Stanley Druckenmiller's Duquesne Family Office exited its entire Alphabet position in the first quarter of 2026 and rotated the capital into three AI hardware “picks-and-shovels” names: SanDisk, Micron Technology, and Seagate Technology, according to recently reported 13F filings.
Alphabet Inc. receives a Strong Bullish upgrade following transformative Google I/O AI announcements from yesterday's presentation. GOOG unveiled Gemini 3.5, Gemini Omni, and agentic AI Search, radically enhancing both consumer and enterprise offerings. A revamped AI pricing model ties revenue to compute usage, supporting faster gross margin expansion and GOOGL valuation upside.
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Alphabet (GOOGL) delivered a blowout Q1 2026, with $109.9B revenue (+22% YoY) and $39.7B operating income (+30% YoY), decisively refuting the bear thesis. GOOGL's Cloud segment accelerated to 63% YoY growth, tripling segment profit and building a $460B+ backlog, signaling multi-year visibility and margin expansion. Search and AI monetization remain robust, with Search queries at all-time highs, 19% YoY growth, and Gemini/AI subscriptions scaling rapidly across consumer and enterprise.
Alphabet posted a record FQ1 operating margin of 36%+, driven by AI investments and internal TPU development. GOOG Cloud's operating margin nearly doubled year-over-year to ~33%, highlighting AI's role in margin expansion and future external revenue opportunities. I see consensus growth and EPS estimates (with a 13.6% annual growth rate) as conservative, with my model projecting a 17.4% rate.
OpenAI committed 300 million Singapore dollars and launched its first overseas AI lab in Singapore. Google expanded AI cooperation into education, healthcare and scientific research.
Google's smartwatch software gets buried under a heap of AI health news at I/O 2026.
Google delayed its Gemini 3.5 Pro AI model, disappointing some developers. The smaller Gemini 3.5 Flash model now powers Google's Antigravity AI coding service.
Commentary: Just as AI Overviews are starving digital publishers of search traffic, AI-driven YouTube features will likely trigger a drop-off in video creation.
Every product search, price check and restaurant booking has started the same way since 1998: Type something short, get a list of links. That model is 25 years old.
Commentary: Forget "Ask YouTube." Google should prioritize the AI work it's doing in science.
Google Docs Live, Ask YouTube and Project Aura made the top of my list.