Google’s cloud rival Microsoft has been more active in leasing capacity from a series of outside clouds, including CoreWeave, Iren, Lambda Labs, Nebius and Nscale. CoreWeave and Nebius shares leapt 4% and 5% in extended trading, respectively, after Ashkenazi’s comments.<\/p>\n
“There are very, very large customers of ours on cloud, who we are trying to support them through this extraordinary moment, and the incremental opportunity they are bringing to us, while a short-term cost over a few months may be very high, in the lifetime of the deal, as we bring more capacity on, is highly ROI positive,” Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said.<\/p>\n
\u2014Jordan Novet<\/p>\n
Third-quarter search slow down?<\/p>\n
FILE PHOTO: Nick Fox, VP of Product for Search and Assistant, speaks at a Google event on September 23, 2018 in San Francisco, California. <\/p>\n
Amy Osborne | Afp | Getty Images<\/p>\n
Google’s finance chief Anat Ashkenazi told analysts during the earnings call to brace for some tougher comparisons when it comes to the company’s search business.<\/p>\n
Ashkenazi noted that while Google continues “to benefit from innovation in search by improving the user and advertiser experience with AI,” the third quarter might be a bit different.<\/p>\n
“At the same time, in Q3, we will begin lapping an acceleration in search performance that began in the third quarter last year,” Ashkenazi said.<\/p>\n
Considering Google’s search revenue for the second quarter came in at $63.3 billion, slightly behind Wall Street’s expectations of $63.4 billion, and investors will likely be scrutinizing the business in the third quarter.<\/p>\n
\u2014Jonathan Vanian<\/p>\n
Most of Google’s $44.9 billion capex supported AI infrastructure<\/p>\n
Most of Google’s $44.9 billion capital expenditures went to technical infrastructure to support the AI buildout, finance chief Anat Ashkenazi told analysts on an earnings call. <\/p>\n
About 60% of infrastructure investments went to servers and 40% toward data centers and networking equipment.<\/p>\n
\u2014Samantha Subin<\/p>\n
Pichai touts user growth in Antigravity AI coding tool<\/p>\n
Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks during a keynote address at Google I\/O on May 19, 2026 in Mountain View, California. <\/p>\n
Benjamin Fanjoy | Getty Images<\/p>\n
Developers are increasingly adopting Google’s artificial intelligence coding tool Antigravity. It now has over 2.4 million weekly active users, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said on the Google parent’s earnings call.<\/p>\n
The company provides an Antigravity free tier, and it comes with the $19.99 monthly Google AI Pro and $99.99 Google AI Ultra subscriptions. Enterprise pricing is also available. Pichai did not say how many of the 2.4 million were paying. <\/p>\n
In Antigravity, people can select models from Google and from Anthropic, along with an open model OpenAI released last year. Options from Chinese labs DeepSeek, Moonshot AI and Z.ai are not available. <\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Thibault Sottiaux, engineering lead for OpenAI’s competing Codex tool, said Codex and the recently announced ChatGPT Work agent now have 10 million weekly active users, up from 6 million one week earlier. OpenAI introduced the GPT-5.6 model on July 9<\/a>. <\/p>\n Anthropic has not specified the number of people using its Claude Code software-development service. SpaceX is working to complete<\/a> the acquisition of AI coding startup Cursor for $60 billion by the end of the third quarter. Alphabet owns stakes in both Anthropic and SpaceX.<\/p>\n \u2014Jordan Novet<\/p>\n Google’s advertising tools show promise<\/p>\n Google said businesses are embracing their artificial intelligence-powered advertising tools like Performance Max and AI Max.<\/p>\n Customers using these tools are seeing 50% more conversions on average on search at a similar return on advertising spend, the company said. <\/p>\n \u2014 Samantha Subin<\/p>\n Maybe Google shares will be better tomorrow<\/p>\n If you’re wondering why Google shares are flat in after-hours trading despite the company’s cloud computing unit soaring a whopping 82% from a year ago, Gene Munster of Deepwater Asset Management had some thoughts.<\/p>\n Munster said in a post on X<\/a> that Google missing on search and operating margins likely played a role in muting investor enthusiasm over cloud computing growth.