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Alphabet announces $80B equity capital raise to expand AI infra and compute

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Re: Alphabet announces $80B equity capital raise to expand AI infra and compute

#171

Post by marysol5 »

bel8 wrote: post #17
plmpsu wrote: post #6

Quoting: In addition, Alphabet has reached an agreement to sell $10 billion of stock to Berkshire Hathaway Inc. in a private placement, comprised of $5 billion in Class A Common Stock at a price of $351.81 per share and $5 billion in Class C Capital Stock at a price of $348.20 per share. This investment by Berkshire Hathaway adds to the position it has built since Q3 2025.

They know Google has a ton of data to train LLMs on. Recently I have been asking YouTube's new AI about some videos ("when is Steam metrics mentioned in the video?" for example), which means they also index videos. This is an unthinkable amount of data. I'm actually impressed at how bad Alphabet is with LLMs since they invented the thing as we know AND have all the data to train on, yet OpenAI and Anthropic are eatin…

How good is YT's data though? Have you seen their Auto Caption? It's utterly incapable of understanding speech.

Auto Dubbing on the other hand is incredible, translating Russian/Ukranian speech with different voices and accents for each speaker, during a fire fight is wild.

Re: Alphabet announces $80B equity capital raise to expand AI infra and compute

#172

Post by marysol5 »

Saline9515 wrote: post #169
marcus_holmes wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kodak problem. Kodak invented the digital camera but their revenue came from making photographic film. They were unable to take advantage of their invention because it would cannibalise their revenue. That didn't stop other people and the revenue died anyway. Google's main revenue is ads based on search. LLMs are a competitor to search. Creating better LLMs will cut into search volumes. In any large organisation this…

LLMs still need a search API, and use it a lot. Google is well positioned to earn from this service, especially if they can prove that their search service is superior to competitors. While they lose some of their moat, they are well positioned to dominate the market, just like they did in the consumer space.

Yeah but LLM's don't offer you an advert.

"You tried to find a recipe for cupcakes, well all I can offer you is an advert on kitchen appliances"

Re: Alphabet announces $80B equity capital raise to expand AI infra and compute

#173

Post by marysol5 »

mitchell_h wrote: post #23
bel8 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They know Google has a ton of data to train LLMs on. Recently I have been asking YouTube's new AI about some videos ("when is Steam metrics mentioned in the video?" for example), which means they also index videos. This is an unthinkable amount of data. I'm actually impressed at how bad Alphabet is with LLMs since they invented the thing as we know AND have all the data to train on, yet OpenAI and Anthropic are eatin…

I use anthropic's models daily, and sometimes switch to Gemini. Google is losing the marketing front BADLY, but their AI service is surprisingly great. It's far cheaper than anthropic for one. and for my kind of research it's just better.

We use Kiro (AWS) and Gemini (Google) at work.

Kiro is of course really good to back into AWS stuff, it knows more about AWS than Amazon themselves!

Gemini is really good at understanding my inane ramble and mis-spelling

Re: Alphabet announces $80B equity capital raise to expand AI infra and compute

#174

Post by logicchains »

bel8 wrote: post #17
plmpsu wrote: post #6

Quoting: In addition, Alphabet has reached an agreement to sell $10 billion of stock to Berkshire Hathaway Inc. in a private placement, comprised of $5 billion in Class A Common Stock at a price of $351.81 per share and $5 billion in Class C Capital Stock at a price of $348.20 per share. This investment by Berkshire Hathaway adds to the position it has built since Q3 2025.

They know Google has a ton of data to train LLMs on. Recently I have been asking YouTube's new AI about some videos ("when is Steam metrics mentioned in the video?" for example), which means they also index videos. This is an unthinkable amount of data. I'm actually impressed at how bad Alphabet is with LLMs since they invented the thing as we know AND have all the data to train on, yet OpenAI and Anthropic are eatin…

Google doesn't suck at LLMs, they suck at customer service. There was a period where Gemini Pro was the best LLM out there, before they gutted it with quantization. It's like they didn't realize that "provide a great product, get people hooked then cut the quality" doesn't work when switching costs are so low. As with GCP, putting the wants of SREs over the wants of customers is not how you gain lots of customers.

