Prediction: Alphabet's Profit Growth Carries It to $5 Trillion Before 2028

Just one company has ever ended a trading day worth more than $5 trillion. Nvidia did it first on Oct. 29, 2025. Apple has crossed the level in trading, though it hasn't closed above it.

Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL)(NASDAQ:GOOG) got close, too. At its record close of $402.62 on May 13, the Google parent was worth around $4.86 trillion -- less than 3% below the line.

Shares have since slid to around $344 as I write, and the company is worth about $4.2 trillion. Reaching $5 trillion from here takes a rise of around 19%, or about $410 per Class A share with today's share count. Making it by the end of 2027 means climbing about 15% a year.

I think Alphabet gets there before 2028. And the case rests almost entirely on profit growth the business is already delivering.

Image source: Alphabet.

What does $5 trillion take?

On reported earnings, Alphabet looks cheap at around 17 times earnings over the past four quarters. But more than half of its $14.24 in earnings per share for the first half of 2026 came from gains on stakes in other companies, mainly unrealized.

Measured against the profit analysts expect for 2027, shares cost around 23 times earnings. Meta Platforms is at about 21 times its own expected 2027 earnings, so I think Alphabet's price is fair for a business growing profits so fast.

If that price-to-earnings multiple holds, the stock can only climb as fast as profits do. Alphabet's earnings power has to grow around 19% by the end of 2027, or about 15% a year.

Showing how easily the company is clearing that bar, Alphabet's operating income rose 30% year over year to $40.8 billion in the second quarter of 2026. That rate matched the first quarter and accelerated from 16% growth in the fourth quarter of 2025, which absorbed a $2.1 billion compensation charge linked to Waymo.

Put another way, last year's full-year growth of 15% would about hit the target. This year's pace is twice that.

Cloud's bigger share

Of the $9.5 billion gain in Alphabet's operating income from the year-ago quarter, Google Cloud added around $6 billion. Cloud revenue surged 82% to $24.8 billion, and its operating margin climbed to 35.6% from 20.7%, giving the segment $8.8 billion in operating income. A year ago, Cloud earned less than a tenth of the operating income from Alphabet's two big segments. Today it earns about 18%.

Even more could come in 2027. In the second quarter, Alphabet started delivering TPU systems (full setups built around its in-house artificial intelligence chips) to customers' data centers.

"We anticipate the vast majority of the revenues from these agreements will be realized in 2027," chief financial officer Anat Ashkenazi said on Alphabet's second-quarter earnings call.

Search doesn't need to speed up for the prediction to work. Google Search & other revenue grew 17% to $63.3 billion in Q2, easing a bit from 19% in the first quarter. But operating income for the Google services segment, which includes Search, still rose around 20%.

Depreciation is the risk I'm watching

The biggest risk is depreciation. Alphabet's depreciation expense climbed to $7.1 billion in the second quarter, up 42% year over year, after 44% growth in each of the two previous quarters. It's rising faster than operating income.

And more is coming. Alphabet had $122.8 billion in property and equipment not yet in service as of June 30, up from $78.6 billion at the end of 2025. These assets begin depreciating when they're running. Management also expects capital spending to rise significantly again in 2027, after a 2026 plan of $195 billion to $205 billion -- over double what Alphabet spent in 2025.

This is the part of the forecast I'm least sure about. But operating income could grow half as fast as it did in the first half of 2026 and still about hit the target. I think the most likely way this prediction misses is depreciation pushing profit growth back under last year's 15%.

Can Alphabet get to $5 trillion before 2028? I think so. The profit growth it needs is around half what the company is posting now, and TPU sales could add a second boost in 2027.

At about 23 times expected 2027 earnings, Alphabet stock strikes me as worth considering here -- maybe buying in gradually as the spending works its way into earnings. But a 15-month deadline doesn't leave much time to recover if depreciation climbs faster than I expect in 2027.

Daniel Sparks and his clients have positions in Apple. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Apple, Meta Platforms, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.