Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai sees more ‘AI’ in Search, plans $75 billion capex

Alphabet’s CEO Sundar Pichai has said that the advancements in Generative AI will be further deployed to improve Google’s AI overviews for Search, a strategy that has been ‘playing out positively’ for the company.

“I think we’ll continue bringing AI in more powerful ways, in multimodal ways,” said Pichai, after the quarterly earnings report, hinting at expanding use cases for its Search business. “…AI overviews has seen stronger growth, particularly across all segments of users, including younger users, so it’s being well received,” added Pichai.

Pichai referred to features like Google Lens and Circle to Search, and cited the example of its AI model Gemini as he talked about ‘possibilities’ of expanding use cases for Search.

“…as you make it (Search) more easy for people to interact and ask follow-up questions, et cetera, I think we have an opportunity to drive further growth,” said Pichai, hinting that going forward, Alphabet may incorporate follow-ups into the AI feature as well.

Alphabet slides after cloud sales fall short of expectations

Alphabet said it sees ‘opportunities for further productivity and efficiency’, and will keep it a priority for the company, as it announced that it will invest nearly $75 billion in capex this year, a majority of which will go into technical infrastructure such as servers and data centers.

With this, Alphabet has joined Meta is ramping up its annual AI spend, betting that a more affordable AI tool will further increase demand for their services.

Pichai was all praises for the DeepSeek team, calling them a ‘tremendous team’. “I think they’ve done very, very good work,” said Pichai, adding that a cost-effective AI model will increase use cases, and Alphabet is increasing its investment in those areas.

“I think part of the reason we are so excited about the AI opportunity is, we know we can drive extraordinary use cases because the cost of actually using it is going to keep coming down, which will make more use cases feasible. And that’s the opportunity space. It’s as big as it comes, and that’s why you’re seeing us invest to meet that moment,” said Sundar Pichai.