Google Cloud Revenue Surges 63% to $20B as Alphabet Lifts Capex to $190B
What Happened
Google Cloud's 63% growth materially outpaces AWS (28%) and Azure (40%). Alphabet raised 2026 capex guidance to $180B–$190B, citing AI training demand and the Anthropic compute commitment. Search revenue also held up better than feared.
My Take
Google Cloud finally broke the "third place forever" narrative, and the Anthropic deal is the proximate cause — Anthropic's growth essentially rents itself back through GCP. The strategic lesson for any cloud buyer: diversify before pricing leverage shifts. Right now you can play AWS, Azure, and GCP against each other; by 2027 capacity will be the constraint, not price, and the labs with locked-in compute (Anthropic, OpenAI) will get served first. Lock multi-year reserved capacity now if you can.
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