After a rocky start to the year, Google ends 2025 with strongest performance yet — From a Wall Street perspective — The company’s stock price has doubled since emerging from the financial crisis in 2009.

alphabetical The stock is up 65% this year, slightly ahead of its 2021 gains. The stock hit 2025 lows in April as president donald trump It once threatened to impose huge tariffs on trading partners, but the tariffs have since jumped to more than 100%.

Of the eight technology companies valued at more than $1 trillion, Alphabet was by far the biggest gainer. The next strongest rebound comes from chipmakers Broadcom and NVIDIAup 49% and 39% respectively.

At this point, Google needs to confront skeptics who question whether the search giant can maintain its dominance in the age of artificial intelligence. and open artificial intelligence With ChatGPT and Sora services attracting growing consumer engagement and concerns over the future of online advertising in a world of AI-powered chatbots and agents, Google’s business model is seen as a target for major disruption.

Alphabet’s 18% plunge in the first quarter was the stock’s worst period since mid-2022.

But by the second quarter, the mood began to improve. In April, the company promoted a 16-year company veteran Josh Woodward Runs the Gemini application, Google’s answer to ChatGPT.

In August, Woodward’s team launched image generator Nano Banana, a feature of Gemini that lets users leverage artificial intelligence to generate images. The feature went viral upon its launch, with people using it to blend multiple photos together to create personal digital statues. By the end of next month, Gemini app will have more than 5 billion images deposed OpenAI’s ChatGPT is at the top Apple’s App store.

Google’s AI talent pool deepened this summer when the company announced a protocol Bringing on board Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of AI coding startup Windsurf, as well as other senior R&D employees from the high-profile startup, which previously worked at talks Acquired OpenAI for $3 billion. The deal fell through, and Google eventually agreed to pay $2.4 billion in licensing fees and compensation to Windsurf’s top engineers.

Despite losing an antitrust case last year, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta found that Google had an illegal monopoly in internet search september reign Object to the most serious consequences proposed by the Department of Justice.

Google doesn’t have to spin off Chrome and can still pay companies to pre-install the product, meaning it can keep paying apple Billions of dollars to become the default search engine on the iPhone. One consequence of the ruling is that Google will have to share certain data with competitors.

Gemini momentum is the biggest story.

Last month, Google announced Gemini 3The upgraded AI model comes nearly eight months after the launch of Gemini 2.5.

While Gemini still lags behind ChatGPT in overall usage, it is catching up quickly. According to this month’s data similar networkChatGPT’s share of generated AI traffic fell to about 68% from 87% a year ago, while Gemini jumped from about 5% to about 18% during the period.

Analysts at Citizens wrote in a note on Tuesday that the key development for Alphabet is not just Gemini but the impact of the company’s artificial intelligence investments on its core search business.

AI Overviews is Google’s search-embedded service that provides artificial intelligence-driven summaries for user queries. “The combination of updated models is improving the relevancy of answers, which we see as a further driver of engagement,” Citizen Analysts said.

“We believe Google can further accelerate search revenue growth in Q4 2025, which we view as a key near-term issue,” the analysts wrote, recommending a buy on the stock even after the recent rally.

Analysts also highlighted Google’s broad strength in cloud computing, an area the company is pursuing Amazon web services and Microsoft Azure and the company’s leadership in robot axis Waymo will be a potential catalyst in 2026.

Still, expectations are high as investors pile into the stock. Analysts expect fourth-quarter revenue to rise 15% to more than $111 billion when Alphabet next reports results, while full-year growth next year is expected to be in the mid-teens, according to LSEG.

October, alphabet bulge Its forecast for capital expenditures in 2025 increased from $85 billion to $93 billion. Analysts expect that number to jump to more than $114 billion by 2026, according to FactSet.

CEO Sundar Pichai The company has repeatedly said it is coping with soaring demand. He said on an earnings call in October that Google’s cloud business had signed more than $1 billion in deals as of the third quarter of 2025, more than in the previous two years combined.

Analysts at Pivotal Research warned in a note to clients earlier this month that if OpenAI, one of Google’s major customers, cuts spending or faces other problems with its growing obligations, “artificial intelligence stocks and the overall market could get pretty ugly for the time being.”

But Pivotal analysts have a buy rating on the stock and raised their price target by $50 to $400, about 28% above Wednesday’s closing price of $313.

“We believe that if this reshuffle does occur, it will be like the one in 2000 and will inevitably be a healthy elimination process, leaving fewer, more dominant competitors, with GOOG in the lead,” they wrote.

—CNBC’s Jennifer Elias contributed to this report.

watch: Alphabet takes the lead as markets reprice AI execution