As thousands of datacentres are constructed across Europe, the Guardian and Investigate Europe have uncovered disturbing evidence that some workers building them are exposed to dangerous conditions and living in fear of speaking out

Sandu* checked his watch. He was winding down the last 15 minutes of his shift at a vast Google datacentre site in Saint-Ghislain, Belgium, in March, when the call came in. The 34-year-old electrical tester had already worked almost 10 hours, but says such last-minute jobs were normal: “I had no choice. People have been fired after saying no.”

The task was one Sandu had done many times before and involved a series of tests measuring the safety and integrity of the electrical wiring. A protective suit was locked away in an equipment room. The round trip would have added another 15 minutes to the job, he says, and people were waiting, so he decided not to retrieve the suit.

As thousands of datacentres are constructed across Europe, the Guardian and Investigate Europe have uncovered disturbing evidence that some workers building them are exposed to dangerous conditions and living in fear of speaking out

Sandu* checked his watch. He was winding down the last 15 minutes of his shift at a vast Google datacentre site in Saint-Ghislain, Belgium, in March, when the call came in. The 34-year-old electrical tester had already worked almost 10 hours, but says such last-minute jobs were normal: “I had no choice. People have been fired after saying no.”

The task was one Sandu had done many times before and involved a series of tests measuring the safety and integrity of the electrical wiring. A protective suit was locked away in an equipment room. The round trip would have added another 15 minutes to the job, he says, and people were waiting, so he decided not to retrieve the suit.

As ações da Alphabet, controladora do Google, despencaram 12,6% nesta quinta-feira (29), registrando a maior queda da história da empresa em um único dia.

A Alphabet ficou entre as empresas que chamaram a atenção de Wall Street após a divulgação de seu relatório trimestral, na noite de quarta-feira (28). A receita abaixo do esperado foi agravada pelo aumento acelerado dos gastos de caixa relacionados à IA (inteligência artificial).

Com isso, a queda eliminou cerca meio trilhão de dólares em valor de mercado da companhia.

O movimento reflete a preocupação dos investidores com os gastos elevados das grandes empresas de tecnologia, as chamadas Big Techs, em inteligência artificial, além das dúvidas sobre como essa tecnologia está afetando seus próprios negócios.

As ações da Alphabet recuaram acentuadamente em meio aos receios de desaceleração do crescimento do negócio de publicidade nas buscas do Google, ao mesmo tempo que os investimentos em inteligência artificial continuam aumentando.

As maiores empresas de tecnologia do mundo estão investindo centenas de bilhões de dólares na construção de centros de dados, em uma corrida para tentar garantir posições entre as vencedoras do boom da inteligência artificial.

CNN Cast: Entrevista com Eduardo López, Presidente de Google Cloud para America Latina

Diante desse cenário, Wall Street tem adotado uma postura mais cautelosa e busca entender quais empresas estão investindo de forma racional, como esses gastos afetam outras áreas de seus negócios e quais companhias realmente se beneficiarão do impacto transformador da IA na sociedade.

A Alphabet registrou US$ 51,4 bilhões em despesas de capital apenas no terceiro trimestre, em comparação com US$ 91,4 bilhões ao longo de todo o ano de 2025.

À medida que a empresa amplia os investimentos em inteligência artificial, incluindo a construção de centros de dados, sobra menos caixa para formas de retorno mais imediatas aos acionistas, como recompra de ações e pagamento de dividendos.

*Com informações da Reuters e CNN Internacional 

• While some companies are slashing head count, Google's is surging.
• The company had nearly 205,000 employees at the end of September.
• While Google has conducted layoffs, it has also ramped up hiring and acquired Wiz.

While AI may be driving some companies to slash their head count, Google's is soaring.

When Google reported its Q3 earnings on Wednesday, it said it had 204,757 employees for the quarter ending September 2026. That means Google added roughly 10,000 people to the payroll since the end of March.

The uptick in head count runs counter to another trend across the tech industry, where some of Google's peers are slashing their workforces. Meta has been on a cost-cutting odyssey for several years, while Microsoft recently offered voluntary buyouts to 60,000 employees.

Some of Google's head count growth can be attributed to mergers and acquisitions. On March 11, Google said it had completed its acquisition of cybersecurity firm Wiz, which had roughly 2,000 employees.

