Meet the Warren Buffett Stock That's Crushing Nvidia in 2025

Key Points

• Nvidia has been one of the best-performing large-cap stocks over the last few years.

• This company's strategic shift resulted in strong operating results in 2025.

• Warren Buffett has held shares since 2012, including an additional purchase at the start of 2025.

• 10 stocks we like better than VeriSign ›

Warren Buffett is well known for eschewing advanced technology stocks. That's often led him and Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) (NYSE: BRK.B) investors to miss out on some of the most lucrative investment opportunities in the market.

One of the biggest winners of the last few years has been Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA). Its GPUs are essential infrastructure for artificial intelligence (AI) training and inference. As a result, it's seen demand soar over the last few years, and it continues to grow both its top and bottom lines at a breakneck pace. After incredible price appreciation in 2023 and 2024, Nvidia shares continued to climb this year, surpassing the $4 trillion threshold.

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But the Oracle of Omaha is proving once again that he doesn't need to invest in the hottest tech stocks to produce market-beating returns. In fact, one of Berkshire's longtime holdings is outperforming Nvidia's 31% gain in 2025, rising 38% so far this year.

Image source: Getty Images.

The internet monopoly in Berkshire's portfolio

While Buffett typically stays away from tech stocks, he has made a few exceptions on occasion. Berkshire has long owned shares of Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), which remains its largest holding in its marketable equities portfolio. That's despite the fact that Buffett has trimmed about 70% of its shares.

What Buffett likes about Apple is that it makes a consumer product that's relatively easy to understand, even if you don't understand all the technology that goes into it. Apple's strength is in its user experience and brand loyalty, and it doesn't require advanced engineering knowledge to understand those competitive advantages.

Another longtime Buffett favorite in the tech space with an easy-to-understand competitive advantage is VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN). VeriSign owns the exclusive rights to register domain names with .com or .net. In other words, it has a monopoly over the most popular top-level domains, and that's not going to change anytime soon.

The one thing keeping its monopoly in check is its contract with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN. It's limited in how quickly it can raise the price it charges for new domain names and renewals. The only thing it has to do to maintain its exclusive rights is operate critical internet infrastructure and provide uninterrupted domain name system (DNS) services.

As a result, VeriSign can produce wider profit margins every year as it raises prices. And while competing top-level domains have entered the market, every serious business wants a .com or .net domain. That ensures it maintains a high level of renewals and a growing number of customers over time.

VeriSign works closely with registrars to grow its customer base. After some disappointing results over the last few years, it shifted strategies to push registrars to focus on offering better pricing and attracting long-term customers. The strategy has paid off with strong net increases in domain registrations in the first half of 2025. That's somewhat offset by an increase in marketing expenses.

The improvement hasn't gone unnoticed by the market. As mentioned, the stock has climbed more than 38% in 2025, outpacing Nvidia. And management is optimistic about the rest of 2025 as well.

Is the stock a buy?

VeriSign's financials are set up for slow and steady growth for the foreseeable future. It can raise the rates it charges for domain names in most years, according to its ICANN contract. Meanwhile, the capital expenditures and ongoing operating expenses required to keep up its end of the contract are relatively small compared to its revenue base. It has shown the ability to leverage marketing spend to grow its customer base, which should result in high customer lifetime value.

But after climbing 38% so far this year, the stock looks a bit expensive. Buffett might agree. He sold about $1.2 billion worth of the stock earlier this summer at the current price. That said, price wasn't the only reason Buffett sold the stock. The stock sale also put Berkshire below a 10% stake in the company, which reduces its regulatory filing requirements. Additionally, Berkshire agreed to hold its remaining stake in VeriSign for at least one year from the sale.

At a price around $285 per share, VeriSign trades for 32 times forward earnings estimates. That's a high price to pay, even for a company that has a monopoly. While its earnings growth should remain relatively steady, it's not going to climb so fast that it can justify that earnings multiple. Despite the actual business sitting on a solid footing, the stock looks risky right now due to the potential for multiple compressions weighing on the stock price. Investors should wait for the multiple to fall back toward the mid-20s, where Buffett last bought shares of the stock at the start of the year.

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Adam Levy has positions in Apple. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, Nvidia, and VeriSign. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.