Google Stock Price Forecast - GOOGL At $330 Weighs $180B AI Capex Against Explosive Cloud Momentum

Google stock (NASDAQ:GOOGL) – Q4 reset, AI capex shock and price around $330

Google stock – price, range, valuation and what the market is discounting now

Google stock (NASDAQ:GOOGL) trades around $330–$331, down roughly 0.9% from a previous close near $333.34 after a volatile session that saw the price dip toward $306.92 and test intraday highs around $331.45. Over the last year the stock has climbed from a 52-week low near $142.66 to a high around $350.15, putting the company just under a $4.0 trillion equity value. At current levels the trailing P/E sits near 30.5x, with non-GAAP multiples just over 30x and a token quarterly dividend of $0.21 per share translating to a yield close to 0.25%. The pullback after earnings – an initial 6%–8% after-hours drop that has moderated to a mid-single-digit drawdown from the peak – is entirely about the $175–$185 billion 2026 capex plan, not about the health of the business. On the numbers you provided, applying a 27x multiple to roughly $13.16 of 2027 operating EPS supports fair value around $355, implying high single-digit upside from the $330 area before giving credit to optionality in AI agents, Universal Commerce Protocol and autonomous bets like Waymo.

Record quarter – $113.8B revenue, 18% growth and EPS up 31% despite spending

Alphabet delivered one of its strongest quarters ever. Q4 revenue reached $113.8 billion, up 18% year over year and more than $2.3 billion ahead of the consensus around $111.5 billion. GAAP EPS printed at $2.82 versus expectations near $2.64, a 31% jump on the prior year’s $2.15–$2.16 range. That performance pushed full-year revenue above the $400 billion line for the first time. Operating income for the quarter was about $35.9 billion, up 16% year over year even after higher R&D and SG&A and a one-off ~ $2.1 billion stock-based comp charge tied to Waymo. Consolidated operating margin landed in the low 30s; backing out that Waymo expense, underlying margin expansion looks better than the headline suggests, particularly with capex almost doubling in the period. Trailing twelve-month free cash flow sits around $73 billion after Q4 capex of $27.9 billion, which was up roughly 95% year over year. That combination – 18% top-line growth, 31% EPS growth, low-30s operating margin and $70B+ of free cash generation – is not consistent with a business entering a maturity cliff. The market’s issue is not earnings power; it is the scale and timing of the AI infrastructure build.

Search and Google Services – 17% growth disproves the “AI kills search” story

The “Google Search and other services” line generated roughly $63.1 billion in Q4, a 17% year-over-year increase on a base that was already massive. Total Google Services revenue was near $95.9 billion, with segment operating margin at about 41.9%, maintaining elite profitability despite ongoing investment in AI experiences. The narrative that generative models would erode the core search franchise is not showing up in the numbers. AI Overviews and Gemini-driven experiences are increasing complexity of user sessions, producing more follow-up queries and more ad surfaces rather than collapsing usage. Management framed it as an “expansionary moment”: more usage than ever, with AI making queries richer and more monetizable. At a rough run-rate, the Search and related services engine is driving mid-$200 billions of annual revenue with high-40s incremental margins. As long as this unit continues to grow mid-teens while holding margins, it more than funds the capex sprint and protects the equity story even if parts of the AI spend under-earn for a few years.

YouTube – a $60B+ ad and subscription machine building recurring revenue

YouTube ad revenue reached about $11.4 billion in Q4, growing high single to low-teens year over year depending on the series you focus on, and annual revenue across ads plus subscriptions has now pushed beyond $60 billion. YouTube Premium, YouTube Music and Google One subscriptions delivered around $13.6 billion in Q4 revenue, up roughly 17%, and powered the paid consumer base to more than 325 million accounts across Alphabet’s services. The NFL Sunday Ticket move locked in a premium subscription anchor and reinforced YouTube’s position as the top streaming platform in the US. This matters for the equity case because it diversifies the mix away from purely cyclical ad dollars into recurring subscription cash flows that are less sensitive to short-term macro shocks. It also gives Alphabet leverage to push AI-assisted creation tools, auto-dubbing and content discovery features that increase engagement and time spent without sacrificing monetization.

Google Cloud – 48% revenue growth, 30% margin and a $240B backlog backed by AI

Google Cloud is now the fastest-growing major segment. Q4 revenue hit $17.7 billion, up 48% year over year and actually accelerating from the 34% growth rate in Q3. Operating margin moved to roughly 30.1%, up from the high-teens a year ago, which means Cloud is no longer a margin drag; it is now a profit center with heavy operating leverage. Operating profit in Q4 was about $5.3 billion from Cloud alone. The backlog is the more important datapoint: outstanding Cloud commitments have expanded from roughly $155 billion to about $240 billion in a single quarter, essentially doubling year over year. Large-ticket deals above $1 billion are becoming more common, and management highlighted that around 75% of Cloud customers are now using vertical AI solutions, from custom TPUs to the Vertex AI platform. That mix – high growth, high margin and a backlog that already exceeds one full year of Alphabet’s consolidated revenue – is exactly what you want to see when a company announces triple-digit-billion capex plans. Without this visibility, $175–$185 billion of spend would look reckless; with it, the spend looks like an attempt to catch up with demand rather than a blind bet.

Gemini and AI deployment – 10B tokens per minute and 750M monthly users

The AI footprint is measurable at this point. Alphabet’s models are already processing more than 10 billion tokens per minute through APIs, indicating intense usage from enterprise customers building on top of Gemini and Cloud infrastructure. On the consumer side the Gemini app has passed roughly 750 million monthly active users, approaching the kind of mass scale usually associated with the top few global apps. AI is now embedded across Search, YouTube, Workspace, Cloud and Android, which creates a loop: AI features drive usage; usage generates data; data improves models; better models strengthen the moat. Importantly, management claims to have cut the unit cost of serving Gemini queries by about 78% during 2025 thanks to TPU optimizations and data-center efficiency. That cost curve shift is what keeps AI features accretive rather than dilutive to Search and Cloud margins even as volume ramps. If that trend holds, a large part of the AI capex will be recovered through structurally lower cost per inference and higher revenue per user across multiple surfaces.

