Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway discloses Snowflake stake, confirming a rapid $800 million gain

• Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway confirmed the size of its Snowflake stake in a regulatory filing on Monday.
• The billionaire investor's company owns about 5.1 million Class A shares, or 2.2%, of the cloud-data platform's outstanding stock.
• Berkshire has notched a $800 million gain, as it spent $735 million on shares worth more than $1.5 billion as of Monday's close.
• The unusual bet shows that Buffett's company is "evolving and becoming a much more tech-aware, tech-centric, tech-focused conglomerate," Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman $4.
• $4.

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway officially disclosed its stake in Snowflake on Monday, confirming it has scored a $800 million gain on its investment in the cloud-data platform.

The famed investor's conglomerate owns about 6.1 million Class A shares, it said in a $4. The holding represents about 2.2% of Snowflake's total outstanding shares, which include 40.4 million Class A shares and roughly 240 million Class B shares.

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Berkshire spent $250 million to buy about 2.1 million shares in a private placement when Snowflake went public earlier this month. It bought another 4 million shares at the IPO price of $120 from former Snowflake CEO Robert Muglia in a secondary transaction, costing it $485 million.

The upshot is Berkshire splurged $735 million on Snowflake shares that have more than doubled in value to $1.5 billion, based on Snowflake's closing share price of $250 on Monday. As a result, it has notched a $800 million gain.

More Snowflakes might drop

Berkshire's Snowflake bet surprised many investors as Buffett has $4 loss-making, aggressively valued technology companies and IPOs in favor of safer, cheaper wagers.

The unusual deal stemmed from Berkshire's insurance unit being a Snowflake customer, CEO Frank Slootman $4. It appears that Todd Combs, the CEO of Geico and one of Buffett's two portfolio managers, was impressed by the company and expressed interest in becoming an investor. That explains why $4.

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Berkshire's Snowflake investment may look like an anomaly, but Slootman argued it was a product of structural change. Buffett's company is "evolving and becoming a much more tech-aware, tech-centric, tech-focused conglomerate," he said.