Alphabet Inc.’s Class C shares (NASDAQ: GOOG) spent today flirting with fresh record highs as Wall Street doubled down on a new narrative: Google isn’t just an AI software giant anymore – it’s becoming a serious AI chip and cloud infrastructure player, with a valuation pushing toward $4 trillion.
Multiple developments on November 26, 2025 — new AI-hardware analysis, big institutional buying, and fresh analyst commentary — all converged on the same theme: Alphabet’s AI strategy is broad, deep, and increasingly monetised.
Alphabet (GOOG) Stock Price Snapshot on November 26, 2025
As of U.S. trading on November 26:
- Price range today: GOOG opened around $323–324 and has traded roughly between $318 and $329, brushing against new all‑time highs. [1]
- 52‑week range: About $142.66 – $328.8, meaning the stock has more than doubled from its lows over the past year. [2]
- Market capitalization: Around $3.9 trillion, putting Alphabet firmly in the top three companies globally by market value and within striking distance of the ~$4.2 trillion valuation of Nvidia. [3]
- Valuation: Trailing P/E is in the low‑30s (roughly 31–32x earnings), up from about 20x a year ago, reflecting investors’ willingness to pay up for AI growth. [4]
- Performance: YTD, Class C shares are up roughly 70%, with one Benzinga analysis putting Class C gains at ~69.8% and Class A at ~70.7%. [5]
Alphabet has also just experienced its best quarter for stock performance in roughly two decades, driven by outsized AI enthusiasm and blockbuster Q3 earnings. [6]
Morgan Stanley Puts a Big Number on Google’s AI Chip Potential
The headline Wall Street story today comes from MarketWatch:
“Alphabet gets closer to $4 trillion as Morgan Stanley puts a big number around its chip potential.” [7]
Key points from that coverage and related summaries:
- Morgan Stanley’s analysts argue that Alphabet could be selling around 1 million AI accelerator chips annually by 2027, centred on its in‑house Ironwood Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) roadmap. [8]
- That potential AI‑chip volume, layered on top of Google Cloud growth, is a big part of why the firm sees Alphabet approaching or surpassing the $4T market‑cap threshold in the medium term. [9]
While the note’s full spreadsheet math is behind paywalls, the takeaway is clear: Alphabet is increasingly being valued not just as an ad + cloud business, but as a full‑stack AI infrastructure company with its own high‑end chips.
Even rough back‑of‑the‑envelope thinking explains the enthusiasm: if Alphabet sold on the order of 1M high‑end AI chips at typical data‑center pricing, that could translate into tens of billions of dollars in annual hardware and cloud‑attached revenue later this decade — on top of its core ad and cloud business.
Ironwood TPUs vs. Nvidia: A New AI Hardware Narrative Emerges
Another fresh piece today, syndicated via Finviz from The Motley Fool, frames the competitive landscape bluntly: “A Brave New World in AI Hardware: Are Qualcomm’s and Alphabet’s New Chips Game Changers?” [10]
Highlights:
- Nvidia still dominates AI hardware, controlling an estimated 85–90% of the ~$45B AI chip market, but the article argues that its moat is finally being attacked on multiple fronts. [11]
- Qualcomm’s AI200 and AI250 aim at cost‑efficient AI compute on the low‑end and inference side.
- Alphabet’s Ironwood TPU sits on the high‑end, optimised for training large AI models:
- The report says Ironwood can roughly match Nvidia’s Blackwell GPUs on performance for a given power budget and may scale more efficiently at massive data‑center size. [12]
- Ironwood is tightly integrated with Google Cloud and the Gemini model stack, giving Alphabet an end‑to‑end advantage (chips + software + models + cloud). [13]
The same article notes that Alphabet’s stock is up ~68% year‑to‑date, more than double Nvidia’s ~30% rise, underscoring how aggressively investors are now pricing in this AI hardware optionality. [14]
Adding fuel to that story, other coverage this week has reported that Meta is in talks to spend billions of dollars on Google’s TPUs and may also rent TPUs via Google Cloud as early as next year — a potential shift that some estimate could redirect a meaningful slice of demand away from Nvidia. [15]
From Antitrust Overhang to “Hottest AI Stock”: The Sentiment Flip
A Business Insider deep dive published today traces Alphabet’s recent surge back to its favourable U.S. search antitrust ruling in early September, where a federal judge rejected the most aggressive breakup proposals, sparing key businesses like Chrome and Android. [16]
According to that analysis:
- The antitrust decision lifted a major regulatory overhang, and the stock has climbed roughly 50%+ since the ruling. [17]
- Over just the last two weeks, Alphabet:
- Revealed a significant stake from Berkshire Hathaway,
- Launched its Gemini 3 chatbot to strong reviews, and
- Rallied about 17% in a single week. [18]
- That surge helped Alphabet overtake Microsoft in market value and move into “shouting distance” of Nvidia and Apple at the top of the market‑cap league tables. [19]
Reuters echoed this yesterday, noting Alphabet was on pace to hit $4 trillion in market value as AI‑driven gains accelerated and premarket trading briefly pushed shares above $330. [20]
Today’s coverage collectively reinforces the same message: Alphabet is now perceived as one of the central “pure plays” on the AI megatrend, not a laggard catching up.