In January 2023, Google announced it would slash roughly 12,000 roles — around 6% of the workforce at the time — and has since made several smaller rounds of layoffs, Business Insider has reported.

While the head count has grown somewhat steadily since Q2 2024, it has accelerated since the end of 2025. Google also reported Wednesday that its quarterly revenue grew 25% from this period last year.

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A Alphabet, controladora do Google, divulgou resultados decepcionantes em seu principal negócio, a publicidade em buscas, e uma aceleração maciça no consumo de caixa, à medida que injetava recursos no desenvolvimento de IA.

Em um sinal de que os clientes corporativos estão adotando a tecnologia, as receitas do Google Cloud mais que dobraram, mas os investidores, inquietos com o altíssimo custo e com a desaceleração do crescimento do mecanismo de busca dominante no mercado, fizeram com que as ações caíssem 10% após o fechamento do mercado.

“Em um mercado preocupado com a possibilidade de a IA canibalizar o negócio principal, os investidores precisam ver a busca acelerando, não desacelerando”, disse Dave Wagner, gestor de portfólio da Aptus Capital Advisors.

“A nuvem está impulsionando os resultados, mas, até que a busca mostre que a IA é um valor agregado, as ações provavelmente continuarão sendo negociadas em baixa.”

A empresa de Mountain View, na Califórnia, registrou um fluxo de caixa livre negativo de US$ 9,1 bilhões, contra as expectativas dos analistas de que ficaria próximo do ponto de equilíbrio, segundo dados da LSEG.

Esforços agressivos para aumentar a capacidade da nuvem e financiar o desenvolvimento de IA levaram a Alphabet a queimar US$ 5,9 bilhões no último trimestre, a primeira vez que o resultado ficou negativo em 22 anos como empresa de capital aberto.

A receita total ficou aquém das expectativas de Wall Street: o crescimento da receita do Google Cloud superou as expectativas, mas não foi suficiente para compensar uma queda de US$ 1,4 bilhão na publicidade.

O segundo trimestre consecutivo de fluxo de caixa negativo da Alphabet representou uma reviravolta brusca para uma empresa que há muito tempo era uma das maiores geradoras de caixa do setor de tecnologia.

Além disso, a Alphabet ainda planeja aumentar significativamente seus gastos de capital para 2027, em comparação com as previsões de gastos deste ano, que variam entre US$ 195 bilhões e US$ 205 bilhões, disse a diretora financeira Anat Ashkenazi aos analistas em uma teleconferência.

Embora os executivos não tenham especificado um valor para os gastos de 2027, os investidores estavam apreensivos com a possibilidade de um grande salto.

Google tem receita recorde, mas registra caixa negativo | ABERTURA DE MERCADO

O lucro líquido disponível para os acionistas ordinários da Alphabet caiu 25%, para US$ 26,17 bilhões, e o lucro ajustado por ação, de US$ 2,67, ficou abaixo das estimativas de Wall Street, que eram de US$ 3,02.

Os resultados refletem os enormes custos da expansão da IA, com os investidores preocupados tanto com um possível gasto excessivo quanto com o risco de ficar para trás dos concorrentes por não investir o suficiente.

A receita total do terceiro trimestre, de US$ 127,6 bilhões, ficou aquém da estimativa dos analistas de US$ 128,2 bilhões, segundo dados da LSEG. A receita com anúncios ficou em US$ 82 bilhões, ficando abaixo das expectativas de US$ 83,4 bilhões.

Google anuncia inclusão do Pix no Google Pay

• Alphabet shed around $500 billion in market value on Thursday after its stock tanked 13%.
• If the losses persist, it will be the second-largest one-day drop in market cap for any company.
• Shares of Google's parent company fell after its earnings disappointed investors.

Alphabet is on track to suffer its biggest-ever one-day market-cap wipeout, and the second-largest value drop in stock-market history.

Shares of Google's parent company slumped by as much as 13.5% in early trading on Thursday, slashing Alphabet's market capitalization by over $500 billion, from around $3.9 trillion to $3.4 trillion.

If the losses persist until the close, it would be the second-largest one-day loss of market capitalization ever. Only AI chipmaker Nvidia has lost more value in a single day, when it shed close to $600 billion on January 27, 2025, on fears that China's DeepSeek would steal its lunch.

