My Favorite Artificial Intelligence Stock to Buy Right Now

Source The Motley Fool

Key Points

  • Alphabet has rapidly gained market share in the AI space with its Gemini LLM.

  • Start-up rivals Anthropic and Open AI are leading for now, but they lack Alphabet's resources; neither is set to turn a profit anytime soon.

  • Not only is Alphabet profitable, but it's also growing incredibly fast and has nearly $100 billion to invest in whatever it needs to come out on top.

  • 10 stocks we like better than Alphabet ›

Google's parent company, Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL), is one of the original Silicon Valley tech giants that have come to dominate the stock market.

It has also emerged as the leader among those original tech giants in artificial intelligence (AI), and it's eating into the market share of OpenAI, the company that made AI mainstream in the first place with the launch of ChatGPT back in late 2022.

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OpenAI might have launched the first large language model (LLM) to achieve mass success, but since its peak 50% market share in the Enterprise LLM API space in 2023, it has fallen to 25% market share.

An artist's rendering of two robots standing face to face on a black backdrop.

Image source: Getty Images.

As reported by Menlo Ventures, OpenAI has been totally eclipsed by its start-up rival Anthropic, which has secured 32% market share with its Claude LLM. And Google's Gemini isn't far behind it at 20% market share.

But despite Claude's rise to prominence, I think Gemini will win out in the Enterprise AI market for the simple reason that it has Alphabet behind it. Anthropic is still a start-up with all the weaknesses that come with that. Sure, Anthropic is set to achieve profitability in 2028, a full two years ahead of OpenAI, but Alphabet is already profitable. It also has incredibly vast resources to invest in AI development. Here's what I mean.

Profitability matters

We all love an underdog story of a little guy overcoming a giant, right? Well, investing is another story, and that story's not Rudy. Barring a miracle for OpenAI or Anthropic, Alphabet is a giant that neither can realistically overcome.

For its latest results, for the third quarter of 2025, Alphabet reported revenue of $102.3 billion, up 16% over Q3 2024. Net income totaled $34.9 billion, up 33% over Q3 2024. And diluted earnings per share (EPS) grew by 35% over Q3 2024. On the cash front, Alphabet's free cash flow came in at $24.4 billion, up 39% over Q3 2024. The company also holds $98.5 billion in cash, which is enough to pay off its entire debt of $44.2 billion twice.

And while profitability for its start-up rivals is still years away at best, Alphabet is running a 59% gross margin and a 32% net income margin.

Alphabet also has its own cloud infrastructure that I would wager both OpenAI and Anthropic have had to use at some point. And the company has more than enough money to buy as many data centers as it needs without needing to ask early investors to pour in more money without seeing a concrete return.

Case in point: Alphabet recently inked a 25-year power purchase agreement with NextEra Energy to resurrect the Duane Arnold Energy Center in Iowa, expressly to provide more electricity for Alphabet data centers it has either planned or owns in the area.

Alphabet also simply flat-out acquired Intersect, a data center energy infrastructure company, for $4.75 billion in December 2025. That's a rounding error for a company of Alphabet's size.

That's just what you can do when you have Alphabet's resources. And I haven't even mentioned the company's engineering quality or prowess at developing new software, but suffice it to say it has talent in spades.

Sure, we all like to see the little guy win. But isn't it also entertaining when a world-class team absolutely dominates in its sport?

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*Stock Advisor returns as of January 17, 2026.

James Hires has positions in Alphabet. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet and NextEra Energy. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Disclaimer: For information purposes only. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
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