Alphabet shares have surged more than 140% in the last year, in large part due to its AI strategy.

What has set the company apart?

McKenzie Segalos is looking into that for today's tech check.

Morning, Mac.

Hey, good morning, Carl.

So Alphabet making a run at NVIDIA's crown as investors buy into its AI strategy.

Anthropic has reported a 200, well, we got Anthropic reportedly signing this $200

billion Google Cloud commitment that briefly pushed Alphabet above Invidia after hours,

leaving the two neck and neck for the title of world's most valuable company.

Wall Street is shrugging off the risk.

More than 40% of Google's future contracted

cloud revenue is now tied to Anthropic, even as Google invests up to $40 billion in that same

customer. Now, normally, that kind of customer concentration and circular financing

would be a red flag. Oracle was punished for its open-AI exposure. Microsoft faced similar questions, but with Google, the market reaction has been the opposite,

in part because investors see the company getting paid across the AI stack.

Gemini keeps it in the model race.

Google is reportedly working on an agent to rival OpenClaw.

Google Cloud sells compute. TPUs are an Invidia alternative,

and Google still has search, YouTube, and massive distribution to push AI products to users.

So Google may not win every lane in AI, but it can still get paid by the companies that do,

including Anthropic, a direct model rival that still needs Google's

cloud and chips to scale, which helps explain why shares are up more than 140% over the last

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