Alphabet's shares slumped after its earnings report on Wednesday showed about $9.1 billion in negative free cash flow as it spent heavily on AI infrastructure, and profits that fell short of Wall Street's forecasts.

Google's AI search revenue also lagged expectations, despite CEO Sundar Pichai saying on the earnings call that AI helped search queries grow at the fastest year-over-year pace in five years.

Search revenue of $63 billion came in below analysts' estimates and was virtually flat compared to the previous quarter.

That came as a shock because search revenue had beaten Wall Street's estimates in each of its four previous quarterly earnings reports.

"It's worth noting that the strong growth in AI Mode queries had an impact because of the lower monetization we were seeing in AI Mode," Philipp Schindler, Google's chief business officer, said on the call.

He also announced that Google is introducing ads in AI Mode to more users, including in international markets for the first time.

The rise of generative AI has shaken up Google's core business as chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude give people an alternative way to search. While Google has its own chatbot, Gemini, and has integrated it into its search engine with AI Mode, revenue is lagging behind its popularity.

"Just like our shift to mobile over a decade ago, we are focused on building the best Search user experience, followed by monetization," Pichai said.

As well as one of the market's biggest-ever single-day value losses, if Alphabet stock closes more than 9.77% lower on Thursday, it would be the company's worst post-earnings percentage drop since going public in 2004.

"In the AI trade you need a clean story to pique investor interest. But it only matters if numbers track in the right direction," Mark Shmulik, a senior analyst at Bernstein, wrote in a note.

"Is Google an AI winner? Probably, but not today."

A Alphabet GOOGL.O, controladora do Google, não atingiu as expectativas de receita de Wall Street nesta quarta-feira (28), devido aos altos gastos com inteligência artificial que aceleraram a queima de caixa, fazendo com que suas ações caíssem cerca de 8% no pregão estendido.

A gigante da tecnologia reportou um fluxo de caixa livre negativo de US$ 9,07 bilhões, em comparação com as expectativas dos analistas de que se aproximaria do ponto de equilíbrio , de acordo com dados compilados pela LSEG.

Isso representou um aumento em relação ao prejuízo de US$ 5,9 bilhões no trimestre anterior e a primeira vez que a empresa registrou prejuízo em seus 22 anos de história como empresa de capital aberto.

Os prejuízos crescentes da Alphabet foram impulsionados por gastos para aumentar a capacidade da nuvem e financiar pesquisas em IA. A empresa reportou um prejuízo operacional de US$ 7,66 bilhões em “atividades de nível Alphabet”, que, segundo ela, refletiu principalmente despesas relacionadas à pesquisa e desenvolvimento em IA.

De acordo com dados da LSEG, a receita total da gigante da tecnologia no terceiro trimestre foi de US$ 127,6 bilhões, ficando abaixo da estimativa dos analistas de US$ 128,2 bilhões.

A queda na receita foi causada pelo principal negócio de publicidade do Google, que registrou US$ 82,01 bilhões em receita, cerca de US$ 1,41 bilhão abaixo das expectativas.

A receita do Google Cloud superou as estimativas e mais que dobrou, atingindo US$ 30,71 bilhões no terceiro trimestre encerrado em 30 de setembro , mas não foi suficiente para compensar o desempenho da área de publicidade.

A terceira maior provedora de serviços em nuvem do mundo, atrás da Amazon Web Services (AMZN.O) e do Azure da Microsoft (MSFT.O ), continuou a expandir seus compromissos com empresas, apoiada por contratos plurianuais de infraestrutura em nuvem e IA nos setores de cibersegurança, varejo e serviços financeiros.

Os resultados reforçam a posição da Alphabet como principal beneficiária do aumento dos gastos corporativos com IA, atenuando as preocupações dos investidores de que os elevados investimentos em capacidade computacional possam superar os ganhos de receita no curto prazo.

O interesse das empresas por treinamento e inferência de IA baseados em nuvem permaneceu forte ao longo do ano, mantendo a utilização de data centers em alta e pressionando os principais provedores de nuvem a acelerar a implantação de infraestrutura.

Monetização da nuvem tem ajudado big techs, diz estrategista | ABERTURA DE MERCADO

Prevê-se que a Alphabet, a Microsoft, a Amazon e a Meta invistam coletivamente bem mais de 700 bilhões de dólares em 2026 para expandir a infraestrutura de data centers de IA, chips e capacidade de rede de alto desempenho.

