Alphabet's AI Investments in 38 Companies in 2025

After acquiring DeepMind, and spending more than $13 billion to build data centers Google became one of the leading players in the AI field Driven by its AI investments and search engine investments the tech giant reported a strong profit growth of 25+% in the second quarter of 2024, beating analysts’ expectations.^{1 2}

Alphabet

Alphabet is a conglomerate including Google which mainly consists of search, maps, YouTube, Chrome, Cloud, AdWords, AdSense, and the Android mobile phone platform.³

Beyond Google, Alphabet consists mostly of moonshots and investments: Google X, Calico, Nest, Ventures, Fiber, and Capital.

To understand the current state of Alphabet’s AI strategy, one needs to look at:

1. Google, which we examined separately here since AI is baked into so many of Google’s products
2. Alphabet’s fully owned ventures outside Google, like Waymo or DeepMind
3. Alphabet’s investments through Google Capital or Google Ventures

Focusing on 2&3, we structured these companies along the industries they serve. Most companies serve industries like Healthcare that are experiencing an AI revolution. Another large group of companies is active as AI enablers. Like Deepmind or API.ai they aim to build the building blocks of AI including systems, libraries, and APIs.

Google’s ventures are specifically focused on AI enablers, transport & logistics and healthcare.

Instead of diving into all of Alphabet’s bets in the field of AI, we will first focus on Deepmind, Waymo, and Nest, which are Alphabet’s leading investments leveraging AI.

DeepMind

DeepMind at the heart of Google operations

In April 2023, DeepMind merged with Google AI’s Google Brain division to become Google DeepMind, as part of the company’s ongoing attempts to accelerate AI research in response to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Google collaborates with DeepMind to solve some of its engineering challenges, like energy efficiency. By applying DeepMind’s ML to Google data centers, energy use for cooling was reduced by up to 40%. Their collaboration model is explained here.

DeepMind in chemistry

Google DeepMind’s AI researchers developed and used the neural network AI program AlphaFold to predict the intricate folding patterns of proteins, solving a five-decade scientific enigma. This computational technique for designing new proteins could fuel new boundaries of protein engineering by enabling scientists to create new proteins

AlphaFold is considered a “complete revolution” by the Nobel Committee, and it is being used to fold 200 million proteins globally.

DeepMind in digital health

DeepMind Health works with hospitals on mobile tools and AI research to help get patients from test to treatment as quickly and accurately as possible.

The company’s priorities are shaped by patients and clinicians, unlike top-down IT projects that can be costly and ineffective.

Nurses and doctors in that system and elsewhere simply don’t have the tools to instantly analyze each test result, determine the right treatment, and make sure that every single patient who needs complex or urgent care is escalated to the right specialist immediately.

MuZero, AlphaZero, and AlphaDev by DeepMind

DeepMind’s AI systems MuZero, AlphaZero, and AlphaDev approached the circuit as a neural network for accelerating chip design and improving performance.

DeepMind collaborated with YouTube to compress and transmit video, leveraging MuZero to improve the YouTube user experience by decreasing the bitrate by 4% while maintaining visual quality.

AlphaDev, a version of AlphaZero, made a novel breakthrough in computer science by optimizing the algorithm sorting process.

Sorting algorithms assist digital devices in processing and displaying information, including the ranking of online search results and social postings.

AlphaDev identified a method that improves performance for sorting sequences by 70% compared to the algorithms in the C++ library. This implies that results from user searches may be sorted significantly more quickly. When applied at scale, this saves enormous amounts of time and energy.

Artificial general intelligence with DeepMind

One of the crucial aspects of general intelligence is applying knowledge from one task to another.

DeepMind’s models solve advanced reasoning problems in mathematics: AlphaProof, a new reinforcement-learning-based system for formal math reasoning, and AlphaGeometry 2, an updated version of our geometry-solving system. These systems answered four of six problems from this year’s International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO), placing them on par with a silver medalist.

Waymo

Waymo is Google’s self-driving car project. It’s a large-scale AI model known as the Waymo Foundation Model, which underpins the vehicle’s capacity to sense its surroundings and make driving judgments.

Waymo continues to rev up autonomous driving with AI. In October 2024, Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana stated that the self-driving car business is providing 100,000 robo-taxi rides each week, doubling the 50,000 ride number in June.

CEO Dmitri Dolgov posted a video demonstrating how the software is continuously learning. The brief video shows how the Waymo Driver adapts its path as it travels through tunnels, storms, and narrow streets.

If you are interested in how ML-powered Google’s cars work, here are more geeky details from here.

Nest

Google Nest is a brand of smart AI-powered home appliances that includes smart speakers, smart displays. AI is baked into Nest. When you’re on your way home, Google will work with Nest to preheat or cool your home to your preferred temperature. Control your Nest with your voice from your tablet or phone app.

In 2024, Google announced 2 large smart home AI upgrades:

• Natural language processing (NLP): Google claims that the revamped Nest now functions similarly to Amazon Alexa and Apple’s Siri, using natural language processing technology to respond to user inquiries.
• Gemini integration: Google is now integrating Gemini into the Google Home app for smart home Nest cameras, employing image recognition to provide descriptions of what the camera catches.

Nest’s built-in intelligent home appliances can help Google get into more houses, and allow users to get more involved in everyday life, some of which are carried out digitally each day.

Analysts are predicting that the Internet of Things will be a trillion-dollar market, which was one justification for Nest’s $ 3.2 billion price tag.

Bottom line

Google continues to innovate in AI, and we’ll keep track of their progress. To stay on the bleeding edge of AI, you can check out AI applications in marketing, sales, customer service, IT, data, or analytics.

You can also find our list of AI tools and services:

• AI Consultant
• AI/ML Development Services
• Data Science / ML / AI Platform

External Links

• 1. News | Google Parent Spent $13 Billion on AI Efforts as It Scales Back Office Growth.
• 2. News | Google Parent Spent $13 Billion on AI Efforts as It Scales Back Office Growth.
• 3. News | Google Parent Spent $13 Billion on AI Efforts as It Scales Back Office Growth.