AI startup roughly 14% owned by Alphabet (about $13.3B invested, with commitments of up to $30B more); its private valuation jumped from $350-380B to $965B during Q2, driving much of Alphabet's investment gain, while Anthropic has also committed to buying at least five gigawatts of Google Cloud compute - the same business line Alphabet is touting for 82% growth.
Elon Musk's space company, roughly 6%-owned by Google at end of 2025; went public in June 2026 at a $1.77 trillion valuation, up from $400 billion privately a year earlier, contributing to the quarter's investment-gain windfall.
Alphabet/Google CEO who defended the raised capex guidance by citing strong long-term compute demand and disclosed Alphabet's most ambitious pre-training run yet, for a future Gemini 4 model.
Tax consultant who publicly flagged the circularity of Alphabet marking up the value of its own stake in Anthropic, a company that is simultaneously one of Google Cloud's largest customers.
GE
Gene Munster (Deepwater Asset Management)
Analyst who singled out the Cloud revenue surge as the most significant number in the release, arguing it could drive share appreciation despite the stock's initial post-earnings dip.