Alphabet reported strong second-quarter 2026 results, with growth in advertising and cloud computing, both increasingly driven by artificial intelligence, pushing revenue and profit well beyond Wall Street's expectations. YouTube advertising revenue alone surpassed $11 billion, up 13 per cent on the same period last year, though this was overshadowed by even stronger gains elsewhere in the business, underlining how central AI has become to the company's growth strategy.

Across the whole of Alphabet, revenue rose 24 per cent year-on-year to $120 billion, with total advertising revenue (spanning Search, YouTube and Google Network) reaching $81.6 billion, of which Google Search alone contributed $63.3 billion. Subscriptions added $12.9 billion and cloud services almost $25 billion, with Google Cloud revenue growth accelerating to 82 per cent, helping push quarterly profit above $112 billion, or $9.11 per share. Chief executive Sundar Pichai credited the results largely to AI investment, noting that Gemini Enterprise is now used by nearly 90 per cent of Fortune 100 companies, the Gemini app has 950 million monthly active users, and Gemini models process 22 billion API tokens per minute; he also pointed to YouTube's role during the FIFA World Cup 2026, which drew over 1.7 billion unique viewers to related videos.