The “Oracle of Omaha” has officially retired. Mostly.

At age 95, legendary investor Warren Buffett stepped down on Wednesday as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, the once-failing textile business he spent 60 years building into one of the world’s largest and most powerful companies.

Today marks another step in Buffett’s long — and still partial — goodbye from Berkshire Hathaway. It’s the first day under Buffett’s longtime deputy and handpicked successor, Greg Abel.

“He is a great manager, a tireless worker and an honest communicator. Wish him an extended tenure,” Buffett wrote to Berkshire shareholders in a November letter.

Together with his longtime business partner and close friend, the late investor Charlie Munger, Buffett transformed Berkshire Hathaway into a global powerhouse.

Today, the massive conglomerate owns businesses ranging from insurance companies and railroads to Dairy Queen and Duracell batteries. It’s also a powerful investor in many large public companies, including Apple, Coca-Cola and American Express.

“Because of its breadth and its depth … it really is sort of a microcosm for the broader economy,” Cathy Seifert, an analyst who covers Berkshire for CFRA Research, told NPR earlier this year.

This financial success has made Buffett into a giant of American capitalism, and one of the wealthiest people in the world. At the same time, his down-to-earth folksy persona and his willingness to give away his money — not to mention the annual shareholder parties he throws in his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska — have made him into a national celebrity outside of Wall Street.

“I think it’s remarkable to hear Warren talk about what business and society and values should be,” one longtime Berkshire shareholder, Rosalyn Trumm of Omaha, told NPR in May at the yearly gathering.

At age 95, Buffett has been taking steps towards retirement for years. In 2021, he publicly named Abel as his successor. Then Munger died in 2023 at age 99, drawing more attention to Buffett’s plans for Berkshire’s future without him. Finally, at his most recent annual shareholder meeting in May, Buffett announced that he would be officially handing off the CEO reins to Abel at the end of the year.

Despite all the public succession planning, Berkshire Hathaway investors still seem a little nervous about the future: The company’s shares rose more than 11 percent overall in 2025, but are still somewhat down following Buffett’s retirement announcement in May.

Still, Buffett’s retirement isn’t quite complete. He will remain chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, and told shareholders in November that he will continue sharing his public thoughts in annual letters.

“As the British would say, I’m ‘going quiet.’ Sort of,” he wrote, before concluding, “I enjoy the chance to keep in touch with you.”

Correction: In an earlier version of this story, Hathaway was misspelled in the headline as Hathway.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/01/02/warren-buffett-officially-retires-as-berkshire-hathaways-ceo/