{"id":597259,"date":"2026-04-11T15:14:23","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T15:14:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/597259\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T15:14:23","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T15:14:23","slug":"alphabet-is-quietly-building-its-next-major-business-and-it-could-be-bigger-than-you-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/597259\/","title":{"rendered":"Alphabet Is Quietly Building Its Next Major Business &#8212; and It Could Be Bigger Than You Think"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Most investors think of artificial intelligence (AI) as a software story &#8212; better models, smarter tools, and new applications. But behind every AI system sits something far more important: infrastructure. Every chatbot, recommendation engine, or enterprise AI tool runs on massive computing power somewhere. And increasingly, that &#8220;somewhere&#8221; is the cloud.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s where Alphabet (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.com\/quote\/nasdaq\/googl\/\" class=\"font-bold hover:underline\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">GOOGL<\/a> 0.41%) (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.com\/quote\/nasdaq\/goog\/\" class=\"font-bold hover:underline\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">GOOG<\/a> 0.21%) is quietly building what could become one of its most important businesses.<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"The letters AI hover above a control panel.\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"880\" height=\"587\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"h-auto max-w-full rounded object-contain\" style=\"color:transparent\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1775920462_60_.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Image source: Getty Images.<\/p>\n<p>AI doesn&#8217;t scale without the cloud<\/p>\n<p>AI doesn&#8217;t run in isolation. It requires enormous amounts of data, storage, and processing power, not just once, but continuously. After all, every AI interaction is unique, so the software (such as ChatGPT) must run a separate computation each time a user makes a request.<\/p>\n<p>Yet most companies don&#8217;t build that infrastructure themselves. They have to rent it. That&#8217;s what makes <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.com\/terms\/c\/cloud-computing\/\" class=\"text-cyan-900 hover:text-cyan-800\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">cloud computing<\/a> so critical. Every time a company <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.com\/terms\/a\/ai-training\/\" class=\"text-cyan-900 hover:text-cyan-800\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">trains<\/a> a model, processes data, or deploys an AI application, it consumes computing power. And that demand doesn&#8217;t stay flat; it grows exponentially as usage grows.<\/p>\n<p>In short, AI doesn&#8217;t scale without infrastructure, and infrastructure is one of those areas where big money lies.<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"Alphabet Stock Quote\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"64\" height=\"64\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"w-full flex-none object-contain\" style=\"color:transparent\"  src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1775920463_908_.png\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Today&#8217;s Change<\/p>\n<p>(-0.41%) $-1.31<\/p>\n<p>Current Price<\/p>\n<p>$317.18<\/p>\n<p>Key Data Points<\/p>\n<p>Market Cap<\/p>\n<p>$3.8T<\/p>\n<p>Day&#8217;s Range<\/p>\n<p>$316.33 &#8211; $321.85<\/p>\n<p>52wk Range<\/p>\n<p>$146.10 &#8211; $349.00<\/p>\n<p>Volume<\/p>\n<p>545K<\/p>\n<p>Avg Vol<\/p>\n<p>34M<\/p>\n<p>Gross Margin<\/p>\n<p>59.68%<\/p>\n<p>Dividend Yield<\/p>\n<p>0.26%<\/p>\n<p>Google Cloud is starting to show real momentum<\/p>\n<p>For years, Google Cloud lagged behind its larger competitors, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. That&#8217;s starting to change. The business has been growing rapidly, with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.com\/terms\/r\/revenue\/\" class=\"text-cyan-900 hover:text-cyan-800\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">revenue<\/a> rising 48% year over year in the latest quarter and reaching an annual run rate of more than $70 billion.<\/p>\n<p>Just as important, it has become a major profit contributor to Alphabet&#8217;s overall business, with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.com\/terms\/p\/profit\/\" class=\"text-cyan-900 hover:text-cyan-800\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">operating profit<\/a> more than doubling from $2.1 billion to $5.3 billion in that period. This isn&#8217;t just growth for the sake of growth, but profitable and, arguably, sustainable growth in the coming quarters, if not years, as demand from AI computing continues to surge.<\/p>\n<p>If this trajectory continues, the cloud division will gradually grow its overall contribution to Alphabet&#8217;s underlying profits.<\/p>\n<p>Why is Alphabet better positioned than it looks?<\/p>\n<p>One of the little-known things about Alphabet is that its advantage goes beyond just running data centers. In fact, it operates across the entire AI stack:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.com\/investing\/2025\/11\/26\/googles-tpus-create-another-risk-for-nvidia-stock\/\" class=\"text-cyan-900 hover:text-cyan-800\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">custom chips (TPUs)<\/a><br \/>\nleading AI models like Gemini<br \/>\na global data center network<br \/>\na full enterprise cloud platform<\/p>\n<p>That allows Alphabet to offer a complete service to its customers. Companies don&#8217;t just want computing power. They want tools that help them build, train, and deploy AI efficiently, without stitching everything together themselves. Alphabet provides that in one ecosystem. And that creates a powerful dynamic: more AI usage, greater cloud demand, and, ultimately, deeper customer stickiness.<\/p>\n<p>What does it mean for investors?<\/p>\n<p>Alphabet built its reputation on search. But its next major growth engine may sit behind the scenes. As AI adoption accelerates, the companies providing the infrastructure will become just as important as those building the models. Alphabet isn&#8217;t just participating in that shift &#8212; it&#8217;s positioning itself to help power it.<\/p>\n<p>Still, while the opportunity is clear, execution still matters. A few key signals will determine how big this business becomes:<\/p>\n<p>Does Google Cloud maintain strong growth as AI adoption expands?<br \/>\nCan Alphabet increase its market share in the cloud?<br \/>\nDoes profitability grow with revenue?<\/p>\n<p>These factors will shape whether the cloud becomes a central pillar of Alphabet&#8217;s future, and investors should watch them closely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Most investors think of artificial intelligence (AI) as a software story &#8212; better models, smarter tools, and new&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":597260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-597259","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=597259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}