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Alphabet just joined one of the rarest clubs in markets, companies worth roughly $4 trillion or more, according to Reuters and real-time quote data.
The company’s class A shares pushed its market value to around $4 trillion in intraday trading on Monday, Jan. 12, as the stock traded near a record high, with GOOGL changing hands around $331 and the market cap hovering just under $4 trillion at the close, reported MarketScreener.
Only a handful of companies have ever traded at or above that level, with Nvidia, Microsoft, and Apple the only other names to hit the $4 trillion mark in recent years. Alphabet had previously joined the $3 trillion club in September 2025 after a months-long rally powered by AI optimism and relief over regulatory and antitrust worries, according to Yahoo Finance.
Alphabet’s corporate team marked the occasion with a short note, calling the new value “a milestone built on years of investing in AI and helpful products for everyone,” according to a post from the company’s official @NewsFromGoogle account on X that was cited in coverage of the move.
That tone matches what you are seeing from Wall Street, where the stock is now treated as less of a cyclical ad name and more of a core AI platform.
Alphabet’s move into this valuation tier is being driven by investors who now see it as one of the cleanest ways to own large-scale AI infrastructure, not just a search and ads business.
Alphabet briefly hit the $4 trillion line after its “sharpened artificial intelligence focus allayed doubts about its strategy and thrust it back to the forefront of the high-stakes race,” said Reuters in a piece on the milestone.
The stock’s recent surge sits on top of a big year, because Alphabet’s shares gained around 65% in 2025 as the company turned Google Cloud into a real growth engine and pushed its Gemini models across search, YouTube, and enterprise AI, reported Channel Africa.
Analysts have credited that combination of ad stability, cloud momentum, and AI product launches for the multiple expansions that took Alphabet from a $3 trillion story into the $4 trillion club, noted Virginia Business and MarketScreener.
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Alphabet’s rally is also being reinforced by influential market voices who are treating the stock as a core AI winner for 2026. Jim Cramer said he “bet it keeps climbing in 2026” and admitted that selling Alphabet for his charitable trust was a mistake he did not want to repeat, according to coverage of his comments from InsiderMonkey and Finviz.
Cramer pointed to the launch of the latest Gemini models, YouTube’s strength, and Waymo’s leadership in robotaxis as reasons Alphabet has been “re-rated from an ad company to an AI leader” in investors’ minds.
The valuation story gets more interesting when you factor in Apple’s AI pivot. Apple plans to use Google’s Gemini artificial intelligence model to power an enhanced version of Siri and its broader Apple Intelligence features under a multi-year deal, according to CNN.
Apple concluded after “careful evaluation” that Google’s AI technology offered the “most capable foundation” for its Apple Foundation Models, said a joint statement cited by News18.
The partnership marks a major shift for Apple, which has historically leaned on in-house work for core technologies, and it effectively turns a long-running mobile rivalry into a new revenue stream for Google, according to News18’s report on the agreement.
Apple is betting that a revamped, Gemini-powered Siri will help reignite iPhone demand after sluggish device sales, while Google gets to embed its AI stack into one of the world’s largest consumer platforms, said CNN in its coverage of the deal.
For you as an investor, that means:
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You are looking at a fresh, high-margin stream of AI platform revenue that should scale with Apple device usage.
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You are seeing additional proof that outside giants are willing to rent Gemini rather than rebuild similar models from scratch.
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You are dealing with more concentration of AI risk and reward in a handful of mega-cap names that already dominate market indices.
Apple could end up paying around $1 billion per year to integrate Gemini into Siri and related features, according to an earlier Bloomberg report cited in CNN’s analysis of the partnership. Even a number at a fraction of that level would still be meaningful for Alphabet because it would show how AI “tolls” can start to add up for a company of this size, said Virginia Business.
Inside Google, the tone around this valuation is one of long-game AI execution rather than a one-off. Google Chief Scientist Jeff Dean said he was “excited to see us partner with Apple to bring Gemini models to Apple users, powering Apple Intelligence features,” in a post on X (formerly Twitter) reacting to the Apple-Gemini deal.
Dean has spent years leading efforts like Google’s tensor processing unit chips, and that same profile described Alphabet’s AI footprint as “planet-scale infrastructure” that underpins search, YouTube, and now Gemini workloads. The framing matters to you, because it shows how Google’s own leadership sees the stock’s rerating as recognition of a multi-year, capital-intensive AI buildout rather than a quick meme trade.
Related: Apple analyst sets bold stock target for 2026
Outside the company, bullish commentary has built around that same theme. Alphabet is being described as a “tech giant” whose diversified revenue streams and ongoing investments in AI position it for “sustained growth” as markets lean into digital infrastructure, according to MyTopStock’s review of the company.
Those takes echo the idea that if you own Alphabet at this size, you are effectively holding a piece of the underlying plumbing of the AI economy, said Virginia Business.
When a stock joins a club this exclusive, it is natural to ask if you have already missed the move. Alphabet’s path here has been steep, because shares are up roughly 65% over the past year and have added another few percentage points in early 2026.
At a market cap of around $4 trillion, even small changes in sentiment concerning AI demand can translate into hundreds of billions of dollars in value either way, said MarketScreener.
If you are holding Alphabet or thinking about starting a position, I see the trade-offs this way: You are buying a dominant search and ads business that still generates enormous cash flow and has held up even through macro uncertainty. You are getting exposure to a cloud unit that has shifted from an afterthought to a key growth driver as enterprises sign up for AI workloads on Google Cloud.
At the same time, you are taking on valuation and concentration risk in a market where mega-cap AI names already drive a disproportionate share of index returns, according to Reuters.
For long-term, tech-heavy investors, my question is less about whether Alphabet “deserves” to be at $4 trillion today and more about whether Gemini, Google Cloud, and deals like Apple’s Siri partnership will be big enough and fast enough to keep the company in this club through the next downturn.
This story was originally published by TheStreet on Jan 13, 2026, where it first appeared in the Markets section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.