Feb 06, 2026
3 min read
The CEO of Google's parent company celebrated a record year of Gemini and cloud business progress.The company will generate $73.3 billion in free cash flow by 2025.
OpenAI seeks new funding, Alphabet has AI success and investment muscle
The CEO of Google's parent company highlights Gemini and cloud business progress in a record year.The company will generate 73.3 billion dollars in free cash flow in 2025.
If at the beginning of 2025 Wall Street was convinced that OpenAI was the winner in the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution against groups like Alphabet, which were lagging behind, a year later that vision seems to have changed almost completely.In a conference with investors and analysts this Wednesday, after the presentation of the 2025 accounts, Alphabet's CEO, Sundar Pichai, began his appearance with a very direct phrase: "This has been a fantastic quarter for Alphabet. The launch of Gemini 3 was an important milestone and we are in an extraordinary moment."
He did not explicitly mention OpenAI, but he boasted about ChatGPT's direct competitor, Gemini, saying it had reached 750 million monthly active users, an increase of 100 million from the previous quarter. Although Pichai highlighted to investors that Gemini Enterprise has more than 8 million paid seats since its launch four months ago, that number is still lower than ChatGPT's nearly 800 million. According to the manager, more than 120,000 companies already use theGemini.
Pichai said that Alphabet, which is also responsible for YouTube, for the first time reached 400,000 million dollars (about 340,000 million euros) in the business sector, 15% more, and a growth of 48% in cloud and financial contracts in this part of 240,000 million, 55% more after the demand for services.
Alphabet posted $73.3 billion in free cash flow in 2025, up from $24 billion in the fourth quarter, and $120.8 billion in cash and cash equivalents.In this wave, the company presented forecasts for 2026 that include investments between 175,000 and 185,000 million in new infrastructure for AI, which is almost double from 2025.
The figures announced by Alphabet coincide with an important time for OpenAI, which is working on a new funding round of about $100 billion that could include Nvidia, Amazon, Microsoft, SoftBank, as well as investment groups from the US and Arab countries, with a possible public offering on the horizon.The company has accelerated contacts to complete the deal, which could be worth between $750,000 million and $830,000 million.
Concerns about OpenAI's ability to finance its investment commitments in AI infrastructure have spread in the market, a situation that has punished companies associated with startups led by Sam Altman on the stock market.Since last September, Microsoft, which owns about 27% of the capital of OpenAI, has lost more than 20%, while Oracle, which has a contract with the startup for more than 300 billion, has lost half of its value.
By contrast, Alphabet's shares rose nearly 35% during the same period, bringing its market cap to $4 trillion, nearly five times the price OpenAI will receive in its new funding round.
In this context, Pichai described several of Alphabet's advances in artificial intelligence: new processing units (TPUs) that join Nvidia's GPUs;LM Arena models in text, vision and image;proprietary Gemini models that process 10 billion tokens per minute through direct APIs used by customers;introduction of a new open AI standard for agency trading;or Citadel Securities, Mercedes Contracts with groups such as Benz, Airbus and Honeywell.
"I think that the area of the LLM is an exciting path, and I think that 2026 will continue to show that progress. Obviously, we are improving these models before training, after training, during computer-examination in many times; and we are introducing multimodal models with the capabilities of institutions. Also, Picha has shown great progress," Picha said.
The manager also planned traditional Google businesses, such as search or YouTube, which also included AI tools.Therefore, Google Services increased by 14%, to 95.9 billion dollars, with a 17% increase in Google Search, while YouTube exceeded 60 billion dollars in revenue.
As for autonomous vehicle subsidiary Waymo, it noted that it has closed a $16 billion funding round to accelerate its global expansion with the US, UK and Japan as its first markets."It has surpassed 20 million, now offers more than 400,000 trips per week, and recently launched the service in its sixth market, Miami," Pichai said.Alphabet announced that it recognized stock-based compensation related to Waymo's $2.1 billion investment round.
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