Alphabet Raises AI Spending But Still Can't Meet Demand: 'We're Still in a Supply Constraint Environment'

The Google parent company raised its 2026 capital expenditure outlook to $195 billion to $205 billion, up from its prior forecast of $180 billion to $190 billion.

During Alphabet’s second-quarter earnings call, CEO Sundar Pichai said Google continues to face capacity constraints as demand for AI products and cloud services exceeds available infrastructure.

“Demand for our models is translating to strong token usage across developers and enterprise customers, and we continue to be supply constrained, a sign of momentum and rapid adoption,” Pichai added.

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Expands Capacity to Meet AI Demand

Alphabet plans to expand its use of third-party capacity in the third quarter as a bridging strategy while it continues building out internal capacity.

“We’re still in a supply constraint environment. I think we’ve said this now for multiple quarters in a row, we are seeing very strong demand, both from external cloud customers as well as across the business,” CFO Anat Ashkenazi said.

Wall Street Divided on AI Spending

Alphabet’s higher AI spending outlook became one of the biggest talking points after earnings, with Wall Street split between concerns over rising capital expenditures and optimism that accelerating cloud demand justifies the investment.

Investor Gary Black said the higher spending could “potentially trigger a new CapEx arms race,” while Deepwater Asset Management‘s Gene Munster called Google Cloud’s performance “the most important number” in the quarter, pointing to strong enterprise AI demand.

Earnings Beat Wall Street Estimate

Alphabet reported second-quarter revenue of $119.80 billion, topping analyst estimates of $116.82 billion, according to Benzinga Pro.

The company also reported second-quarter earnings of $9.11 per share, beating estimates of $2.87.

Price Action: Alphabet Class A stock closed 1.46% lower on Wednesday at $342.09; it fell 3.31% in after-hours trading. The company’s Class C stock closed 1.24% lower at $341.91 and fell 2.92% in extended trading.

Benzinga edge rankings indicate that GOOG has a Momentum score in the 87th percentile and a Growth score in the 89th percentile.

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Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.

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