It turns out that holding onto your Google stock for a couple decades works out pretty well. Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) shares have rocketed 54% year-to-date in 2025, hitting fresh all-time highs and making co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin considerably richer in the process.
Climbing the Billionaire Ladder
Page and Brin have been fixtures in the top 10 wealthiest people globally for years, finishing 2024 ranked sixth and eighth respectively. But Alphabet's recent surge has propelled them both back into the top five on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, currently sitting at third and fifth place.
Here's how the top five billionaires stack up right now, including their year-to-date wealth changes:
- Elon Musk: $431 billion, -$1.36 billion
- Larry Ellison: $282 billion, +$89.7 billion
- Larry Page: $252 billion, +$83.5 billion
- Jeff Bezos: $245 billion, +$6.36 billion
- Sergey Brin: $235 billion, +$76.9 billion
That's right: Page has gained $83.5 billion this year, while Brin is up $76.9 billion. Only Oracle's Ellison has done better in 2025, posting an eye-watering $89.7 billion gain that briefly pushed him past Musk at the top of the rankings. Each Google founder has jumped three spots from their end-of-2024 positions.
So who got bumped from the top five? Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg dropped from third to sixth, while LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault fell from fifth to seventh. Bezos slipped two spots from second to fourth but managed to hang onto his top-five status. Among the broader top 10, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has been another big mover, jumping from 12th place to ninth.
Why Alphabet Is Flying
Alphabet's 54% gain comes despite earlier concerns that artificial intelligence might disrupt Google Search's dominance. Instead, the company placed aggressive bets on its own AI products and effectively quieted the doomsayers. The stock got another vote of confidence when Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway disclosed a new position in the third quarter.
That stake, consisting of 17,846,142 shares, makes Alphabet a top 10 holding in the Berkshire portfolio. When the Oracle of Omaha starts buying your stock, people tend to notice.
Page and Brin remain substantial shareholders in the company they founded, which means they'll continue riding the wave alongside other investors if Alphabet keeps posting these kinds of gains. Given that the stock is trading at all-time highs with strong momentum across the business, that's looking like a pretty good bet right now.