What you need to know
- Alphabet posted $109.9B in Q1 2026 revenue, up 22% YoY, continuing its strong double-digit growth streak.
- AI, especially Gemini, is driving growth across Search, Cloud, and subscriptions with record usage and demand.
- Google Cloud surged 63% YoY to $20B, fueled by enterprise demand for AI infrastructure and services.
- Alphabet is doubling down on AI, with $35.7B in capex as it scales Gemini and cloud capacity rapidly.
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, just posted its Q1 2026 earnings, and continuing its double-digit growth streak, the company reported a massive $109.9 billion in revenue.
Compared to the same quarter last year, revenue is up 22% from $90.2 billion. This growth was largely driven by what the company calls its “AI investments” and “full stack approach,” with AI now contributing across nearly every part of the business.
Google says Search had a strong quarter, with AI-driven experiences pushing queries to an all-time high and helping the business grow revenue by 19%. Gemini also played a role here, with the company calling it its “strongest quarter ever for consumer AI plans,” driven by the Gemini app.
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On the enterprise side, Gemini is also seeing solid traction, with paid monthly active users growing 40% quarter over quarter. Sundar Pichai said Gemini is now processing over 16 billion tokens per minute via direct API usage, which is up more than 60% compared to last quarter.
Subscription revenue is also on the rise, with Alphabet now reporting 350 million paid subscriptions, led by YouTube Premium and Google One. Speaking of YouTube, the company has also posted a increase in YouTube ad revenue, reaching $9.88 billion, up from $8.93 billion a year ago.
Google Cloud had a standout quarter, growing 63% year over year to $20 billion, driven largely by demand for AI infrastructure and enterprise tools, including Gemini-powered services.
Alphabet is also ramping up its spending. Capital expenditures hit $35.7 billion in Q1 2026 alone, highlighting how aggressively the company is investing in AI infrastructure and cloud capacity. Much of this is tied to growing demand for Gemini-powered services across both enterprise and consumer segments.
We haven’t heard much about upcoming Gemini models just yet, but we can expect to learn more about Google’s AI roadmap and broader advancements at Google I/O 2026.
Android Central’s Take
Google has been pushing AI into everything for a while now, and these numbers show it’s finally working. Whether it’s Gemini or Cloud, the growth is there, and it doesn’t look like the company is slowing down anytime soon.
