Beth McKenna, The Motley Fool
Mon, May 4, 2026 at 7:00 PM CDT

Shares of Google parent Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) rocketed 33.8% higher in April, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Last month was Alphabet's best monthly performance since October 2004, two months after its initial public offering (IPO), when the stock (then named Google) soared 47.1%.

For additional context, in April, the S&P 500 index returned 10.5%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index returned 15.3%. Artificial intelligence (AI)-related stocks overall had a particularly good month. (Chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices, for instance, skyrocketed 74% in April.)

So, Alphabet stock got a brisk tailwind from the market's strength, but it also had company-specific catalysts.

Alphabet will start selling its AI-enabling TPUs. Image source: Getty Images.

Alphabet stock climbed steadily throughout April, with its biggest jump coming at the end of the month after it released stellar first-quarter 2026 results on April 29. On April 30, shares surged 10%.

Following this release, many Wall Street firms significantly raised their one-year price targets.

In Q1, Alphabet's revenue grew 22% year over year to $109.9 billion. Google Services revenue increased 16% to $89.6 billion, while Google Cloud revenue soared 63% to $20.0 billion, driven by strong demand for its AI products and infrastructure. The company's broad-based, robust results underscore its success in monetizing its AI spending.

Earnings per share (EPS) increased 82% year over year to $5.11, crushing the Wall Street estimate of $2.63. However, a big chunk of net income ($36.9 billion) came from unrealized gains on investments in non-marketable private equities.

We can assume these "paper gains" refer primarily to AI model builder Anthropic -- a main competitor to ChatGPT creator OpenAI -- and, probably to a lesser degree, SpaceX. Alphabet is a significant investor in both of these high-growth companies, which could be a big boon for it once they go public.

The best metric to gauge Alphabet's operating performance is operating income. This metric was $39.7 billion in the quarter, up 30% year over year.

CEO Sundar Pichai highlighted an especially standout statistic about Google Cloud on the earnings call: "[O]ur backlog nearly doubled quarter on quarter to over $460 billion." Note this is sequential quarter growth, not year over year.