New York, Feb 27, 2026, 17:37 EST — After-hours
Alphabet Inc’s class C shares (GOOG.O) rose 1.4% to $311.43 on Friday after a report that Meta Platforms signed a multi-year, multi-billion-dollar deal to rent Google’s AI chips. Shares were last down about 0.5% at $309.90 in after-hours trading, the extended session after U.S. markets close. StockAnalysis
The chip headline lands in a market still jumpy about where artificial intelligence ends up helping profits — and where it just rewires old business models. “There continues to be this … back and forth about who might be the victim and those that will actually emerge winners,” Kristina Hooper, chief market strategist at Man Group, said. Reuters
Regulators, meanwhile, keep poking at Google’s biggest money-maker. Belgium’s competition watchdog opened an investigation into the sale of online ads by Google, saying it had “serious indications” that the model for selling online ads was in breach of antitrust rules and that the company appeared to be abusing its market power. The authority said the probe was in a preliminary phase and the outcome was unclear. Reuters
The Information reported Meta would rent Google’s Tensor Processing Units, or TPUs — custom chips used to train and run artificial intelligence models, typically through Google’s cloud. Google has been pitching TPUs as an alternative to Nvidia’s GPUs, or graphics processing units, the workhorse chips for AI computing. Yahoo Finance
Wall Street’s tone did not help. The S&P 500 fell 0.43% on Friday and the Nasdaq dropped 0.92%, while Nvidia slid 3.5% as investors debated whether AI winners have already priced in years of growth. “They have priced in a lot of good news. And now it’s time for a breather,” said Talley Leger, chief market strategist at The Wealth Consulting Group. Reuters
Alphabet also outperformed some megacap peers on a down day. Microsoft fell 2.24% and Meta dropped 1.34%, while Amazon rose 1.0%, according to MarketWatch. Alphabet’s trading volume climbed to about 33 million shares, above its 50-day average of about 21.8 million. MarketWatch
GOOG traded between $303.59 and $312.08 on Friday. The stock’s 52-week range is $142.66 to $350.15, according to Investing.com. Investing.com
Some of the sensitivity traces back to Alphabet’s own spending plans. Earlier this month, the company said 2026 capital expenditure could as much as double as it deepens investment to ease compute constraints and push ahead in the AI race; it forecast capex of $175 billion to $185 billion for 2026. Reuters
Alphabet also said on Feb. 4 its board declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.21 per share, payable on March 16 to stockholders of record on March 9 for its Class A, B and C shares. Alphabet Investor Relations
But the path is messy. A tougher regulatory hit to Google’s ad machinery would land where Alphabet still makes most of its money, and could force business changes that show up slowly in margins. At the same time, a wider pullback in AI spending — or a shift in who supplies the compute — would test the bullish case around chips and cloud.
Investors will also have one big macro number to digest before the next week gets going. The U.S. Employment Situation report for February is scheduled for release on Friday, March 6, at 8:30 a.m. ET. Bureau of Labor Statistics
For Alphabet, traders will be watching for any follow-through on TPU demand and for signs Europe’s ad probes are turning from process into penalties. March 6 and the March 9 dividend record date are the next marks on the calendar.
