AI wins have Alphabet poised to become world’s biggest company

The Google logo is seen outside a building housing Google offices in Beijing on February 4, 2025. Photo by GREG BAKER/AFP via Getty Images

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Over the past year, Alphabet Inc. has gone from an artificial intelligence afterthought to the one firm in the market with dominant positions in nearly every aspect of the technology. Now it’s on the brink of overtaking AI chip giant Nvidia Corp. as the largest company in the world.

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“Alphabet holds a significant spot in almost every corner of the AI ecosystem, and the combination of everything it offers puts it in a prime position to be the biggest winner of AI,” said Luke O’Neill, chief investment officer at CooksonPeirce Wealth Management, which owns stakes in Alphabet and Nvidia.

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Google’s parent closed Friday with a market capitalization of US$4.8 trillion. Nvidia was below that level on Tuesday, but a three-day rally into the end of the week pushed it to US$5.2 trillion.

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The gap between the two has narrowed considerably over the past six months, as Alphabet shares have been on a tear, including a 34 per cent gain in April, its best month since 2004. On Oct. 31, Nvidia’s market capitalization was US$4.9 trillion and Alphabet’s was less than US$3.4 trillion. Since then, Alphabet’s stock price has soared 40 per cent while Nvidia’s is up just 6.3 per cent, trailing the S&P 500 Index and the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 Index. 

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Alphabet shares fell as much as 2.3 per cent on Monday, while Nvidia flipped between small gains and losses

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Investors say it’s logical that Alphabet would ultimately seize the title of world’s largest company because its tentacles reach into so many important parts of the technology industry and the AI trade.

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Nvidia may be the leader in building AI chips, but Alphabet has a rival product that’s gaining favor. It also owns a bunch of massive businesses like Google Search, Google Cloud, YouTube and Waymo. In addition, Alphabet’s Gemini AI model is considered one of the best in the industry, and the company is a significant investor in Anthropic, which has another leading model in Claude.

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“Nvidia is a great company, but it has the potential to be far more cyclical should AI spending slow down,” O’Neill said. “Alphabet is so diversified that if one business falters, the others can pick up the slack. You can’t get a wider competitive moat than Alphabet has, and it seems like THE company of the internet era. So it would make sense if it were the biggest.”

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Alphabet was the biggest stock in the market in early 2016 when it briefly surpassed Apple. As of Friday, Apple’s market cap is US$4.3 trillion, followed by Microsoft Corp. at US$3.1 trillion and Amazon.com Inc. at US$2.9 trillion.

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This earnings season offered a demonstration of how Alphabet is emerging as the standout winner among Big Tech. Not only did it post stronger-than-expected growth in its search and cloud businesses, but the company’s tensor processing unit, or TPU, AI chips have become a key attraction for customers. They’ll soon be available for Google Cloud clients to run in their own data centers, chief executive Sundar Pichai said.

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Alphabet is expected to generate about US$3 billion of revenue from TPU-related infrastructure in 2026 and US$25 billion in 2027, Citizens analyst Andrew Boone wrote in a note to clients on May 5.