Re: Alphabet announces $80B equity capital raise to expand AI infra and compute

#175

Post by marysol5 »

pineapple_opus wrote: post #161
lemax wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm quite certain that Google's AI services are likely the most used in the world right now by virtue of having the widest distribution. It's in the search box. It's on your Android phone. Just because they aren't the preferred coding or research agent does not mean they are losing - that's a pretty small slice.

Yeah this seems true. Claude Code are famously dubbed as best AI coding agent, but google doesn't care about that niche I guess. Somehow, I still rely on google search as they have diversified it. If you ask questions, it will enable "AI overview" , but if we search about particular object/platform like "Google stock" or "bbc news", it will give the old classic search experience and we woulnd't need to swallow "AI ov…

I tried using Gemini CLI to sort some code issues for me, ran out of tokens mid-way through, even though I have Gemini Pro.

Turns out licensing is separate for "code" and "pro"...

Re: Alphabet announces $80B equity capital raise to expand AI infra and compute

#176

Post by marysol5 »

vasco wrote: post #36
mitchell_h wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use anthropic's models daily, and sometimes switch to Gemini. Google is losing the marketing front BADLY, but their AI service is surprisingly great. It's far cheaper than anthropic for one. and for my kind of research it's just better.

Is it? My mom and all her friends use "the intelligence". What is it? Gemini, because it's on their android phone.

Apple played a blinder by calling it "Apple Intelligence".

Well done lads

Re: Alphabet announces $80B equity capital raise to expand AI infra and compute

#177

Post by marysol5 »

tempest_ wrote: post #53
mitchell_h wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use anthropic's models daily, and sometimes switch to Gemini. Google is losing the marketing front BADLY, but their AI service is surprisingly great. It's far cheaper than anthropic for one. and for my kind of research it's just better.

I have not tried the Gemini CLI in a few months but when I did it was a shit show. Google makes it very hard to use their shit and it was full of bugs. Anthropic's current run is based entirely around Claude Code in this space and the last time I used the gemeini-cli it wouldnt give me access to the latest models and I was paying them for the privilege

It will also just sit there "thinking" for ages, if whatever you are doing requires an input (like sudo)

Sometimes you have to tab across and give it a PW, but it seemingly is incapable of parsing that, and just asking.

Kiro, what we use at work, on the other hand will just prompt you. (And doesn't like taking credentials directly)

Re: Alphabet announces $80B equity capital raise to expand AI infra and compute

#178

Post by jbs789 »

exabrial wrote: post #127

Question from an outsider: my perception is Google has lost $80b in excessive spending on teacups. I never thought I'd see them attempt to raise money, seems like they've always had an unlimited pile of it. Why is this necessary for them?

I think you’re spot on. If you think they know what they are doing, then why are they selling shares now instead of issuing debt? They must either be maxed out on debt issuance or believe the cost of equity (future equity returns) are low.

Re: Alphabet announces $80B equity capital raise to expand AI infra and compute

#179

Post by schonfinkel »

afavour wrote: post #69

It’s difficult to avoid the feeling that a horrible financial reckoning is on the way. All these big tech firms are spending wildly to make sure they are the one on top at the end of it all. But whoever that ends up being there’s going to be one hell of a lot of fallout underneath them.

And it's not just AI, we're riding atop a previous finance + crypto bubble that didn't properly pop up.

Re: Alphabet announces $80B equity capital raise to expand AI infra and compute

#180

Post by marysol5 »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #141
bel8 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They know Google has a ton of data to train LLMs on. Recently I have been asking YouTube's new AI about some videos ("when is Steam metrics mentioned in the video?" for example), which means they also index videos. This is an unthinkable amount of data. I'm actually impressed at how bad Alphabet is with LLMs since they invented the thing as we know AND have all the data to train on, yet OpenAI and Anthropic are eatin…

I'm guessing one goal of the semi recent AI translated subtitles on every video, is now every video has a transcription. It's actually incredibly useful if you just want to summarize a video, or my use case, want a text tutorial of something that's a video.

Their transcribing and summarisation of Google Meetings is pretty good.

I have a boss who loves to rattle on for ages, and it gives a breakdown of what on earth he was on about

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