Alphabet Just Delivered 82% Cloud Growth. Why It Wasn't Enough

Alphabet reported strong Q2 earnings with 82% Google Cloud revenue growth to $24.8B and overall revenue up 24% to $119.8B. However, the stock fell after-hours as investors focused on the company's massive capital expenditure increase of $15B to $195-205B annually. Alphabet reported negative free cash flow of $5.8B for the first time as a public company, with expectations for continued negative FCF due to AI infrastructure spending.