Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai posted his own take right after the company's second-quarter results, calling it an amazing quarter where the company's AI investments are redefining what's possible across every part of the business. The numbers he cited: Alphabet's overall revenue grew 24% year over year, and Google Cloud's growth rate accelerated to 82%. The Gemini app's monthly active users reached 950 million, up 200 million in five months from the 750 million figure reported back in February. The APIs powering Gemini and Alphabet's other AI models are now processing 22 billion tokens per minute, the basic unit AI models use to process text, up from more than 16 billion the prior quarter. He also said Gemini Enterprise, the company's AI product for businesses, is now used by 90% of the Fortune 100. Pichai said he saw exciting momentum everywhere from Search to YouTube to the Gemini app, thanking partners and employees before hopping on the earnings call. The results came alongside Alphabet's decision to raise its 2026 capex guidance to $195 billion to $205 billion, and Pichai's post is effectively the CEO putting real user and traffic numbers behind the claim that all that spending is translating into actual usage.
Why it matters · Alphabet had already said it's spending more on AI capex, but whether that spending is turning into actual usage is a separate question. Pichai putting his own numbers behind it, 200 million more Gemini users in five months and rising API traffic, gives investors trying to gauge whether AI investment is converting into real demand something concrete to check.
Worth asking · Gemini adding 200 million monthly users in five months and rising API traffic is an impressive growth story. But how much of that growth is actually converting into revenue and profit for Alphabet is still an open question. Does user growth like this reliably translate into better economics, or is there a real risk it's mostly free users padding a usage number?