Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai Hails ‘Standout’ Q2 As AI Powers Growth Across Divisions — Retail Cheers Rising Google Search Momentum

Alphabet (GOOGL) (GOOG) stock was among the top trending tickers on Stocktwits late Wednesday following upbeat quarterly results, with CEO Sundar Pichai and analysts expressing optimism about the company's future direction.

The company’s Class A and Class C shares were among the top five trending tickers on Stocktwits late Wednesday, with retail traders exhibiting an ‘extremely bullish' sentiment (93/100), an improvement from the ‘bullish’ mood observed a day ago.

The message volume also perked up to ‘extremely high’ levels.

Alphabet stock was up over 2% in overnight trading, driven by a 14% year-over-year (YoY) revenue growth for the second quarter of the fiscal year 2025. The earnings per share increased to $2.31 from $1.89 a year ago, with the top line reaching $96.43 billion, exceeding the Fiscal.ai-compiled consensus of $2.2 and $94.02 billion.

Among businesses, Google Search revenue increased by about 12% to $54.19 billion, and YouTube ad revenue rose 13% to $9.80 billion, resulting in a 10% rise in total ad revenue to $71.34 billion. 

Deepwater Asset Management Managing Partner Gene Munster said that Search was so strong that investors will likely return to the stock over the next few months.

On the earnings call, Pichai said Shorts generated as much revenue per watch hour as traditional YouTube in-stream ads in the U.S. 

Google Cloud revenue jumped 31.7% YoY to $13.62 billion, with the growth accelerating from the 28% pace in the first quarter. The company attributed the strength to solid growth across core Google Cloud Platform (GCP) products, artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, and generative AI (GenAI) products.

The annual revenue run rate of the Cloud business exceeded $50 billion.

Commenting on the results, Pichai said Alphabet had a standout quarter, with robust growth across the company. 

“We are leading at the frontier of AI and shipping at an incredible pace. AI is positively impacting every part of the business, driving strong momentum,” he added.

The executive noted that the company had more than 450 million monthly active users for its Gemini App, with daily requests growing over 50% sequentially.

Looking ahead, the company has increased its capital expenditure (capex) for 2025 to approximately $85 billion, up from the $75 billion initially announced during its first-quarter earnings call.

Alphabet stock is up less than a percent for the year-to-date period, lagging most of its mega-cap tech peers.

Separately, Pichai said on X that he was excited for everything that’s coming into view for the next decade, especially the progress toward artificial general intelligence (AGI). Tesla CEO Elon Musk reacted to his post, stating that there is “serious money” involved in it.

A bullish watcher expected the Alphabet stock to rally to $200, either on Thursday or Friday. The stock ended Wednesday’s session down 0.58% to $190.23.

Another user called Alphabet a “behemoth” that deserves more respect in the market, adding that “Fantastic balance of stable profits and huge potential avenues for growth.”

The Koyfin-compiled consensus price target for Alphabet stock is $205.96, implying roughly 8% upside potential.

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