<\/p>\n “My take: Given what we now know, the stock should be up tomorrow,” Munster said before the earnings call. “The Cloud number is the most important number and it was a massive beat.”<\/p>\n \u2014Jonathan Vanian<\/p>\n World Cup drives record search win for Google<\/p>\n Mikel Merino of Spain celebrates after winning the FIFA World Cup 2026 Final match between Spain and Argentina at New York New Jersey Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, USA on July 19, 2026. <\/p>\n Evrim Aydin | Anadolu | Getty Images<\/p>\n The recent World Cup international soccer tournament drove record search queries to Google.<\/p>\n “As a big football fan, I was particularly excited to see search usage hit an all-time high during the World Cup this year,” Pichai said on an earnings call with analysts. “This really highlights how much people turn to Google in moments that matter.”<\/p>\n The company said 1.7 billion unique viewers globally watched World Cup-related videos on YouTube during the event.<\/p>\n \u2014 Samantha Subin<\/p>\n Sales related to Waymo and other bets increased 2%<\/p>\n Alphabet’s other bets category \u2014 which includes businesses like Waymo and Verily \u2014 came in at $382 million for the second quarter, representing a 2.4% year-over-year increase.<\/p>\n \u2014Jonathan Vanian<\/p>\n YouTube advertising jumps 13% <\/p>\n Google’s YouTube advertising revenue rose 13% to about $11.06 billion, topping a StreetAccount estimate of $10.81 billion. <\/p>\n That’s up from $9.8 billion in the year-ago period and about $9.9 billion last quarter. <\/p>\n \u2014 Samantha Subin<\/p>\n Alphabet posts $99 billion gain on equity securities<\/p>\n Guests dressed as astronauts during the SpaceX closing bell ceremony at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, US, on Friday, June 12, 2026.<\/p>\n Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images<\/p>\n Perhaps the biggest catalyst in Alphabet’s profit-and-loss statement, released after market close on Wednesday, was the $97.98 billion in “other income.” It’s the singular factor that helped Alphabet’s profit reach $112.11 billion for the second quarter, up 298% year over year.<\/p>\n The main source of the “other income” bump was a $99.03 billion gain on equity securities. The gain was up from just $1.29 billion in the second quarter of 2025.<\/p>\n The $99.03 billion figure includes realized and unrealized gains and losses. Alphabet is sitting on investments in Anthropic and SpaceX. But SpaceX shares have come down nearly 33% since the second quarter ended. <\/p>\n \u2014 Jordan Novet<\/p>\n Sundar Pichai on second-quarter results, AI momentum<\/p>\n Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of Alphabet Inc., during the Google I\/O Developers Conference in Mountain View, California, US, on Tuesday, May 19, 2026.<\/p>\n David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images<\/p>\n “Our AI investments are redefining what’s possible across every part of our business,” CEO Sundar Pichai said in a press release, highlighting the company’s strong AI pipeline.<\/p>\n The company said its Gemini App now has 950 million active users and can process 22 billion API tokens per minute. That’s up from 16 billion last quarter.<\/p>\n \u2014 Samantha Subin<\/p>\n Capex totals $44.9 billion, slightly ahead of estimates<\/p>\n Google reported $44.9 billion in capital expenditures during the second-quarter. StreetAccount estimates called for capex of $44.8 billion.<\/p>\n The company said second-quarter capital expenditures grew 100% year-over-year.<\/p>\n \u2014 Samantha Subin<\/p>\n Google search revenue jumps 17%<\/p>\n Google’s search revenue grew 17% to $63.3 billion, up from about $54.2 billion a year ago. That was slight behind a StreetAccount estimate of $63.4 billion.<\/p>\n \u2014 Samantha Subin<\/p>\n Cloud jumps 82% from a year ago on AI demand<\/p>\n A Google cloud logo is seen at the announcement of Google’s biggest-ever investment in Germany on November 11, 2025 in Berlin, Germany.<\/p>\n Sean Gallup | Getty Images News | Getty Images<\/p>\n Google’s cloud revenue jumped 82% to $24.8 billion, up from $13.6 billion a year ago. <\/p>\n Analysts had forecast revenue of $22.4 billion, reflecting 64% year-over-year growth. Cloud backlog totalled $514 billion, the company said.