Alphabet stock holds firm as Berkshire’s big bet and SpaceX windfall reshape the story.

Alphabet Inc. Class A stock (US02079K3059) is trading at $345.90 as of the Nasdaq close on August 14, 2026, with the shares up 10.51% since the start of 2026 while slipping 2.37% year to date from an earlier peak, according to recent market data.

Recent coverage of Alphabet’s latest quarter highlights revenue of $119.80 billion and earnings per share of $9.11, both ahead of analyst estimates and supported by a net margin above 50% and a return on equity slightly above 51%.

For investors, the combination of a strong operating quarter, a large non-operating gain tied to Alphabet’s SpaceX stake and continuing AI-related capital spending has turned the stock into a focal name in the broader technology trade.

Quarterly earnings beat with a SpaceX twist

Alphabet’s most recent quarterly report, covering the second quarter of 2026, showed revenue rising 24.2% year over year to $119.80 billion, surpassing consensus expectations that had looked for between $116.53 billion and $117.07 billion.

The same report indicated earnings per share of $9.11, beating consensus figures that had been centered in the high-$2 range, and delivering an earnings surprise of more than $6 per share that pushed reported net income significantly higher than in the prior-year period.

Alongside that operating performance, Alphabet reported a net margin of 54.77% and a return on equity of 51.32%, metrics that underscore how profitable the core information services and advertising franchises remain even as the company spends heavily on artificial intelligence infrastructure.

However, part of the extraordinary net income figure ties back to Alphabet’s long-held stake in SpaceX, with an unrealized gain of an estimated $77.4 billion on that investment contributing to a reported $112.1 billion net income figure for the quarter and inflating the growth rate for the group of large-cap technology peers.

Analysts tracking the so-called “Mag 7” technology names have noted that earnings growth for the group would have been closer to 30.3% year over year in the second quarter if Alphabet’s non-operating SpaceX gain were stripped out, compared with an 85.5% headline increase with the gain included.

In other words, Alphabet’s core business posted a solid beat on revenue and operating earnings, but the single large fair-value remeasurement on the SpaceX stake created a one-time boost to headline earnings that investors should treat differently from recurring cash flows.

Capex, cloud backlog and the AI buildout

The same quarter’s disclosures around capital expenditure and cloud demand underscore how aggressively Alphabet is investing in its AI and cloud strategy.

Management raised full-year capital expenditure guidance to as much as $205 billion, highlighting how spending on data centers, networking hardware and custom AI chips has scaled as demand for generative models and cloud-based AI services grows.

At the same time, the reported Google Cloud backlog reached $514 billion, a level that points to substantial contracted or strongly committed business stretching over future years across infrastructure, platform and software services.

Second-quarter capital expenditure itself came in at $45 billion, double the figure for the same period a year earlier, which pushed Alphabet to a quarterly free cash flow loss of $5.9 billion even as reported earnings and margins remained robust.

On a valuation basis, Alphabet trades at a forward price-to-earnings multiple of 16.86 as of August 14, 2026, which some observers view as modest for a company central to the AI buildout, but that same data set indicates the price-to-free-cash-flow multiple is closer to 79 when negative recent free cash flow is taken into account.

For investors, these numbers frame a trade-off: the company is converting strong operating profits into very heavy investment in future capacity, and short-term free cash flow metrics look weaker even as the longer-term revenue backlog in cloud and AI-related services expands.

Berkshire’s expanded stake and valuation debate

Recent portfolio disclosures show that a major long-term investor has expanded its exposure to Alphabet during 2026, adding tens of millions of shares and lifting the holding to one of its top three positions by value.

One report indicates that 48.1 million Alphabet shares were added, taking the total holding to roughly 106 million shares with an aggregate market value of $37.8 billion, reflecting notable conviction in the stock at current price levels.

Separately, detailed analysis of that investor’s filings suggests that the Alphabet stake ranks as the third-largest holding in its portfolio, reinforcing the view that large institutions are comfortable owning the shares even after a double-digit percentage gain since the start of the year.

In parallel, valuation tools that compare the current price of $345.90 with an internally derived fair-value estimate of $251.98 suggest that Alphabet shares are 37.3% above that fair value measure, implying that by this specific yardstick the stock screens as overvalued.

Those same metrics highlight the tension between growth expectations and valuation: a substantial unrealized gain on Alphabet’s SpaceX stake and the rapid buildout of AI infrastructure support the bullish case, while the premium to certain fair-value estimates and negative recent free cash flow bolster more cautious arguments.

SpaceX stake turns into a defining asset

Alphabet’s investment in SpaceX, first made in 2015, has become a major asset on its balance sheet, with recent regulatory filings and price data showing how much the stake has appreciated.

Coverage of those filings notes that Alphabet held roughly 551.2 million SpaceX shares as of June 30, 2026, and that at SpaceX’s June 30 closing price of $170.86 those shares carried a market value of roughly $94.2 billion.

Compared with the original investment of $900 million, the stake’s value has risen more than 100-fold over roughly a decade, turning Alphabet into the largest single institutional shareholder in SpaceX based on the data available since SpaceX’s listing.

This outsized gain helps explain why the second-quarter net income figure of $112.1 billion includes such a large non-operating component and why the Mag 7 group’s earnings growth profile looks less extreme once Alphabet’s SpaceX revaluation is excluded.

For shareholders, the SpaceX stake illustrates the upside that can come from long-duration, non-core investments in adjacent technology platforms, but it also introduces volatility: fair-value marks on such holdings can swing headline earnings sharply from quarter to quarter without matching changes in underlying cash generation.

Representative product: Google Cloud AI services

Within Alphabet’s operating businesses, Google Cloud’s AI services stand out as a representative product line that ties directly into the backlog and capex numbers highlighted in the latest quarter.

Google Cloud offers infrastructure, platform and software tools that let enterprises train and deploy machine learning and generative AI models, including managed services that bundle compute, storage and specialized accelerators into integrated offerings.

The reported $514 billion cloud backlog suggests that large customers are committing to multi-year contracts for these services, often tied to data analytics, AI-enhanced applications and modernized back-end systems.

Heavy capital spending, including the $45 billion second-quarter capex figure and the full-year guidance of up to $205 billion, is directed in significant part toward expanding the capacity and reliability of these AI and cloud products.

For Alphabet, sustained demand for Google Cloud AI offerings is a key pillar of the long-term growth thesis, even if near-term margins and free cash flow are under pressure from the magnitude of current investments.

Price context and trading view

Alphabet Inc. Class A shares last closed at $345.90 on Nasdaq on August 14, 2026, with the price down 0.13% on that session and modestly below recent intraday highs while still reflecting a 10.51% gain since the start of the year.

That price level sits above certain fair-value estimates clustered around $251.98 and roughly in line with recent opening quotes reported in the mid-$340s, leaving the stock trading at a valuation that some metrics characterize as rich while others emphasize the company’s dominant position in online advertising and AI infrastructure.

Fact box

Company: Alphabet Inc. Class A

ISIN: US02079K3059

Ticker: GOOGL

Exchange: Nasdaq

Price (as of August 14, 2026, 4:00 p.m. ET): $345.90 USD

Market cap: Value consistent with a $345.90 share price and large-cap technology status (as of August 14, 2026)

Sector / Industry: Communication services / Interactive media and services

Index membership: S&P 500, Nasdaq-100