Institutional ticker directory tracking stock mentions, long/short ideas, and high-conviction pitches extracted from quarterly hedge fund letters.
| Ticker | Company | Sector | Industry | Pitches | Stance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fund / Manager | Thesis Excerpt | Stance | Period / Date | Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Arauca Capital Jean Philippe Tissot | “Alphabet is the global technology conglomerate operating Google Search, Google Cloud, YouTube, and proprietary AI models. The manager adopted a bearish stance on continuing to hold the position, executing a complete exit at around $370 per share and closing out long-dated synthetic call options following a massive rally from the mid-$150s. The rationale centers on deteriorating free cash flow quality and compressed margins of safety. Although fundamental operating results remained robust, with Cloud expanding over 80% and Search rising roughly 17%, capital expenditure expanded dramatically, pushing free cash flow into negative territory during Q2. As the stock surged to around $370, valuation multiples expanded to levels that failed to compensate for capital intensity and asymmetric downside derivative risk as option expiries neared. Key risks that triggered the exit include relentless hyperscaler capex inflation, balance sheet leverage, and multiple compression, with the fund choosing to fully cash out its gains.” | BEAR | Q2 2026 Sep 1, 2026 | View Pitch |
Myrmikan Research Daniel Oliver | “Google (market cap $4 trillion) reports over $460 billion in backlog orders, and its Q2 2026 net income increased by a stunning 298%, from $28.2 billion in Q2 2025 to $112 billion. Backing out the $99 billion in net income attributable to a write-up in Google's equity stake in Anthropic, there was still an impressive $10.8 billion gain. Yet to achieve this increase, capital investment nearly doubled to $44.9 billion and investments into private companies jumped to $21 billion. Google's manic spending sent adjusted free cash flow down sharply, to negative $26 billion, and the company had to issue $30.5 billion in common shares, $19 billion in convertible debt, and $24.8 billion in straight debt during the quarter to continue its spending. In Q1, the company had raised $32 billion in debt, including a $1.4 billion century bond with a fixed nominal yield of 6.125%—the U.S. dollar is unlikely to survive a hundred years, much less a technology company. Half of Google's revenues come from the now ad-cluttered search that produces archaic results compared to AI queries—the company has little choice but to bet everything on AI, and the market currently values this highly uncertain bet at $4 trillion.” | NEUTRAL | Q2 2026 Aug 31, 2026 | View Pitch |
Baron Global Opportunity Fund Alex Umansky | “Alphabet Inc. is the parent of Google, whose products are used by billions of people every day and include Search, YouTube, Android, Chrome, Gmail, Maps, and the Gemini assistant. In total, 13 Google products each serve over 1 billion monthly users, and 5 surpass 3 billion. The company reports in two primary segments: Google Services, which earns most of its revenue from advertising, and Google Cloud, which sells infrastructure, platform, and application services to enterprises. Within Google Services, Google's core Search and Advertising platform is one of the most attractive technology business models ever built – distribution is effectively free, advertisers compete against one another to bid up prices, and users themselves determine which advertisers earn placement. The manager initiated a position during the quarter. Alphabet detracted 0.27% from performance. SpaceX signed a terrestrial data center hosting agreement with Google representing part of $26 billion of annualized revenue.” | NEUTRAL | Q2 2026 Aug 26, 2026 | View Pitch |
Harry Qelm Baabsman Harry Qelm Baabsman | “The one from the Tech Titans that the Steppe Eagle has under his wing. This behemoth commands a Sales figure of over $400 billion and a market capitalization of over $3.5 trillion. In recent years, the company has kept its grasp over the Internet Search, YouTube, and AI. It also vigorously grows in the area of Cloud Computing (double-digit growth), and this is the top company for Autonomous Driving, an undisputed leader with the most driven distance. It still doesn't look expensive and is worth every invested dollar. We entered the position in 2022 and 2023 at an average price of $106.” | NEUTRAL | Q2 2026 Aug 18, 2026 | View Pitch |
Baron Fifth Avenue Growth Fund Alex Umansky | “We did well in Communication Services (SpaceX and Alphabet). Broadcom signed a new long-term agreement with Alphabet, reducing the risk of Google insourcing. On the earnings call, Hock Tan, Broadcom's CEO, described it as 'a very, very strong agreement and it basically reflects the strength of the partnership we have simply because of the products we do... and any intellectual property we deploy into this whole program... it's a commitment that is very substantial in dollars. Very, very substantial amount of dollars.' SpaceX has recently signed its first terrestrial data center hosting agreements with Anthropic and Google, together representing $26 billion of annualized revenue.” | NEUTRAL | Q2 2026 Aug 14, 2026 | View Pitch |
Loomis Sayles Global Growth Fund Aziz Hamzaogullari | “Alphabet is a holding company that owns a collection of businesses, the largest and most important of which by far is Google. Google is the global leader in online search and advertising and also offers cloud solutions to businesses and consumers globally, with a goal of organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful. Google dominates the US and global traditional search market with a greater than 80% share of search volumes. A fund holding since inception, Alphabet reported quarterly financial results that were fundamentally strong and above consensus expectations for most key metrics. The company is seeing the positive benefits of its AI investments in all the core areas of its business, including accelerating search volumes, strong user engagement and streamlined content creation on YouTube as well as the broader advertising business, and faster growth in the company's cloud business. Total revenue of $110 billion represented a 19% increase year over year in constant currency, while reported earnings per share rose 82%. Google Services reported quarterly revenue of $90 billion, which increased 16% year over year and represented approximately 82% of total revenue. Advertising revenue was driven by the search business, which accelerated and grew 19% year over year. The company benefited from strength in retail and financial services, as well as from the scaling growth in its Gemini AI app, which previously reported over 750 million monthly average users, AI overviews, which are available in 40 languages and 200 countries and previously reported over 2 billion monthly average users, and AI Mode, the company's native AI-search powered by its Gemini models. Google Cloud reported quarterly revenue of $20 billion on growth that accelerated meaningfully to 63% year over year and represented 18% of total revenue. Revenue acceleration was driven by continued growth of GCP across AI Solutions and AI infrastructure, as well as core GCP products. The company's cloud revenue backlog nearly doubled over the prior-year quarter to more than $460 billion. We believe market expectations underestimate Alphabet's long-term sustainable growth rate. As a result, we believe the company is selling at a significant discount to our estimate of intrinsic value and offers a compelling reward-to-risk opportunity.” | NEUTRAL | Q2 2026 Aug 12, 2026 | View Pitch |
Baron Durable Advantage Fund Alex Umansky | “Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google, contributed to performance with the stock up 23.2% as the market increasingly recognized its unique position vis-à-vis AI. Alphabet is the industry's most vertically integrated AI player, with ownership across every layer of the stack, including custom TPU silicon, global cloud infrastructure, the Gemini foundation models, and distribution across 13 products with more than 1 billion users each. This full-stack ownership is translating into strong demand. Google Cloud revenue grew 63% year-over-year and backlog surged nearly 300% to roughly $460 billion, prompting management to raise 2026 capital expenditure guidance and signal a significant further increase in 2027. Search revenue grew 19% year-over-year as AI features drove record query volumes, demonstrating that generative AI is expanding, rather than eroding, the core franchise. Capital access has itself become a competitive moat, allowing Alphabet to fund supply aggressively and outbid peers for scarce compute. We maintain strong conviction, viewing Alphabet's vertical integration and balance sheet strength as durable advantages in a multi-year build cycle. Cloud revenue growth accelerated to 82% from 63% last quarter (at $100 billion scale), with 36% EBIT margins and an astonishing 47% incremental EBIT margin quarter over quarter. Backlog increased $52 billion to $514 billion with accelerating conversion - $257 billion will convert over the next eight quarters. Gemini Enterprise is now used by 90 Fortune 100 companies in some capacity. The breadth of growth has improved significantly with new customer acquisitions more than doubling year on year. Over 500 customers processed over 1 trillion tokens each over the last 12 months.” | NEUTRAL | Q2 2026 Aug 12, 2026 | View Pitch |