<\/p>\n Google’s cloud growth has been accelerating ahead of competitors Microsoft and Amazon Web Services.<\/p>\n Last quarter, Google’s cloud business topped $20 billion.<\/p>\n \u2014 Samantha Subin<\/p>\n Revenue jumps 24%<\/p>\n Google’s revenue rose 24% to $119.8 billion, up from $96.4 billion in the year-ago period, the company said. <\/p>\n \u2014 Samantha Subin<\/p>\n Alphabet execs likely to give Waymo update as robotaxi service aims for international expansion<\/p>\n A line of Waymo robotaxis drives through North Beach on July 7, 2026 in San Francisco, California. <\/p>\n Heather Diehl | Getty Images<\/p>\n Alphabet’s autonomous vehicle venture, Waymo, is far ahead of U.S. competitors today. In late 2025, CEO Sundar Pichai told employees at an all-hands meeting that he expected the business to\u00a0“meaningfully” contribute to Alphabet’s financials as soon as 2027.<\/p>\n Executives are likely to face questions about Waymo, as the company fields safety concerns<\/a> while working to expand in the U.S. and to take the robotaxi service international this year.<\/p>\n Today, Waymo operates a driverless ride-hailing service commercially in 11 major metro areas across the U.S., and is running testing or limited services in 21 other cities, including testing in London and Tokyo.<\/p>\n According to an online database<\/a> maintained by the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles, Waymo now has 677 robotaxis registered in the Lone Star state, compared to 175 vehicles registered for use as driverless ride-hailing vehicles in Texas by Tesla<\/a> and 44 registered by Amazon<\/a>-owned Zoox.<\/p>\n In its first quarter<\/a> update, Baidu<\/a> said its Apollo Go robotaxi service footprint spanned 27 cities as of May 2026, and during that period, the autonomous ride-hailing service delivered 3.2 million fully driverless operational rides.<\/p>\n \u2014Lora Kolodny<\/p>\n Digital ad market looks stable, at least for now<\/p>\n Despite the war<\/a> in Iran and ongoing concerns about its impact on the broader economy, the digital advertising market appears to be humming along.<\/p>\n Analysts at Bernstein wrote in a note on Tuesday that their recent advertising channel checks “were strong for Meta<\/a> and Google,” implying that the two digital ad titans will likely report another healthy quarter of sales growth.<\/p>\n Wolfe Research analysts agree, writing in a note on Monday that their ad checks show a “resilient environment” that suggests “stability in Q2 despite macro concerns.” And they see a boost from the World Cup and upcoming midterm elections. As for threats posed by OpenAI, Wolfe’s analysts described those as “headline risks,” but said, “Google Search ad demand trends continue to imply at least stable trends.”<\/p>\n Meta reports results next week.<\/p>\n \u2014 Jonathan Vanian<\/p>\n Google’s recent AI talent exodus <\/p>\n FILE PHOTO: John Jumper, senior research scientist at Google DeepMind, at the Bloomberg Tech Summit in London, UK, on Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024. <\/p>\n Hollie Adams | Bloomberg | Getty Images<\/p>\n Google’s earnings come on the heels of some major high-profile departures, as the battle for top artificial intelligence talent heats up. <\/p>\n Gemini co-head Noam Shazeer announced<\/a> in June that he was joining OpenAI, less than two years<\/a> after returning through a partnership with his startup. Senior researcher scientist John Jumper left<\/a> Google Deepmind for Anthropic last month.<\/p>\n Technology companies have spent billions in recent months to lure top talent and acquire AI capabilities. The frontier labs, however, are starting to face a new reality, as businesses begin reining in token costs and seek out cheaper alternatives. <\/p>\n Software companies have also fallen victim<\/a> to the AI talent drain as frontier labs build out the enterprise layer. <\/p>\n \u2014Samantha Subin<\/p>\n Anthropic funding set to boost Alphabet’s investment income<\/p>\n Dario Amodei, CEO and co-founder of Anthropic, speaks during the 56th annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 20, 2026.