By Daniel Sparks
Publication Date: 2026-05-20 17:51:00
Bill Ackman — the billionaire investor and CEO of hedge fund Pershing Square — made two big disclosures on X (formerly Twitter) last week. On Friday, May 15, he revealed that Pershing Square had quietly built a 5.65 million-share position in Microsoft (MSFT +0.75%) during the first quarter. The next day, he confirmed that the firm had funded the new bet by fully exiting its multi-year long investment in Alphabet (GOOG 0.55%)(GOOGL 0.22%) — Google’s parent company.
Naturally, the move turned heads. Alphabet has been one of the market’s clearest artificial intelligence (AI) winners this year, with shares climbing roughly 23% year to date and even hitting all-time highs at one point in mid-May. The Windows maker, meanwhile, is down about 14% year to date as of this writing, trading far below its 52-week high of more than $555.
Ackman insists the trade isn’t a bet against Google.
“To be clear, our sale of $GOOG was not a bet against the company,” he wrote on X. “We are very bullish…
