Google Cloud Revenue Grows 82% as Alphabet Defends Capex Surge

Alphabet's cloud computing segment posted 82% year-over-year revenue growth in its latest quarter, one of the fastest expansion rates the unit has recorded. Commentary on the results points to a large and growing contracted backlog as the main reason management is comfortable committing to sharply higher capital expenditure on data centers and AI infrastructure. The backlog figure represents work already signed but not yet recognized as revenue, which supports expectations that growth can be sustained into the following quarter. Alphabet, like other hyperscalers, has been raising its capital spending guidance to add compute capacity for AI workloads, a shift that pressures near-term free cash flow while building out the asset base behind cloud revenue.