Aristotle Value Equity Fund Howard Gleicher | “Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube, was a primary contributor during the period. We initiated our position in the first quarter of 2025, when investors were concerned that generative AI tools would fundamentally alter search behavior and erode Google's advertising franchise. Since then, Alphabet has continued to demonstrate the strength of its ecosystem and the resilience of its core businesses. Google Search has remained strong, with AI-powered features increasing user engagement while supporting advertising growth, and Google Cloud has continued to benefit from robust enterprise demand for AI infrastructure and services. Importantly, Alphabet appears increasingly capable of monetizing these new experiences in a manner consistent with its historical strengths, through advertising, distribution, and integration across a broad user base rather than relying solely on paid subscriptions. YouTube also remains well positioned to benefit from continued growth in advertising and subscription revenues, including YouTube TV, as consumers continue to shift away from traditional cable. In addition, while we continue to monitor regulatory risk, capital intensity, and changes in search behavior, recent execution reinforces our view that Alphabet remains a high-quality business with durable competitive advantages and multiple avenues for long-term value creation.” | BULL | Q2 2026 Aug 10, 2026 | View Pitch |
Baron Opportunity Fund Michael Lippert | “During the quarter, we added to our position in Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google—the world's largest search and digital advertising franchise—as well as YouTube and Google Cloud Platform, one of the three leading hyperscale cloud infrastructure businesses globally. Alphabet also owns DeepMind, one of the premier AI research organizations in the world. Alphabet generates approximately $174 billion in trailing operating cash flow, a funding advantage that becomes increasingly important as the AI race enters a phase of high capital intensity. Our conviction deepened this quarter as several developments reinforced our view that Alphabet is one of the most strategically advantaged businesses in the AI era. At Google I/O 2026, management disclosed that Alphabet now processes 3.2 quadrillion tokens monthly—seven times increase year over year—with the Gemini app surpassing 900 million monthly active users, more than doubling in a year. AI is proving additive rather than cannibalistic to core search. Search revenue grew 19% year-over-year in the first quarter, and CEO Sundar Pichai noted that AI features are driving more search usage, not less. Google Cloud accelerated to 63% year-over-year revenue growth—a five-year high—with operating margins expanding to 33% and the cloud backlog nearly doubling sequentially to approximately $462 billion, anchored in part by a landmark multi-year tensor processing unit (TPU) commitment from Anthropic, affirming that Alphabet's custom silicon is winning the confidence of the most demanding AI infrastructure customers. What distinguishes Alphabet from every other competitor in the AI landscape is the breadth of its vertical integration: custom eighth-generation TPUs optimized for both training and inference, frontier Gemini models, the Antigravity enterprise agentic coding platform, and consumer distribution across 13 products with more than 1 billion monthly active users each—including five with more than 3 billion. No pure-play AI lab or cloud competitor replicates this stack, and we believe the cost and distribution advantages it confers widen over time. We see a long runway for growth as Google Cloud accelerates, Gemini monetization deepens across search and subscriptions, and this full-stack advantage compounds—a combination we believe bodes well for long-term shareholders.” | NEUTRAL | Q2 2026 Aug 6, 2026 | View Pitch |
Giverny Capital Asset Management David M. Poppe | “Our two largest positions are Alphabet and Arista, which I believe have strong positions in the emerging AI economy. Alphabet has a near monopoly in search, a robust cloud data center business, a leading computer chip used in AI data centers, a highly profitable asset in YouTube and the premier autonomous driving platform in Waymo. It has built a tremendous collection of assets. We trimmed Alphabet and Arista. We sold 17% of our position in Alphabet in April at about $380. Management subsequently sold $80 billion of stock in a secondary offering at $350 to raise money to fund more investment in data centers. I feel we did the responsible thing in trimming Alphabet as it got to nearly 12% of our portfolio. Arista and Alphabet remain our largest positions as of June 30. The valuations on both are high enough that future returns likely will be lower than we're used to, even if the businesses continue to grow.” | NEUTRAL | Q2 2026 Aug 4, 2026 | View Pitch |
Eagle Capital Management Ravenel B. Curry III | “Google Search and YouTube are comparatively more mature, but continue to grow at well-above GDP rates with attractive margins. We believe AI is demonstrably helping Google Search, which has accelerated as ad targeting and content capabilities have improved. Google TPUs and Amazon's Trainium chips are the most competitive custom silicon programs. At times, Alphabet has been ahead in AI models. Today it's not, but with each new release, the pole position shifts. We ascribe 35% of the value of Alphabet to their cloud business and 65% to the remainder of the company.” | NEUTRAL | Q2 2026 Aug 4, 2026 | View Pitch |
Bronte Capital Amalthea Fund John Hempton | “Google faces a similar threat — but its management is superior to AMP's. ### Google's problem Google has a search business that produces vast profits by displaying ads. It i” | NEUTRAL | Q2 2026 Aug 3, 2026 | View Pitch |
Bronte Capital Amalthea Fund John Hempton | “Google faces a similar threat — but its management is superior to AMP's. ### Google's problem Google has a search business that produces vast profits by ...” | NEUTRAL | Q2 2026 Aug 3, 2026 | View Pitch |
SGA - U.S. Large Cap Growth Tucker Brown | “Alphabet was a contributor to performance during the quarter supported by the continued narrative that the company is a well-positioned beneficiary of the AI investment cycle. Its full-stack exposure spans infrastructure, foundational models, developer tools, and scaled consumer applications, providing broad participation in AI adoption. The stock benefited from the company's Q1 report which highlighted robust ongoing demand for the company's AI compute resources. We continue to view Alphabet as a high-quality, long-term compounder. Its leading global platforms, supported by strong network effects, direct user relationships, and scaled infrastructure, underpin durable pricing power and highly recurring revenue streams. The company remains well-positioned to benefit from sustained growth drivers, including the ongoing shift toward digital advertising and cloud computing, while its continued investment in AI and innovation supports its ability to reinforce its competitive position over time. We added to the position and raised the target, maintaining an above-average weight.” | BULL | Q2 2026 Jul 30, 2026 | View Pitch |
SGA - Global Growth Hrishikesh Gupta | “Alphabet was a contributor to performance during the quarter supported by the continued narrative that the company is a well-positioned beneficiary of the AI investment cycle. Its full-stack exposure spans infrastructure, foundational models, developer tools, and scaled consumer applications, providing broad participation in AI adoption. The stock benefited from the company's Q1 report which highlighted robust ongoing demand for the company's AI compute resources. We continue to view Alphabet as a high-quality, long-term compounder. Its leading global platforms, supported by strong network effects, direct user relationships, and scaled infrastructure, underpin durable pricing power and highly recurring revenue streams. The company remains well-positioned to benefit from sustained growth drivers, including the ongoing shift toward digital advertising and cloud computing, while its continued investment in AI and innovation supports its ability to reinforce its competitive position over time.” | BULL | Q2 2026 Jul 30, 2026 | View Pitch |
Lakehouse Global Growth Fund Nick, Erwin and Donny | “Alphabet was our strongest performer as the market moved from fearing AI would cannibalise the Google Search business, to recognising the breadth of the company's AI advantages. Search re-accelerated through the year, driven by strength in retail and financial services. AI Overviews and the rapid scaling of AI Mode expanded the share of monetisable queries, reinforcing our view that Search is in an expansionary phase rather than facing cannibalisation. As encouraging as Search was, Cloud was the real standout. Revenue growth accelerated to 63% year-on-year and crossed US$20 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time. This came even as demand continued to outstrip available capacity. The backlog roughly doubled in the most recent quarter to over US$460 billion, underpinned in part by a new TPU hardware (Alphabet's own highly specialised AI chips) revenue stream. As the only hyperscaler with a fully integrated AI stack spanning chips, infrastructure, models, data and distribution, we believe Alphabet is exceptionally well placed to benefit from the ongoing adoption of AI and it remains a core holding in the portfolio.” | NEUTRAL | Q2 2026 Jul 29, 2026 | View Pitch |
AGT Partners Greg | “We have also recently purchased a position in Alphabet. In brief, Alphabet's main upside lies in its ability to turn AI from a perceived disruption risk into a further extension of its competitive moat. With Search, YouTube, TPUs, Gemini, Android, Workspace, Google Cloud, and consumer subscriptions, Alphabet controls multiple scaled platforms through which AI services can be distributed and monetised. Its paid subscription base has also reached 350 million, further broadening its revenue base beyond advertising. The key question is whether AI disrupts Google's search economics or strengthens its moat by improving user experience, expanding monetisation surfaces, leveraging on its vast amounts of data and accelerating Cloud adoption. So far, the business has remained resilient, with Search still growing strongly and Google Cloud becoming a more meaningful second engine. Another important risk is capex discipline. Like other US hyperscalers, Alphabet is now spending aggressively on AI infrastructure. Over time, investors will need evidence that this spending strengthens its Cloud competitiveness, enables AI monetisation, and supports durable revenue growth. Its recent 2Q results provide encouraging evidence that these infrastructure investments are beginning to bear fruit: Cloud revenue grew 82% year-on-year, operating margins expanded meaningfully to 36%, and backlog increased to US$514 billion. Nearly 90% of Fortune 100 are using Gemini Enterprise, with Alphabet's management noting from discussions with many CEOs that enterprises are still in the very early stages of exploring what AI can do for their businesses. While concerns have emerged around Alphabet reaching negative free cash flow in this quarter, we do not view this as a major concern so long as the spending is disciplined, demand-backed, and directed toward assets that strengthen the business's economic moat over many years. If one is building a toll road, negative free cash flow during the construction phase is not necessarily a problem. What matters is whether, upon completion, the asset becomes a valuable infrastructure platform capable of generating strong cash flows for decades. So far, the evidence suggests that these investments are beginning to produce strong tangible results. While it remains a relatively small position for us today, we will continue to learn and monitor the AI transition closely and assess the business as developments unfold. Should the thesis strengthen further and valuation remain sensible, we would look to increase our position at the right time.” | NEUTRAL | Q2 2026 Jul 29, 2026 | View Pitch |