<\/p>\n Denis Balibouse | Reuters<\/p>\n Investors will be paying attention to Alphabet’s investment income after a recent Anthropic funding round pushed up the value of Google’s holding in the model developer. <\/p>\n In 2023, Google first bought a 10% stake in Anthropic. The search company announced plans to invest up to $40 billion more<\/a> in April, having invested more than $3 billion in the startup already. By May, with Anthropic’s Claude Code gaining attention for its ability to quickly write application code, the company said investors had valued it at $965 billion<\/a>. That was up from $380 billion<\/a> as of February.<\/p>\n Alphabet is also sitting on a stake in SpaceX<\/a>, which went public<\/a> in June, after first investing $900 million in the rocket maker in 2015. SpaceX shares have drifted down about 8% since the record-setting initial public offering. <\/p>\n Three months ago, Google touted a $37 billion<\/a> gain on equity securities. <\/p>\n \u2014Jordan Novet<\/p>\n Google releases new Gemini models that are cheaper than frontier rivals Google is trying to keep up with OpenAI and Anthropic with its cutting-edge Gemini AI models, while also offering models at prices that recognize a more frugal approach to AI spending. <\/p>\n On Tuesday, the company released three new\u00a0Gemini<\/a>\u00a0models, including its clearest answer yet to\u00a0Anthropic<\/a>‘s lead in\u00a0cybersecurity<\/a>. Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber is designed to detect and patch software vulnerabilities and will initially be available only to governments and trusted partners through a limited-access pilot. Google said the specialized model runs at a lower price per token than larger models.<\/p>\n With Gemini 3.6 Flash, Google aims to bolster its coding assistant technology while using up to 17% fewer tokens and offering a lower price per token than the previous model. <\/p>\n The pricing war in AI is heating up as demand soars for open-source models, largely out of China. The hottest recent example is Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3.<\/p>\n \u2014 MacKenzie Sigalos<\/p>\n Google stock headed for third straight losing month on AI concerns<\/p>\n Gemini AI signage during the Google I\/O Developers Conference in Mountain View, California, US, on Tuesday, May 19, 2026. <\/p>\n David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images<\/p>\n Google’s stock is on pace for a third straight month as the company heads into the second-quarter print on mounting AI skepticism.<\/p>\n Shares are up 11% for the year but have dropped 1% in May, 6% in June and are pacing for a nearly 3% loss in July.<\/p>\n That puts the company behind Apple and Nvidia for the year.<\/p>\n Google’s stock drop comes as skepticism swirls over skyrocketing artificial intelligence spending and businesses pour billions into the infrastructure buildout.<\/p>\n \u2014 Samantha Subin<\/p>\n What about spending in 2027?<\/p>\n Signage at the Google Midlothian Data Center in Midlothian, Texas, US, on Friday, Nov. 14, 2025.<\/p>\n Jonathan Johnson | Bloomberg | Getty Images<\/p>\n Investors shouldn’t expect Alphabet’s epic spending spree to change course next year.<\/p>\n Finance chief Anat Ashkenazi said in April that 2027 capex is likely to “significantly increase” from the up to $190 billion planned for this year.<\/p>\n Evercore analysts wrote in a note over the weekend that “when the CFO warns about following year capex in the March Quarter, the plans are going to be aggressive.” The Evercore analysts then \u2014 jokingly \u2014 asked if the number could hit “$300B? $350B?!”<\/p>\n Ultimately, they settled on an estimate of $262 billion, and noted that they’re concerned “that capex spend could ramp higher than this.” The consensus estimate for Alphabet’s 2027 capex is about $257 billion, according to FactSet.<\/p>\n \u2014 Jonathan Vanian<\/p>\n YouTube ad revenue growth set to slow as user base expands past 3 billion<\/p>\n Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images<\/p>\n Analysts expect YouTube’s advertising revenue growth to ease up as the video engine reaches greater scale.<\/p>\n The unit should contribute $10.81 billion in revenue, which would imply roughly 10% growth from a year earlier, decelerating from 11% expansion in the first quarter.