AI Push Provides a Boost to GOOGL's Cloud Business: More Upside Ahead?

Alphabet GOOGL is riding on a strong Google Cloud prospect, which accounts for 14.6% of GOOGL’s 2025 revenues. Google Cloud revenues jumped 35.8% over 2025’s reported figure to $58.71 billion. The top line benefited from growth in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) across core products, AI Infrastructure and generative AI (Gen AI) Solutions. Cloud backlog jumped 55% sequentially to $240 billion at the end of 2025. The AI push is expected to boost Google Cloud’s prospects in the near term.

Alphabet’s expanding AI infrastructure is helping it win enterprise clients. GCP’s prospects remain robust, driven by strong demand for enterprise AI infrastructure, including TPUs (led by seventh-generation Ironwood) and NVIDIA’s latest GPUs, enterprise AI solutions driven by demand for the latest Gemini and other AI models, and other services, including cybersecurity and data analytics. Google Cloud is also benefiting from strong Gen AI adoption due to leading models, including Gemini, Imagen, Veo, Chirp and Lyria. In the fourth quarter of 2025, revenues from products built on Gen AI models grew nearly 400% year over year.

At the end of the fourth quarter of 2025, Alphabet’s Cloud clientele doubled compared with the first quarter of 2025. The number of deals worth $1 billion surpassed the previous 3 years combined, reflecting larger customer commitments. 75% of Google Cloud customers have used Alphabet’s vertically optimized AI from chips to models to AI platforms and enterprise AI agents, which offer superior performance, quality, security and cost efficiency. Alphabet’s cloud AI accelerators are addressing the needs of leading Frontier AI labs, capital markets firms like Citadel Securities, enterprises like Mercedes-Benz and governments for high-performance computing applications.

Security push is expected to drive Google Cloud’s top-line growth further. The addition of Wiz (acquisition pending, expected to complete in 2026) to Google Cloud will boost competitive prowess against the likes of Amazon AMZN and Microsoft MSFT in the cloud computing space. Accelerating investments bodes well for GOOGL’s prospects. Alphabet expects capital expenditure between $175 billion and $185 billion for 2026.

GOOGL Faces Tough Competition in Cloud Domain

Per Synergy Research Group data, Amazon’s share in the worldwide cloud infrastructure market amounted to 28% in the fourth quarter of 2025, ahead of Microsoft’s Azure platform at 21% and Google Cloud at 14%. 

Amazon is spending heavily on fortifying its Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure that supports AI workloads and expanded data center capacity. Amazon committed $200 billion in capital expenditure for 2026, with the vast majority directed toward AWS infrastructure. In the fourth quarter of 2025, AWS grew 24%, its fastest pace in 13 quarters, with backlog surging 40% to $244 billion.

In the second quarter of fiscal 2026, Microsoft Azure and other cloud services revenues accelerated 38% in constant currency (cc), with management attributing significant contributions to AI-related demand. Microsoft Cloud revenues reached $51.5 billion, increasing 24% in cc. For the third quarter of fiscal 2026, Azure and other cloud services revenue growth is expected to reach approximately 37% to 38% in cc.

GOOGL’s Share Price Performance, Valuation & Estimates

Alphabet shares have appreciated 85.7% in the trailing 12 months, outperforming the broader Zacks Computer and Technology sector’s return of 30.1%.

GOOGL Stock Outperforms Sector

The GOOGL stock is trading at a premium, with a forward 12-month price/sales of 9.01X compared with the broader sector’s 6.43X. Alphabet has a Value Score of D.

GOOGL Valuation

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2026 earnings is pegged at $11.58 per share, up 4.5% over the past 30 days, suggesting 7.1% growth from fiscal 2025’s reported figure.
 

Alphabet Inc. Price and Consensus

Alphabet Inc. price-consensus-chart | Alphabet Inc. Quote

Alphabet currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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