Alphabet adds $111 billion in market value after showing progress on AI front in 2nd-quarter earnings

• Alphabet surged as much as 7% on Wednesday, adding about $111 billion to its market valuation.
• The search giant reported second-quarter earnings that beat analyst estimates and talked up its AI developments.
• “This is our seventh year as an AI-first company, and we intuitively know how to incorporate AI into our products,” CEO Sundar Pichai said.

Alphabet stock surged as much as 7% on Wednesday, adding $111 billion to its market valuation, after the search giant reported second-quarter earnings that beat analyst estimates.

The company saw its revenue grow 7% to $74.6 billion, while its operating income jumped 12% to $21.8 billion. Operating income in Alphabet’s Google Cloud division turned positive, an important milestone for the company. Alphabet’s Cloud business has been a distant third place to Amazon’s AWS and Microsoft’s Azure.