CNBC Transcript: Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett Sits Down with CNBC’s Becky Quick During the 2026 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting Today

WHEN: Today, Saturday, May 2, 2026

WHERE: CNBC  

Following is the unofficial transcript of a CNBC interview with Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett today, Saturday, May 2, during the 2026 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting. Following are links to video on CNBC.com: https://global-deals.online/video/2026/05/02/watch-cnbcs-full-interview-with-berkshire-hathaway-chair-warren-buffett.html%3C/a%3E, https://global-deals.online/video/2026/05/02/warren-buffetts-message-to-shareholders-and-partners-follow-the-golden-rule.html%3C/a%3E, https://global-deals.online/video/2026/05/02/warren-buffett-on-deepfakes-artificial-intelligence-we-dont-know-whats-going-to-happen.html%3C/a%3E, and https://global-deals.online/video/2026/05/02/warren-buffett-tells-cnbc-its-not-the-ideal-environment-to-invest-berkshires-record-cash-hoard.html%3C/a%3E.

All references must be sourced to CNBC.

BECKY QUICK: We are sitting down right now with Warren Buffett, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, who, for the first time in 60 years, has been watching all of this from the audience instead of being on stage. And you know, last year at this time, Warren, you surprised everyone with the announcement that you were stepping down as CEO. Fast forward a year, and here we are. What do you think?

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, I think it's all working. It's all working. It isn't our ideal surrounding area or environment, I should say, in terms of deploying cash for Berkshire, but in terms of how we got the right management, we got the right arrangement, and you know, we can pick our spots, and nobody can tell us what to do exactly. And so sometimes we're doing nothing, but other times we get quite active. I mean,

QUICK: You know, Ajit spent some time on the stage today talking about how one of his keys is to do nothing when it –

BUFFETT: Absolutely.

QUICK: – comes to insurance, when it comes to writing insurance, which is the same thing that you have always talked about with whether to invest or not.

BUFFETT: Yeah, the world is full of people that are offering you things to do. And then the question, is to – find one that you know makes sense, and there may be 20 out there that make sense, that you don't understand, and you just leave them alone.

QUICK: You said that the world or the surrounding environment is not ideal. And I guess that points to the idea that there's almost $400 billion in cash on hand, although Greg took some pains to show it's really more like $380 billion in cash on hand –

BUFFETT: Well, yeah –

QUICK: – but that there's a lot of cash on hand, and you're still active in managing the portfolio too, and looking at stocks. You're looking around and you don't see a lot that you want to invest in.

BUFFETT: Well, then we don't do anything. I mean, we've been – up to 60 years I've been in the business. Probably five of them really juicy. And I think it was Tom Watson Sr. of IBM that said they asked him the reason why IBM had been so successful, or something like that, and he said, I'm smart of spots, and I stay around those spots, and that's the whole thing. And IBM was in three different businesses, including time clocks and a couple – and two of the three turned out to be no good, but – so they just focused on the one.

QUICK: What is it when you look around that – it's just prices are too high at this point?

BUFFETT: Yeah.

QUICK: I would imagine there are – Greg said this from the stage too, there are businesses that you liked –

BUFFETT: Yeah, well –

QUICK: – just not these prices.

BUFFETT: And I would say, I understand fewer of the businesses as a percentage of the whole than I did 10 years ago. I have not learned new industries for some years. And so I don't kid myself on that. I'm not going to learn them. I'm not going to have an edge on a whole bunch of younger people that have actually grown up with them, used the product, seen things, but – well, as I mentioned, you know, you don't have to understand too many if they're like Apple.

QUICK: But looking around, let's just get some macro thoughts on this, because I don't know that this is something that that Greg is going to comment on, per se, just looking at the macro stock market environment, what does this feel like to you? Is – does it feel expensive? Does it feel like there are opportunities in some places?

BUFFETT: Well, it feels like, you know, I've compared the markets to a church with a casino attached. And people can move between the church and casino. And I would say there are more people in the church and more people in the casino, but the casino has gotten very attractive to people. If you're buying one day options, or selling them, I mean that is – that's not investing, it's not speculating, it's gambling. Just totally. There's nobody that can explain why they're buying an option for one day, unless they maybe the fellow that made the 400 and some thousand dollars from knowing when we were going into Venezuela can do it. But I mean, that's for – and the quantity of those things is just incredible. So we've never had people in a more gambling mood than now. But that doesn't mean that investing is terrible. It does mean that prices for an awful lot of things will look very silly. I mean, they have a squeeze, and then Avis of all things. Well, Avis has been around for 50 years, but just this past week – and we have lots more regulation and everything now, but people spend their time figuring out how to get around the rules rather than follow the rules. That's just a challenge.

