Most Fortune 100 companies use Gemini Enterprise, and enterprise AI sales helped boost Google Cloud revenue by 82% in the second quarter.
Alphabet can continue to upsell and cross-sell enterprise users on more AI services for years to come.
With Space Exploration Technologies shares already available, an Anthropic IPO just around the corner, and OpenAI's IPO likely coming next year, investors will soon have plenty of leading artificial intelligence stocks to choose from.
But a subtler AI play is already available through Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) (NASDAQ: GOOG). Google Gemini is a leading AI model and is a popular choice among enterprise users. Indeed, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai recently said that almost 90% of Fortune 100 companies use Gemini Enterprise.
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Here's why that's great news for Alphabet stock and its investors.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai. Image source: Alphabet.
A lot of attention is being paid to consumer AI markets right now, partly because individuals were among the earliest adopters of AI, long before companies began experimenting with AI chatbots and agents.
But an important shift occurred a couple of years ago as AI companies realized that building new features for enterprise users might be a more lucrative strategy. That's why you saw Anthropic pivot toward Claude Cowork, which has helped the company become a massive success. Anthropic's sales have skyrocketed nearly sevenfold over the past year, reaching an annualized revenue run rate of $65 billion.
Alphabet knows the enterprise strategy is key to AI's success, too. Pichai said on Alphabet's Q2 2026 earnings call: "It's great to see the wide adoption of Gemini Enterprise, with nearly 90% of the Fortune 100 using it."
Pichai said that millions of businesses, including Intel, PepsiCo, and Macy's, are using Gemini Enterprise to build AI agents, automate workflows, and improve cybersecurity. Their collective usage has resulted in more than 1 trillion paid tokens used in the past year.
That's great news for Alphabet and its investors because the more those Gemini Enterprise users spend their tokens -- on AI requests, image generation, analytics, etc. -- the more money Alphabet makes.
And it's already paying off for Alphabet. While it doesn't break out AI revenue on its own, management said Google Cloud revenue rose 82% in the second quarter to nearly $25 billion, driven by enterprise demand and AI products.
Enterprise users have more resources and are less likely to bounce around to different software tools and services than individual customers. This makes them very lucrative for tech companies, which is why both Anthropic and Alphabet (and more recently, OpenAI) have courted enterprise users so heavily.
With nearly 90% of Fortune 100 companies already having paid Gemini Enterprise accounts, Alphabet is off to a great start in locking in these customers for years to come. And because the company offers a wide variety of tech tools -- including web hosting, advertising, AI agents, email, etc. -- Alphabet has many opportunities to both upsell enterprise customers on additional tools and lock them into an ever-expanding AI ecosystem.
I know it's easy to assume that Anthropic and OpenAI will dominate the AI market in the coming years -- and both companies should certainly be on your investment radar -- but Alphabet is already proving its worth in the AI enterprise space. Investors would be wise not to ignore the company's impressive progress.
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Chris Neiger has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet and Intel. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.