Warren Buffett credits Apple CEO Tim Cook with making ‘a lot more money than I’ve ever made’ for Berkshire Hathaway

• At the annual shareholder meeting of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett praised Apple's CEO Tim Cook for his leadership of the company. The Apple investment of Berkshire Hathaway has marked a rare foray in the tech industry for Buffett. Apple will eventually be a most significant and benefit -profit investment in Berkshire.

When investors in the world looked at the IMACs, the iPod, and the iPhone and saw technological successes, Warren Buffet saw something simpler: products loved by everyone.

Buffett, who on Saturday announced his desire to come down from his role as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway by the end of the year, made billions of investment in Apple. Long carefully with tech investments, Buffett made an exception for Apple. At one point in 2024, he was even the Apple Largest investor Outside the ETFs.

Throughout the years, Buffett has not popularly treated Apple as a consumer commodity company, not a tech company. He also enjoyed Apple's ability to create and market products that seemed to not get enough consumers. In that sense, Buffett likens Apple more than Coca-Cola, another of his long-term investment.

At a Saturday meeting, Buffett sang Apple and CEO compliments Tim Cook for the returns that he had delivered Berkshire Hathaway in recent years.

“I'm a bit shy to say that Tim Cook made more money in Berkshire than I had done Berkshire Hathaway,” Buffett said.

Cook, in Buffett's estimation, has led the company that is amazing since Apple Cofounder and CEO Steve Jobs went down in 2011, just months before he died.

“I know Steve Jobs for a moment, and of course Steve has done things that have done nothing to develop Apple,” Buffett said. “Steve chose Tim to succeed him, and he actually made the right decision. Steve died as a child as you know, and no one but Steve could have created Apple, but no one but Tim could have developed it.

Jobs and buffetts crossed paths several times in their career. At one time, Buffett recalled that Jobs called him for advice on what to do with Apple's big cash pile. Buffett recommends Apple Buy Back Stock, agreed by both men who are not measured in their view. However, jobs decided not to, choose instead of just to handle the cash.

“He just wants to have cash,” Buffett said CNBC in 2012. “It was very friendly -friendly to me because I found out that he said that I told him that there was nothing to do with cash. But he didn't want to re -buy the stocks, even though he really thought his stock was significantly impeccable.”

It was another few years after his phone call at jobs before Buffett became an apple investor. Berkshire Hathaway first began investing in Apple in 2016. The transition was marked with a significant transfer to the company's investment approach. To that point, Buffett and his investment partner, the late Charlie Munger, have avoided investing in tech companies because they think they do not understand the industry to make decisions.

A few years before the investment in Apple, Munger, Berkshire Hathaway's vice chair, recognized that it was not a common investment for the company despite its strong performance in recent years.

“The whole world admires apple accomplishments,” Munger told Reuters In 2013. “On the other hand, you can hardly think of another business that is more un-berkshire-like than Apple.”

By 2016, Buffett and Munger will set up and start developing a massive iPhone-Maker stake. That year, a Berkshire investment manager made a relatively small investment (for Berkshire Hathaway) of nearly $ 1 billion in Apple sharing. Later that year, another Berkshire Exec introduced Apple as a promising stock, which led to a stripe of major investments.

Despite being a bit disappointed with the tech itself, Buffett admires the pull of Apple products on their consumers. “Warren can see how dominant the products are,” Munger said The Wall Street Journal in 2023.

From that point on Berkshire will continue to invest in Apple, which eventually became Berkshire's biggest investment. However, Berkshire has reduced its stake. Last year, it sold billions -billion in Apple's stock because it built a massive cash pile, which has it to this day.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com