Alphabet (GOOG): One of the Biggest Beneficiaries of the AI Transition

Pelican Bay Capital Management (PBCM), an investment management company, released its fourth-quarter 2025 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. PBCM Concentrated Value Strategy returned 8.5% in the quarter, compared to a 3.8% return for the Russell 1000 Value Index. The robust performance of AI-related stocks and commodities exposure drove the Strategy’s performance in the quarter. For the full year, the Strategy returned 20.6% compared to 15.9% for the Index. The firm seeks to invest in high-quality companies with a strong balance sheet. Please review the Fund’s top five holdings to gain insights into their key selections for 2025.

In its fourth-quarter 2025 investor letter, PBCM highlighted stocks like Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG). Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG), the parent company of Google, offers various platforms and services operating through Google Services, Google Cloud, and Other Bets segments, and is a significant contributor to the strategy’s performance in the quarter. On February 5, 2026, Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) stock closed at $331.33 per share with a market capitalization of $4.008 trillion. One-month return of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) was 0.67%, and its shares gained 77.05% of their value over the last 52 weeks.

PBCM stated the following regarding Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) in its fourth quarter 2025 investor letter:

"Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) also landed on the list of top 5 contributors for a second consecutive quarter. The company appears to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the AI transition, and their Gemini Large Language Model (LLM) has established itself as a leading LLM along with Claude and ChatGPT. Perception has come a long way from when we first purchased GOOG in March 2023 when the prevailing consensus was that GOOG missed the AI boom and its monopoly on search would deteriorate rapidly.

Unfortunately, in our view investors may have become too enthusiastic about Alphabet’s prospects, pushing the share price well ahead of our most optimistic view of its intrinsic value. As a result, we made the decision to exit our position this quarter and redeployed the funds into a new position. It is always difficult to sell our compounders, and GOOG certainly qualifies as one; but when a stock price moves 10% or more above the top end of our estimated range of intrinsic values, we would no longer be investing but rather speculating."

Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is in the 7th position on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 186 hedge fund portfolios held Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) at the end of the third quarter which was 178 in the previous quarter. In 2025, Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) achieved its first-ever $400 billion annual revenue. While we acknowledge the potential of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) as an investment, we believe certain AI stocks offer greater upside potential and carry less downside risk. If you're looking for an extremely undervalued AI stock that also stands to benefit significantly from Trump-era tariffs and the onshoring trend, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock.

In another article, we covered Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) and shared a list of buzzing AI stocks on market radar. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q4 2025 page for more investor letters from hedge funds and other leading investors.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.