The $175–$185B 2026 capex plan – near-term FCF pressure, long-term moat expansion

The market’s main objection is straightforward: Alphabet plans to spend between $175 and $185 billion in capex during 2026, roughly double the ~$91.4 billion level in 2025 and far above prior sell-side forecasts around $120 billion. Q4 capex of $27.9 billion, up 95% year over year, was just the opening step. The spending is concentrated in AI infrastructure: data centers, custom TPUs, advanced networking, undersea cables and the physical build-out required to support both the existing Cloud backlog and expected incremental AI workloads. In the short term this trajectory compresses reported free cash flow and pushes depreciation higher, so headline EPS growth is expected to slow to around 5% in 2026 before rebounding to mid-teens as new capacity is monetized. The critical distinction is between maintenance and growth spending. The combination of 48% Cloud growth, a $240 billion Cloud backlog, over-subscribed AI capacity and commentary that demand for AI infrastructure is exceeding current supply all point toward growth capex rather than defensive maintenance. Very few companies on the planet can deploy $180 billion into AI capex from a position of $70B+ FCF and a fortress balance sheet. If this build-out pays off, it will create an infrastructure moat that only one or two peers can realistically match.

Valuation, growth profile and how much risk is priced at $330

On your numbers, Google stock (NASDAQ:GOOGL) is up roughly 62% over the last year, outpacing the broad market and most mega-cap tech peers. Non-GAAP P/E around 30.8x looks rich versus the index but reasonable against the growth profile: revenue expected to rise 12%–17% annually and EPS growth normalizing in the mid-teens after the 2026 capex bulge. Free cash flow yield sits near 1.9%, which is low in absolute terms but reflects the choice to reinvest heavily rather than maximize FCF in the near term. Compared with peers, the stock trades at a premium to names like Meta on earnings multiples but in line or slightly above Microsoft when adjusting for growth and AI exposure. Using a 27x multiple on expected 2027 EPS around $13.16 gives a fair-value zone near $355, implying perhaps 7%–9% upside before any optionality for things like Universal Commerce Protocol, Waymo or more aggressive capital returns. With the price around $330, the market is effectively charging a modest AI capex discount but is not pricing a disaster scenario; it is treating Alphabet as a high-quality growth compounder where near-term FCF compression is acceptable as long as top-line and Cloud momentum remain intact.

Strategic levers – Universal Commerce, Apple partnership and network effects

Beyond the core segments, there are strategic levers that support a premium multiple. The Universal Commerce Protocol initiative, built with partners such as Shopify and Walmart, turns Gemini into an end-to-end shopping agent that can handle discovery, cart construction and checkout without the user opening a merchant website. If this framework gains adoption, Alphabet will sit in the flow of more transactions, capturing economics at the conversational layer. On the device side, the multi-year deal to power Apple Intelligence with Gemini gives Alphabet a path into an installed base of roughly 2.5 billion active Apple devices. That relationship hedges any share shifts in classic web search and extends AI reach into iOS workflows. Both initiatives strengthen the data feedback loop, expand surfaces for ad and transaction monetization, and make it harder for smaller AI platforms to challenge the ecosystem.

Risks – AI economics, competition, regulation and capex execution

There are real risks. At $175–$185 billion of capex in a single year, execution risk is high: if data-center build-out runs ahead of sustainable demand or if AI pricing compresses faster than unit costs fall, returns on those dollars will be weaker than modeled and the market will punish the stock. Competitive pressure in AI infrastructure from hyperscalers that control their own chips and clouds – notably Microsoft with Azure and Amazon with Trainium-backed AWS – remains intense and could force Alphabet to price more aggressively in some workloads. On the content side, AI could cannibalize certain ad formats if users get answers directly in AI Overviews and never reach third-party pages; Alphabet has to manage that monetization carefully. Regulatory risk is non-trivial: antitrust actions targeting search defaults, Chrome, ad-tech and app stores could reshape parts of the business model and reduce integration benefits. Finally, depreciation from the capex wave will weigh on reported earnings even if cash economics look solid, which can cap the multiple for a period.

Capital returns, balance sheet and insider alignment

Despite the capex surge, Alphabet still generates enough free cash flow to support substantial repurchases and a small dividend. With roughly $73 billion in trailing FCF and very low net debt, the balance sheet can absorb a multi-year investment cycle without stressing credit metrics. The newly-initiated $0.21 quarterly dividend is symbolic more than material but signals confidence in durable cash generation.

Bottom line view on Google stock (NASDAQ:GOOGL) at current levels

Putting the pieces together – 18% revenue growth, 31% EPS growth, low-30s operating margin, 48% Cloud expansion with a $240 billion backlog, $400+ billion annual revenue and a price near $330 that implies a high-20s to low-30s earnings multiple – the story is clear. The near-term headline is uncomfortable: $175–$185 billion of 2026 capex will suppress free cash flow and feed volatility as markets debate AI returns. Underneath that, the core businesses are strengthening, AI products are scaling both on consumer and enterprise sides, and the infrastructure moat is being pushed out aggressively. Based purely on the data you provided and the current price zone, the risk-reward still skews positive. I would categorize Google stock (NASDAQ:GOOGL) as a Buy, with a bullish bias as long as the price holds well above prior consolidation supports and Cloud plus Search metrics stay on the current trajectory.

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