For years the shareholders of Alphabet, the company behind Google, quietly asked the same thing: when will these billions thrown at artificial intelligence start returning something? The answer, at least for now, came from the most unexpected till - the cloud.

Revenue from Google Cloud jumped by 82 percent year on year and reached 24.8 billion dollars in a single quarter. For comparison, the previous quarter's growth was 63 percent, and Wall Street expected around 22.46 billion. When a figure exceeds both its own projections and analysts' expectations, it usually means something is really changing - or that everyone together underestimated how fast companies would throw themselves at AI.

That is exactly the driver: companies buying ready-made infrastructure and AI solutions. And the backlog of contracts not yet turned into revenue reached 514 billion dollars. That is committed business for years ahead - Google already knows the money is coming, it is just waiting to collect it.

Alphabet's profit hit 112.1 billion dollars, against 28.1 billion in the same period last year - a fourfold jump. Total revenue grew by 24 percent to 119.8 billion, the twelfth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. Gemini, the company's chatbot, now counts 950 million monthly users, up from 750 million at the end of 2025.

„Our investments in artificial intelligence are redefining what is possible in every part of our business,” said CEO Sundar Pichai. It sounds like a sentence written for shareholders, not for users - and that is exactly why it is worth reading twice. Because the same company is announcing capital spending of 180 to 190 billion dollars for this year alone. That is not a company's budget, that is a state's budget.

When analysts on the conference call asked exactly when all this would pay off, Pichai did not give a date - he gave a reassurance. „We are seeing strong signs of demand, including long-term contracts... if anything, the dynamics look healthier than a year ago.” In other words: trust us, the money is coming. The Balkans know this sentence by heart - everyone who promised a big project has said it at least once.

Still, unlike many AI promises that remain marketing, here there is a concrete figure to back it up - 24.8 billion in cloud revenue, collected, not projected. The question is not whether Google earns from artificial intelligence. The question is whether anyone besides the handful of giants can even afford to play in a game where the entry ticket costs 190 billion a year.