Alphabet’s Silent Layoffs help AI Expansion

Alphabet (Nasdaq: GOOG) recently announced its first quarter results that soared past market expectations. The performance helped the stock climb 10% in the after-hours session. The stock has already climbed nearly 25% so far this year.

Alphabet’s Financials

Alphabet’s revenue grew 20% to $109.9 billion, ahead of analyst estimates of $107.2 billion. EPS of $2.62 was marginally shy of analyst estimates of $2.63.

Among key segments, revenues from Google Services came in at $89.6 billion compared with $77.3 billion a year ago. Google cloud revenues grew 63% to $20 billion compared with the Street’s estimates of $18 billion. The growth in the segment was led by an increase in enterprise AI Solutions and enterprise AI Infrastructure. Google Cloud now has a backlog of $460 billion. Revenues from other bets were down to $411 million from $450 million reported a year ago.

Overall advertising revenues were up 16% to $77.3 billion. YouTube advertising revenues of $9.9 billion missed the Street’s expectations of $10 billion. On the positive note though YouTube subscriptions are growing faster than YouTube ads.

Alphabet continues to invest in building AI infrastructure and capacity and increased its earlier estimated capital expenditure outlay for the year from $175-$185 billion to $180-$190 billion. It incurred $35.7 billion in capex in the first quarter of the year so far.

Alphabet’s AI Expansion

According to the analysts, Google’s robust backlog and performance is a clear result of its full-stack AI growth. And Alphabet just continues to up the ante. At its annual Google I/O developer conference this month, Alphabet release a slew of new AI models and products. It introduced Gemini 3.5 Flash, a faster and more cost-efficient addition to Google’s model family. Gemini 3.5 Flash is being positioned as an AI model that delivers strong performance at significantly lower compute costs. It also announced Omni, a new model designed to simulate physical environments and predict outcomes based on user actions. So far these predictive models that change responses to the environment and the physical world have been studied inside Google DeepMind for robotics and simulation research. The release of Omni suggest that Google is investing in a capability that goes beyond the current chatbot paradigm. Within the agentic front, Google introduced Gemini Spark, a new general-purpose AI agent embedded in the Gemini app. Spark has been designed to reason across connected apps and it can also take actions on the user’s behalf, thus reducing the need for human input. Spark has been launched in beta for Google AI Ultra subscribers.

Analysts believe that by releasing so many AI capabilities, Alphabet is flexing its AI model building capabilities. Recently Anthropic’s latest model, Mythos, was in the news because it had discovered thousands of previously unknown software vulnerabilities. OpenAI’s latest GPT-5.5 has also recently become the default model for ChatGPT. Google’s products are a demonstration of its model capability, agent deployment, and developer tooling all at once.

Google’s stock is trading at $379.38 with a market capitalization of $4.6 trillion. It hit a 52-week high of $404.47 earlier this month and has recovered from the 52-week low of $163.33 from a year ago.

Unlike other tech giants that have announced mass lay-offs, Google has been playing it differently. In the recent quarter, it has not announced big lay-offs, but reports suggest that the company has been quietly reshaping its org structure. The cuts are spread across a performance review process, a voluntary buyout offer, and a flattening of its management layer. Within the last year, Google has laid off more than one-third of its managers overseeing small teams. It has 35% fewer managers, with fewer direct reports.  

As of April 2026, the global tech industry has recorded 78,557 layoffs, with 76.7% occurring in U.S. companies. While giants like Oracle (25,000+), Amazon (16,000), and Block (4,000) lead the charge, a disturbing pattern has emerged.

According to research by Alan Cohen (RationalFX), nearly half of these job losses are now explicitly tied to “AI Restructuring.” However, a deeper analysis suggests that AI is often being used as an “AI-as-an-excuse” narrative to justify aggressive cost-cutting and boost sagging stock prices. Companies like Oracle have automated the termination process itself, firing thousands via 6:00 AM emails—a cold-blooded approach that reflects a total deficit of empathy and human kindness.

The 1Mby1M Perspective: Stop Being the Victim

There is only one permanent solution to this trend of mass layoffs and “AI-driven” displacement: Learn to become an entrepreneur. You don’t have to build a “Unicorn.” You just need to solve a real problem, build a sustainable business, and create your own livelihood. This tsunami of layoffs will continue; paralysis is not a solution. * If you have been laid off: Now is the time to pivot your skills toward a venture you own.

Read my papers on Career Lifeboat Strategic Framework for Professional Resilience and why Solo Entrepreneurs are Vital for the AI era.

If you still have a job: Now is the perfect time to consider bootstrapping a startup with a paycheck before the next 6:00 AM email arrives.

Take Action Now

• For the Displaced: Equity-Free Accelerator for Laid-Off Techies | 1Mby1M
• For the Part-Time Founder Hedging Against Layoffs: Bootstrap with a Paycheck through 1Mby1M
• Free Mentoring: Join our Free Mentoring Roundtables for Startup Founders to get direct feedback on your idea.
• Rapid Validation: Use the 1Mby1M AI Mentor to stress-test your business model 24/7.

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About 1Mby1M:

One Million by One Million (1Mby1M) is the first global virtual accelerator in the world, founded in 2010 by Silicon Valley serial Entrepreneur Sramana Mitra. It offers a fully online entrepreneurship incubation, acceleration and education resource for solo entrepreneurs and bootstrapped founders working on tech and tech-enabled services ventures.

1Mby1M does not charge equity, offers an AI Mentor available 24/7 in 57 languages, and offers a compelling alternative to Y Combinator and other equity accelerators.