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Google parent Alphabet has quadrupled its quarterly profit to nearly 120 billion dollars, driven by AI and its strongly growing cloud business. At the same time, the company is announcing AI investments of up to 200 billion dollars this year. On the markets, concern is growing about runaway spending.

Alphabet is presenting record figures while at the same time stoking the debate over the cost of the AI race. The New York Times (US) reports that the company quadrupled its profit to nearly 120 billion dollars, driven by heavy AI investment and growth above all in the cloud business. The conservative FAZ (Germany) emphasizes that Google is countering new AI rivals with its own features in search and beating expectations. The BBC (United Kingdom) and the business-liberal Handelsblatt, by contrast, focus on the flip side: the company is "burning" money, and investment in AI data centers keeps rising, this year to as much as 200 billion dollars. According to Reuters, CEO Sundar Pichai at the same time rejected the accusation that Google is losing ground in the AI race. The interpretations thus differ in emphasis, here record profit, there spending risk, not in the figures. What is clear is that Alphabet is betting billions on expanding its AI infrastructure.