Alphabet is the one stock I’d own if I could only own one.
If I could only own one stock for the next decade, it would be Alphabet (GOOGL -2.05%) (GOOG -1.99%). The company has dispelled fears that artificial intelligence (AI) is a threat, while its biggest risk around its antitrust case is now behind it. Meanwhile, it probably has one of the best long-term growth setups of any stock out there.
Alphabet’s dominance starts with search. Google remains the front door to the internet for billions of people, and that’s not changing anytime soon due to the huge distribution advantage the company has. It controls both the world’s leading smartphone operating system and web browser in Android and Chrome, respectively, while its search revenue-sharing deal with Apple makes it the default search engine for Safari.
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Meanwhile, Alphabet is now incorporating AI throughout Google to make its offering even stronger and help drive query growth. With new features like Lens and Circle to Search, Alphabet has found new ways to help people search instead of just typing in text. This is driving more queries, many of which have a shopping intent that feeds into its massive ad network. Meanwhile, AI Overviews and its new AI Mode, which lets users toggle between traditional results and chatbot-style answers, are also driving more engagement.
Google’s data advantage also shouldn’t be underestimated. The company has decades of user data, as well as videos through YouTube, that it can use to make its Gemini AI models better. Alphabet’s strength in multimodal AI is another area of strength that gets overlooked. The Gemini chatbot app has been taking off, largely due to Nano Banana, its newest AI image editor and creator, while Google Veo 3 is a video AI leader.
Alphabet has also spent decades creating one of the most wide-reaching ad networks on the planet. It can handle anything from global campaigns to local merchants. Creating great search and AI products is just half the battle; you need to be able to monetize them, and Alphabet’s unmatched ad network puts it light-years ahead of any emerging competition.
To the clouds and beyond
While search is Alphabet’s biggest business, it is far from a one-horse pony. Cloud computing has become the company’s fastest-growing business. Last quarter, Google Cloud revenue jumped 32% to $13.6 billion, while operating income more than doubled to $2.8 billion. Demand is so strong that Alphabet raised its 2025 capital expenditure (capex) budget by $10 billion to $85 billion to expand data center capacity. Unlike many peers, Google Cloud is vertically integrated from top to bottom. Google is the only company with its own world-class AI model and its own custom chips, called Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), that it’s using at scale. Those TPUs provide both cost and performance advantages, especially as workloads shift toward inference rather than training.
Alphabet is also taking AI deeper into the enterprise with its new Gemini Enterprise and Gemini Business subscriptions. These offerings let companies build and deploy AI agents without writing code. The launch includes pre-built agents and access to partner-built ones, all backed by enterprise-grade security features like Model Armor. This positions Google to compete directly with Microsoft and OpenAI for corporate AI spending, and early adopters such as Gap and Virgin Voyages are already reporting measurable productivity gains.
Behind all this, Google Cloud benefits from technology that’s hard to replicate. It developed Kubernetes, which is now the standard for containerized apps, and it owns one of the largest private fiber networks in the world, delivering low-latency performance on a global scale. Its pending acquisition of Wiz, meanwhile, will add a best-in-class cloud security platform. Google Cloud may be the third-largest cloud provider by market share, but its technology stack and integration with Gemini give it a differentiated position that could drive outsize growth over the next decade.
In addition to cloud computing, Alphabet also has some promising emerging bets. The one furthest along is Alphabet’s robotaxi unit Waymo, which is already operating in multiple U.S. cities and expanding rapidly. If it can lower costs, it could eventually become a huge profit driver for the company. The company’s quantum computing team, meanwhile, is also making real progress with its Willow chip, which has shown reduced error rates as it scales.
A cheap stock with big growth ahead
Despite all this, Alphabet’s valuation still looks attractive. The stock trades at a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of roughly 22.5 times projected 2026 earnings, which is a clear discount to its mega-cap AI peers. So, despite the rally in the stock this year, it still is not fully getting the respect it deserves.
Given its valuation, wide moat, growth prospects, and the optionality of its emerging bets in robotaxis and quantum computing, Alphabet is the one stock I’d own if I could only own one stock.