Berkshire Hathaway doesn’t publish a simple, up‑to‑the‑day “company count,” but you can get a solid, current-range answer.

Quick Scoop

  • As of the end of 2022, Berkshire Hathaway wholly owned and operated 73 subsidiaries (these are the fully controlled operating companies, like GEICO, BNSF Railway, Dairy Queen, etc.).
  • Those 73 “core” subsidiaries often contain many more individual businesses inside them (for example, Marmon alone operates over 100 manufacturing and service businesses, and Alleghany is itself a holding company with multiple subsidiaries).
  • Separately from these operating companies, Berkshire also holds dozens of publicly traded stocks (42 positions in its latest SEC filings, such as Apple, American Express, Bank of America, Coca‑Cola, and Chevron).

So if you’re asking:

  • “How many companies does Berkshire Hathaway own outright?” → Around 70+ major wholly owned subsidiaries , based on the latest detailed breakdown.
  • “How many different businesses are under the Berkshire umbrella in total?” → Several hundred once you include all the underlying businesses inside groups like Marmon and Alleghany, plus partial stakes in public companies, though there’s no single official public number.

Why the number is fuzzy

  • Subsidiaries buy and sell smaller businesses frequently, so the exact count changes.
  • Berkshire’s annual report lists subsidiaries, but many are grouped (e.g., Marmon group), and not every sub‑sub‑company is broken out by name.

If you’re tracking “latest news” or “trending topic”

  • Recent attention focuses more on which stocks Berkshire holds (Apple, Japanese trading houses, etc.) and portfolio changes each quarter, not on counting every underlying company.
  • Infographics and forum posts that say “everything Berkshire owns” are usually visual summaries of the well‑known brands, not an exact legal-entity count.

TL;DR: Berkshire Hathaway directly owns about 73 major operating subsidiaries , but because many of those are holding groups with numerous businesses inside, the true number of individual companies and business units runs into the hundreds , and it’s not published as a single precise figure.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.