Alphabet Company Profile

The CODEW · Company Profile · Company Intelligence · AI Intelligence

Last updated: October 15, 2026 | Latest reported quarter: Q2 2026 (ended June 30, 2026) | Tickers: NASDAQ: GOOGL, GOOG

Company overview

Alphabet is the parent company of Google. It combines the world's largest search and online advertising business with YouTube, Android, Google Cloud, and Google DeepMind, the unit behind the Gemini models. It is one of the few companies that controls every layer of the AI stack: custom chips (TPUs), data centers, frontier models, a cloud platform, and consumer distribution to billions of users.

In 2026 the company's center of gravity has shifted. Google Cloud is now growing faster than any other major cloud provider, carries a contracted backlog above $500 billion, and has started selling TPU systems directly to outside customers, while capital spending has pushed quarterly free cash flow negative.

Key facts

Founded	Google, 1998; Alphabet became the parent holding company in 2015
Headquarters	Mountain View, California
Listing	NASDAQ: GOOGL (Class A), GOOG (Class C)
CEO	Sundar Pichai (Google CEO since 2015, Alphabet CEO since 2019)
Control	Co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin remain board members and controlling shareholders
Employees	About 190,000 (third-party figure; confirm against the latest 10-K)
2025 revenue	Above $400 billion for the first time, up about 15% year over year
Reporting segments	Google Services; Google Cloud; Other Bets

Business model

Google Services (Search, YouTube ads, Network, and subscriptions, platforms and devices) generates most revenue and nearly all profit, mainly from advertising. Google Cloud sells infrastructure, data and AI platforms, Workspace, and now security following the Wiz acquisition. Other Bets holds early-stage ventures.

Search and other revenue was $63.3 billion in Q2 2026, roughly half of the quarter's $119.8 billion total. Google Services produced about $39.5 billion of operating income that quarter, which is the cash engine funding the AI build-out.

Products and technology

Area	Status
Gemini models	Gemini 3 family is current; Gemini 3.5 Flash and 3.6 Flash released in 2026. The flagship 3.5 Pro has been reported delayed, and early work on Gemini 4 has been mentioned.
Gemini app	950 million monthly active users reported on the Q2 call; Sundar Pichai announced more than 1 billion in August 2026. Daily active users tripled over the year.
Search AI features	AI Overviews reach about 2 billion monthly users; AI Mode passed 1 billion monthly users (Google I/O 2026, per third-party summary).
Gemini Enterprise	Paid monthly active users grew 40% quarter over quarter in Q1 2026.
TPUs	Seventh-generation Ironwood is generally available. Google began recognizing revenue from TPU system sales in Q2 2026.
Google Cloud	Compute, data and AI platform, Workspace, and security (Wiz, a $32 billion acquisition now integrated).

Google also offers NVIDIA capacity alongside its own silicon. In April 2026 it announced an A5X platform that can scale to 960,000 NVIDIA Rubin GPUs across data centers.

Financial information

Metric	Q2 2026 (quarter ended Jun 30, 2026)
Revenue	$119.8 billion (+24% year over year)
Google Services revenue	$94.5 billion (+15%)
Search & other	$63.3 billion (+17%)
YouTube ads	$11.1 billion (+13%)
Google Cloud revenue	$24.8 billion (+82%); operating income $8.8 billion, up from $2.8 billion (margin about 36%)
Operating income	$40.8 billion (+30%); operating margin 34%
Net income	$112.1 billion, inflated by roughly $98 billion of unrealized gains on equity securities (reported to be mainly a SpaceX stake)
Capital expenditure	$44.9 billion (about double a year earlier); operating cash flow $39.1 billion, so free cash flow was about negative $5.9 billion
Revenue backlog	$519.5 billion, of which $513.9 billion is Google Cloud; just over 50% expected to convert to revenue within 24 months
2026 capex guidance	Raised to $195–205 billion from $180–190 billion

For context, Q1 2026 revenue was $109.9 billion with Cloud at $20.0 billion (+63%) and a 32.9% Cloud operating margin. Cloud backlog was about $240 billion at the end of 2025, then $462 billion at the end of Q1 2026, partly reflecting direct TPU hardware deals. Management said it will use more third-party capacity in Q3 as a bridge, which it expects to bring modest near-term margin pressure. Check whether Q3 2026 results, typically reported in late October, have been published before using these as the latest figures.

