Alphabet Shares Slide After SpaceX Stake Loss as Anthropic Emerges as SpaceX's Biggest Customer

October 30, 2026 · Category: Business & Tech

Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) had its worst day in years on Thursday, with shares down about 12% after third-quarter results disappointed on several fronts, Yahoo Finance reported. Revenue of $127.58 billion came in just under the $128.22 billion analysts expected, and the company posted negative free cash flow of $9.07 billion as it keeps spending heavily on AI infrastructure, according to CNBC. Alphabet kept its full-year capital spending forecast of $195 billion to $205 billion. Google Search brought in $63.4 billion, below the $64.9 billion expected, Yahoo Finance said.

One line on the income statement explains much of the earnings miss. Net income fell to $26.17 billion, or $2.12 a share, from $34.98 billion a year earlier, in large part because of an unrealized loss on Alphabet's stake in SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX), whose shares declined during the quarter, Invezz reported, citing the earnings call. It is an accounting mark, not cash out the door, but it shows how closely the big AI players are now tied together. Underneath, the business kept growing: revenue was up 25%, and Google Cloud sales more than doubled to $30.7 billion.

Investors treated Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) very differently. Its Azure cloud business grew 48% excluding currency effects, ahead of estimates, and management guided to 49% to 50% growth this quarter, Yahoo Finance reported. Microsoft shares finished Thursday roughly flat. The contrast suggests investors are rewarding AI spending when they can see it turning into revenue, and punishing it when growth in the core business looks like it is slowing.

SpaceX had its own news. Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing a person familiar with the matter, that Anthropic is the "Customer B" that made up about 34.5% of SpaceX's third-quarter revenue, making the AI lab a bigger customer than the U.S. government, according to Bloomberg Tax. Anthropic rents computing power from SpaceX's AI unit under contracts worth up to $120.5 billion through 2029, but it can cancel with 90 days' notice after early 2027, The Next Web reported. Neither company commented.

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Tickers: NASDAQ:GOOGL, NASDAQ:SPCX, NASDAQ:MSFT

Why it matters

This week's results show how much AI spending, investment stakes and compute contracts now link the largest tech companies. A loss on one company's stock can hit another's earnings, and a single customer can make up a third of a supplier's revenue. This is reporting only, not investment advice.

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