Mayar Capital Abdulaziz A. Alnaim | “Alphabet recently chose to raise money by issuing equity rather than debt. First, it is remarkable that Alphabet, one of the most profitable and most cash generative businesses in history suddenly needs to raise capital from outside investors. After years of buying back stock they're now issuing it. What makes it especially interesting is the company's choice. The sum raised is only modestly more than its existing debt load. Had Alphabet borrowed the same amount instead, it would have taken its net debt from under half its EBITDA to under one times EBITDA. This is a business with an enormous capacity to borrow, and it could borrow very cheaply, at rates around five percent. A management team will only choose to issue equity in place of the debt it could raise that easily if it believes the equity is the cheaper currency, which is to say if it believes the shares are overvalued. By my math, Alphabet's own management is implicitly telling you they think their equity is worth somewhere between a third and forty-four percent below where it trades. When the people who know a business best would rather print shares than borrow, it is worth paying attention.” | NEUTRAL | Q2 2026 Jul 25, 2026 | View Pitch |
Vulcan Value Partners - Focus Vulcan Value Partners, LLC | “Alphabet delivered robust results during the first quarter. Core Google Search revenue accelerated to 19%, the fastest growth in 16 quarters. AI continues to be an expansionary moment for search as search queries are at an all-time high. Google Cloud revenue growth accelerated to 63%, the fastest growth rate it has ever reported. Google Cloud margins expanded to 33%, up from 18% in the first quarter of 2025. Google Cloud backlog grew 5X year-over-year with growth driven by enterprise AI offerings and TPU sales. While we have always had high expectations for Google's Cloud business, its performance over the last several years has simply been astonishing. Google Cloud is now roughly 40% of our value for the company. As a reminder, 2023 was the first year that Google Cloud posted positive EBIT. Consensus estimates for Google Cloud 2027 EBIT are $54BN, a stark contrast to the negative EBIT margin business at $26BN of revenue in 2022. Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, and Alphabet's entire leadership team deserve a round of applause. We continue to monitor the AI disruption risks across all of our portfolio companies and MVP businesses.” | NEUTRAL | Q2 2026 Jul 23, 2026 | View Pitch |
Vulcan Value Partners Focus Plus Vulcan Value Partners LLC | “Alphabet delivered robust results during the first quarter. Core Google Search revenue accelerated to 19%, the fastest growth in 16 quarters. AI continues to be an expansionary moment for search as search queries are at an all-time high. Google Cloud revenue growth accelerated to 63%, the fastest growth rate it has ever reported. Google Cloud margins expanded to 33%, up from 18% in the first quarter of 2025. Google Cloud backlog grew 5X year-over-year with growth driven by enterprise AI offerings and TPU sales. While we have always had high expectations for Google's Cloud business, its performance over the last several years has simply been astonishing. Google Cloud is now roughly 40% of our value for the company. As a reminder, 2023 was the first year that Google Cloud posted positive EBIT. Consensus estimates for Google Cloud 2027 EBIT are $54BN, a stark contrast to the negative EBIT margin business at $26BN of revenue in 2022. Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, and Alphabet's entire leadership team deserve a round of applause. We continue to monitor the AI disruption risks across all of our portfolio companies and MVP businesses.” | NEUTRAL | Q2 2026 Jul 23, 2026 | View Pitch |
Claret Asset Management Alain Chung | “Market leaders like Nvidia, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta generate hundreds of billions of dollars in positive free cash flow annually. Between Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft, they have committed over USD 725 Billion in capital spending in 2026 and promise even more in the years to come. Alphabet (Google's parent company) replaced Verizon in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) on June 29, 2026, representing a significant change to one of the United States' main indices. Because Alphabet's Class A shares (GOOGL) trade at a much higher price of ~$355 USD per share as of writing this, it immediately commands roughly a 4% weight in the index. This places it among the top 10 most influential companies in the Dow, meaning a big day for Google can move the index quite a bit. Alphabet becomes the fifth 'Magnificent Seven' mega-cap tech stock to be placed into the exclusive 30-member club, joining Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Nvidia.” | NEUTRAL | Q2 2026 Jul 22, 2026 | View Pitch |
Guinness Global Innovators Dr Ian Mortimer, CFA | “Alphabet returned 24.4% in USD over Q2. Alphabet has also taken advantage of strong investor sentiment. In June, the company priced close to $85bn in equity, including a private placement with Berkshire Hathaway, only weeks after raising nearly $32bn in bonds in February, both to help fund its AI infrastructure build-out. Alphabet generated $174bn of operating cash flow over the past year and had not raised meaningful equity since 2006. Its tapping both equity and debt markets within weeks indicates the scale of the AI infrastructure build-out.” | NEUTRAL | Q2 2026 Jul 17, 2026 | View Pitch |
L1 Capital International Fund David Steinthal | “Four other companies (AerCap, Alphabet, Nvidia and Visa – in alphabetic order) each contributed around 0.5% or greater. We have rebalanced the portfolio weights between Alphabet and Microsoft. We remain comfortable with the Azure hyperscaler business of Microsoft, although we believe the business may be less well positioned compared to Alphabet's GCP and Amazon's AWS hyperscaler businesses: Microsoft is behind in developing its own chips (GPUs, CPUs, ASICs) to support AI workloads at lower cost and reduce reliance on Nvidia. Previously, Azure pulled back on some data centre investments and is now capacity constrained and more dependent on neocloud capacity for immediate needs. Azure is more OpenAI-centric and less Anthropic-centric, and recently Anthropic has been out-executing OpenAI.” | NEUTRAL | Q2 2026 Jul 17, 2026 | View Pitch |
Wedgewood Partners David A. Rolfe, Michael X. Quigley, Christopher T. Jersan | “Alphabet was a top contributor to performance during the quarter. Google Search and Cloud continue to accelerate, with Search posting 19% revenue growth and Cloud posting 63% revenue growth, helping drive 30% growth in operating income. That torrid growth in operating income compares to, we estimate, more than 40% growth in Alphabet's total gross assets. While that means returns on capital were slightly diluted, they remain above 30%. We think Alphabet is an exceedingly rare, if not entirely unique, business, growing a nearly $450 billion gross asset base by 40% while maintaining a 30% return on that massive asset base. These are astonishing compounding figures. Further, we have excluded from operating income large, unrealized gains from the Company's investment portfolio, which totaled more than $35 billion in the most recent quarter (mostly due to SpaceX) and nearly $50 billion over the past six quarters. The Company also has a 14% stake in the private company Anthropic. That stake could be worth more than $100 billion based on valuations reported from recent capital raises. We highlight these investments because these investees are drivers of recent inflation in component costs, especially DRAM memory. Although the market typically ignores the 'one-time' investment gains that Alphabet has made, we think these extremely large gains have served as a de facto hedge for the rapid, incremental capex spending requirements. In other words, we estimate the $150 billion in investment gains on SpaceX and Anthropic (if realized) could effectively cover incremental DRAM-related capex costs for several years. These one-time gains are not included in our core calculations for returns - but suffice it to say, Alphabet has plenty of excess profitability to continue investing both responsibly and aggressively. In addition, Alphabet announced it would begin delivering its proprietary Tensor Processing Units (TPU) to external customer data centers, representing a very sizable new addressable market. Alphabet has spent more than a decade developing and iterating on TPU systems for internal workloads, claiming to reduce the cost of serving its AI model (Gemini) by almost 80%. We expect Alphabet to continue delivering excellent returns as it helps proliferate AI use cases for businesses, consumers, and data centers. Despite outperformance during the quarter, we continue to manage portfolio concentration risk by limiting individual position sizes to 10%.” | BULL | Q2 2026 Jul 15, 2026 | View Pitch |