QUICK: The type of investor you though, is, you laid it out yourself. In the 60 years you've been doing this in the business, you've had maybe five juicy years. I guess that means you're always looking for the next juicy year. What do you think it would take to make a juicy year or a juicy opportunity for you?

BUFFETT: It's a phone call. In many – in some cases, but the board of business last year wasn't big enough to be meaningful but we got a letter.

QUICK: At Bell Labs?

BUFFETT: Yeah, Bell Labs. And sometimes there's more zeros attached to them than others, and we're big enough to handle anything, and we can make decisions faster than anybody, and our word is good. There's an awful lot of people that when they –  they're in the business of reselling something, or you know, it's – and it's a lot better if you're a good salesperson. There's no reason to be selling vacuum cleaners or, you know, might as well sell stock. You'll make way more money. It's where the money is, and there's more money around than ever.

QUICK: But the best opportunities have probably come when the macro environment leads to panic –

BUFFETT: That's the most likely, yeah. Well, the most likely time to buy things is when nobody else will answer their phones. You know, everybody else talks about their wonderful trading departments and everything. Just try them out. Sometimes, when markets are collapsing, they don't answer the phones. And if they do, the bids are subject and the offers are subject and the spread is wide, and they'll use the information they get from you about what you want to do to go out and kill you some other way. I mean, it's really like going to a slaughterhouse. I mean, you know, you don't feel like eating hot dogs for a while.

QUICK: I guess what I'm trying to get at is, do you see the circumstances building up anywhere that could lead to a time like that again, any sort of panic in the market?

BUFFETT: Sure.

QUICK: Where do you see them?

BUFFETT: Well, if you saw them, then they wouldn't happen.

QUICK: Okay.

BUFFETT: I mean, you've got all kinds –  you don't worry about what people are talking about can happen. It's something that comes out of the blue, but something will come out of the blue. I mean, a nuclear bomb could come out of the blue.

QUICK: Well, let's knock on wood on that.

BUFFETT: Well, it doesn't do any good. It's not going to – that's the point. It was the Arch Duke getting shot, you know, and then 1914 or something like that, for World War One. It just takes everything in life. And if it's something people are talking about and thinking about, it's not going to happen. But there are things that can happen out of the blue, and actually, that's particularly true to use that phraseology now, because the things that can come out of the sky, we don't know what can happen tomorrow. I don't like to talk that way to people, whether it's you or anybody else, I mean, because whether it does you a lot of good to worry about that. I don't think it does do any good to worry about it. I think it's good to be cognizant of it, but the worrying about it is terrible. And I don't like to – I don't like to even cause that belief with people, I don't like to go and tell them the end is coming. The end is coming or something like that.

QUICK: A friend told me yesterday, he's recently started using the phrase I don't fret, I don't worry. And that's probably a good way to go about life. But let's talk about some of the issues that are out there right now. Inflation is up. That's an issue. So how does Berkshire – how does Berkshire handle that with its businesses?

BUFFETT: Well, we can't handle runaway inflation, except not to be there in the way of it. And if you look at the number of countries that had runaway inflation since World War Two, you know, in my lifetime, it's very large. And once you create that, it becomes a different world. Germany obviously experienced it after World War One, but there are dozens and dozens of countries that have experienced it. And of course, you have countries going bankrupt like six or seven times. I mean, it's just amazing what people do in financial markets.

QUICK: What about the inflation that we're dealing with right now, which is, you know, not excessive. It's north of 3% at this point. But we're not even back at the levels we were during covid, where we got to eight to 9% –

BUFFETT: Oh no –

QUICK: – so what about just higher energy prices? How that works through the line and how you handle it?

BUFFETT: Well, it came close before Volcker. I mean, it was just, it was cash is trash. People were losing faith in the currency, and they felt they could borrow 12%, earn 6% on farming or something like that, and they had huge farmers in this state – Nebraska – collapse because they bought beyond the earning power, they're paying interest rates beyond the earning power just because they felt that the dollar was going to disappear and the land wouldn't disappear. And it's tragic for many people, and if you're the best doctor in town or the best lawyer in town, you'll always make money under any – the best TV personality, I mean it's, but – what not having faith in the money does to a country, it turns it into something else.

