Alphabet Q3 2026 earnings: $51.4 billion of capex, Google Cloud up 103%, a 1 billion-user Gemini app and $195–205 billion guidance unchanged

Alphabet's Q3 2026 earnings, reported on October 28, 2026, showed Google's parent spending more than ever on AI infrastructure while its cloud business doubled. Revenue rose 25% to $127.58 billion. Google Cloud revenue more than doubled to $30.71 billion, capital expenditures reached $51.36 billion in the quarter, and CFO Anat Ashkenazi said Alphabet's 2026 capex range of $195 billion to $205 billion is unchanged. CEO Sundar Pichai said the Gemini app has reached 1 billion users. The same afternoon, Google announced Gemini 4 Carbon, covered in our Gemini 4 Carbon story.

This story is based on Alphabet's Q3 2026 earnings release and 10-Q, its Q2 2026 release, Sundar Pichai's call remarks as published by Google, Google's August 11, 2026 Gemini app announcement, transcripts of the October 28 earnings call published by Investing.com and TradingKey, and SiliconANGLE's report on the July call, checked October 29, 2026. It reports results and company statements only and isn't investment advice.

The short version

• Revenue: $127.58 billion, up 25%. Operating income $40.58 billion, up 30%, a 31.8% margin.
• Google Cloud: revenue up 103% to $30.71 billion; operating income $11.12 billion, against $3.59 billion a year earlier.
• Capex: $51.36 billion in the quarter. The 2026 range of $195–205 billion stays where Alphabet set it in July; Ashkenazi expects 2027 capex to "increase significantly."
• Gemini: 1 billion Gemini app users, per Pichai (monthly users, Google said in August), and nearly 32 billion API tokens processed a minute.
• Cloud backlog: $561 billion, Ashkenazi said on the call; the 10-Q shows $560.8 billion.
• Profit: net income available to common stockholders fell to $26.17 billion from $34.98 billion, mainly because of an $8.7 billion loss on equity securities.

What were Alphabet's Q3 2026 results?

Last verified: October 29, 2026

Pichai said in the release that Alphabet is "now on a half-trillion dollar revenue run rate." Google Services revenue rose 11% to $96.30 billion, led by 12% growth in Google Search & other, to $63.35 billion. YouTube ads brought in $11.21 billion, up from $10.26 billion, and subscriptions, platforms and devices $14.29 billion, up from $12.87 billion. Alphabet's workforce grew to 204,757 from 190,167 a year earlier, a headcount trend that runs the other way from Microsoft's buyout offer.

The drop in earnings per share to $2.12 isn't an operating story. The release says an $8.7 billion net loss on equity securities cut net income by $6.7 billion and diluted EPS by $0.55. Ashkenazi said on the call that it came "primarily" from an unrealized loss on Alphabet's investment in SpaceX, according to both transcripts.

What is Alphabet's capex guidance for 2026?

Unchanged at $195 billion to $205 billion. "Our full year 2026 CapEx guidance range of $195 billion to $205 billion remain unchanged," Ashkenazi said, according to the Investing.com and TradingKey transcripts, so the lead that Alphabet reaffirmed the range is correct. She added: "We continue to expect our CapEx to increase significantly in 2027 and will provide further details on our Q4 call."

Alphabet raised the range to $195–205 billion in July, from $180–190 billion, SiliconANGLE reported at the time. Quarterly spending rose from $44.92 billion in Q2, according to that quarter's release, to $51.36 billion in Q3. Alphabet has spent $159.80 billion over the past four quarters, and the release shows free cash flow of negative $9.07 billion for Q3.

The release also shows how Alphabet is paying for it. It made no share repurchases in the quarter, against $11.5 billion a year earlier; it issued senior unsecured notes for net proceeds of $28.7 billion; and it sold 12 million Class A and 24 million Class C shares through an at-the-market program for net proceeds of $4.3 billion and $8.1 billion, with $27.6 billion of capacity left.

Chipmakers see the other side of this spending. TSMC reported that high-performance computing was 68% of its Q3 revenue, as our TSMC Q3 2026 earnings story details. Microsoft, reporting the same day, trimmed its own calendar-2026 capex view to about $170 billion, as our Microsoft earnings story reports.

How many people use the Gemini app?

One billion a month, by Google's count, though Google hasn't said how it defines a user. The release says "the Gemini app has reached one billion users—making it the fastest-growing product in Google's history." Neither the release nor the call says "monthly," but Google announced on August 11, 2026 that the app had "officially surpassed 1 billion monthly users," and in July Pichai's Q2 release quote said the Gemini app "has 950 million monthly active users." Google hasn't published how it counts a monthly user, and SiliconANGLE reported in August that Google had not explained it.

On usage, Pichai said Google's "first-party model APIs are now processing nearly 32 billion tokens per minute," which he called "more than four times what we processed a year ago." The Q2 release put it at 22 billion API tokens a minute. Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said on the call that "Across all our AI services, we have sold more than 100 million seats for knowledge work," without a figure for Gemini Enterprise alone.

Pichai also used the call to claim the top spot for Google's newest model. "And with Gemini 4 Argon and now Carbon, which we announced today, we're excited to be leading at the frontier," he said, according to the remarks Google published on its blog, adding that Carbon "ranks #1 on the recently updated Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index at 59." That's Pichai citing a third-party index on the day of launch; what the index measures is covered in our story on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v5. Argon's launch is in our Gemini 4 Argon story.

How big is Google Cloud's backlog?

"Google Cloud's backlog was $561 billion in the third quarter," Ashkenazi said, according to both transcripts. The figure isn't in the earnings release, but Alphabet's 10-Q, filed October 29, lists $567.7 billion of remaining performance obligations, of which $560.8 billion related to Google Cloud, and says Alphabet expects to recognize "just over 55%" of the revenue backlog as revenues over the next 24 months. In July, Alphabet put the backlog at $514 billion, SiliconANGLE reported then.

Kurian said TPU "system sales were also a meaningful contributor" to Cloud's growth, and Ashkenazi said "we've had some system sales recorded as revenue, but expect more of it to come in through 2027." Neither gave a dollar figure for TPU sales.

What's confirmed, reported and uncertain

• Confirmed (Alphabet's Q3 release): revenue, operating income and margin, segment and Cloud figures, capex of $51.36 billion, free cash flow, the $8.7 billion equity loss and its effect, buybacks, debt and share issuance, headcount, Pichai's 1 billion-user and 32 billion-token statements.
• From the call, via Investing.com and TradingKey transcripts: the unchanged $195–205 billion range and 2027 comment, the $561 billion backlog, the SpaceX attribution, TPU and seat remarks, and Pichai's Carbon remarks (also in Google's published version of his remarks).
• Reported: the July range change from $180–190 billion and the $514 billion Q2 backlog (SiliconANGLE).
• Confirmed (Alphabet's 10-Q and Google's August 11 post): $560.8 billion of Google Cloud remaining performance obligations; the Gemini app's 1 billion users described as monthly users.
• Uncertain: how Google defines a monthly Gemini app user, the size of the SpaceX loss on its own, and the 2027 capex figure, due on the Q4 call.