“About nine months ago, the conventional wisdom was that OpenAI would disrupt Google in search and Meta in consumer engagement. In early June, Google announced plans to raise $80 billion in an equity o” | NEUTRAL | Q2 2026 Jul 15, 2026 | View Pitch | |
Thornburg Global Opportunities Fund Brian McMahon | “Alphabet Inc (Google) is the third largest holding. Internet-based search & advertising, content, software applications, and data centers. Returned +14.3% in H1 2026 and +66.0% in calendar 2025. Trail” | BULL | Q2 2026 Jul 10, 2026 | View Pitch |
Mayar Capital Abdulaziz A. Alnaim | “Alphabet's decision to raise capital by issuing equity rather than utilizing its cheap debt capacity suggests management believes its stock is overvalued. This capital allocation decision implies the shares may be trading 33% to 44% above their intrinsic value.” | BEAR | Q2 2026 Jul 3, 2026 | View Pitch |
VVP Q2 Letter 06.30.26 Portfolio Manager | “Alphabet posted highly impressive growth driven by a rebound in Core Google Search and explosive expansion in Google Cloud, where revenues surged 63% and margins doubled. High demand for custom AI hardware and infrastructure has made Google Cloud a primary value engine for the company.” | BULL | Q2 2026 Jun 30, 2026 | View Pitch |
Trojan Fund from Troy Asset Management Sebastian Lyon, Charlotte Yonge | “Alphabet's performance has helped our Multi-Asset portfolios over the past twelve months. The share price bottomed at $145 in April and doubled from the lows by the year end. The valuation has risen f” | BULL | Q1 2026 Apr 29, 2026 | View Pitch |
Alluvium Global Fund Stuart Pearce, Alexis Delloye | “Our core holding in the technology platform space is Alphabet. It had a poor quarter (down 8.1%), but it has had a stellar run over the last 12 months (it returned 86.6%). A year ago its shares traded” | BULL | Q1 2026 Apr 21, 2026 | View Pitch |
Wedgewood Partners David A. Rolfe, Michael X. Quigley, Christopher T. Jersan | “Alphabet grew its core search revenue by +17% and continues to accelerate as users spend more time on Google properties, driven by the Company's AI offerings (AI Mode and AI Overviews). At the same ti” | BULL | Q1 2026 Apr 13, 2026 | View Pitch |
Giverny Capital Asset Management David M. Poppe | “Alphabet was one of Giverny's bottom five contributors during the quarter, declining 8.1%. Despite this short-term drag, the manager emphasizes that it remains a core holding with robust fundamentals, including a strong balance sheet and a deep competitive moat.” | BULL | Q1 2026 Apr 13, 2026 | View Pitch |
Personal Asset Trust Portfolio Manager | “Alphabet has recovered strongly as its antitrust overhang cleared and Gemini 3 successfully reclaimed search traffic share from ChatGPT. Although the fund has taken partial profits due to expanded multiples, the manager highlights its structural advantages, including proprietary TPU chips and unmatched distribution networks.” | BULL | Q1 2026 Mar 31, 2026 | View Pitch |
Unison Asset Management Alex and Dan | “Alphabet continues to be treated like the stepchild of the AI revolution despite having invented it. We believe the company employs some of the best and brightest engineering minds. Its seven platform” | BULL | Q4 2025 Feb 2, 2026 | View Pitch |
Unison Asset Management Alex and Dan | “Alphabet continues to be treated like the stepchild of the AI revolution despite having invented it. We believe the company employs some of the best and brightest engineering minds. Its seven platforms with over 2 billion users provide fertile ground for this talent to generate additional use cases and value for consumers and enterprises. It has a vast and unique trove of data on which to train and enhance its models. Fast forward one year and sentiment on Alphabet has shifted dramatically. The Company released new models and products, received a favorable antitrust ruling, and launched Gemini 3 to raving reviews. Gemini has been gaining meaningful market share from ChatGPT and was entirely trained on Google's TPUs. Alphabet delivered its first $100 billion revenue quarter in Q3 and incremental returns on capital remain attractive despite materially higher capex. We trimmed roughly a quarter of our position but continue to hold a significant stake given the strength of the core business and substantial optionality. BSD Analysis: Alphabet enters 2026 as a premier leader in the artificial intelligence era, successfully transitioning its core search business to incorporate generative AI via the Gemini model. The company is benefiting from a significant structural advantage through its sixth and seventh-generation Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), which reduce internal compute costs while attracting major enterprise cloud deals. For 2026, the investment narrative is bolstered by Google Cloud's continued path toward higher profitability and YouTube's resilient advertising revenue despite a fragmented media landscape. While regulatory challenges and antitrust scrutiny remain persistent risks, Alphabet's massive $100 billion-plus cash pile provides a substantial cushion for aggressive share repurchases and strategic investments. Management's focus on "Other Bets," particularly in autonomous driving via Waymo, offers long-term optionality beyond digital advertising. With a P/E ratio that remains attractive relative to its "Magnificent Seven" peers, Alphabet provides a balanced profile of growth and value.” | BULL | Q4 2025 Feb 2, 2026 | View Pitch |
Pelican Bay Capital Management Tyler Hardt, CFA | “Alphabet (GOOG) also landed on the list of top 5 contributors for a second consecutive quarter. The company appears to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the AI transition, and their Gemini Large Language Model (LLM) has established itself as a leading LLM along with Claude and ChatGPT. Perception has come a long way from when we first purchased GOOG in March 2023 when the prevailing consensus was that GOOG missed the AI boom and its monopoly on search would deteriorate rapidly. Unfortunately, in our view investors may have become too enthusiastic about Alphabet's prospects, pushing the share price well ahead of our most optimistic view of its intrinsic value. As a result, we made the decision to exit our position this quarter and redeployed the funds into a new position. It is always difficult to sell our compounders, and GOOG certainly qualifies as one; but when a stock price moves 10% or more above the top end of our estimated range of intrinsic values, we would no longer be investing but rather speculating. BSD Analysis: Alphabet remains a dominant cash generator, but AI has shifted its core business from set-and-forget to constant optimization. Search usage is resilient, yet answer-first experiences threaten ad density even if engagement holds up. The true moat is distribution—Chrome, Android, YouTube, and default placements—more than any single model advantage. That distribution buys time, not immunity, to rework monetization. Cloud adds strategic breadth but increases capital intensity and margin volatility. Regulation is a persistent valuation drag, functioning like a slow tax rather than a kill switch. Buybacks prop EPS while strategy adapts, but they don't solve the transition. Optionality across YouTube, ads, and AI tools is real, if unevenly monetized. Alphabet wins only if it evolves without cannibalizing the intent-driven engine that funds everything else.” | BULL | Q4 2025 Jan 22, 2026 | View Pitch |
Impax US Sustainable Economy Fund Scott LaBreche, Christine Cappabianca | “Alphabet Class C, an underweight position, was one of the top performers in the period. Share price performance was driven by robust advertising revenue growth. YouTube and Search benefited from a rebound in digital advertising during the holiday season. Cloud revenues saw double-digit growth and margin improvement. Cost optimization initiatives boosted profitability, leading to positive investor sentiment. BSD Analysis: Alphabet remains one of the most dominant cash-flow machines ever created, despite trading like it's permanently under siege. Search is still default behavior for billions, and AI enhances monetization rather than destroying it. YouTube has matured into a multi-engine business spanning ads, subscriptions, and creator monetization. Google Cloud is no longer a science project — profitability changes the earnings profile materially. Regulatory pressure is constant, but user behavior hasn't meaningfully shifted. Capital discipline has improved through buybacks and cost control. The balance sheet provides absurd optionality for AI investment. This is not a melting ice cube. It's a tollbooth adapting faster than critics admit.” | BULL | Q4 2025 Jan 21, 2026 | View Pitch |
Weitz Partners III Opportunity Fund Wally Weitz, CFA® & Drew Weitz | “Google parent Alphabet was the Fund's top performer in both periods. The latest release of the Gemini AI surpassed expectations, with several benchmarks showing Gemini's performance moved to the front of the pack. While relative standing among frontier models remains fluid, Alphabet's progress reinforced its position among perceived AI winners. The company continues to benefit from its scale, proprietary data, and infrastructure advantages. These strengths underpin long-term growth across advertising, cloud, and AI-driven services. BSD Analysis: Alphabet enters 2026 as a premier leader in the artificial intelligence era, successfully transitioning its core search business to incorporate generative AI via the Gemini model. The company is benefiting from a significant structural advantage through its seventh-generation Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), which reduce internal compute costs while attracting major third-party enterprise deals. For 2026, the investment narrative is bolstered by Google Cloud's continued path toward higher profitability and YouTube's resilient advertising revenue despite a fragmented media landscape. While regulatory challenges and antitrust scrutiny remain persistent risks, Alphabet's massive $100 billion-plus cash pile provides a substantial cushion for aggressive share repurchases and strategic investments. Management's focus on "Other Bets," particularly in autonomous driving via Waymo, offers long-term optionality beyond digital advertising. With a P/E ratio that remains attractive relative to its "Magnificent Seven" peers, Alphabet provides a balanced profile of growth and value.” | BULL | Q4 2025 Jan 12, 2026 | View Pitch |
