Why Alphabet Rallied This Week

Shares of search giant Alphabet (GOOG -0.42%) (GOOGL -0.39%) rallied this week, up as much as 10.1% on Thursday before retreating to 9.2% gain on the week as of 1 p.m. ET Friday, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence. That's a big move for a company as big as Alphabet that didn't report any financial results. But the search giant unveiled several positive bits of news on the technology front this week. Alphabet retakes the cutting edge On Monday, Alphabet published a blog post about the company's new quantum computing chip named Willow. According to Alphabet, the new chip was able to perform a calculation in five minutes that would take today's fastest supercomputers more time than the universe has been in existence. On X, Elon Musk responded to the news with just one word: Wow -- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2024 While commercial quantum computing may be years away, the announcement and validation from Musk appeared to instill confidence that Google was still executing on cutting-edge tech. There were also reassurances on more current innovations in cloud computing and generative artificial intelligence (AI) -- two areas where Google was thought to have had a late start. This week, sell-side research firm Piper Sandler released the result of its survey of leading chief investment officers. Not only was there increased optimism for 2025 IT spend generally, but Google Cloud rose significantly in stature in the survey, with a plurality of CIOs calling it the "most strategic" cloud for AI. Then on Wednesday, Alphabet released its latest large language model (LLM), Gemini 2.0., to developers, with a wider release set for January. The latest model has several innovative features such as Project Mariner, which allows the AI to take control of your browser to complete work, just as a human would. Alphabet has had its doubters Alphabet has been the cheapest "Magnificent Seven" stock for a while now, as some investors feared its core franchises would be disrupted by generative AI. However, that threat hasn't shown up in any of Alphabet's earnings reports, which have continued to show strong search results this year. Meanwhile, this week provided several reminders that Alphabet's innovation engine is still very much best-in-class.