

-how and who made the investment decision (does Buffett knows how valuable Snowflake is for tech?);

- will they start investing in later-stage pre-ipo companies (Stone Payments is a Brazilian fintech that is akin to Snowflake in the timing and size of committment)?

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/04/warren-buffett-says-berkshir...

> SNOW is unique in their portfolio because it is the only investment in tech.

In addition to the 1.72B in Snowflake, I see 1.74B in Amazon and another 117.7B in Apple.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1067983/000095012321...

While these are certainly tech companies, Amazon and Apple both primarily make their money by selling physical things. I believe part of his reservation in “tech” historically has been with companies that do not - not that he thinks they’re bad investments, just that he doesn’t understand them well enough to invest himself.

The major difference is the risk profile of the decisions (although the time horizon might ultimately be the same): both Amazon and Apple were more mature (and significantly older, larger orgs, brand awareness, etc) running B2B and B2C businesses, while Snowflake is less than 10 years old and not well known outside some circles

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