by winston » Sat Jul 26, 2025 7:59 am
vested
Alphabet, Inc.
Going into its earnings report, Wall Street was wondering if ongoing antitrust challenges and intense AI competition would finally catch up to the search giant.
Well, Alphabet delivered, at least on the headline numbers. The company posted adjusted earnings per share of $2.31, topping analyst forecasts of $2.18 per share. Revenue came in at $96.43 billion, beating Wall Street’s expectation of $94 billion. That represents an impressive 14% year-over-year jump.
Alphabet’s individual segments also showed strength. For example, YouTube ad revenue was $9.8 billion, above the forecasted $9.56 billion.
But the real story here is Alphabet’s aggressive push into AI.
For starters, the Google Cloud segment brought in $13.62 billion versus estimates of $13.11 billion – and increased by 32%. The division has signed more billion-dollar deals in the first half of 2025 than it did in all of 2024 – and it now has a backlog of $106 billion.
I should also add that Gemini, the company’s flagship AI platform, now has over 450 million users, with requests up by more than 50% since Q1.
Meanwhile, Google’s AI video generator (Veo3) has already generated 70 million videos in just two months.
What Alphabet is doing in AI right now is just stunning.
So it should come as no surprise, then, that Alphabet is increasing its AI spending to a staggering $85 billion, up from an earlier projection of $75 billion.
Alphabet clearly intends to take the fight directly to competitors like Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) in the rapidly growing AI market.
Yet, despite the strong beat on earnings and revenue, shares initially pulled back after hearing the AI spending news.
But remember, I said this is the rational time of year. That turned out to be true in this case, as the stock snapped back once investors realized that you have to spend money to make money – and so far, the company’s AI best are paying off.
Source: Investor Place
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