O desempenho superior do Google Cloud ocorre em um momento em que os provedores de hiperescala enfrentam diferentes graus de restrições de capacidade, posicionando a Alphabet de forma favorável para conquistar participação de mercado entre as empresas que migram cargas de trabalho de IA para a nuvem.

Embora os gargalos de fornecimento de silício avançado e energia para data centers em todo o setor tenham persistido, os investimentos da Alphabet em unidades de processamento de tensores personalizadas, juntamente com GPUs de terceiros, ajudaram a expandir suas capacidades de prestação de serviços.

As iniciativas proprietárias de IA da Alphabet também impulsionaram o crescimento, e a adoção de seu conjunto de modelos Gemini se ampliou em softwares corporativos e plataformas de desenvolvedores no trimestre em questão.

A integração da empresa com o ecossistema da Apple (AAPL.O) para impulsionar recursos de IA baseados em nuvem continuou a apoiar o alcance mais amplo do ecossistema da Alphabet.

• Google's AI chip business is turning into a TPU-shaped headache for Nvidia.
• A blockbuster deal with Oracle will put Google's TPUs inside another hyperscaler.
• Is the market underestimating the potential of Google's chip business?

Earlier this year, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang downplayed the threat of other companies building competing AI chips, including Google.

"Without Anthropic, why would there be any TPU growth at all?" he said in an interview with podcaster Dwarkesh Patel, referring to Google's custom chips. "It's 100% Anthropic."

That is no longer the case.

On Tuesday, Google and Oracle announced a blockbuster deal that will see Google's TPUs, short for Tensor Processing Units, made available to Oracle cloud customers from next year. As the companies underscored in a joint announcement, it's the first time Google's TPUs have been offered on a hyperscaler's platform beyond its own.

Anthropic isn't the only one Nvidia should be worried about. OpenAI has a job listing for a software engineer to optimize its models for TPUs, and The Information reported Tuesday that OpenAI plans to buy TPUs from Google.

Meanwhile, several analysts have predicted Google's TPU business is about to explode as more companies hedge their bets with a multichip strategy — providing an opening for Google and others to further move onto Nvidia's turf.

Despite this, Nvidia's chip business still eclipses everyone else's, including Google, which is also a big customer of Nvidia's GPUs. Yet Google's AI chips, which the company began building more than a decade ago to power search and other products, might be poised for takeoff.

On Wednesday, during Google's third-quarter earnings call, chief financial officer Anat Ashkenazi said the company expects a "meaningful revenue ramp in 2027" in TPU sales.

Cloud chief Thomas Kurian also said on the call that TPU sales were a "meaningful contributor" to the company's Q3 financials.

In its IPO paperwork filed this week, Anthropic said it planned to spend $114.5 billion on Google compute between April 2026 and July 2033. While it didn't specify how much of that would go to TPUs specifically, it estimated spending between $125 billion and $150 billion on TPU capacity from Google and other providers.

In the same filing, Anthropic said it's also using Amazon's Trainium chips and AMD's GPUs, as well as chips from Nvidia and Google.

All told, this might be Nvidia's nightmare scenario coming true. If companies are increasingly using a multichip strategy, it could hamper Nvidia's pricing power.

Google declined to comment, and Nvidia and OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment.

TPU takeoff?

Google's TPU business may only be getting started.

In notes published this month, Japanese banking group Mizuho projected TPU revenue of $28 billion for 2026 and $67 billion in 2027. Mizuho said Google could see that number reach as high as $100 billion in 2028, while TD Cowen's John Blackledge projected it could reach $138 billion, accounting for 34% of Google Cloud's 2028 revenue.

That number is still dwarfed by Nvidia, which reported $96.2 billion in revenue in the previous quarter alone, and the market reacted with a shrug on Wednesday as its share price stayed flat.

Some analysts, though, think the market is underestimating Google, especially as more companies look to reduce their reliance on Nvidia's GPUs.

"We believe Google's TPU hardware business is emerging as a materially larger opportunity than what is currently reflected in consensus estimates," Mizuho analysts wrote in a note published October 18, adding that selling TPUs outright — rather than renting them from Google's own data centers — could ease Google's aggressive capex spending.

And even if that spending continues to soar — and right now, there are no signs the foot is coming off the accelerator — analysts at Bank of America said Google's cash-splashing looks "relatively efficient" compared to its peers, as TPUs continue to power the company's own AI efforts.

