The 1 Number That Shows Why Alphabet Is a Buy Today

Google (GOOG) Cloud backlog surged to $155B in Q3, up 46% quarter-over-quarter and 82% year-over-year.

Google Cloud operating margins hit 23.7% in Q3, up from 17% last year as scale improves.

Over 70% of Google’s cloud backlog ties to AI-related services, with enterprises adopting Gemini models and TPUs.

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In the competitive tech stock landscape, Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) stands out because of its diverse revenue streams, from search advertising to cloud computing. While its third-quarter earnings report last week gave its stock a boost, one number stood out in a report full of positive news:  Google Cloud’s backlog surged to $155 billion — up almost $50 billion sequentially, marking a 46% increase quarter-over-quarter and 82% year-over-year.

This figure, known as remaining performance obligations (RPO), reflects committed future revenue from customer contracts. As enterprises ramp up artificial intelligence (AI) and data investments, this backlog highlights Google Cloud’s momentum against rivals like Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT).

For investors, it signals reliable growth ahead, positioning Alphabet as a compelling buy in a market hungry for AI-driven upside.

Backlog, or RPO, measures the total value of contracted revenue that a company expects to recognize in the future. For Google Cloud, this includes subscriptions, usage-based fees, and long-term deals for services like computing power, storage, and AI tools.

The $155 billion total breaks down into current RPO (expected within the next year) and non-current (beyond that). Alphabet expects to recognize 55% of the total within the next two years. Although Google Cloud is in third place with a 13% share, it continues to grow much faster than either Amazon’s AWS (29%) or Microsoft’s Azure (20%), closing the gap between them..

The third-quarter surge was fueled by multi-year contracts with large enterprises adopting Google Cloud’s AI infrastructure, such as Gemini models and Vertex AI platform. CEO Sundar Pichai said the Gemini App now has over 650 million monthly active users, and queries tripled from Q2. This isn’t just a one-off; it’s part of a trend where backlog has nearly doubled year-over-year, outpacing overall cloud revenue growth of 34% to $15.2 billion.

The backlog jump points to accelerating demand in a cloud market projected to hit as much as $2 trillion by 2030. Key drivers of the increase include AI workloads, where customers like Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO) and Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) are integrating Google’s Tensor processing units (TPUs) — custom-designed application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) — and custom silicon for efficient training and inference.