\n<\/p>\n
Warren Buffett has done it again. This time it seems like it may be an accident, but who really knows how his genius works. <\/p>\n
The Oracle of Omaha, now 96, stepped down as Berkshire Hathaway\u2019s chairman last week, with a track record of investing in mundane industries like insurance, railroads and utilities. They don\u2019t have the flash of the big AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, but turns out it didn\u2019t matter. The real AI windfall is coming from somewhere nobody would guess: power companies.<\/p>\n
In 2000, Berkshire bought MidAmerican Energy, a utility serving Iowa and the Midwest, with zero thought of artificial intelligence. Today, Iowa is a major data center hub, and AI\u2019s massive appetite for electricity has turned that decades-old deal into one of Berkshire\u2019s sharpest AI plays. \u201cSometimes in business, boring is what makes the most consistent profits,\u201d Ken Mahoney, president and CEO of Mahoney Asset Management, told CNN<\/a>.<\/p>\n It gets better. Berkshire\u2019s 2016 purchase of Precision Castparts, a manufacturer of turbine components, went so badly that Buffett admitted he\u2019d paid \u201ctoo much,\u201d forcing an $11 billion write-down. Now turbines are one of the industry\u2019s biggest bottlenecks for powering data centers. <\/p>\n None of this was planned. \u201cThere was no talk of leveraging AI as part of this strategy,\u201d says Cathy Seifert of CFRA Research. \u201cThis was a little bit of luck and good fortune.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Warren Buffett has done it again. This time it seems like it may be an accident, but who really knows how his genius works. <\/p>\n The Oracle of Omaha, now 96, stepped down as Berkshire Hathaway\u2019s chairman last week, with a track record of investing in mundane industries like insurance, railroads and utilities. They don\u2019t have the flash of the big AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, but turns out it didn\u2019t matter. The real AI windfall is coming from somewhere nobody would guess: power companies.<\/p>\n In 2000, Berkshire bought MidAmerican Energy, a utility serving Iowa and the Midwest, with zero thought of artificial intelligence. Today, Iowa is a major data center hub, and AI\u2019s massive appetite for electricity has turned that decades-old deal into one of Berkshire\u2019s sharpest AI plays. \u201cSometimes in business, boring is what makes the most consistent profits,\u201d Ken Mahoney, president and CEO of Mahoney Asset Management, told CNN<\/a>.<\/p>\n It gets better. Berkshire\u2019s 2016 purchase of Precision Castparts, a manufacturer of turbine components, went so badly that Buffett admitted he\u2019d paid \u201ctoo much,\u201d forcing an $11 billion write-down. Now turbines are one of the industry\u2019s biggest bottlenecks for powering data centers. <\/p>\n None of this was planned. \u201cThere was no talk of leveraging AI as part of this strategy,\u201d says Cathy Seifert of CFRA Research. \u201cThis was a little bit of luck and good fortune.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n