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Google Cloud surpasses $20B but says growth was capacity-constrained
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Google Cloud, the business under parent company Alphabet that provides enterprise AI solutions, had a blowout first quarter, with revenues topping $20 billion for the time, a 63% increase from the same period last year. However, investors were concerned about the constraints surrounding the business and how Google decides to allocate cloud capacity. In the first quarter of 2026, the company said its cloud growth was driven by strong performance in the Google Cloud Platform, which grew at a higher rate than the Google Cloud division’s overall revenue growth. (The Cloud division includes a variety of services like infrastructure, data analytics, AI/ML tools, and Google Workspace.) Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai told analysts on the Q1 2026 earnings call on Wednesday that this growth came from “strong demand” for Gemini Enterprise and its AI solutions, and pointed to an increased demand for infrastructure, including TPU hardware and data centers. AI solutions were the largest driver of cloud growth, with products built on Google’s genAI models growing nearly 800% year-over-year. Google Gemini Enterprise also grew 40% quarter-over-quarter, the company said, and AI token growth via its API grew to 16 billion tokens per minute, up from 10 billion in the fourth quarter. Pichai noted other cloud milestones, including new customer acquisition doubling year-over year, deal momentum doubling the number of $100 million to $1 billion deals year-over-year, with the company signing multiple “billion-dollar-plus” deals. Customers also outpaced their initial commitments by 45% quarter-over-quarter, he said. Still, the exec warned, there were constraints to this growth, noting that Google Cloud’s backlog had doubled in the quarter to $462 billion. He spun this as a positive for the company, noting that it demonstrated how Google Cloud was different from other competitors. “Obviously, we are compute constrained in the in the near-term,” Pichai said. “And as an example, our cloud revenue would have been higher if we were able to meet that demand. So we are working through that moment, and we are investing, but we have a robust, long-range planning framework…we see extraordinary opportunities ahead,” he added. Techcrunch event San Francisco, CA | October 13-15, 2026 The company expects to work through 50% of the backlog over the next “24 months,” it said. Much of the company’s revenue potential comes from providing infrastructure through the cloud, and, with some customers, the direct sale of TPU hardware as well. Pichai told investors that Google takes an approach that considers the return on capital investment (ROIC), which helps it to continue to properly invest in the “cutting edge.” When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Sarah has worked as a reporter for TechCrunch since August 2011. She joined the company after having previously spent over three years at ReadWriteWeb. Prior to her work as a reporter, Sarah worked in I.T. across a number of industries, including banking, retail and software. You can contact or verify outreach from Sarah by emailing or via encrypted message at sarahperez.01 on Signal. View Bio
Google has added another 25 million paid subscriptions to its services over the past quarter, according to parent company Alphabet’s first-quarter earnings on Wednesday. The company said it now had 350 million paid subscriptions across its services, up from 325 million in Q4 2025, with YouTube and Google One plans driving the recent growth. Its release didn’t tout the number of Gemini subscribers as a standalone metric, nor its monthly active users. But access to advanced Gemini features is now bundled in with those Google One plans, which are growing. The lack of solid numbers, however, may suggest that the Gemini chatbot still has somewhere north of 750 million users, as in the prior quarter. Instead, this quarter, Google pointed to the growth of Gemini in the key enterprise market, noting a 40% quarter-over-quarter increase in paid monthly active users. It did not offer a solid number here, either, though. YouTube ad revenue missed Wall Street expectations, even as it continued to grow year over year. As Google pushes ad-free viewing as part of its YouTube Premium plan, the video service has seen a decline in ad dollars that has worried investors. Per CNBC, Wall Street expected Alphabet to bring in $9.99 billion in YouTube ad revenue this quarter, but it pulled in $9.88 billion. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai had warned analysts last quarter that it would be important to evaluate YouTube’s business going forward based on a combination of ads and subscriptions, because when users switch to a YouTube subscription plan, it will have a negative impact on YouTube ads. Last year, YouTube’s annual revenue topped $60 billion across both ads and subscriptions, with Q4 2025 bringing in $11.4 billion in YouTube ads alone. This quarter, the YouTube ads figure was $9.9 billion. That’s up 11% year-over-year, the company pointed out, but the miss on expectations could suggest consumers are continuing to move from ad-supported YouTube viewing to ad-free subscriptions through YouTube Premium. We expect to hear more about this on the company’s earnings call. Still, Alphabet’s stock is up on its overall earnings beat with revenue of $109.9 billion, which included healthy cloud growth. On that front alone, revenue topped $20 billion. Techcrunch event San Francisco, CA | October 13-15, 2026 When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Sarah has worked as a reporter for TechCrunch since August 2011. She joined the company after having previously spent over three years at ReadWriteWeb. Prior to her work as a reporter, Sarah worked in I.T. across a number of industries, including banking, retail and software. You can contact or verify outreach from Sarah by emailing sarahp@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at sarahperez.01 on Signal. View Bio
In Brief Posted: 5:34 AM PDT · April 29, 2026 Image Credits:Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto / Getty Images Google Translate is now 20 years old, and to celebrate, the company has added a new feature that lets users practice their pronunciation and enunciation of words and phrases in different languages. When you translate a word, sentence or phrase, you can navigate into the “Practice” menu to find a “Pronounce” button, which shows you phonetics that you can say out loud to practice speaking the translated text. The app then scores your pronunciation and gives you feedback, like “Some sounds were a little unclear.” You can listen to the app’s pronunciation of the text, too. The feature is rolling out in the U.S. and India, and currently supports English, Spanish, and Hindi. Celebrating 20 years of Google Translate and… the launch of a top-requested feature! 🎂One of the toughest things about speaking a new language is getting the nuances of pronunciation just right. Now, you can get instant feedback with "pronunciation practice,” which uses AI… pic.twitter.com/DdMfiMB9dz— Nick Fox (@thefox) April 28, 2026 This feature resembles Duolingo in how it lets you practice speaking words and sentences. Last month, the company rolled out its live headphone translation feature to iOS, and expanded its availability on Android devices to Germany, Spain, France, Nigeria, Italy, the United Kingdom, Japan, Bangladesh, and Thailand. Techcrunch event San Francisco, CA | October 13-15, 2026 Topics Subscribe for the industry’s biggest tech news Latest in Apps
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