Doanh thu quý 3 của Google đạt 127,6 tỷ USD, chi tiêu cho AI còn mạnh tay hơn, dòng tiền mặt báo động đỏ

Original Author: Li Hailun

Original Editor: Xu Qingyang

Original Source: Tencent Technology

Local time in the United States on October 28, Google's parent company Alphabet released its financial report for the third quarter of the 2026 fiscal year, ended September 30.

Although revenue maintained growth, Alphabet's third-quarter revenue, adjusted earnings per share, and free cash flow were all below Wall Street expectations, and future capital expenditures will further increase, causing the company's stock price to fall 9.79% in after-hours trading to $293.09.

The financial report showed that Alphabet's third-quarter revenue reached $127.577 billion, an increase of 25% from $102.346 billion in the same period last year. Although Alphabet's revenue grew 25% year-over-year, achieving double-digit growth for the 13th consecutive quarter, the actual third-quarter revenue of $127.577 billion was still below the $128.22 billion expected by Wall Street analysts.

Operating profit reached $40.576 billion, up 30% year-over-year; operating margin was 32%, higher than 31% in the same period last year.

In terms of net profit, although Alphabet's third-quarter revenue grew 25% year-over-year, net profit attributable to common shareholders fell 25% year-over-year, from $34.979 billion in the same period last year to $26.170 billion.

The main reason was that changes in the fair value of equity securities turned other gains and losses from a gain of $12.759 billion in the same period last year to a loss of $8.221 billion, of which net losses from changes in the fair value of equity securities amounted to $8.664 billion. Diluted earnings per share were $2.12, lower than $2.87 in the same period last year; calculated on a basis excluding the impact of equity securities losses, earnings per share were $2.67, below the $3.02 expected by Wall Street analysts.

In terms of cash flow, Alphabet's third-quarter free cash flow was negative $9.065 billion, compared with positive $24.461 billion in the same period last year, a year-over-year decrease of $33.526 billion. Capital expenditures during the same period reached $51.355 billion, an increase of about 114% from $23.953 billion as of the end of 2025.

The company maintained its full-year 2026 capital expenditure guidance of $195 billion to $205 billion and expects capital expenditures to increase significantly in 2027.

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said in the financial report that AI investment is driving search business growth, with search query volume, including commercial queries, growing at the fastest year-over-year rate in the past five years. Google Cloud revenue grew 103% year-over-year, and first-party model APIs process nearly 32 billion tokens per minute, more than four times that of a year ago. In consumer products, Gemini App users reached 1 billion, making it the fastest-growing product in Google's history; global paid subscribers to YouTube Music and Premium also exceeded 150 million.

Capital Expenditures Continue to Grow

As of September 30, 2026, Alphabet's total assets reached $1,003.312 billion, surpassing $1 trillion, a substantial increase from $595.281 billion at the end of 2025. Among them, net fixed assets reached $372.827 billion, higher than $246.597 billion at the end of 2025; marketable securities reached $208.764 billion; cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities totaled $265.098 billion.

In the third quarter, Alphabet's capital expenditures further expanded, reaching $51.355 billion, an increase of about 114% from $23.953 billion in the same period last year, mainly reflecting the company's continued investment in AI computing power and related infrastructure, as well as inventory buildup required to expand TPU system sales, which also put pressure on cash flow. At the same time, although the company's revenue maintained growth, the sharp increase in capital expenditures still put pressure on cash flow, pushing free cash flow from positive $24.551 billion in the same period last year to negative $9.065 billion, below analysts' expectation of negative $2.7 billion.

In terms of debt, Alphabet's long-term debt rose to $125.102 billion, a substantial increase from $46.547 billion as of the end of 2025. The company maintained its full-year 2026 capital expenditure guidance of $195 billion to $205 billion and expects capital expenditures to grow further significantly in 2027. As investment in AI infrastructure continues to expand, the company's financing needs and debt scale have also risen accordingly.

