Alphabet’s 160% One-Year Rally

CNBC reported Sunday that Alphabet has surged roughly 160% over the past year. That run briefly pushed the company past Nvidia in market capitalisation during after-hours trading this week.

From AI Laggard to Full-Stack Contender

The turnaround is striking. Alphabet was widely considered vulnerable when the generative AI boom first erupted. Today, Wall Street is pricing in a very different story.

Investors now credit the company’s breadth. Alphabet controls its own AI models through Gemini and DeepMind, operates Google Cloud for compute, designs proprietary tensor processing units as a rival to Nvidia GPUs, and distributes AI features across Search, YouTube, and Android.

Managing partner Gene Munster of Deepwater Asset Management told CNBC that Google is one of only two companies owning most of the AI stack. He cited chips, models, infrastructure, and distribution as key advantages. The other company he named was Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which merged with xAI in February at a $1.75 trillion valuation.

Wall Street Turns Bullish After Standout Quarter

Following Alphabet’s most recent earnings report, analysts at JPMorgan named the stock their top overall pick across the technology sector. The bank highlighted accelerating growth and a cloud backlog that roughly doubled to $462 billion.

Analysts at Mizuho separately raised their price target, arguing that consensus forecasts still meaningfully underestimate Google Cloud revenue and operating income over the next two years.

Alphabet closed last week with a market capitalisation of $4.8 trillion, trailing only Nvidia at $5.2 trillion. The gap narrowed sharply after reports emerged that AI model developer Anthropic committed to spend $200 billion on Google Cloud compute over five years.

Concentration Risk Clouds the Backlog Story

Not everyone is convinced the picture is clean. The Anthropic commitment, if verified at that scale, could account for more than 40% of Alphabet’s total contracted cloud revenue. That raises questions about customer concentration.

Analyst Gil Luria of D.A. Davidson drew a comparison to Oracle, whose backlog surged in late 2024 largely due to a single arrangement with OpenAI. Luria, who holds a neutral stance on Alphabet shares, told CNBC that Alphabet signalled a doubled backlog without disclosing that one deal drove nearly all of the increase.

Anthropic itself is heavily funded by Alphabet and spends much of that capital back on Google Cloud and TPUs, a circular dynamic some analysts view as a risk rather than a strength.

Among the other large-cap technology companies, chip designer Broadcom ranks second for one-year returns, up approximately 107% over the same period.

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