{"id":665309,"date":"2026-06-30T02:06:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T02:06:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/665309\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T02:06:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T02:06:15","slug":"alphabet-stock-pops-on-dow-debut-but-ai-questions-loom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/665309\/","title":{"rendered":"Alphabet stock pops on Dow debut, but AI questions loom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"InlineVideo-videoThumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/108328027-Alphabet_2.jpg\" alt=\"Alphabet joins the Dow as AI doubts weigh on shares\"\/><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/GOOGL\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Alphabet<\/a> shares rose 4% on Monday as the company officially joined the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/.DJI\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Dow Jones Industrial Average<\/a>, replacing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/VZ\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Verizon<\/a> and adding a symbolic blue-chip designation.<\/p>\n<p>The move comes despite continued pressure on the stock. Even with Monday&#8217;s gain, Alphabet is still tracking for its worst month since February of last year, with six of the past seven weeks in the red. That marks a sharp reversal from May, when the company briefly eclipsed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/NVDA\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Nvidia<\/a> after-hours to become the world&#8217;s most valuable company by market capitalization.<\/p>\n<p>Alphabet&#8217;s Dow inclusion is more symbolic than mechanical. The stock is already in the S&amp;P 500 and Nasdaq 100, where most benchmarked assets sit, limiting the amount of forced fund buying tied to the index change. <\/p>\n<p>Recent Dow additions have also struggled after joining: Nvidia, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/CRM\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Salesforce<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/AAPL\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Apple<\/a> all traded lower 60 days after entering the index.<\/p>\n<p>Weakness in Google shares comes as investors question the payoff from the company&#8217;s artificial intelligence spending, with lower-cost <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/06\/26\/china-zhipu-z-ai-open-source-anthropic-openai.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Chinese models<\/a> improving, Google DeepMind researchers tied to Gemini and coding tools leaving for rivals like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/06\/26\/us-government-anthropic-claude-mythos5-ai.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Anthropic<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/06\/26\/openai-anthropic-new-ai-spending-reality-as-users-shift-to-efficiency.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">OpenAI<\/a>, and compute access emerging as both a customer constraint and a recruiting issue.<\/p>\n<p>Alphabet reportedly does not have enough compute capacity to meet demand from enterprise customers such as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/META\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Meta<\/a>, and is turning to infrastructure rivals, including <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/SPCX\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">SpaceX<\/a>, to help close the gap. Alphabet did not respond to multiple requests for comment on reports about Meta&#8217;s Gemini usage.<\/p>\n<p>Compute access has also become a recruiting tactic. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/06\/18\/google-gemini-co-lead-noam-shazeer-leaves-for-openai.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Noam Shazeer<\/a>, the former Gemini co-lead who recently left Google for OpenAI, reportedly cited reduced access to compute as part of his frustration.<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, Chinese models are pushing pricing lower just as Google tries to build an enterprise business around Gemini. DeepSeek has said the fourth version of its open-source model is coming in two weeks.<\/p>\n<p>That strain is now showing up on Alphabet&#8217;s balance sheet. <\/p>\n<p>Its cash pile is shrinking, it skipped buybacks in the first quarter for the first time in nearly a decade, and it has raised more than $140 billion in debt and equity as the AI capex race gets more expensive.<\/p>\n<p>WATCH: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/video\/2026\/06\/24\/alphabet-shares-slide-as-ai-talent-departs-deepmind-for-anthropic.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Alphabet shares continue downward slide as AI talent departs DeepMind for Anthropic<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"InlineVideo-videoThumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/108326456-Alphabet_shares_continue_downward_slide_as_AI_talent_departs_DeepMind_for_Anthropic.jpg\" alt=\"Alphabet shares continue downward slide as AI talent departs DeepMind for Anthropic\"\/>Stock Chart IconStock chart icon<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static-redesign.cnbcfm.com\/dist\/a54b41835a8b60db28c2.svg\" class=\"Collapsible-dismissButton\" alt=\"hide content\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Alphabet stock chart.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/preferences\/source?q=https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alphabet shares rose 4% on Monday as the company officially joined the Dow Jones Industrial Average, replacing Verizon&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":665310,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,20690,4144,733,4308,4117,273,4126,467,14647,4140,33863,12990,86,56,54,55,7480],"class_list":["post-665309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-alphabet-class-a","tag-apple-inc","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-breaking-news-markets","tag-business-news","tag-dow-jones-industrial-average","tag-markets","tag-meta-platforms-inc","tag-nvidia-corp","tag-salesforce-inc","tag-space-exploration-technologies-corp","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-verizon-communications-inc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=665309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/665310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}