NEW YORK, Jan 14, 2026, 10:26 EST — Regular session
Alphabet’s non-voting class C shares fell about 1.1% to $332.84 on Wednesday, after earlier touching $338.33. The class C stock carries no voting rights.
The dip comes after a sharp run that put “Google parent” back in the middle of the AI trade, and not everyone wants to chase it at these levels.
For investors, the story has shifted quickly from headlines to follow-through: can Alphabet turn its AI push into steady revenue, and keep the lawyers and regulators from slowing it down.
Apple said it will use Google’s Gemini models for a revamped Siri later this year under a multi-year deal, widening Gemini’s reach via Apple’s base of more than two billion active devices. Tesla CEO Elon Musk called it “an unreasonable concentration of power,” while Parth Talsania at Equisights Research said it “shifts OpenAI into a more supporting role.” Reuters
Alphabet briefly hit $4 trillion in market value on Monday, Reuters reported, and its class A shares touched a record high that day. Phil Blancato, CEO of Ladenburg Thalmann Asset Management, said Alphabet was “the one name that has surprised us all” among the megacap tech names. Reuters
The stock was also trading in a weaker tape. Wall Street’s main indexes slipped for a second day as investors digested big bank results, with the Nasdaq down about 0.7% in early trade, Reuters said.
Legal risk is still hanging over the AI story. Google asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit by Penske Media, the publisher of Rolling Stone, Billboard and Variety, over “AI overviews” — the AI-written summaries that appear at the top of some search results — arguing the case was “legally defective in every way.” Reuters
Analyst targets have moved up alongside the stock. Bank of America’s Justin Post raised his price target to $370 from $335, Investors Business Daily reported, after the Apple tie-up pushed Alphabet shares to fresh highs earlier this week.
Positioning adds another wrinkle. A Hazeltree report said hedge funds kept heavily crowded long bets in large-cap tech last year, including Alphabet — a long position is a bet a price rises, while a short anticipates a fall.
On the product side, Nikkei Asia reported Google will start developing and manufacturing high-end smartphones in Vietnam this year, including new product introductions for Pixel models, though Reuters said it could not immediately verify the report.
But the downside case is easy to sketch: if ad demand cools, or AI costs rise faster than expected, the stock can reprice quickly. And any court action that forces changes to how Google surfaces information in search could hit sentiment, even before it hits numbers.
The next clear catalyst is Feb. 4, when Alphabet hosts its 2025 fourth-quarter earnings call at 1:30 p.m. PT. Investors will be listening for updates on ad trends, Google Cloud growth and how fast Gemini features are turning into paid products.
