{"id":22328,"date":"2026-01-12T15:45:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T13:45:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jhb-webdevelopers\/channelafrica\/news\/alphabet-hits-4-trillion-valuation-as-ai-refocus-lifts-sentiment\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T16:33:20","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T14:33:20","slug":"alphabet-hits-4-trillion-valuation-as-ai-refocus-lifts-sentiment","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/alphabet-hits-4-trillion-valuation-as-ai-refocus-lifts-sentiment\/","title":{"rendered":"Alphabet hits $4 trillion valuation as AI refocus lifts sentiment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The tech giant on Wednesday \u200csurpassed Apple in market capitalisation for the first time since 2019, becoming the second most valuable company in the world.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The milestones mark a remarkable change in investor sentiment for Alphabet, with its stock surging about 65% in 2025, outperforming its peers on Wall \u200cStreet&#8217;s elite group of stocks, the so-called Magnificent Seven. The stock has \u200bgained another 6% so far this year, and was last up 1.1%.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The shift was fueled by the company quelling concerns that it let an early AI advantage \u200dslip by, turning a once-overlooked cloud unit into a major growth engine and drawing a rare tech investment from Warren Buffett&#8217;s Berkshire Hathaway.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Its new Gemini 3 model has also drawn strong reviews, intensifying pressure on \u2060OpenAI after GPT-5 left some users underwhelmed. A <em>Reuters<\/em> report said that Samsung Electronics plans \u200dto double this year the number of its mobile devices with AI features powered by Google&#8217;s \u200cGemini.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;Reuters&#8211;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":11885,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[44],"class_list":["post-22328","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-finance","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Alphabet hit a $4 trillion market valuation on Monday, as the Google parent's sharpened artificial intelligence (AI) focus allayed doubts about its strategy and thrust it back \u200bto the forefront of the high-stakes race.","published_date":null,"news_description":"Alphabet hit a $4 trillion market valuation on Monday, as the Google parent's sharpened artificial intelligence (AI) focus allayed doubts about its strategy and thrust it back \u200bto the forefront of the high-stakes race.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/22328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/22328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25660,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/22328\/revisions\/25660"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=22328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}