Alger Spectra Fund Patrick Kelly, Dan Chung, Ankur Crawford | “Alphabet is the parent of Google and a global leader in digital advertising, cloud computing, and AI-driven consumer services. Shares contributed positively during the quarter as investors increasingly recognized improving execution across the company's AI strategy, supported by strong engagement trends and rising AI-related workloads. Google Cloud was a key driver, with management highlighting accelerating usage, including increased AI token processing and continued momentum in the Gemini ecosystem. Sentiment was further supported by strengthening cloud demand and new customer wins, as well as reports that Google may broaden access to its TPU capabilities, including potential deployments beyond Google Cloud. BSD Analysis: Alphabet remains one of the most powerful cash-flow machines ever built, anchored by Search and YouTube. AI integration is enhancing ad relevance and monetization rather than cannibalizing core economics. Google Cloud is now a legitimate profit contributor, adding diversification beyond advertising. Regulatory pressure is constant, but user behavior has not shifted. The balance sheet supports aggressive buybacks alongside massive AI investment. Alphabet trades as if disruption is inevitable, but evidence suggests evolution instead. A dominant platform still compounding quietly.” | BULL | Q4 2025 Jan 8, 2026 | View Pitch |
Greenfield Investment Management Erin Greenfield | “Alphabet – We bought shares in September 2021 at US$134, representing about 27 times earnings. After witnessing society's shift online during COVID, I believed Google and YouTube would continue to grow profits. Artificial intelligence later became a major narrative, and Alphabet's stock experienced volatility as investors debated winners. Today it appears Google's AI platform, Gemini, is well positioned versus competitors. The stock has risen to roughly US$314, representing about 29 times earnings. I feel the company should continue to grow profits by increasingly monetizing its many touch points impacting daily life. BSD Analysis: Alphabet remains one of the most dominant cash-flow machines ever built, even as investors obsess over disruption narratives. Search is still default behavior for billions, and AI enhances monetization rather than replacing it. YouTube has matured into a multi-engine business spanning ads, subscriptions, and creator monetization. Google Cloud is no longer a science project — profitability changes the earnings profile materially. Regulatory pressure is constant, but user behavior hasn't meaningfully shifted. Capital discipline has improved through buybacks and cost control. The balance sheet provides absurd optionality for AI investment. This is not a melting ice cube. It's a tollbooth adapting faster than critics admit.” | BULL | Q4 2025 Jan 5, 2026 | View Pitch |
Miller Howard Investments Portfolio Manager | “The manager critiques Alphabet's inclusion as a top holding in the Russell 1000 Value Index. They argue that Alphabet remains fundamentally a growth stock and that its value categorization is counter-intuitive and compromises value style integrity.” | BEAR | Q4 2025 Dec 31, 2025 | View Pitch |
Chevy Chase Trust Amy P. Raskin | “The manager has significantly reduced exposure to mega-cap technology stocks due to growing skepticism over the near-term return on capital for massive artificial intelligence investments. While these firms possess strong core cash flows, their high index concentration and exponential growth assumptions pose substantial downside risk if AI enthusiasm fades.” | BEAR | Q4 2025 Dec 31, 2025 | View Pitch |
Latitude Global Fund Freddie Lait | “Alphabet was one of our best contributors this year, with total returns of 66%. We also wrote that Google would be best positioned in an AI world, given its vertically integrated model and its pedigree in AI. The likely attributes of winners in this space are data, processing power and distribution. Google dominates all three. Google's dominant platforms in search, mail, maps, video and autonomous driving give it the best possible chance of successfully deploying AI across its network. We believe AI is likely to make search a better business and the powerful moat coming from having the world's best distribution into advertisers is unlikely to be undermined. Today's valuation of c.24x PE will make it harder to achieve the same level of future returns. BSD Analysis: Alphabet is currently executing a massive 185 billion dollar capital expenditure program for 2026, marking a decisive commitment to securing its leadership in the generative AI and cloud infrastructure eras. The company is successfully transitioning its core Search ecosystem into an AI-first platform, with the Gemini model now powering more sophisticated query responses and driving higher engagement across YouTube and Workspace. Google Cloud has reached a major milestone of consistent profitability and is seeing accelerated adoption as enterprises utilize Alphabet's custom TPU and Axion chips to manage massive AI workloads. While this intensive investment phase is drawing significant scrutiny, the firm's dominant advertising moat and a 70 billion dollar buyback program provide a strong financial foundation. As the "utility provider" for the AI economy, Alphabet's vertical integration from hardware to consumer applications creates a powerful long-term competitive advantage.” | BULL | Q4 2025 Dec 31, 2025 | View Pitch |
Columbia Global Technology Growth Fund Columbia Management Investment Advisers, LLC | “Alphabet (GOOGL) delivered exceptional returns during the fourth quarter of 2025, with shares surging over 25% as the company reclaimed AI leadership through its Gemini 3 product family and reported its first-ever quarter with over $100 billion in revenue. The November launch of Gemini 3 fundamentally shifted investor perception from viewing Google as an AI follower to recognizing it as an industry leader. Strong financial performance bolstered confidence, alongside evidence of AI-driven cloud demand from enterprise customers, including major contract wins from the Pentagon and AI pioneer Anthropic, which committed to using up to one million of Alphabet's chips for AI development. Alphabet shares increased over 60% during 2025. BSD Analysis: Alphabet remains the most powerful attention-monetization engine ever built, even as every new tech cycle claims it's about to be disrupted. Search continues to print extraordinary cash flow because intent, not interfaces, is what advertisers pay for. YouTube has evolved into a multi-engine platform spanning ads, subscriptions, and creators. AI spending is heavy, but Alphabet owns the data, distribution, and infrastructure to make it productive. Cloud margins are quietly improving, adding a second profit pillar. Regulatory pressure is constant yet hasn't meaningfully changed user behavior. Investors underestimate adaptation speed. Alphabet funds reinvention internally without balance-sheet stress. This is dominance with optionality, priced like it's fragile.” | BULL | Q4 2025 Dec 31, 2025 | View Pitch |
Royal London Global Equity Diversified Fund Portfolio Manager | “Alphabet demonstrated strong market performance supported by excellent financial results and the successful rollout of the Gemini 3 AI model, which reassured investors of its competitive positioning. Despite taking some tactical profits to increase cash reserves, the managers maintain a strong positive outlook on the company as a long-term compounder.” | BULL | Q4 2025 Dec 31, 2025 | View Pitch |
Fidelity Dividend Growth Fund Zach Turner | “Overweight exposure to Alphabet contributed most at the stock level. The shares rose about 29% the past three months, as the parent of the Google search engine continued to execute on its artificial intelligence strategy while producing solid financial results across its other businesses. Investors were especially positive on the firm's fast-growing cloud-computing division, while the advertising and search segments also showed strength. In November, Google debuted an updated version of its AI model, Gemini, that company executives said represented a "massive jump" in reasoning and coding ability. We added a bit to this position, given the strong fundamental backdrop. BSD Analysis: Alphabet remains one of the most powerful cash-flow engines ever built, even as disruption narratives refuse to die. Search is still default behavior, and AI enhances monetization rather than eliminating it. YouTube has quietly become a global media platform with multiple revenue levers. Google Cloud profitability resets the earnings profile from optionality to substance. Regulatory pressure is constant, but user behavior hasn't meaningfully changed. Capital discipline has improved through buybacks and cost control. The balance sheet provides unmatched AI investment flexibility. This is not a melting ice cube. It's a dominant tollbooth adapting in real time.” | BULL | Q4 2025 Dec 31, 2025 | View Pitch |
Baron Fifth Avenue Growth Fund Alex Umansky | “Alphabet Inc. is the parent company of Google, the world's largest search and online advertising company. Shares rose 28.8% (and up 65.3% for the year) on strength in the company's core businesses, as well as in Google Cloud and Other Bets. In the third quarter, revenues grew 15% in constant currency while EPS grew 35% year-on-year. Despite strong growth of AI competitors such as ChatGPT, both Search and YouTube delivered double-digit revenue growth year-on-year. Additionally, Google Search paid clicks increased compared to the prior year. Google also released the latest version of its AI assistant, Gemini, which currently sits at the top of most AI leaderboards, suggesting the company's frontier AI research capabilities remain world class. Meanwhile, Cloud revenue growth also accelerated to 34% year-over-year, driven by demand for AI cloud services, with the number of large deals over $1 billion, signed through the third quarter of 2025, greater than the prior two years combined, and the number of monthly AI tokens processed in September up 20 times year-on-year. We believe there is further runway for cloud acceleration given a significant increase in backlog and a large deal announced with leading AI startup Anthropic. Long term, we believe AI innovation should lead to further broad-based opportunities such as autonomous driving (through Waymo), agentic commerce (through the recent partnerships with Shopify and others on Universal Commerce Protocol) and a continued healthy cloud infrastructure business in GCP. BSD Analysis: Alphabet trades like a company under siege, yet the core franchise remains absurdly strong. Search is still the default gateway to the internet, and that habit doesn't break easily. AI isn't killing the model — it's raising the cost of competing with it. YouTube continues to gain share in streaming and connected TV, quietly building a second profit engine. Google Cloud has crossed into profitability, adding real operating leverage. Regulatory pressure is persistent, but it hasn't changed user behavior or advertiser dependence. The balance sheet gives Alphabet freedom to invest aggressively without risking stability. This is not a broken giant. It's a dominant platform priced with permanent doubt baked in.” | BULL | Q4 2025 Dec 31, 2025 | View Pitch |
