GOOGL Analysis: Alphabet Becomes the World's Most Valuable Company as Its AI Capex War Bet Pays Off
Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) has quietly ascended to the throne. At $311.76 per share with a $3.77 trillion market capitalization, Google's parent company is now the most valuable publicly traded corporation on earth, having overtaken Apple and Microsoft in a rally fueled by accelerating revenue growth, dominant AI infrastructure spending, and an advertising machine that refuses to slow down. The stock sits just 11% below its 52-week high of $349.00, making it the best performer among the Magnificent Seven over the past year. The numbers tell the story with unusual clarity. Full-year 2025 revenue reached approximately $402.9 billion, up meaningfully from the prior year, with fourth-quarter revenue of $113.9 billion representing 15.8% year-over-year growth — an acceleration from earlier quarters. Net income for the year topped $132.2 billion, producing trailing twelve-month earnings per share of $10.82. These are not the figures of a company coasting on legacy businesses; they reflect a triple engine of search advertising, YouTube, and Google Cloud firing in concert. What makes Alphabet's current position particularly compelling — and controversial — is its capital expenditure posture. The company is spending roughly 24.5% of revenue on capex, the vast majority directed at AI infrastructure including its proprietary TPU chips. While rivals rely almost entirely on Nvidia's GPUs, Alphabet's custom silicon gives it a structural cost advantage in training and deploying AI models at scale. The question for investors is whether this spending creates an unassailable moat or simply compresses returns on capital. With next earnings due April 23, 2026, the market will soon have fresh data to adjudicate that debate.