Key Points
-
Alphabet’s total revenue rose 18% year over year in the fourth quarter of 2025.
-
The tech giant’s cloud computing segment saw its operating income more than double to $5.3 billion.
-
Management anticipates 2026 capital expenditures in the range of $175 billion to $185 billion.
When investors look at Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG)(NASDAQ: GOOGL), they see a dominant brand with strong top-line momentum. The search giant’s business is growing fast, with total company revenue rising 18% year over year to $113.8 billion in the fourth quarter of 2025.
But underneath the surface, the company is undergoing a capital-intensive transition to support artificial intelligence (AI).
Will AI create the world’s first trillionaire? Our team just released a report on the one little-known company, called an “Indispensable Monopoly” providing the critical technology Nvidia and Intel both need. Continue »
With Alphabet’s revenue rising rapidly while it spends aggressively, where could the stock be five years from now?
The answer might surprise you. Despite Alphabet’s already massive size (the company has a market capitalization of more than $3.6 trillion as of this writing), I think its stock price is likely to trade at a far higher level in five years.
The name, Alphabet.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
A soaring cloud computing business
A key driver of Alphabet’s recent success is its increasingly diversified business. Specifically, the company’s Google Cloud segment (cloud computing) saw revenue jump 48% year over year to $17.7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2025.
And this isn’t just top-line growth. It is highly profitable. Impressively, the segment’s operating income soared from roughly $2.1 billion in the fourth quarter of 2024 to $5.3 billion in the most recent quarter.
But Alphabet’s core business is also still firing on all cylinders. The company’s “Google Search & other” segment saw revenue increase 17% year over year to $63.1 billion in the fourth quarter. In addition, YouTube ads revenue rose 9% year over year.
This broad-based growth translated into significant profitability. Alphabet’s fourth-quarter net income increased 30% year over year to $34.5 billion.
The capital expenditure trade-off
Profitability is key for Alphabet right now, as it will need a lot of cash. As the company continues to invest heavily in AI infrastructure, its highly profitable, rapidly expanding cloud division and cash-rich search business help fund its extreme appetite for more computing.
Alphabet management said its 2026 capital expenditures are anticipated to be in the range of (brace yourself) $175 billion to $185 billion.
This is an enormous sum, reflecting management’s commitment to building out the necessary data center and computing infrastructure to maintain its technical leadership. For context, that represents nearly double the $91.4 billion Alphabet spent on capital expenditures in 2025.
But there’s good reason for management’s aggressive investments. AI demand is exploding.
“We’re seeing our AI investments and infrastructure drive revenue and growth across the board,” explained Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai in the company’s fourth-quarter earnings release.
Of course, while spending like this is a risk, it’s also an opportunity — and I believe Alphabet will capitalize on it while managing the risks prudently.
Alphabet stock: a five-year forecast
And this brings me to my forecast.
If we look five years down the road, I believe it’s reasonable to expect the company’s strong top-line momentum and soaring cloud computing profitability to drive robust bottom-line results over a five-year period. If the company effectively monetizes its AI investments, I believe it can grow earnings per share fast enough to double over the next five years. Additionally, I believe the market will continue rewarding Alphabet with a price-to-earnings ratio of around 28 five years from now, given the company’s long history of execution.
Under this scenario, the stock would double in five years from its price of about $300 today, putting the share price at about $600.
This, of course, is not a guarantee, but rather a way to visualize how successful execution over the years can pay off for shareholders if things go well. Some key risks, of course, are that competition intensifies, or Alphabet’s massive capital investments don’t pay off handsomely.
Given the company’s big capital spending, Alphabet remains a high-risk stock. But given its momentum in the cloud and its market leadership in search, I think it’s a bet worth making. Still, because of the elevated uncertainty around capital intensity, I’d keep any position in the stock small for now.
Should you buy stock in Alphabet right now?
Before you buy stock in Alphabet, consider this:
The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Alphabet wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.
Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $534,008!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,090,073!*
Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 949% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 192% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built by individual investors for individual investors.
*Stock Advisor returns as of March 7, 2026.
Daniel Sparks and his clients have no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.