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- Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway took a $500 million stake in Nubank.
- The Brazilian fintech's biggest investment yet values it at $30 billion.
- Berkshire has been making more bets on technology companies.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has plowed $500 million into Nubank, marking the largest single investment in the Brazilian financial-technology company to date.
A group of funds also invested $250 million in the digital bank, boosting the total proceeds from Nubank's Series G funding round – which originally raised $400 million in January – to $1.2 billion.
Both deals were struck last Friday and value the company at $30 billion, Nubank told The Wall Street Journal. That valuation implies that Berkshire owns about 1.7% of the business.
Nubank, which has amassed 40 million customers since its launch eight years ago, offers a slew of financial services including credit cards, personal loans, payments, life insurance, and investment products.
The company's bosses plan to use the latest influx of cash to broaden their product range, deepen their foothold in existing markets, expand internationally, and attract top-tier talent.
Berkshire has invested in Brazilian fintechs before. It spent $340 million for roughly 11% of StoneCo when the digital-payments group went public in 2018. It trimmed its holding by about 25% last quarter, but still had $655 million of StoneCo stock as of March 31.
The Nubank bet underscores Berkshire's increased openness to tech investments. Despite Buffett's historical aversion to lossmaking tech startups and IPOs, his company invested $570 million in Snowflake when the cloud-data platform went public last fall.
Buffett's company has been casting its net wider in search of bargains recently. For instance, it built roughly 5% stakes in five Japanese trading houses last year. Nubank appears to be the latest example of that trend.