Alphabet, Google's parent, reported its third-quarter results on 28 October, and AI demand showed up almost everywhere in them. Revenue came to $127.6 billion, up 25% from $102.3 billion a year earlier and the thirteenth quarter in a row of double-digit growth. Sundar Pichai said the company is now running at half a trillion dollars of revenue a year.
Google Cloud was the standout. Its revenue rose 103% to $30.7 billion, against $15.16 billion a year before, and its operating income jumped to $11.12 billion from $3.59 billion. Alphabet credited enterprise demand for AI infrastructure and AI solutions, with sales of TPU systems also helping. In his remarks Pichai said the Gemini app has reached one billion users, which he called the fastest growth of any Google product, and that the company's own model APIs now handle nearly 32 billion tokens a minute, over four times the figure of a year ago. Alphabet described its Gemini 4 models, Argon and Carbon, as leading at the frontier.
Google Services brought in $96.3 billion, up 11%. Advertising was $82.0 billion, with Search and other at $63.35 billion, up 12%, and search query growth the highest in five years. YouTube ads earned $11.2 billion against $10.26 billion a year earlier, and YouTube Music and Premium passed 150 million subscribers, trials included.
Header graphic for Unite.AI's report on Alphabet's Q3 2026 results
Image: Unite.AI
Profit tells a more mixed story. Operating income was about $40.6 billion, up 30%, for a margin of 31.8%, though one outlet printed $40.76 billion. Net income fell to $26.17 billion from $34.9 billion, and earnings per share to $2.12 from $2.87, after an $8.7 billion net loss on equity securities. Costs held at the Alphabet level, which include shared AI research, produced a $7.66 billion operating loss, up from $4.47 billion.
About Alphabet
Alphabet is a US technology holding company based in Mountain View, California. It was created on 2 October 2015 in a restructuring of Google, which became its main subsidiary alongside several former Google businesses, and it trades on Nasdaq as GOOGL and GOOG.
Co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin stepped down from their executive posts in December 2019, and Sundar Pichai, already Google's CEO, became CEO of Alphabet too. On 16 January 2020 it became the fourth US company to reach a $1 trillion market value. On 15 September 2025 it became the fourth to top $3 trillion, after Nvidia, Microsoft and Apple, helped by AI optimism and an antitrust ruling that did not force a Chrome divestiture.
The spending side grew too. Capital expenditure was $51.36 billion in the quarter and free cash flow was negative $9.07 billion. There were no share buybacks, compared with $11.5 billion a year earlier. Long-term debt stood at $125.1 billion, up from $46.5 billion at the end of 2025, after $28.7 billion of senior notes were raised. Other Bets, the group of experimental businesses, made $372 million in revenue and lost about $2.05 billion at the operating level. Alphabet ended the quarter with about $265 billion in cash and marketable securities and 204,757 employees, up from 190,167 a year before. Revenue in the US was $67.7 billion, up 39%,, and Google Services earned $39.16 billion in operating income, while traffic acquisition costs were $16.37 billion, up from $14.88 billion. A quarterly dividend of $0.22 a share is payable on 14 December to holders of record on 7 December.
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