One data point in Alphabet's financial report was particularly noteworthy: unallocated costs at the Alphabet level reached as high as $7.655 billion (compared with $4.467 billion in the same period last year). This expense mainly involves group-shared AI R&D activities, including personnel compensation and technical infrastructure usage costs required for general AI model development, as well as some group management expenses. As AI R&D continues to advance, related costs at the Alphabet group level are also increasing.

AI infrastructure investment and its impact on cash flow have become a common topic in tech giants' financial reports. Local time on October 21, Meta released its third-quarter 2026 financial report. The company's advertising business maintained growth, but AI infrastructure investment continued to expand, and capital expenditures climbed further.

In the third quarter, Meta's capital expenditures were $33.942 billion, or $34.906 billion including finance leases; operating cash flow during the same period was $32.786 billion, and free cash flow turned negative at $2.12 billion. The company also raised the upper end of its full-year capital expenditure guidance to $145 billion. After the financial report was released, Meta's stock price fell nearly 7% on the following trading day.

Oracle released a different signal. Local time on October 28, the company announced capital expenditure and financing arrangements for the coming years at its investor day, expecting capital expenditures to peak in the next few years, no external financing exceeding $20 billion before fiscal 2030, and free cash flow to turn positive in the second half of fiscal 2028. After the news was announced, Oracle's stock price rose more than 12%.

While Meta and Alphabet continue to increase investment in AI infrastructure, Oracle expects capital expenditures to peak in the next few years and plans to control the scale of external financing. Tech giants' investment strategies in AI infrastructure are beginning to show differences, and the market's focus is gradually shifting to return on investment: whether continuously expanding computing power investment can bring corresponding business growth, and whether companies can maintain healthy cash flow during expansion.

Computing Power Money Printer Fully Erupts

In the third quarter, Google Cloud revenue reached $30.709 billion, compared with $15.157 billion in the same period last year, a sharp year-over-year increase of 103%, significantly exceeding the $28.7 billion generally expected by analysts. Profitability also improved simultaneously, with segment operating profit rising sharply from $3.59 billion in the same period last year to $11.121 billion, and operating margin rising to about 36.2%.

Enterprise demand for AI infrastructure and solutions is the core driver of Google Cloud's business explosion.

As more and more enterprises deploy AI models into actual business operations, demand for computing power, cloud platforms, and model services continues to increase. Alphabet said that TPU system sales also made an important contribution to Google Cloud revenue growth, reflecting that enterprise customers' demand for AI computing infrastructure is accelerating into actual orders and revenue.

Usage of model services is also growing rapidly. Alphabet disclosed that Google's flagship first-party model APIs process nearly 32 billion tokens per minute, more than four times the processing volume a year earlier and up about 40% from the previous quarter.

Google Cloud's revenue doubling and substantial operating profit growth show that Alphabet's huge investment in AI has begun to translate into considerable revenue and profit through its cloud business. Compared with the cash flow pressure brought by continuously rising capital expenditures, the rapid growth of the cloud business also provides the company with an important window to observe the return on AI investment (ROI).

However, as subsequent infrastructure investment continues to expand, whether Google Cloud can maintain its current growth rate and whether profit growth can continue to cover higher computing power construction costs remain focuses of the market.

Core Advertising and Search Grow Steadily

As Google's traditional core cash cow, the Google Services segment showed strong resilience in the third quarter, generating revenue of $96.302 billion (compared with $87.052 billion in the same period last year) and operating profit of $39.157 billion (compared with $33.527 billion in the same period last year).

Among them, "Google Search & Other" revenue reached $63.350 billion, up 12% year-over-year, but below analysts' expectation of $64.96 billion. There had long been concerns that generative AI would divert traffic from traditional search engines, but as Pichai emphasized: AI investment has not weakened search; instead, it has driven year-over-year search query volume (including commercial queries) to the highest growth rate in the past five years.

At the same time, YouTube advertising revenue reached $11.207 billion, up 9.2% year-over-year; Google Network advertising revenue was $7.455 billion.

