Google is now the world’s fourth most valuable public corporation, behind Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft, with a market worth of slightly over $3 trillion. It surpassed Apple earlier this year for first spot.
This is not Alphabet’s first experience with the $2 trillion club. The company briefly reached the level in November 2021 and earlier this month, but closed above it for the first time on Friday, according to Bloomberg.
The announcement comes after Alphabet’s first-quarter earnings report, which showed revenue exceeding analysts’ projections due to the success of its search engine. Sundar Pichar, CEO of Alphabet, praised Google Cloud for offering generative AI capabilities through its Gemini architecture.
“In Cloud, we have announced more than 1,000 new products and features over the past 8 months. At Google Cloud Next, more than 300 customers and partners spoke about their generative AI successes with Google Cloud, including global brands like Bayer, Cintas, Mercedes Benz, Walmart, and many more,” Pichai told investors during the call.Pichai also said that Google was well “positioned for the next wave of AI innovation and the opportunity ahead,” and reminded investors that the company has been “AI-first” since 2016.
The business recently delighted investors by announcing that it would increase its stock repurchase program by $70 billion.
Despite the recent success, Alphabet has faced significant challenges in the last year. The company has experienced growing pains with its AI capabilities, including a pause of its picture generator due to criticism for being too woke.
Still, Alphabet sees AI as a crucial to its business success and is willing to spend more to compete. Earlier this month, it announced the development of its own central processing unit, Axion, to facilitate the training of complicated AI models.