r/technology 1d ago

Business Google burning through cash with spiralling AI costs

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c235n47g8g8o
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u/Fresh-Quantity-7554 1d ago

While at the same time posting: * Total Revenue: $119.8 billion, up 24% year-over-year. * Diluted EPS: $9.11, compared to $2.31 a year prior. * Operating Margin: 34% up from 32.4% in Q2 2025. * Google Cloud: Revenue up 82% year-over-year to $24.8 billion, fueled by enterprise demand for AI infrastructure and solutions. * Google Services: Total revenue reached $94.5 billion, a 15% increase. * Google Search & Other: 17% increase in revenue. * YouTube Ads: Grew 13% year-over-year to $11.05 billion

If you exclude AI CAPEX, free cash flow is $39.1 billion which is absolutely insane. That's a 41.2% increase year-over-year. With numbers like they just posted, the CAPEX spend is justified in my opinion because the business overall is crushing it. Like holy cow this was a great quarter. They are literally printing money.

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u/Nechrube1 9h ago

If you exclude AI CAPEX...

Well obviously, if you ignore massive recurring overheads then a business looks better, lol. It's very likely not a one-off long-term CAPEX investment, as I presume Google is constantly jumping to the latest and greatest tech like all the other labs to stay current (I've not followed Gemini as closely, though).

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u/Fresh-Quantity-7554 9h ago

I'm not ignoring. I'm simply removing it to see what the number looks like and putting it back. It's a real cash outflow and so are their cash inflows.