QUICK: Yeah.

BUFFETT: I've always hoped the U.S. never does it, but we are not immune from it happening. We have a lot of control over whether rates may go up a half a point or down a half a point, but what we may have less control over is whether they go up 50 points.

QUICK: You've long been a supporter of Jay Powell's.

BUFFETT: Exactly.

QUICK: He had his last FOMC meeting as chairman just this last week. He did say that he's going to be sticking around staying on the Fed, staying in that position for the foreseeable future, in part because of the threats that he's faced.

BUFFETT: I'll feel better when he's there better than when he's not. I mean, you know, I just felt better when Volcker was there. But you, economists aren't the best this sort of thing, you know, read it in the old economics book from 1950, 1970 that, Paul Samuelson was a terrific guy and smart as hell. He had the standard textbook for 25 years. And if you looked up, you know, zero interest rates, and year after year after year, it was a 900 page book, and there wasn't an entry for it, you know, I mean, it was the most important economic development, I mean, in terms of the impact it would have and everything during the lifetime of the students reading it. But it's what you don't think of that does all the damage.

QUICK: Let's talk a little bit about CEOs in some of the Berkshire holdings. You mentioned Apple's Tim Cook and just the phenomenal job you think he's done.

BUFFETT: Incredible.

QUICK: He's not the only one of your major holding CEOs who's stepped down. James Quincey recently stepped down from Coca-Cola too. And we just spoke with Vicki Hollub who announced that she is retiring and stepping down from that position at Occidental. Part of what Greg's talked about is how stable that portfolio is and and these holdings or companies that he knows, and managers that he did, that he knows. There's going to be some new managers in some of those major holdings coming in. Is that a problem?

BUFFETT: Well, it was certainly a problem in Coca-Cola there for a good many years when I was around the company. I mean, sure, it's and you have the most problems with a really good company, because it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll continue. I mean, if you're selling some product that people are buying every day, they make the wrong decision for a long time. But that's one of the problems with investing that, Tim Cook, I felt was very, very good from the start and are, most of our managers are very good at the smaller problems, like they can't anticipate the overwhelming problems. That's my job, or now Greg's job.

QUICK: Do you feel good about those holdings still? Have you met any of the new managers of those businesses?

BUFFETT: I haven't met the old managers—

QUICK: Of the new businesses of the new CEOs that are coming in? Tim Cook's replacement?

BUFFETT: Oh yeah, you know—

QUICK: Henrique at Coca-Cola.

BUFFETT: I certainly met the people at Bell Labs that we did. You know, obviously I met Becky, we made the deal and so I enjoy meeting the people, but you can make mistakes with people. I mean look at the divorce rate. You know, that's more important than whether you got the right CEO or anything else, and now you've got years of trial. I mean, back when I was young, you had to make the decision, or you didn't have to make the decision but a good many people made the decision when they were 20 or 21—

QUICK: To get married.

BUFFETT: Yeah, they got married and now they spend five years, they still make the same mistakes.

QUICK: So you think we're getting worse at our judgment?

BUFFETT: Well, I don't know. Maybe that people behave differently before the marriage than after, who knows exactly, I would say that almost everybody feels either their marriage is better or worse than they anticipated a month after they were married. But I don't know which.

QUICK: Warren, let's talk a little bit about deepfakes because the deepfake Warren that popped up early in this session was pretty good. They had somebody standing up, you know, Greg was joking about it, but, you know, the first, the first question went to a guy from Warren up in the rafters, who lives in Omaha. You've been concerned about some of these AI deepfakes, and what that means for the world.

BUFFETT: Yeah, I would be concerned if everybody was, well, actually, the worst thing would be to have a really good imitator of any president that came along. I mean, just imagine, well yet we had that famous thing before, way back in New Jersey, where they the Martians coming and everything like—

QUICK: Oh, "War of the Worlds" with Orson Welles.

BUFFET: But what you can do, well, if you convince people to lend you money, you shouldn't be borrowing it, I mean, it's it's scary, and it's particularly scary when you have nine countries or so with nuclear weapons and people working on it, something even more, we haven't dealt with this. We don't know what's going to happen.

