Warren Buffett and Greg Abel walkthrough the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders Meeting in Omaha, Nebraska on May 3, 2025.

David A. Grogen | CNBC

In the final stretch of his tenure atop Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett was still pursuing that elusive elephant.

The 95-year-old legendary investor, who handed over the CEO reins to Greg Abel at the start of 2026, made it clear that deal size was not the constraint, it was lack of opportunities.

"It's external circumstances. Believe me if after we get finished talking you say, 'I've got a great $100 billion new idea.' I would say, 'Let's talk,'" Buffett told Becky Quick in a special interview in May after he said he was stepping down at the end of the year.

The never-before-seen interview is part of the "Warren Buffett: A Life and Legacy" special airing Tuesday at 7 p.m. ET. on CNBC.

The remarks underscore a central paradox at Berkshire today. The company is awash in liquidity, with its cash hoard swelling to a record $381.6 billion at the end of the third quarter, but Buffett found no opportunities in 2025 large enough to move the needle at prices he considers sensible.

"It means that when I look at the stock market, when I look at companies of a size that would make any difference to our total, I don't see anything. Well, we're buying one or two things, but it's peanuts. But I'm willing to spend $100 billion this afternoon, you know," Buffett, now chairman, told CNBC.

In October, Berkshire closed a deal to buy Occidental Petroleum's chemical business, OxyChem, for $9.7 billion in cash, marking its largest purchase since 2022, when it paid $11.6 billion for insurer Alleghany.

Berkshire's cash has grown significantly after Buffett aggressively dumped enormous pieces of his two largest holdings, Apple and Bank of America. 

Buffett doesn't want to be sitting on this much cash. He has long warned that cash is a poor long-term asset, even as he insists on holding ample reserves to weather unforeseen shocks.

"I'd rather have $100 billion and a really good business at a sensible price than have $100 billion in cash," he said. "At certain levels, cash is necessary, but cash is not a good asset."

He likened liquidity to oxygen, cheap to maintain and catastrophic to run out of at the wrong moment.

"You always want to have enough," Buffett said. "You don't have to pay a lot for it. But you do need oxygen. And cash is that way. You always need to have it available because you do not know what will happen. I do not know what the stock market will do, and I do not know what business will do."

Abel has been a longtime lieutenant who played a central role in several of Berkshire's acquisitions particularly in energy, and helped transform Berkshire Hathaway Energy into a powerhouse.

While Abel's deal-making credentials are established, Berkshire shareholders may not extend him the same patience they have long afforded Buffett. With the conglomerate sitting on a mountain of cash and shares underperforming the market, pressure to deploy capital could quickly become a defining challenge for the new CEO.

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