Finance
Ajit Jain dumps more than half of his Berkshire Hathaway stake
Ajit Jain at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting in Los Angeles, California. May 1, 2021.
Gerard Miller | CNBC
Ajit Jain, Warren’s Buffett’s insurance chief and top executive, sold more than half of his stake in Berkshire Hathaway, a new regulatory filing showed.
The 73-year-old vice chairman of insurance operations dumped 200 shares of Berkshire Class A shares on Monday at an average price of $695,418 per share for roughly $139 million. That left him holding just 61 shares, while family trusts established by himself and his spouse for the benefit of his descendants hold 55 shares and his non-profit corporation Jain Foundation owns 50 shares. Monday’s sale represented 55% of his total stake in Berkshire.
The move marked the biggest decline in Jain’s holdings since he joined Berkshire in 1986. It’s unclear what motivated Jain’s sales, but he did take advantage of Berkshire’s recent high price. The conglomerate traded above $700,000 to hit a $1 trillion market capitalization at the end of August.
“This appears to be a signal that Ajit views Berkshire as being fully valued,” said David Kass, a finance professor at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.
Berkshire Hathaway
It’s also consistent with a significant slowdown in Berkshire’s share buyback activity as of late. Omaha-based Berkshire repurchased just $345 million worth of its own stock in the second quarter, significantly lower than the $2 billion repurchased in each of the prior two quarters.
“I think at best it is a sign that the stock is not cheap,” said Bill Stone, CIO at Glenview Trust Company and a Berkshire shareholder. “At over 1.6 times book value, it is probably around Buffett’s conservative estimate of intrinsic value. I don’t expect many, if any, stock repurchases from Berkshire around these levels.”
The India-born Jain has played a crucial role in Berkshire’s unmatched success. He facilitated a push into the reinsurance industry and more recently led a turnaround in Geico, Berkshire’s crown jewel auto insurance business. In 2018, Jain was named vice chairman of insurance operations and appointed to Berkshire’s board of directors.
“Ajit has created tens of billions of value for Berkshire shareholders,” Buffett wrote in his annual letter in 2017. “If there were ever to be another Ajit and you could swap me for him, don’t hesitate. Make the trade!”
Before it was officially announced that Greg Abel, Berkshire’s vice chairman of non-insurance operations, will evenetually succeed the 94-year-old Buffett, there were rumors about Jain one day leading the conglomerate. Buffett recently clarified that Jain “never wanted to run Berkshire” and there wasn’t any competition between the two.
Dario Amodei, Anthropic CEO, speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box outside the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Jan. 21st, 2025.
Gerry Miller | CNBC
Anthropic is in talks to raise a $3.5 billion funding round, significantly more than the amount previously expected, CNBC has confirmed.
The round would roughly triple the artificial intelligence startup’s valuation to $61.5 billion, according to two sources familiar with the deal, who asked not to be named because the details aren’t public. Lightspeed Ventures is leading the funding, with participation from General Catalyst and others, the sources said.
The financing, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, signals continued investor demand for top-tier AI companies, even in the face of potential disruption from China’s DeepSeek. Anthropic is backed by Amazon and Google, and had initially set out to raise $2 billion, according to a source.
Anthropic declined to comment.
The company’s last private market valuation was $18 billion. Amazon has poured $8 billion into the startup.
Anthropic was founded by early OpenAI employees and is the creator of the popular chatbot Claude. Earlier Monday, Anthropic released what it says is it’s “most intelligent AI model yet. Its so-called hybrid model combines an ability to reason — or stopping to think about complex answers — with a traditional model that spits out answers in real time.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon on Monday said the U.S. government is inefficient and in need of work as the Trump administration terminates thousands of federal employees and works to dismantle agencies including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Dimon was asked by CNBC’s Leslie Picker whether he supported efforts by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. He declined to give what he called a “binary” response, but made comments that supported the overall effort.
“The government is inefficient, not very competent, and needs a lot of work,” Dimon told Picker. “It’s not just waste and fraud, its outcomes.”
The Trump administration’s effort to rein in spending and scrutinize federal agencies “needs to be done,” Dimon added.
“Why are we spending the money on these things? Are we getting what we deserve? What should we change?” Dimon said. “It’s not just about the deficit, its about building the right policies and procedures and the government we deserve.”
Dimon said if DOGE overreaches with its cost-cutting efforts or engages in activity that’s not legal, “the courts will stop it.”
“I’m hoping it’s quite successful,” he said.
In the wide-ranging interview, Dimon also addressed his company’s push to have most workers in office five days a week, as well as his views on the Ukraine conflict, tariffs and the U.S. consumer.
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