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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