Harris Associates Concentrated Strategy Tony Coniaris | “Alphabet was a contributor during the quarter. The U.S.-headquartered technology conglomerate's stock price jumped after it delivered impressive third-quarter earnings. Search revenue growth beat consensus expectations as Google continues to see strong user engagement trends. Results were also ahead of expectations in the Cloud segment, and the outlook for this business remains robust given accelerating demand for AI compute. We continue to believe Alphabet is undervalued on a sum-of-the-parts basis and see potential for the company's AI leadership to drive further upside across the portfolio. BSD Analysis: What investors miss about Alphabet is that its biggest risk is also its biggest strength: sheer scale. Disruption narratives underestimate how deeply Google is embedded in daily behavior and enterprise workflows. AI doesn't eliminate search — it changes how queries are answered and monetized. YouTube is quietly becoming the most powerful video platform on earth, not just an ad business. Cloud growth doesn't need to win the market to move earnings meaningfully. Regulatory overhang suppresses the multiple, not the cash flow. Capital returns are now a real part of the story. This is not a story stock anymore. It's a dominant platform trading below its strategic value.” | BULL | Q4 2025 Dec 31, 2025 | View Pitch |
Munro Global Growth Fund Nick Griffin | “As the parent company of Google, Alphabet has long operated at the forefront of technology. To this day, Google remains synonymous with internet search and has consistently commanded 90% of the global search market for multiple decades. Beyond its dominance in digital advertising, the company is driving innovation across generative AI, cloud computing, enterprise software, and pioneering ventures in areas such as autonomous vehicles (Waymo) and quantum computing. Alphabet is well positioned in the AI landscape as the industry's only truly vertically integrated technology leader, from designing its own silicon through to distributing consumer-facing AI products. Its AI strategy rests uniquely on three mutually reinforcing pillars – an industry-leading foundational model (Gemini), a full-stack cloud solution powered by cutting-edge GPUs and proprietary TPUs, and an AI-enhanced Search engine that is expanding usage and monetisation. Alphabet solidified its AI leadership in November with the release of Gemini 3, a new industry benchmark that effectively leap-frogged its competitors. By deeply integrating Gemini across its core ecosystem – including Search, YouTube, and Android – Google doubled its monthly active users to 650 million since March, dramatically narrowing the gap with ChatGPT. The model success also validated Google's decade-long investment in custom chips, known as Tensor Processing Units (TPUs). While competitors grappled with GPU supply constraints, Google Cloud was able to offer a unique value proposition through leveraging its custom TPUs, which are highly power efficient and optimised particularly for large-scale inference workloads. Anthropic, OpenAI and Meta are among some of the major AI labs that have committed to using TPUs in their AI stack. This technological differentiation drove a record $50 billion sequential increase in Google Cloud's backlog, which ended the third quarter at $158 billion. The narrative that AI would disintermediate Search has also been replaced by a story of expansion. With the launch of AI Overviews, users are found to be searching more frequently with queries growing by 10% and they are also asking more complex questions. This uplift in user engagement has translated directly into ad performance, with paid click growth more than tripling from 2% at the start of the year to 7% by Q3, proving that AI is making search more valuable for both users and advertisers. With the ability to capture user intent and behaviour within its product ecosystem that serves over 2 billion users worldwide, Alphabet has created a powerful distribution flywheel that allows AI innovations to be deployed and adopted efficiently across the world. Google's role as a differentiated cloud provider also provides incremental upside to revenue growth. Ultimately, we think there is lots of optionality for growth ahead for Alphabet and see a pathway for its earnings to double over the next 5 years. BSD Analysis: Alphabet remains one of the most powerful cash-flow engines in the world, anchored by Search and YouTube's unmatched reach. AI integration strengthens its core businesses by improving relevance, engagement, and ad monetization rather than disrupting them. Google Cloud has emerged as a real growth and profit contributor, adding diversification beyond advertising. Regulatory pressure is constant, but user behavior and advertiser dependence haven't changed. The balance sheet enables massive buybacks while funding AI infrastructure at scale. Alphabet trades at a valuation that implies far more disruption than evidence supports. This is a dominant platform evolving, not eroding.” | BULL | Q4 2025 Dec 31, 2025 | View Pitch |
Orbis Global Equity Fund Brent Jackson | “Sharp-eyed followers will have noticed the reintroduction of Alphabet to the portfolio. Approximately a year ago, we sold out of Google's owner, Alphabet, on the concern that its core business was being undermined by the rapid development of AI-powered Large Language Models (LLMs). ChatGPT's introduction seemed to catch Alphabet flat-footed, prompting a response that was first slow, then rushed and chaotic. How the facts have changed. With the recent launch of Gemini 3, Alphabet's LLM is widely perceived to have overtaken ChatGPT in capability, and is catching up in user numbers too. We now believe Alphabet has formidable competitive advantages which will be exceedingly difficult for competitors to overcome. A key one is the ability of Google Search and Gemini to riff off each other, with Gemini grounding responses in real-time information via Search, improving accuracy and reducing hallucinations. With YouTube and Android, Alphabet has data to draw on that AI competitors can't so easily access, alongside its own ready-made AI use cases. Alphabet also has a cost advantage from operating its own cloud and designing its own purpose-built chips. Despite fears, Alphabet's search revenues have accelerated, not declined. At 28 times next year's estimated earnings, headline metrics understate long-term earnings power; valuing the core implies assets like Waymo, quantum computing and Gemini effectively come for free. If AI takes over the world, Alphabet is best placed to win; if it doesn't, we return to a world where Google's core search business was never under threat. Welcome back to the portfolio, Alphabet, you'll fit in just fine. BSD Analysis: Alphabet remains a cash-printing machine, but AI has forced the market to finally price in self-cannibalization risk. The shift from links to answers threatens ad density even if users love the new experience. Its true moat is distribution—Chrome, Android, YouTube—and default placement, not just model performance. Google Cloud diversifies earnings, but it's capex-heavy and structurally lower-margin than search. YouTube is a quietly powerful monetization engine that benefits from creator economics and shifting TV budgets. Regulation is a slow valuation tax that rarely kills the business but caps the multiple. Buybacks defend per-share compounding when growth optics wobble. Alphabet's job is to evolve monetization without breaking the machine that funds everything.” | BULL | Q4 2025 Dec 31, 2025 | View Pitch |
Guinness Global Innovators Dr Ian Mortimer, CFA | “While Alphabet originally developed TPUs for internal AI workloads, the company may have uncovered a lucrative new revenue stream by offering AI chips to external buyers. The growing traction in Alphabet's AI hardware, along with better-than-expected Q3 earnings results and AI momentum, helped the stock become the Fund's second-best performer of the month. Importantly, rising interest in TPUs highlights a broader industry trend toward workload-optimised hardware. At a high level, GPUs remain highly valued for their flexibility and programmability, especially as AI models evolve rapidly. BSD Analysis: Alphabet remains one of the most powerful cash-generating machines ever built, but AI has finally introduced a credible challenge to search economics. The shift from links to answers threatens ad density even if user engagement stays high. Google's real moat is distribution—Chrome, Android, YouTube—not being first in models. Cloud growth helps diversify, but it's capital intensive and fiercely competitive. Optionality is vast, yet capital discipline is inconsistent. Regulation acts as a slow tax on valuation rather than a kill switch. Buybacks quietly protect per-share math. Alphabet's task is evolving monetization without cannibalizing the core.” | BULL | Q4 2025 Dec 1, 2025 | View Pitch |
Bretton Fund Stephen Dodson and Raphael de Balmann | “The main event for the fund this quarter was the favorable antitrust ruling for Alphabet's Google. The judge decided to mandate limited sharing of search data but did not implement harsher penalties, ” | BULL | Q3 2025 Oct 24, 2025 | View Pitch |
