The company’s cloud unit beat Wall Street expectations as it continues to play a key role in driving AI adoption
Google CEO Sundar Pichai has hailed the company’s growing strength in the AI race after its cloud unit recorded significant financial growth.
Alphabet’s 2025 financial year ended on a bang, with revenue surpassing $400 billion for the first time and Google Cloud revenue reaching $17.7 billion – a 48% increase compared to the same period last year.
Pichai claimed growth in this division is a clear signal of the company’s ongoing success in generative AI.
“Overall, we’re seeing our AI investments and infrastructure drive revenue and growth across the board”, he told investors.
Google Cloud has been the tip of the spear for the tech giant in the AI race, leading on the roll-out of its flagship Gemini model range and development of in-house hardware for AI inference.
With Gemini, the growth signals are clear. Pichai revealed Gemini 3 Pro has recorded the “fastest adoption of any model in our history”.
Indeed, the AI app now boasts more than 750 million active monthly users, marking an increase from 650 million in the previous quarter. Pichai also told investors the company secured eight million paid seats for Gemini Enterprise packages in the space of four months.
Lee Sustar, principal analyst at Forrester, said Google Cloud’s revenue growth is a key indicator that Alphabet is gaining ground on cloud competitors such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft.
“Google Cloud’s quarterly revenue jump of 48% over the same period a year earlier is decisive evidence that it is a full-blown enterprise challenger to AWS and Microsoft Azure,” he said.
