Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is taking profits from the company, which Munger called “a goddamn miracle.”

16 years ago, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway invested $230 million in Chinese electric vehicle startup BYD and raised questions about the conglomerate’s unusual foray into early-stage technology. The bet proved to be one of Berkshire’s most lucrative, with the stake rising to $8 billion at BYD’s peak as the electric car market boomed in China and beyond. Berkshire has recently been taking back some of its profits after making billions of dollars during its hyper-growth phase. Berkshire cut its stake in BYD on June 19 to 5.99% from 7% just a few days earlier, according to data from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The “Oracle of Omaha” credited his late business partner Charlie Munger with persuading him to invest in BYD, a prominent opponent of tech companies. Munger, who died in November at the age of 99, spoke admiringly of BYD founder and CEO Wang Chuanfu, who he said came from a humble family but rose through hard work and talent.

“Here’s one of eight children of a peasant who becomes a famous engineering school professor and before he’s 50 years old wins the Chinese equivalent of the Nobel Prize,” Munger said at Berkshire’s annual meeting in 2012. Buffett revealed that Munger once compared the genius of Chuanfu with Thomas Edison and Bill Gates. When Berkshire’s stake in the Hong Kong-traded stock first went public, Munger went to great lengths to explain to shareholders that BYD was not an early-stage venture capital company, even though at the time of Berkshire’s investment the principal CEO was only 40 years old. “This is not some unproven, highly speculative business. What it is is a goddamn miracle,” Munger said in 2009. He detailed BYD’s journey from making cell phone batteries in the 1990s until switching to the automotive industry in 2003.

Since then, the company has become the largest car brand in China, as well as a major manufacturer of batteries for electric vehicles. “From scratch and with very little capital, he was able to quickly create the best-selling model in China,” Munger said. “And against competition that was Chinese joint ventures with all the major car companies in the world, technological marvels with much more capital, etc. In the fourth quarter of 2023, BYD finally dethroned Tesla as the world’s largest electric car manufacturer , selling more battery-powered vehicles than its rival Elon Musk. The late Berkshire vice chairman was introduced to BYD by his friend Li Lu, founder of Seattle-based asset firm Himalaya Capital, who bought shares in electric car company for Munger’s family portfolio years before Berkshire invested in it. Munger is a longtime admirer of China, impressed by its decades of rapid economic growth. “It’s just amazing how quickly people in China learn to do what we do it took a long time to learn. The world is becoming much more competitive,” Munger said in 2012.