Leadership

Sundar Pichai	CEO of Alphabet and Google.
Anat Ashkenazi	Chief Financial Officer since July 31, 2024; previously CFO of Eli Lilly.
Ruth Porat	President and Chief Investment Officer; former Alphabet CFO.
Thomas Kurian	CEO, Google Cloud, since 2019; previously at Oracle.
Demis Hassabis	Co-founder of DeepMind. Reported to have moved to Chief Scientist of Alphabet and Chair of Google DeepMind, with Koray Kavukcuoglu named CEO of Google DeepMind.
Philipp Schindler	Chief Business Officer (global sales and advertising).
Kent Walker	President, Global Affairs and Chief Legal Officer.

The DeepMind leadership change is reported by trade press, and some July 2026 directories still list the earlier structure. Confirm against Alphabet's leadership page before publishing.

Competitors

Microsoft (Azure) and Amazon (AWS): The other hyperscalers. In Q1 2026 Google Cloud's 63% growth compared with roughly 40% for Azure and 28% for AWS, though Google's base is smaller.
OpenAI (ChatGPT): The main consumer AI rival. ChatGPT reached about 1 billion monthly users in June 2026; the Gemini app followed in August.
Anthropic, Meta and others: Frontier-model competitors, though Anthropic is also a major Google Cloud and TPU customer.
NVIDIA: Both a supplier and the main rival to Google's TPUs for AI compute.
AI-native search and assistants: Alphabet's search franchise faces substitution risk from chatbots and agentic tools.

Strategy

1. Full-stack AI

Management describes a differentiated full-stack approach: owning chips, models, cloud and distribution. TPUs lower Google's own cost to serve AI and, increasingly, are a product in their own right.

2. TPUs as merchant silicon

Anthropic announced in October 2025 that it would use up to one million Google TPUs in a deal valued in the tens of billions of dollars. Meta signed a multibillion-dollar TPU infrastructure deal in February 2026. Google recognized its first TPU system revenue in Q2 2026, and TPU contracts are part of the cloud backlog. Ironwood was co-designed with Broadcom.

3. Capital intensity

Capex guidance for 2026 is $195–205 billion, roughly double the prior year, supported by large investments such as a $40 billion Texas AI infrastructure commitment and nuclear power agreements including the restart of Iowa's Duane Arnold plant with NextEra. Shares fell about 5% after-hours following the Q2 report as investors focused on the capex line.

4. Security and enterprise expansion

The $32 billion Wiz acquisition closed and was folded into Google Cloud, adding a security layer to the enterprise pitch against AWS and Azure.

5. Antitrust and regulatory exposure

Search case: In September 2025 Judge Amit Mehta declined to force sales of Chrome or Android, but ordered an end to exclusive default-placement deals and some search-data sharing. Google and the U.S. government are both appealing.
Ad tech case: On September 2, 2026 Judge Leonie Brinkema rejected the government's request to divest AdX and DoubleClick for Publishers, imposing behavioral remedies and an internal antitrust compliance monitor instead. The final judgment was still being settled as of the ruling.
EU: The European Commission fined Google €2.95 billion in September 2025 for abusing dominance in ad tech.

The CODEW analysis

Independent analysis, separate from the factual record above. Draft for editorial review.

The story has moved from "Can Google answer ChatGPT?" to "Can Google fund the build-out?" Search grew 17%, Gemini is at ChatGPT-scale usage, and Cloud is growing 82% at a 36% margin. The open question is cash: capex exceeded operating cash flow in Q2, and spending is guided to roughly double. Cloud has to convert a $514 billion backlog fast enough to make that spending self-funding.

TPUs change Alphabet's position in the AI supply chain. Selling TPU systems to Anthropic and Meta turns an internal cost advantage into a second revenue line and a bargaining chip against NVIDIA. It also makes Google a competitor to its own chip supplier and cloud partners, and revenue from hardware sales may recognize unevenly, which can distort Cloud growth rates quarter to quarter.

Read net income with care. Q2's $112 billion headline is mostly a paper gain on equity holdings. Operating income (+30%, 34% margin) is the cleaner measure of the business.

Regulatory risk has eased but not gone. No structural breakup in either U.S. case lowers near-term downside, yet appeals, behavioral remedies, a compliance monitor and EU actions keep the advertising model under pressure, especially as AI changes how search is used.

What to watch: Cloud growth and margin as TPU revenue lumps in; backlog conversion; the 2027 capex signal; Gemini 3.5 Pro timing; Search growth as AI Mode scales; and the final ad tech judgment and appeals.

Related coverage

Company Intelligence
AI Intelligence
Company Analysis and Company Deep Dive: Alphabet / Google
Watch Series
The Term Sheet (Wiz, Anthropic TPU deal)
Related profiles: NVIDIA, Broadcom, Anthropic, Microsoft, Amazon / AWS, OpenAI

Sources

This profile is a durable reference page and is not investment advice. Factual sections are sourced above; the CODEW analysis section reflects The CODEW's independent view. Last updated October 15, 2026.

The CODEW