Alphabet, the parent company of Google, is closing in on Nvidia for the title of the world’s most valuable company, capping a year-long rally fueled by surging demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure. As of Saturday, May 9, Alphabet’s market capitalization stood at roughly $4.81 trillion, trailing Nvidia by a narrowing margin after briefly surpassing its rival in after-hours trading earlier in the week.
The stock has climbed approximately 160% over the past year, with shares gaining nearly 14% in the week following Alphabet’s first-quarter earnings report on April 29. That report showed revenue of roughly $110 billion, a 22% increase year over year that topped analyst expectations. Net income surged 81% to $62.6 billion.
Google Cloud Powers the Rally
The standout was Google Cloud, which posted $20 billion in first-quarter revenue — a 63% jump from the prior year that far exceeded Wall Street’s $18 billion forecast. Operating income for the cloud unit tripled to $6.6 billion, and margins expanded from 9.4% to 32.9%. The cloud backlog nearly doubled to more than $460 billion, offering strong multi-year revenue visibility.
JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth, who has called Alphabet his top pick heading into 2026, raised his price target to $445 following the earnings report. “We believe Google can sustain low to mid-teens percentage growth in Search revenues from a substantial base,” Anmuth wrote in January, citing AI leadership and global reach as catalysts.
Anthropic Deal Raises Questions
Not all analysts are uniformly bullish. The Information reported on May 5 that Anthropic has committed to spending $200 billion on Google Cloud over five years as part of an April agreement for multiple gigawatts of processing capacity. The deal, which also involves chipmaker Broadcom, suggests Anthropic accounts for more than 40% of Google Cloud’s disclosed backlog.
Some observers have flagged concentration risk, noting that contracts from Anthropic and OpenAI now represent more than half of the roughly $2 trillion in backlog held by major cloud providers including Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. Alphabet is also investing up to $40 billion in Anthropic, deepening the entanglement between the two companies.
The Path to Number One
The gap between the two tech giants has narrowed rapidly. As recently as early May, Nvidia’s market cap sat at roughly $4.79 trillion to Alphabet’s $4.67 trillion, according to Reuters. CNBC reported on May 1 that options traders were pricing in a 53% probability that Alphabet shares would reach $401 — enough to match Nvidia’s valuation — before May 15. Nvidia’s earnings report, scheduled for May 20, could prove pivotal; its stock has declined following four of its last five earnings announcements.
