Google hits a new milestone: $2 trillion

Alphabet achieved a $2 trillion market cap milestone on Friday.

• Alphabet, Google's parent company, achieved a $2 trillion market cap milestone.
• This company briefly hit the threshold previously but never sustained a full day of trading. 
• Despite its recent success Alphabet hasn't had an easy path to the $2 trillion mark. 

Google's parent company, Alphabet, hit a new milestone on Friday: a $2 trillion market cap.  

Google is now the world's fourth most valuable public company, right behind Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft, which has a market cap of just over $3 trillion and overtook Apple earlier this year for first place. 

This isn't Alphabet's first brush with the $2 trillion club. The company briefly hit the threshold in November 2021 and earlier this month but closed above it for the first time on Friday, according to Bloomberg. 

The news followed Alphabet's first-quarter earnings report on Thursday, where revenue beat analysts' expectations due to the success of Google's search engine. Alphabet's chief executive, Sundar Pichar, also highlighted the contributions of Google Cloud, which has been equipped with generative AI services through Google's AI model, Gemini.

"In Cloud, we have announced more than 1,000 new products and features over the past 8 months. At Google Cloud Next, more than 300 customers and partners spoke about their generative AI successes with Google Cloud, including global brands like Bayer, Cintas, Mercedes Benz, Walmart, and many more," Pichai told investors during the call.

Pichai also said that Google was well "positioned for the next wave of AI innovation and the opportunity ahead," and reminded investors that the company has been "AI-first" since 2016.

The company also delighted investors by announcing that it would expand its stock repurchase program by $70 billion.  

Alphabet has weathered some tough times over the past year despite the past week's success. It's contended growing pains with its AI offerings, including pausing its image generator after it faced criticism for being too woke.

Still, Alphabet is betting on AI as a key to its business growth and is ready to spend big to compete. Earlier this month, it announced that it would be developing its own central processing unit called Axion to facilitate the training of complex AI models.  

Alphabet did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.