For Google, it's the payoff of a decade-plus investment in silicon that was originally designed to make Search smarter. It could also act as something of a buffer against damage to its core search business as AI agents eat Google's lunch, Mizuho also said this month.

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A OpenAI, que detém o modelo de inteligência artificial (IA) ChatGPT, tem planos para adquirir semicondutores de IA à Google, avançou o The Information na terça-feira 27 de outubro, que cita uma fonte familiarizada com o dossier. Já a OpenAI pretende expandir a sua capacidade computacional e diversificar as suas fontes de poder de processamento.

A detentora do ChatGPT está também a desenvolver os seus próprios semicondutores, os Jalapeno, em parceria com a Broadcom, com o objetivo de suportar os seus modelos de IA ainda este ano, refere a publicação Investing.

A Google fechou a sessão de terça-feira 27 de outubro a subir 0,84% e em pré-mercado está a valorizar 1,14%. A Google apresenta esta quarta-feira 28 de outubro os seus resultados referentes ao terceiro trimestre no fecho da sessão.

• Sundar Pichai said Google was still in the early phases of recursively self-improving AI.
• Researchers are working with AI agents to build better models, he said.
• Sergey Brin recently said Google was "starting to get onto that RSI treadmill."

Google's AI models may be helping to build their successors, but CEO Sundar Pichai says the moment of fully self-improving AI is still a while away.

Speaking on an episode of the "Big Technology Podcast" this week, Pichai said that Google researchers were using AI agents to assist them when building models, but caveated that it was still early days.

"We are pretty far from the end state of RSI," said Pichai, referring to recursive self-improvement. "The right way to describe it is, you have RSI loops along with AI researchers in various aspects of model development. I would say you almost have agents helping AI researchers, in some automated way, work together to build these models."

Pichai added that he expected that continuum to keep making progress into next year.

Earlier this month, Google cofounder Sergey Brin said the company's Flash series of models, as well as Gemini 4, were demonstrating how AI was helping to build itself, and that Google was "starting to get onto that RSI treadmill."

"And now our researchers and the model work hand in hand to make the next version of the model," he said.

Brin has been increasingly involved in Google's Gemini efforts and has leveraged his power as cofounder to shift resources to projects he deems most effective, Business Insider previously reported. This has included pushing for more focus on RSI.

A report from the firm Gladstone AI, published earlier this month, said that most researchers interviewed from companies including Anthropic and DeepMind believed RSI will start within the next three to 12 months, and possibly sooner without government intervention.

In another moment on the "Big Technology Podcast," Pichai was asked about how much AI was being used to code internally. The company said in April that 75% of new code inside Google was generated by AI.

"That number in our world today is like meaningless in the sense that every part of code we now touch is influenced by AI deeply," Pichai said. With Gemini 4 Argon, he said, people were going to tackle harder problems. He also said Google was seeing a one-third decrease in code rollbacks, where software is reverted to a previous version because of a bug or system issue.

"And so I think people are writing code more productively, and better code with it," he said of AI tools.

Pichai also uses AI to track Google's model development and internal discussions, he told the "Sources" podcast this week.

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Company ordered to stop work at two sites in country, which has found itself at forefront of tech firms’ latest push

Behind a wire fence lies a vast gaping wound of earth. Before Google’s arrival a few months ago, an estimated quarter of a million trees occupied the 330 hectares (815 acres) of forest near the town of Muhos in rural northern Finland. Now they are all gone.

After the tech company illegally stripped the entire area to build a datacentre – taking even the top soil with it – all that remains is a vast expanse of mud indented with the trail marks of machinery, puddles and mounds of earth, roots and branches. Residents say that brown water flowing off the site is going into a stream that feeds the Oulujoki River.

The International Monetary Fund warned Tuesday that the global economy faces serious risks from Big Tech firms taking on massive debt to fund the buildout of artificial intelligence data centers worldwide. The IMF’s latest Global Financial Stability Report outlines a number of risks to economic growth in the coming years, including a reliance on AI […]

The post IMF warns of debt-fueled AI spending as bubble fears grow appeared first on Asia Times.

As the controversy over AI safety grows, another debate is emerging. Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, has said that artificial intelligence should pay taxes to compensate for the jobs that will be destroyed by the deployment of this technology.

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