<\/p>\n In May, at the I\/O developer conference, Google said YouTube had reached 3 billion users, alongside the company’s search engine, Gmail, Chrome and Android. The milestone makes the site an increasingly compelling destination for advertisers. <\/p>\n Meta had 3.56 billion “daily active people” across its apps in the first quarter<\/a>. <\/p>\n Evercore ISI analysts came away with a favorable assessment of YouTube’s stature following a June survey. In a note to clients on Sunday, they pointed to relatively attractive advertising costs and “linear TV leakage.” <\/p>\n \u2014Jordan Novet<\/p>\n Google’s cloud growth is outpacing rivals<\/p>\n The Google Cloud logo is displayed on a high-definition digital monolith at the entrance of the Google pavilion during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on March 5, 2026.<\/p>\n Joan Cros | Nurphoto | Getty Images<\/p>\n Google is trailing Amazon and Microsoft in cloud computing, but it’s been growing faster. <\/p>\n Second-quarter revenue in Alphabet’s Google Cloud unit, which includes infrastructure and Google Workspace productivity subscriptions, is expected to show 64% growth from a year earlier to $22.24 billion, according to StreetAccount.<\/p>\n That’s an acceleration from 63% expansion in the first quarter, which topped market leader Amazon Web Services’ 28% growth<\/a>. At Microsoft, revenue from Azure and other cloud services increased 40%<\/a>.<\/p>\n Large companies are running more apps on Google’s cloud, incorporating the company’s AI models, CEO Sundar Pichai said on the last earnings call in April. Additionally, the Gemini Enterprise assistant for corporate workers, which starts at $21 per person per month, is gaining traction, he said.<\/p>\n Demand for Google’s tensor processing units, or TPUs, is also ramping at AI labs. In April, Google touted a cloud TPU<\/a> for training AI models and one that handles inference jobs.<\/p>\n The $29.5 billion acquisition earlier this year of cloud security company Wiz<\/a> is also boosting cloud growth. Google is seeing so much demand that it inked<\/a> a deal in June with Elon Musk<\/a>‘s SpaceX<\/a>, agreeing to pay $920 million a month for AI compute capacity. <\/p>\n \u2014 Jordan Novet<\/p>\n Wall Street is focused on AI spending<\/p>\n A general view of the Google Midlothian Data Center on Nov. 14, 2025 in Midlothian, Texas.<\/p>\n Ron Jenkins | Getty Images<\/p>\n Alphabet and its hyperscaler peers are spending boatloads of money on massive data center and related computing projects<\/a>, and investors are paying close attention. <\/p>\n That puts a particular focus on Alphabet’s capital expenditures, or capex, which has been skyrocketing in recent quarters. In April, the company raised its 2026 capex guidance<\/a> to between $180 billion and $190 billion, up from $175 billion to $185 billion.<\/p>\n The consensus estimate for Alphabet’s 2026 capex is $187.1 billion, according to FactSet. Among the web giants, Amazon<\/a> is the only one expected to spend more, with analysts projecting capex of $200 billion, in line with the company’s forecast<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u2014 Jonathan Vanian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pichai weighs in on Waymo bet A Waymo autonomous taxi outside the Google headquarters in Mountain View, California,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":817385,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,31076,5066,2729,254,255,64,63,20154,1053,4065,174,8551,247557,242605,247104,4852,171,20634,366120,105,157334],"class_list":["post-817384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-alphabet-class-a","tag-amazon-com-inc","tag-anthropic","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-breaking-news-investing","tag-breaking-news-markets","tag-breaking-news-technology","tag-business-news","tag-earnings","tag-first-trust-cloud-computing-etf","tag-global-x-robotics-artificial-intelligence-etf","tag-invesco-qqq-trust","tag-investment-strategy","tag-markets","tag-microsoft-corp","tag-openai-forge-global","tag-technology","tag-technology-select-sector-spdr-fund"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=817384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/817385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=817384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=817384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=817384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Google](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/108338182-17846699121784669881-47307787764-1080pnbcnews.jpg\")
<\/p>\n