By Akash Sriram and Kenrick Cai
April 29 (Reuters) – Alphabet topped Wall Street estimates for quarterly revenue on Wednesday, as enterprise spending on artificial intelligence delivered the best quarter of growth for its cloud unit since the start of the AI boom.
Shares of the company were up more than 7% in extended trading.
The Google parent company’s total revenue rose 22% to $109.9 billion in the first quarter, above an estimate of $107.2 billion, according to LSEG data.
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, according to data compiled by LSEG. That growth rate is the best since the company began breaking out the segment’s revenue in 2020, according to LSEG data.
Operating income for the cloud unit tripled to $6.6 billion in the first quarter from $2.2 billion a year earlier. Alphabet’s overall consolidated operating income increased 30% to $39.7 billion.
Google began selling its TPU chips, which compete with Nvidia’s GPUs, directly to some customers, CEO Sundar Pichai announced on a conference call with analysts.
For years Google reserved its TPUs, which stand for “tensor processing units,” only for internal use to develop technologies such as its Gemini AI model. Its decision to lease TPUs to cloud customers helped drive growth for Google Cloud, but the company had held off on directly selling those chips until now.
“Our enterprise AI solutions have become our primary growth driver for Cloud for the first time,” Pichai said on the call.
‘FULL-STACK’ APPROACH
At the same time, its Gemini chatbot drove the “strongest quarter ever” for consumer AI, Pichai said. He said the company was enjoying growth across the board thanks to its full-stack AI approach, referring to every layer of the AI technology chain including chips, data centers, AI models and developer tools.
In turn, CFO Anat Ashkenazi said Alphabet increased its capital expenditure projection for 2026 to between $180 billion and $190 billion, a $5 billion bump compared to what it announced last quarter.
Capital spending in the first quarter more than doubled from a year earlier to $35.67 billion.
“Perhaps even more importantly than Alphabet’s massive cloud growth pace is the broader justification that the $180 billion capex plan — that surprised the market last quarter — is well within the company’s spending power, considering the durability and quality of the revenue curve shown today,” said Thomas Monteiro, a senior analyst at Investing.com.
The third-largest cloud services provider globally, behind Amazon Web Services and Microsoft’s Azure, Alphabet has continued to land major deals, including expanded AI infrastructure partnerships with Meta and cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks.
The results underscore Alphabet’s position as a key beneficiary of global spending on AI, even as investors worry whether massive outlays on infrastructure will translate into sustained growth and market share gains.
Strong demand for cloud-based AI services continues to outstrip supply across the industry, pushing hyperscalers to accelerate investments in data centers, advanced chips and networking equipment.
EXPANDING AI CAPACITY
Revenue at Amazon Web Services jumped 28% to $37.6 billion in the first quarter, compared with analysts’ average estimate of a 25.1% increase to $36.6 billion, according to LSEG. Net sales overall grew to $181.5 billion. Azure revenue grew 40%, in line with consensus estimates.
The three cloud leaders plus Meta are expected to collectively spend well over $600 billion this year to expand AI capacity, as competition intensifies and companies race to secure computing power.
Capacity constraints remain a bottleneck across the sector, limiting providers’ ability to fully capitalize on AI-driven demand despite aggressive spending plans.
Alphabet has also gained traction in its in-house AI efforts. Its Gemini models, including newer iterations rolled out this year, have seen rising adoption across enterprise and consumer applications, strengthening the company’s position in the AI race.
A partnership to power Apple’s artificial intelligence features, including upgrades to Siri, is expected to significantly expand Google’s reach across a vast global device base.
Alphabet shares have outperformed most Big Tech peers over the past year, supported by growing signs that AI integration is lifting its core search and advertising businesses.
AI-driven features such as AI Overviews and AI Mode continue to boost user engagement, while opening new avenues for monetization. The company has expanded ads within AI-generated responses across multiple markets and said monetization is broadly in line with traditional search.
The company said it had 350 million paid subscriptions across YouTube, its cloud storage and advanced AI service Google One and other products.
(Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru and Kenrick Cai in San Francisco; Editing by Tasim Zahid and Deepa Babington)
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