Korean retail investors trading U.S. stocks bought nearly 2 trillion won worth of Alphabet, Google's parent, over the past two weeks. The buying spree appears to reflect expectations that Google's in-house AI-dedicated chip, TPU, will contribute to earnings and reports that Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway accumulated a large position.
On Dec. 5, according to the Korea Securities Depository (KSD), domestic investors recorded the largest net purchases in Alphabet shares over the past two weeks (Nov. 20 to Dec. 4, based on settlement date).
They bought Alphabet's Class A shares with voting rights and Class C shares without voting rights worth $1,068.69 million (about 157.41 billion won) and $125.67 million (about 18.52 billion won), respectively, ranking No. 1 and No. 2 in net purchases. The total comes to 176.0 billion won.
Compared with No. 3 Nvidia (171.8 billion won) and No. 4 Bitmain Immersion Technologies (167.6 billion won) in net purchases, it amounts to more than 10 times the concentrated buying.
Alphabet's Class A share price fell to $276.41 on the 14th of last month and then closed at $317.62 the previous day, jumping 15%. Momentum especially picked up after Berkshire Hathaway disclosed on the 17th of last month that it bought more than 6 trillion won of Alphabet shares.
In the third quarter of this year, Alphabet topped $100 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time, far exceeding the market consensus of $99.89 billion.
After it released the next-generation AI model Gemini3 based on TPU in early last month, positive reviews continued, which also buoyed the stock. TPU has the advantage of being cheaper than Nvidia's high-end graphics processing units (GPU) such as the H100. At the end of last month, foreign media also reported that Meta would adopt TPUs on a large scale in 2027. This fueled expectations that demand for corporate AI will rise, driving rapid growth in the cloud business.
In fact, U.S. investment firm Guggenheim raised its price target for Alphabet to $375 from $330. Morgan Stanley also lifted its target to $330 from $270. Michael Morris, a Guggenheim analyst, said, "Alphabet is the strongest competitor to Nvidia in the AI Semiconductor market, and the stock has significant upside potential next year."
Still, legal and regulatory risks remain. In September, the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., imposed a fine on Google in an antitrust lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2020 against its search division. The case, which could have dealt a major blow to Google's core search business, ended with a fine, but there is still a possibility of an appeal by the Justice Department.
Another variable is growing commentary that Big Tech's results are overvalued. Arun Sai, senior strategist at Pictet Asset Management, said, "The market is not yet convinced when Big Tech's aggressive AI infrastructure expenditure will translate into tangible revenue."