Alphabet became the fourth company with capitalization over $3 trillion

Google's holding company, Alphabet, reached a capitalization of $3 trillion after its shares jumped 4% in trading on Monday. It became the fourth to reach this milestone, after Nvidia, Microsoft and Apple. The catalyst for the rise may have been the conclusion of an antitrust case that required regulators to sell the Chrome browser. Also on Monday, Citigroup raised its target price on the company's stock, expecting it to rise 16%.

Alphabet's Class A shares jumped 4.8% to $252.4 in Monday trading. This became a new record and led to the fact that the market capitalization of the technology giant for the first time was above $3 trillion. The company became the fourth after Nvidia, Microsoft and Apple to reach this bar.

Alphabet reached its $3 trillion capitalization just over 10 years after its creation as Google's holding company, and about 20 years after the search engine's IPO, CNBC recalls.

Since the start of 2025, Alphabet shares have added nearly 32%, double the growth of the Nasdaq Composite index, which is about 16%. The stock has risen more than 70% since its April low, adding about $1.2 trillion in capitalization in that time, Bloomberg notes.

The current stage of growth of Alphabet shares was caused by the antitrust decision, which spared the search giant from the toughest sanctions, writes Bloomberg. The US Department of Justice sought that the company was obliged to sell the Chrome browser, but the judge rejected this requirement, which caused a rally in quotations. After the court ruling, US President Donald Trump congratulated the company, noting that it had a "very good day."

The court ruling was handed down in early September. And in July, Alphabet published a strong report for the second quarter, in which it showed revenue growth for products based on artificial intelligence.

Before these positive factors, Alphabet's shares were mostly cheap this year: this was due, among other things, to investors' fears that generative artificial intelligence, which includes, for example, ChatGPT, will replace Google's search engine. And search is Alphabet's main source of revenue from contextual advertising. Ironically, it was the rise of competitors like Perplexity and OpenAI that ultimately played into Google's hands, strengthening the company's position in the antitrust dispute, according to CNBC. Now Alphabet's key bet in the AI field is its Gemini development, which is the basis for the company's ambitious strategy in the new era of artificial intelligence, the channel says.

On Monday, September 15, Citigroup analyst Ron Josi raised his target price on Alphabet shares from $225 to $280, which implies a 16% upside (from the closing price on September 12). The analyst explained that he sees "an acceleration in the product development cycle that is beginning to emerge as Gemini becomes more widely adopted in both the company's advertising and cloud businesses." Jowsey also noted that this comes against a backdrop of "greater certainty around legal and regulatory risks" with the online advertising market "remaining relatively healthy," according to the bank's assessment.

"Essentially, the court decision has cleared the lane for new growth opportunities, " Neville Jaheri, senior fund manager at Allspring Global Investments, told Bloomberg on Sept. 9. He said he sees "an incredible opportunity" in Alphabet shares, because the ruling "sets the stage for growth that could well have been taken away from the company."

Overall, more than 80% of analysts tracked by Bloomberg recommend buying Alphabet securities. According to MarketWatch, the Wall Street consensus target price for Alphabet shares is $235.5 - down 2.2% from Friday's closing price.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor