The news: Alphabet shares hit an all-time high last week—up about 70% this year and nearing a $4 trillion valuation—after investor enthusiasm surged around its new Gemini 3 model, per CNBC.

Google’s year-end optimism continued with reports that Meta is looking at a billion-dollar deal to use Google’s hardware for its AI expansion. 

More than model releases and future AI deals, the latest developments position Google as a key competitor to OpenAI and Nvidia.

Why it’s worth watching: Google holds structural advantages that few rivals can match. It already reaches billions of users through Android, Search, Gmail, YouTube, and Chrome—an installed base that gives Gemini 3 and future models an immediate distribution moat.

• Google Cloud’s data centers provide the compute backbone needed to scale multimodal AI.
• Its Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), which are also used by Apple, Anthropic, OpenAI, and Salesforce, let Google tune performance and efficiency in ways competitors relying on Nvidia chips cannot. 

Competitors are taking notice: OpenAI’s Sam Altman praised Google on Gemini 3, saying that “Google has been doing excellent work,” and Nvidia noted on X that it was “delighted by Google’s success” while also stating “Nvidia was a generation ahead of the industry.”

• Altman expects Google’s AI efforts to “create some temporary economic headwinds for (OpenAI).” 
• Nvidia’s shares fell by as much as 4% last week on the news that Google’s hardware and data centers are seeing increasing demand.

Looking forward: Google’s parallel push on AI models and custom hardware may pay off faster than expected. 

Its scale and consumer reach give Google a rare advantage anchored on rapid deployment, lower inference costs, and a massive user base already positioned to adopt whatever Google ships next through services they use every day.

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