Big Money Moves: ARK’s Huge Buy and Other Fund Flows
Fresh filings and trading updates on November 26 show institutional money actively repositioning around GOOG:
- Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest disclosed that its ETFs bought 174,293 shares of Alphabet Class C in Wednesday’s trades, worth about $56.4 million, while selling ~355,000 shares of Palantir and trimming other AI‑related names. [21]
- That purchase continues a recent pattern of ARK reallocating more capital toward mega‑cap AI infrastructure leaders like Alphabet.
- Richmond Investment Services LLC more than doubled its position in Alphabet in Q2, boosting its GOOG stake by 145% to 7,665 shares, valued at around $1.36 million at the time of its latest filing. [22]
- At the same time, Wambolt & Associates LLC trimmed its Alphabet holdings by about 2.6%, finishing the quarter with 36,656 shares worth roughly $6.5 million, a modest bit of profit‑taking in an otherwise bullish institutional landscape. [23]
Zooming out, MarketBeat’s deeper look across funds shows Vanguard, State Street, Geode, Norges Bank and Capital World all increasing Alphabet positions in recent quarters, with institutional and hedge‑fund ownership now around 40% of shares outstanding. [24]
Analyst View: “Moderate Buy,” Higher Targets and AI Tailwinds
On the sell‑side, today’s notable update comes from MarketBeat’s analyst survey:
- 51 research firms currently cover Alphabet’s Class A shares (GOOGL) and collectively rate the stock a “Moderate Buy”:
- 41 Buy,
- 6 Hold,
- 4 Strong Buy. [25]
- The average 12‑month price target sits around $308 per share, with several major banks — Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Jefferies, Arete — recently lifting their targets into the $320–$340 range following Q3 results. [26]
Meanwhile, a widely shared Benzinga note today highlights Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, who:
- Argues the AI market is still in its early innings, explicitly rejecting the idea of an “AI bubble.” [27]
- Points to Alphabet as a prime example of AI acting as a powerful tailwind, not just hype — citing the ~70% YTD surge in both Class A and Class C shares. [28]
- Emphasises that Apple’s AI strategy leans heavily on its partnership with Google’s Gemini, reinforcing Alphabet’s central role in the consumer AI ecosystem. [29]
Separately, Morningstar flagged Alphabet as one of the 10 stocks with the largest fair‑value estimate increases after Q3 earnings, underscoring how fundamental analysts are revising long‑term cash‑flow assumptions higher, not just momentum traders bidding up the stock. [30]
The Fundamental Engine: Q3 2025 Earnings and AI‑Driven Growth
The current rally isn’t happening in a vacuum. Alphabet’s Q3 2025 results, reported on October 29–30, marked the company’s first‑ever $100+ billion quarter and showed broad‑based strength across Search, YouTube, Cloud, and AI subscriptions. [31]
Key numbers:
- Revenue: About $102.3–102.35 billion, up 16% year‑on‑year, beating expectations around $99.9B. [32]
- Net income: Roughly $35 billion, up from about $26.3B a year earlier, even after a large EU antitrust fine. [33]
- EPS:$2.87 (GAAP), comfortably ahead of consensus estimates (~$2.26–2.29) and roughly 35%+ higher than the prior year. [34]
- Google Services (mostly ads and consumer products):
- Google Cloud:
- Free cash flow: About $24.5B in Q3, up nearly 40% YoY. [39]
- Capex: Roughly $24B in Q3, with full‑year 2025 capex guidance raised to $91–93B, primarily for AI data‑center build‑out — the third capex hike this year. [40]
On the product side, CEO Sundar Pichai and Alphabet’s own disclosures highlight:
- The Gemini app has more than 650 million monthly active users, with query volumes up 3x versus the prior quarter. [41]
- Alphabet now manages over 300 million paid subscriptions across offerings such as YouTube Premium and Google One, further diversifying beyond ads. [42]
All of this underpins why analysts and large investors are more comfortable assigning Alphabet a premium multiple today.