Bretton Fund Stephen Dodson and Raphael de Balmann | “The main event for the fund this quarter was the favorable antitrust ruling for Alphabet's Google. The judge decided to mandate limited sharing of search data but did not implement harsher penalties, leaving Google's core search business intact. The jump in Alphabet's shares added 3.1% to the fund this quarter. BSD Analysis: Alphabet's minimal regulatory impact from the antitrust case underscores resilience of its search franchise. The outcome maintains its economic moat and cash-generating power. With 20%+ FCF margins, AI integration, and multiple tailwinds in cloud and ads, GOOGL remains a core growth holding.” | BULL | Q3 2025 Oct 24, 2025 | View Pitch |
Fawkes Capital Management Xinyu Ru | “Alphabet was among the fund's largest contributors, as rising recognition for its leadership in artificial intelligence drove advertising price growth despite moderating click-through rates. The company's focus on high-quality shopping leads offset potential headwinds from AI chatbot disruption. The manager emphasized that AI-related infrastructure investment is being funded through internal cash flow rather than excessive leverage, signaling a sustainable growth trajectory. BSD Analysis: Fawkes Capital underscores Alphabet's structural advantage in AI due to its deep learning infrastructure and multi-platform integration. The company's dominant market position, robust balance sheet, and monetization of high-intent search categories underpin resilient free cash flow generation. Trading around 22x forward earnings with consistent double-digit revenue growth, Alphabet remains a long-duration AI compounder with pricing power and margin stability.” | BULL | Q3 2025 Oct 23, 2025 | View Pitch |
Boyar Value Group Jonathan I. Boyar | “Alphabet rebounded sharply, rising nearly 40% as concerns over antitrust challenges and AI competition eased. The company's formidable advantages—network effects, balance sheet strength, and vast R&D—support its market dominance. While some mega-cap valuations appear stretched, Alphabet's diversified revenue base and cloud profitability justify its leadership status. BSD Analysis: Alphabet's AI strategy is gaining traction across both consumer and enterprise segments, with Gemini integration reinforcing the company's ecosystem lock-in across Search, Workspace, and Android. Google Cloud continues to accelerate with stronger margin contribution and expanding enterprise adoption of AI tools and model hosting. YouTube remains a growth engine with premium video, CTV, and Shorts all driving improved monetization. Cost discipline is paying off, pushing margins higher even as Alphabet invests aggressively in data centers and TPU infrastructure. The stock trades at a reasonable multiple for a company with one of the most defensible moats in technology. With AI deepening Alphabet's platform advantage, long-term compounding remains firmly intact.” | BULL | Q3 2025 Oct 17, 2025 | View Pitch |
Alphyn Capital Management Samer Hakoura | “Alphabet's shares rose this quarter, partly driven by the resolution of a major regulatory overhang. On September 2nd, Judge Mehta issued the remedies decision in the DOJ antitrust case concerning Search. The outcome was far less severe than feared, as the court rejected the most draconian measures, including the structural divestiture of Chrome or Android and a broad ban on distribution payments. While Google is now restricted from paying for exclusive default placement (e.g., with Apple), it can still compensate partners for non-exclusive default status. The enacted remedies, which include tailored data sharing and syndication on commercial terms, appear manageable. With one major legal overhang out of the way (another case on the Ad tech monopoly remains outstanding), focus can now return to Alphabet's fundamentals, particularly its strong positioning in Artificial Intelligence. Google's advantage lies in its vertically integrated stack, spanning proprietary infrastructure (TPUs), leading models (Gemini), and scaled global distribution platforms (Search, Android). This full-stack approach allows for optimization and efficiency that competitors cannot easily match; for example, Google claims it has twice the power efficiency of competitors and a 33x efficiency in inference, demonstrating its progress in managing the cost of AI deployment. AI is enhancing Search utility through features like AI Overviews and Lens, driving increased user engagement. Additionally, Google Cloud is rapidly gaining traction, now exceeding a $50 billion annual run rate (growing 32% YoY) with a $106 billion backlog, as enterprises choose Google for its differentiated AI capabilities. This leadership is evident in Google's support for 9 of the top 10 AI labs and its processing roughly 4x the token volume of other providers. The company continues to deliver strong financial performance, with 14% revenue growth and strong operating margins in the last quarter, allowing it to fund an aggressive $85 billion capex plan for AI infrastructure BSD Analysis: Alphabet's AI stack and distribution advantages translate to durable share in search and cloud; the DOJ remedy removes tail risk without impairing the core model. The capex surge into TPUs/data centers is supported by high-margin ad and improving cloud profits, with Cloud's $50B+ run-rate and $106B backlog providing multi-year visibility. Watch unit economics of AI Overviews and inference costs—management's claimed efficiency edge must sustain margins as AI answers cannibalize links. Capital returns remain robust alongside reinvestment, and optionality from YouTube/Android monetization persists. Net: a compounding franchise with litigation risk tempered and multiple catalysts in AI and Cloud. :contentReference[oaicite:1]{index=1}” | BULL | Q3 2025 Oct 1, 2025 | View Pitch |
Baron Fifth Avenue Growth Fund Alex Umansky | “Generative AI models like ChatGPT have introduced a bear case for Alphabet for the first time in over 20 years, centering on the potential disruption of its core search business and massive advertising revenue stream. While Google has long held a near-monopolistic position in the search engine market, the rise of LLMs like ChatGPT could lead to a shift in user behavior and a potential erosion of Google's long-standing lead. For long-term investors, the central risk is that generative AI-powered interfaces could fundamentally change how users seek information, bypassing traditional search results and threatening Alphabet's most profitable advertising engine. However, Google has thus far only seen growth in the number of search queries supported by AI overviews and AI mode, which have also expanded the addressable opportunity to longer and more complex queries. Additionally, Google has seen paid clicks reaccelerate despite the rise of ChatGPT. More broadly, the bull case for Alphabet is multifaceted, leveraging its extensive AI expertise and vast ecosystem. Firstly, Alphabet's DeepMind is a leader in AI research, with a superior talent pipeline and retention, allowing the company to attract top-tier talent and convert research into products at scale – see the recent Veo 3 video generation model release or the significant progress that Alphabet has made with its Gemini models. Second, in contrast to rivals like Meta, Alphabet's diversified revenue streams and hardware investments, such as its custom tensor processing units, provide a crucial advantage. By developing its own full-stack AI infrastructure, from hardware to applications, Alphabet gains superior price-to-performance relative to general-purpose chips like GPUs. This approach enables a more cost-efficient scaling of AI workloads all else being equal. Third, Alphabet's scaled user aggregation surfaces, offers a significant competitive moat. The company has a "billion user club," with nine software products boasting over a billion users each, including Android, Chrome, YouTube, Gmail, and Google Maps. This massive, existing user base provides a substantial advantage by effectively lowering customer acquisition costs for new AI products. Critically, this scaled user base is a powerful magnet for developers, who are incentivized to build applications that integrate with Google's AI engine to reach a vast audience. This flywheel effect – where users attract developers, and a robust app ecosystem attracts more users – strengthens Alphabet's position at the heart of the AI landscape. A fourth forward-looking driver is the coming evolution in commerce, in which every piece of content becomes "shoppable." With its scaled surfaces like YouTube and Google Maps, combined with advanced AI, Alphabet is uniquely positioned to capitalize on this shift. For instance, AI models could recognize products in realxFFFEtime within videos or images, and via integrations with merchants, enable them to be shoppable just in time – this should strengthen Alphabet's positioning in commerce. Lastly, the recent resolution in the Department of Justice case against Alphabet, which was close to a best-case scenario, removes a significant overhang from the stock. Getting everything Alphabet has to offer across its platform and ecosystem at a 23 times P/E multiple is attractive for long-term investors in our view. BSD Analysis: Alphabet prints cash, but AI forces it to defend search economics for the first time in decades. The shift from links to answers threatens ad formats and pricing. Cloud is improving, yet remains a capex arms race. Optionality is everywhere, but discipline is uneven. Regulation is a slow bleed on multiples, not a kill shot. Buybacks quietly support per-share math. Bulls see an undervalued cash engine; bears see peak search rents. Alphabet's future is monetizing AI without eating itself.” | BULL | Q3 2025 Sep 30, 2025 | View Pitch |
