• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer, Yesterday

At least on paper, for now, Google's investments in Anthropic and SpaceX have paid off and enabled its parent company, Alphabet, to offset any losses when quarterly financial reports come.

A footnote in Alphabet's Q2 2026 earnings release provides a bit more insight about where its latest profits came from, but the 10-Q text filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) outlines it in detail.

The specific section that discloses the SpaceX holding breaks down under the Non-Marketable and Equity Securities Footnotes.

After the initial public offering (IPO) of Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) on June 12, 2026, the company reclassified its historical cost-method private equity holding to market equity securities.

As of June 30, 2026, the total fair market value of Alphabet's investment in SpaceX was $94.0 billion, reflecting an effective equity ownership of approximately 4.9%.

No doubt Alphabet's equity stake in SpaceX has something to do with securing control over future AI and space infrastructure.

This alignment reshapes the global computing layout and directly transforms enterprise advertising media buys into something else in the future. At this point that future is unknown, only speculation, based on how AI ultimately influences advertising.

Alphabet booked $99 billion in "unrealized and realized" gains in equity securities within its investments during the quarter — adding $77.1 billion to its overall net income after taxes. The investment accounted for $6.26 of Alphabet's $9.11 in earnings per share.

On Wednesday the company announced a quarterly profit in a 12-figure number for the first time in the search company's history.

Alphabet grew its bottom line by 298% year-over-year in the second quarter, totaling $112.1 billion in net income.

Most of the $99 billion in "other income" is from Alphabet's AI investments and comes primarily from Anthropic and SpaceX. It's unclear how much each of the individual investments contributed to the $99 billion gain, but both companies saw their valuations soar in Q2.

The specific line reads: "Other income reflected a net gain of $98.0 billion, primarily the result of net unrealized gains on our equity securities." 

SpaceX went public in early June at a valuation of $1.77 trillion. Google owned about a 6% stake in the company at the end of 2025. Anthropic saw its private-market valuation jump from $350 billion to $965 billion in the same period. The massive gains on paper grew Alphabet's investment portfolio and trickled through to its bottom line.

Throughout the decade, SpaceX raised dozens of venture rounds to fund its Starlink constellation and Starship development program, according to investing.com.

Equity dilution in SpaceX occurred in February 2026, when it completed a merger absorbing Musk's AI startup, xAI, at a combined private valuation of $1.25 trillion, investing.com reported. This brought Google's effective equity share down to between 4.9% to 5.0% by the time of the public listing.

Alphabet has committed to an investment of up to $40 billion in Anthropic. This partnership combines direct cash with long-term, multi-gigawatt cloud computing infrastructure commitments.