In the consumer AI ecosystem, active users of the flagship AI app Gemini App officially surpassed the 1 billion mark, making it the fastest-growing consumer product in Google's history. At the same time, global paid subscribers to YouTube Music and Premium also exceeded 150 million.

In addition, the Other Bets segment generated revenue of $372 million, compared with $344 million in the same period last year; operating loss widened to $2.047 billion, compared with a loss of $1.426 billion in the same period last year.

From a global geographic perspective, the U.S. domestic market continued to serve as the core growth engine, with third-quarter revenue reaching $67.681 billion, higher than $60.846 billion in the second quarter of this year.

Overseas markets also performed steadily. Among them, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa revenue was $32.695 billion, Asia-Pacific revenue was $19.906 billion, and Other Americas revenue was $7.10 billion, with all major global regions maintaining steady performance.

Looking at this report card, on the one hand, the 25% revenue surge, doubled Google Cloud business, and Gemini's continuously expanding user scale show that Alphabet's commercial capabilities in AI infrastructure, model services, and consumer applications are strengthening; on the other hand, the clearly expanded debt scale and continuously climbing capital expenditures also keep the market on edge.

In this "computing power long march" jointly bet on by the giants, Alphabet has demonstrated firm strategic resolve. For an empire with half a trillion dollars in annualized revenue, whether the aggressively advancing AI infrastructure can deliver super returns exceeding costs in the future will become the core test determining its valuation trajectory in the next stage.

The following is a condensed transcript of Alphabet's third-quarter earnings analyst call:

Pichai's Remarks: Let me first focus on the Gemini 4 series frontier models. Two weeks after Argon's release, demand and usage are strong; on the developer platform, first-week usage climbed 3.5 times as fast as Gemini 3, even with capacity constraints.

Argon performs outstandingly in finance, law, cybersecurity, and science. Developers and cloud customers have already used it to clarify legacy codebases, accelerate scientific research, robotics, discover product improvements, and handle domain-specific tasks requiring deep reasoning. Inside Google, over the past few weeks, the Chrome, Ads, and Search teams have used Argon to write and optimize code faster, increasing code delivery by 35% and reducing errors by 30%.

Argon is only the beginning of the Gemini 4 series. Today we also released Carbon, our strongest frontier model, with advanced cybersecurity and long-horizon capabilities, ranking first with 59 points on the recently updated Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index. Carbon outperforms Argon in almost all areas, including full-stack web development, multimodal understanding, complex knowledge work, and scientific reasoning. We are first rolling out Carbon to selected trusted cybersecurity defenders before expanding access, and it is undergoing testing by the U.S. government.

In addition to the Gemini 4 series, on October 27 we released Genie 4, our most advanced world model to date, capable of simulating safe, realistic, interactive worlds in real time and supporting native audio, an important cornerstone for training robots and agents. This rapid progress highlights our extraordinary model momentum.

We have entered a stage where AI helps improve training and release speed. I expect the next 12 months to continue accelerating due to recursive self-improvement (RSI). We have more models coming soon, including more efficient versions to help developers optimize speed and cost, and to deploy to our billions of users.

Next, search. Search is bringing the benefits of AI to more people than any other product. Just as with the shift to mobile more than a decade ago, we are focused on building the best search user experience first, then monetizing it.

We are building a seamless experience from AI Overviews and AI Mode all the way to traditional search. People are using our AI features more and searching in entirely new ways; queries are longer, more personalized, and more multimodal.

Queries in AI Mode are on average three times longer than traditional search, and one in five AI Mode searches globally uses voice, images, or documents. We now have more than 50 billion visual searches per month. One area I am particularly excited about is helping people complete everyday tasks such as bookings, form filling, appointments, and shopping.

As AI becomes more personalized and begins taking actions for people and businesses, trust and safety are more important than ever. People already trust Google with everyday life tasks, and our leadership in this area remains an important differentiator.

We are building these agent experiences first in Gemini agents for enterprise because security, safety, and governance requirements are extremely high. Next, we