Shareholder Returns: Dividend and Balance‑Sheet Strength
Alphabet is still primarily a growth stock, but it’s increasingly acting like a mature mega‑cap:
- The company pays a quarterly dividend of $0.21 per share (about $0.84 annually), implying a modest yield of ~0.3% at current prices and a payout ratio around 8%. [43]
- Balance‑sheet metrics remain strong, with low debt‑to‑equity (~0.07) and significant cash, even as capex surges. [44]
A Reuters Breakingviews column today notes that major AI hyperscalers — including Alphabet — are increasingly tapping corporate bond markets to help finance this AI arms race, with tech‑sector borrowing reaching an estimated $700B this year. That brings some risk if AI returns disappoint, but Alphabet’s leverage and credit profile remain comfortable compared with past “debt boom” busts. [45]
Risks: Valuation, AI Capex, and Competitive Firepower
For all the optimism, today’s newsflow also highlights some key risks GOOG investors should keep in mind:
- Rich Valuation & Overbought Technicals
- P/E in the low‑30s and a ~90% 1‑year price move mean a lot of AI success is already priced in. Technical indicators cited by Economic Times show overbought readings, with some analysts pointing to potential support around $290 if the stock corrects. [46]
- Huge Capex Commitments
- Alphabet’s projected $90B+ in 2025 capex for AI chips, data centers, and networking is massive even by mega‑cap standards; it will need continued strong AI and cloud demand to earn adequate returns on that investment. [47]
- Regulatory and Antitrust Uncertainty
- While the September search ruling removed the immediate threat of a forced breakup, regulators in the U.S. and EU remain focused on big‑tech dominance in ads, search, mobile ecosystems, and AI. Future actions on data, default settings, or app distribution could still affect growth and margins. [48]
- Fierce Competition in AI
- Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Qualcomm are all racing to capture AI infrastructure and platform share. Ironwood TPUs must prove they can win sustained, large‑scale deployments beyond Google’s own stack (though rumours about Meta’s planned spending are a promising sign). [49]
- Insider Selling
- Recent filings show insiders — including CEO Sundar Pichai — have sold about 225,000 shares (~$58M) over the last 90 days. Insider selling at these valuation levels doesn’t necessarily signal trouble, but it’s something cautious investors watch closely. [50]
What Today’s Move in Alphabet (GOOG) Means for Investors
Putting it all together, the November 26, 2025 picture for Alphabet Class C stock looks like this:
- Short term:
- GOOG is trading near record highs, riding a powerful AI narrative around Gemini, Google Cloud, and Ironwood TPUs.
- Big‑name investors (Berkshire, ARK, major index funds) and a broad analyst base are effectively endorsing Alphabet as a core AI infrastructure holding, not just an ad giant. [51]
- Medium to long term:
- If Morgan Stanley’s and others’ AI‑chip and cloud growth scenarios play out even partially, Alphabet’s earnings power could climb significantly above today’s already impressive Q3 run‑rate. [52]
- The company’s diversified model — Search, YouTube, Cloud, subscriptions, and now chips — gives it multiple ways to monetise AI across consumer and enterprise. [53]
- But with real risk:
- Valuation is no longer “cheap”; execution on AI and cloud must stay excellent to justify a near‑$4T price tag.
- Any slowdown in AI spending, regulatory shock, or mis‑step in capex could trigger a meaningful valuation reset.
For long‑term, growth‑oriented investors, today’s news flow reinforces Alphabet’s status as a leading AI platform with an expanding hardware footprint. For short‑term traders, the stock is in a strong uptrend but also extended, and volatility around AI headlines, bond‑market concerns, or regulatory updates is likely to remain high.
As always, this overview isn’t personalised investment advice. If you’re considering GOOG, it’s worth stress‑testing your own thesis against scenarios where AI capex payoffs are slower, regulation is tougher, or competition bites harder — and making sure that still fits your risk tolerance and time horizon.
References
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