Alphabet is on track to become the most valuable company in the world after adding more than $420 billion in market cap on Thursday. Shares had rallied around 10% after the owner of Google and YouTube reported profit for the latest quarter that almost doubled analysts’ expectations. The record-setting market cap gain also put Alphabet 6% away from surpassing NVIDIA as the most valuable public company in the world.
The tech giant is the latest company to deliver fatter profits for the start of 2026 than analysts expected — even with very high oil prices and uncertainty about the economy. CEO Sundar Pichai said on Thursday that investments in artificial intelligence were “lighting up every part of the business”.
Alphabet stock surged on Thursday — reportedly lifting Google to its best month on Wall Street since 2004 — while Meta shared plunged almost 9%. According to a CNBC update, the company has seen shares rally 34% in April. The company also revised its capital expenditure forecast for this year to between $180 billion and $190 billion, up from its previous estimate of $175 billion to $185 billion.
Alphabet revenue tops expectations, record quarter for its cloud unit
Alphabet topped Wall Street estimates for quarterly revenue on Wednesday, as enterprise spending on artificial intelligence delivered the best quarter of reported growth for its cloud unit yet. Shares of the company were up more than 6% in extended trading.
According to LSEG data cited by Reuters, the Google parent company’s total revenue rose 22% to $109.9 billion in the first quarter, above an estimate of $107.2 billion. Revenue at Google Cloud grew 63% to $20 billion in the first quarter ended March, well above analysts’ average estimate of a 50.1% increase. That growth rate is the best since the company began breaking out the segment’s revenue in 2020.
“Our enterprise AI solutions have become our primary growth driver for cloud for the first time,” CEO Sundar Pichai said on a conference call with analysts. He noted that sales on those products grew eightfold from a year ago.
Larry Page hits $300bn net worth
According to Forbes, Google co-founder Larry Page has just seen his net worth surged past $300 billion for the first time. This came on Thursday after the company’s shares jumped following strong earnings. According to Forbes’ real-time list, Page’s wealth rose by $14.9 billion in a single day, taking it to about $300.9 billion. That makes him the second-richest person in the world, right after Elon Musk.
NVIDIA pushes market cap past $5 trillion mark
The development comes mere days after NVIDIA pushed its market value above the $5 trillion mark for the first time since October. Market capitalisation is the key metric used to determine the ‘value’ of a company. It is calculated by multiplying the current share price of a company by the total number of its outstanding shares.
According to a CNBC report, the stock is up more than 14-fold since the end of 2022 — with the latest rally sparked by better-than-expected earnings from chipmaker Intel last week.
