TL;DR

Alphabet’s market capitalisation surged past $4.6 trillion after a 10% stock jump on Q1 2026 earnings that beat estimates across every division, with Google Cloud growing 63% to cross $20 billion and search queries at an all-time high. The gap with Nvidia, which fell 6% on reports that OpenAI missed growth targets, has narrowed to roughly $200 billion, and options traders assign a 53% probability that Alphabet will overtake Nvidia as the world’s most valuable company before mid-May.

On Thursday, Alphabet’s share price rose nearly 10 per cent after the company reported first-quarter revenue of $109.9 billion, a 22 per cent increase year over year that beat analyst estimates by almost $3 billion. Google Cloud crossed $20 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time, growing 63 per cent. The cloud backlog nearly doubled quarter on quarter to more than $460 billion. Earnings per share surged 81 per cent. Search queries hit an all-time high.…