QUICK: Let's circle back to Berkshire and the Berkshire of today. I think I was speaking with you yesterday or the day before, and we were talking a little bit about Greg Abel, and what a nice guy he is.

BUFFETT: He is a terrific guy.

QUICK: You said something interesting to me though about how you picked him, and it wasn't because he was a nice guy. Why did you pick him?

BUFFETT: Well, he's very, very, very smart about businesses. Incidentally, he's getting his Canadian I mean, he's getting his American citizenship here very soon, and he was going over with me all the things he had to learn about. And I've actually spent a little time in the past with groups of individuals. Of course, my wife, too became an American citizenship, American citizen, and the things they have to learn about, the Constitution and all this. And they're usually so proud when they become American citizens. And I think I detected in Greg even, I mean, you know, as successful he's been in everything else, I mean, he is, it means something to him to become an American citizen, and he sits there with his young son, you know, and the son knows more about some of the answers of the questions, you know, that he may get asked, or something about becoming a citizen. It's really interesting. Where else does that happen in the world? I mean, what people, you know, America's special, and it's a miracle what America's accomplished. I mean, it's just an absolute miracle. And yet, the miracle, the division of the output and everything is about as inequitable as you can come up with, while at the same time, it's got these great attractions. There is some secret sauce. Never been able to define it precisely, but when you run a country for 200 and some years, and people want to come here every year, I mean, there's something about it. And what Greg Abel is very, you know, is looking forward to becoming an American citizen. That means something to him. And he can't buy that at any place, they're packaging it or it won't work for Madison Avenue approach, approach, be an American or something like that. But that feeling just goes in my 95 years, I've seen it, you know, time after time, so I felt, I felt good when Greg just volunteered that day or two to me that he was is up there for his final exams on becoming a citizen.

QUICK: I didn't realize he wasn't a dual citizen already. I knew he was Canadian, but I thought he had dual citizenship.

BUFFETT: He doesn't have a full, whatever the complete citizenship requirement is and and you can say, why does he care, I mean, he's gotten along fine without it here and everything. He still wants to be a citizen.

QUICK: Yeah. 250 years, we're celebrating our 250th anniversary. You pointed out that you've been around for 95 of them. You think we have the special sauce that that will continue in this country, or what do we need to do to preserve that and make sure that it does continue.

BUFFETT: We've got a special sauce, a secret sauce. It's such a good secret that I don't know what exactly it is, but I do know this, that anybody that has a choice would choose to be born in America. I mean, you know, you can pick some very small country they're very happy that they're there but this is there any other country that everybody's, couple 100 years wanted to emigrate to? I mean, and it attracted some terrible people, you know, too, but, but it worked. And they had the mafias from the different groups, not not just the Italian mafia, but, I mean, it wasn't that they were all, we had some system for picking out the wonderful people from some other countries, but it has, it has worked, but it's worth the extremes to which it works. Don't seem to belong to that kind of a society. I mean, if you were drawing up dreams for the ideal society, and you would have this kind of GDP per capita and everything, it wouldn't design, it wouldn't design the, it wouldn't design the inheritance laws. You wouldn't, I mean, you just do all kinds of things differently, but somehow it's worked. But that doesn't mean that we can't do better at all.

QUICK: You know, Warren, there are thousands of people, shareholders and partners of yours for decades, in some cases, who are sitting out in this arena right now. And I just wonder if there's a message you'd like to give to them, who's been following you for years and been partners of yours for years.

BUFFETT: The number one rule I give them is just not give them the golden rule. Do unto others, I'm not a religious guy, but, I mean, nobody said it any better in a couple thousand years than that, which may be why it's lasted to a certain degree too. I mean, more people are reading a 2000-year-old book about how to behave than anything that anybody's coming up with lately. Now it's got a lot of, particularly the Old Testament, it's got different kinds of stories, to some extent, but if the whole world lived by the golden rule, it would be such a more wonderful society.

QUICK: Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you.

BUFFETT: Yeah, and that's true for everything from parenthood to being a boss to being, I mean, just everything in life, and it doesn't cost you anything. In fact, it's reflected in better behavior toward you. So I mean, it's a very selfish sort of thing in one sense, but I've never seen anybody that's unhappy that behave that way. They, and I've seen a lot of people in a lot of different kinds of situations.

QUICK: Warren, I want to thank you for taking this time to sit down with us today. Warren Buffett, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. Greg Abel, is going to be taking the stage in just a moment, and you will see more from him in just a moment.