In 2015, Alphabet invested $900 million in SpaceX at a reported $12 billion valuation. As of early 2026, SpaceX’s combined valuation with xAI is estimated at $1.25 trillion. After accounting for share dilution, Alphabet’s remaining interest is believed to be roughly 7 percent, implying a stake currently valued between $87 billion and $90 billion. Analysts project upside toward $100 billion if SpaceX pursues an IPO by mid-2026. Alphabet recognized an $8 billion unrealized gain in the first quarter of 2025 when SpaceX’s private valuation surged, quietly transforming what was once a modest moonshot investment into potentially the company’s single largest asset by value.

During its fourth-quarter results, Alphabet disclosed plans to more than double capital expenditures in 2026 to a range of $175 billion–$185 billion, up from $91.5 billion in 2025. Approximately 60 percent of this outlay will fund server capacity for machine-learning workloads, while the remaining 40 percent will underwrite new data centers and network upgrades. This spending surge responds to sustained supply constraints, with CEO Sundar Pichai noting that Alphabet processes over 10 billion AI tokens per minute and supports 750 million monthly active users of its Gemini AI assistant. The ramped-up expenditure underpins both enterprise AI contracts—evidenced by a $240 billion Google Cloud backlog, up 55 percent sequentially—and consumer-facing services powered by foundation models.

Alphabet reported that YouTube now has 325 million paid subscribers across its premium tiers, up from 300 million just three months prior. Annual YouTube revenue—including ad sales and subscriptions—reached $60 billion in 2025, a 17 percent year-over-year increase. Fourth-quarter ad revenue grew 9 percent to $11.38 billion, slightly below consensus estimates, while strong uptake of the ad-free subscription tier and expansion of AI-driven content tools contributed to accelerating user engagement. The company highlighted that more than 1 million channels have adopted its AI creation suite and that short-form video ads in select markets now yield higher per-hour ad rates than traditional in-stream spots.