Sands Capital Global Growth Fund Brian A. Christiansen, David E. Levanson, Daniel Pilling | “Alphabet advanced after a favorable U.S. antitrust ruling preserved its search distribution model. The company continues to innovate in AI, integrating generative search while maintaining strong engagement on YouTube and momentum in Google Cloud. Waymo has emerged as a leader in autonomous driving. BSD Analysis: Sands Capital views Alphabet as structurally resilient amid AI disruption concerns. Regulatory clarity supports monetization of new AI tools, while YouTube and Cloud deliver diversified revenue streams. Trading at ~22x forward earnings with FCF margins >25%, Alphabet remains a core compounding position benefiting from AI-driven advertising and productivity adoption.” | BULL | Q3 2025 Sep 30, 2025 | View Pitch |
Madison Sustainable Equity Fund Maya Bittar, Dave Geisler | “Alphabet's strong performance in the third quarter was driven by better-than-expected results and a favorable ruling in the Department of Justice's antitrust trial. The ruling rejected the most severe penalties and allowed Alphabet to retain its core business structure. Revenue rose 12% year-over-year in Search, 13% in YouTube Ads, and 31.7% in Google Cloud, which now generates over $50 billion annually. Alphabet has maintained double-digit revenue growth for eight consecutive quarters, easing investor concerns about GenAI disruption to its core ad model. Madison continues to view Alphabet as a durable, cash-generative compounder well-positioned to benefit from AI integration across its platforms. BSD Analysis: Alphabet's AI integration is finally showing tangible business impact — Search quality improvements, YouTube CTV momentum, and a sharply improving Google Cloud margin profile. The company's operating discipline has structurally raised profitability. Despite its position at the center of the digital economy, Alphabet trades at a discount to its long-term earnings power. As AI adoption deepens, GOOGL remains one of the clearest mega-cap compounders.” | BULL | Q3 2025 Sep 30, 2025 | View Pitch |
Harris Associates Concentrated Strategy Tony Coniaris | “Alphabet was a contributor during the quarter. The technology conglomerate's stock price appreciated following a favorable ruling in the Google Search antitrust case and second-quarter earnings that exceeded expectations across the board. Innovations in the Google Search experience are driving both engagement and revenue benefits. Moreover, Cloud growth is accelerating thanks to robust demand for AI workloads. We continue to believe Alphabet is undervalued on a sum-of-the-parts basis and see potential for the company's AI leadership to drive further upside across the portfolio. BSD Analysis: The fund maintains a bullish stance on Alphabet, emphasizing its AI-driven monetization across Search and Cloud. With forward P/E ~23x and strong free cash flow, Alphabet remains underappreciated given its diversification. Legal overhangs are easing, and AI integration across products like Gemini and Vertex boost revenue visibility.” | BULL | Q3 2025 Sep 30, 2025 | View Pitch |
GreensKeeper Value Fund Michael P. McCloskey | “Our second-best performer in the quarter was Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) +13.5%. During the quarter, Alphabet hosted its annual developer conference, highlighting its advancements in AI tools across its product suite. Google's AI Overview product continues to gain traction with over 1.5 billion monthly users, and its direct ChatGPT competitor, Gemini, is now used by more than 400 million people each month. Recent updates have reinstated the company's models to the top of the AI power rankings. Importantly for shareholders, AI Overviews have been increasing the total number of queries at Google, which the company is monetizing at a similar rate to traditional search. Google's business fundamentals remain healthy, with operating earnings growing 20% in Q1. BSD Analysis: Alphabet is executing a major AI transition from a position of strength, with massive user scale, top-tier model performance, and strong early monetization indicators via AI-enhanced search. Query growth driven by AI Overviews signals incremental engagement, boosting long-term ad inventory and monetization capacity. Gemini's fast adoption reinforces Alphabet's competitive moat across consumer and enterprise AI applications. With operating income growing 20% and Cloud accelerating, Alphabet remains fundamentally strong while still trading at a reasonable multiple relative to its durable growth prospects. Continued gains in AI relevance, monetization efficiency, and infrastructure leadership position the company for sustained long-term compounding.” | BULL | Q2 2025 Jul 15, 2025 | View Pitch |
Diranko Capital David Diranko | “The manager indicates that Alphabet's historical growth was heavily aided by a low-inflation, low-interest-rate environment that is now ending. Consequently, passive market-cap weighted exposure to such mega-caps is unlikely to yield past results.” | BEAR | Q2 2025 Jul 4, 2025 | View Pitch |
Auxier Asset Management Jeff Auxier | “AI disruption has been a growing concern for many investors as they are uncertain of the long-term consequences of this technology. Alphabet has been at the front of AI disruption discussions. Some feared the impact of generative AI tools like ChatGPT on Google Search, but Alphabet has been proactive in defending their moat in search by releasing their own tools. Despite the rapid increase in generative AI use, Google Search still controls about 89.71% of the global search market. The biggest hurdle that AI companies like OpenAI face is that generative AI products are difficult to monetize and are not yet profitable, which gives Alphabet a distinct advantage in search right now. Another strength is Alphabet's content services like YouTube. According to NieLondon Stock Exchangen data, YouTube accounts for 12.5% of all US TV viewing time, higher than any other distributor, without needing to spend billions on creating content for their platform. Netflix is spending over $20 billion for their content this year. With Google and YouTube, Alphabet has the two most visited websites in the world; YouTube has over four times as many monthly visits as the next closest competitor. Alphabet's dominant market position is enhanced with a strong balance sheet currently consisting of over $95.148 billion in cash and marketable securities. Alphabet continues to execute, forecasting 2025 and 2026 earnings per share of $9.65 and $10.25, respectively. Additional uncertainty overhangs the stock from Judge Mehta's anticipated ruling on the “search monopoly” claim due in August. While he has not ruled out the possibility of significant remedies such as forcing a sale of Chrome, he has voiced skepticism over the effectiveness of structural breakups. BSD Analysis: Alphabet is the AI infrastructure superpower the market still treats like a mature ad company. Search remains a cash geyser, YouTube is devouring linear video, and Google Cloud's AI workload growth is finally punching through to margins. With TPUs, massive data centers, and proprietary foundation models, Google owns more layers of the AI stack than any competitor besides NVIDIA. The capex surge isn't a risk — it's a moat under construction. Alphabet is quietly reshaping the compute economy while being priced like a normal megacap.” | BULL | Q2 2025 Jun 30, 2025 | View Pitch |
Van Der Mandele Arar Fund Joost van der Mandele | “The manager liquidated the fund's entire position in Alphabet despite its strong gains and undervaluation. While Waymo represents a valuable autonomous driving leader, Google Search's 92% market share is highly vulnerable to disruption as alternative LLMs achieve functional equivalence, threatening search margins and market share. Additionally, political uncertainties regarding EU-US retaliatory tariffs pose risks to US software exports.” | BEAR | Q1 2025 Apr 3, 2025 | View Pitch |
Ghosh Capital Shomik Ghosh | “Despite being structurally bullish on the company long-term, the manager is not fully concentrated in Alphabet today due to a lack of valuation dislocation relative to its peers. The entire mega-cap sector has pulled down in tandem, leaving minimal relative mispricing.” | BULL | Q1 2025 Apr 2, 2025 | View Pitch |
Alluvium Global Fund Stuart Pearce, Alexis Delloye | “Despite reporting sound operating results, Alphabet's stock declined due to broader tech sector weakness and investor anxiety over its large capital expenditure plans. The fund updated its model to incorporate the Wiz acquisition and higher capex, concluding that the stock now trades at an appealing discount to its intrinsic value.” | BULL | Q1 2025 Mar 1, 2025 | View Pitch |
Bretton Fund Stephen Dodson and Raphael de Balmann | “Alphabet remains a primary fund holding driven by strong revenue growth across digital advertising and YouTube's dominant market share in video streaming. Although artificial intelligence alternatives present long-term competitive risks, Google's core monetization channels and bargain valuation relative to its mid-teens projected earnings growth support a bullish posture.” | BULL | Q4 2024 Dec 31, 2024 | View Pitch |
Ariel Appreciation Fund John W. Rogers | “Alphabet is referenced alongside other dominant technology companies that comprised the bulk of index gains.” | BULL | Q4 2024 Dec 31, 2024 | View Pitch |
Qualivian Investment Partners Aamer Khan and Cyril Malak | “Alphabet posted strong Q2 results driven by Search and Cloud growth alongside expanding operating margins. Despite market concerns around AI capital expenditures, the manager retains high conviction in the company's long-term earnings and cash flow compounding power.” | BULL | Q2 2024 Jun 30, 2024 | View Pitch |
Giverny Capital Asset Management David M. Poppe | “Alphabet generated significant positive returns for the portfolio during the first half of the year, gaining 31%. The manager values Alphabet's strong exposure to AI growth alongside a relatively reasonable valuation of 24x earnings compared to other mega-cap tech peers.” | BULL | Q2 2024 Jun 30, 2024 | View Pitch |
Vulcan Value Partners - All Cap C.T. Fitzpatrick | “Alphabet remains a key portfolio holding among mega-cap technology leaders that rebounded from 2022 underperformance to become a major contributor in 2023. Vulcan values Alphabet's distinct competitive strengths compared to broader market peers.” | BULL | Q4 2023 Dec 31, 2023 | View Pitch |
Each excerpt above is the manager's commentary on this ticker specifically. The full letter has the rest of their portfolio thinking, risk discussion, and broader institutional context.