The search giant is spending tens of billions of dollars on infusing its products with artificial intelligence capabilities.

That balancing act helped Google parent Alphabet Inc. earn $28.2 billion, or $2.31 per share, during the second quarter, a 19% increase from the same time last year. Revenue climbed 14% from a year ago to $96.4 billion. Both figures easily eclipsed analysts’ projections.

Google beat earnings expectations across the board — but a surprise $10 billion increase in capex spending is raising fresh concerns about AI costs.

Alphabet's stock was essentially flat on the year heading into Wednesday's report, suggesting Wall Street wasn't sold on the company's AI positioning. But after the latest earnings, Oppenheimer analyst Jason Helfstein thinks investors will come to think of Alphabet as an "AI winner.

Carolina Parada, head of robotics at Google DeepMind, says this approach to AI robotics could make robots more reliable in challenging situations. This is also the first version of Google's robotics model that developers can tune for their specific uses.

Alphabet beat Q2 expectations with strong ad and cloud revenue, but stayed silent on crypto. Despite backing Web3 infrastructure, Google still holds no Bitcoin or digital assets.