Alphabet Tops $100 Billion Quarterly Revenue For First Time

Alphabet reported its first-ever $100 billion quarter, fueled by a 34% surge in Google Cloud revenue and booming AI demand. The tech giant also announced an increase in expected capital expenditures for the fiscal year of 2025. CNBC reports: "With the growth across our business and demand from Cloud customers, we now expect 2025 capital expenditures to be in a range of $91 billion to $93 billion," the company said in its earnings report (PDF) Wednesday. "Looking out to 2026, we expect a significant increase in CapEx and will provide more detail on our fourth quarter earnings call," said finance chief Anat Ashkenazi on the earnings call with investors Wednesday.

Earlier this year, the company increased its capital expenditure expectation from $75 billion to $85 billion. Most of that goes toward technical infrastructure such as data centers. The latest earnings show the company is seeing rising demand for its AI services, which largely sit in its cloud unit. It also shows the company is continuing to spend more to try and build out more infrastructure to accomodate the backlog of customer requests. "We continue to drive strong growth in new businesses. Google Cloud accelerated, ending the quarter with $155 billion in backlog," CEO Sundar Pichai said in the earnings release.

Not a bubble

[sometimesblue]

In the past year, Alphabet announced a deal worth 'tens of billions' with Anthropic. There was another deal with OpenAI for an unknown amount, but presumably similar to the Anthropic one. They are both a a complicated arrangement of chips going one way and services going the other, but the deals have been given a monetary amount that is beneficial to both parties, so I'm guessing that is going to be a large part of the increased profits at Alphabet. (And will probably also show up on the net balance sheet a

Re: Not a bubble

[Anonymous Coward]

Companies love to announce big deals. Bigger and bigger. Eleventy Gazillion dollars for new widget factories!!

But the news media (and general public) has a very short memory. Nobody ever does a follow-up report on all those big big big multi-gazillion dollar deals. Are they actually producing anything? I bet they aren't.

Company A sells to Company B, who sells to Company C, who sells to Company D, who sells to Company E, who sells to company A.

The same widgets get passed around in a big circle

Re: Not a bubble

[blue trane]

What if the Fed had bought index funds in 2001, would that panic have ended in a few months instead of taking years before new bubbles sustained us?

Beware

[Gravis Zero]

Not a bubble

People in literally every economic bubble have declared it's not a bubble and cite their own "evidence". They generally do this right up until it pops and suddenly disavow their past statements.

Advertising

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

Wake me up when Alphabet's advertising activities (hoovering up all of our data for sale to the highest bidder) drops to less than half of its total revenue. It's slowly dropping, but still about 75% of their revenue.

Yet refuses to fund its own success

[Sebby]

Alphabet reported its first-ever $100 billion quarter, fueled by a 34% surge in Google Cloud revenue and booming AI demand

And yet refuses to pay for the infrastructure that powers its sucess [youtube.com], instead making the population pay for it.

A$$holes.

Re:

[ArchieBunker]

That's the first rule of being rich. You spend other peoples' money instead of your own.

Re:

[timeOday]

Weird take on "they're buying power from the power company like anybody else."

Demand going up may increase rates in the short term, but google pays those higher rates like anybody else. In the longer term the power companies' higher profits are what fund increased generation.

Re: Yet refuses to fund its own success

[blue trane]

When US electricity generation exceeds demand by at least 10% according to eia.gov, is demand just an excuse to raise prices?

In ignoring the energy surplus we enjoy nd constantly playing up the scarcity narrative, are you aiding and abetting arbitrary energy price increases?

Re:

[timeOday]

I suppose the challenge of matching supply to demand is always having that supply at precisely where and when it is wanted. So, there is some waste.

Re:

[larryjoe]

Weird take on "they're buying power from the power company like anybody else."

Demand going up may increase rates in the short term, but google pays those higher rates like anybody else. In the longer term the power companies' higher profits are what fund increased generation.

The problem with this reasoning is that the companies need dramatically more electricity, while households generally do not. The total household electricity demand might increase with more homes but generally stays the same on average per household. This means that the increased rates for both companies and household result in the households effectively subsidizing the companies.