Jan 12 (Reuters) – Alphabet hit a $4 trillion market valuation on Monday, as the Google parent's sharpened artificial intelligence focus allayed doubts about its strategy and thrust it back to the forefront of the high-stakes race. The tech giant on Wednesday surpassed Apple in market capitalization for the first time since 2019, becoming the second most valuable company in the world. The milestones mark a remarkable change in investor sentiment for Alphabet, with its stock surging about 65% in 2025, outperforming its peers on Wall Street's elite group of stocks, the so-called Magnificent Seven. The stock has gained another 6% so far this year, and was last up 1.1%. The shift was fueled by the company quelling concerns that it let an early AI advantage slip by turning a once-overlooked cloud unit into a major growth engine and drawing a rare tech investment from Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. Its new Gemini 3 model has also drawn strong reviews, intensifying pressure on OpenAI after GPT-5 left some users underwhelmed. A Reuters report said that Samsung Electronics plans to double this year the number of its mobile devices with AI features powered by Google's Gemini. Google Cloud's revenue jumped 34% in the third quarter, with a backlog of non-recognized sales contracts rising to $155 billion. Renting out Google's self-developed AI chips that were reserved for internal use to outside customers has also enabled the unit's breakneck pace of growth. Indicating the rising demand, The Information reported that Meta Platforms was in talks to spend billions of dollars on Alphabet's chips for use in its data centers starting from 2027. Meanwhile, the company's dominant revenue generator – the advertising business – has largely held steady in the face of economic uncertainty and intense competition. Alphabet is the fourth company to hit the $4 trillion milestone after Nvidia, Microsoft and Apple. The stock has also benefited after a U.S. judge in September ruled against breaking up the company and allowing it to retain control of its Chrome browser and Android mobile operating system. (Reporting by Zaheer Kachwala, Shashwat Chauhan and Johann M Cherian in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)
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