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Pichai\u2019s bets on outside A.I. startups may be more lucrative than Google\u2019s internal projects. Jakub Porzycki\/NurPhoto via Getty Images<\/p>\n\t\tPichai\u2019s bets on outside A.I. startups may be more lucrative than Google\u2019s internal projects. Jakub Porzycki\/NurPhoto via Getty Images<\/p>\n
Sundar Pichai<\/a>\u2019s biggest A.I. wins may come from other companies instead of Google<\/a> itself. As the longtime CEO of Google and its parent, Alphabet, Pichai has poured billions into A.I. products and cloud services, but it\u2019s Google\u2019s early bets on companies like SpaceX<\/a> and Anthropic<\/a> that are set to deliver the real payday. Both firms are preparing for blockbuster IPOs this year, positioning Google to make tens of billions of dollars<\/a>\u2014possibly more\u2014off investments that may prove more profitable than its own A.I. efforts to date.<\/p>\n Google, helmed by Pichai for more than a decade, has long invested in startups through its venture capital arm, Google Ventures, and its growth arm, CapitalG. The A.I. boom has accelerated that approach, Pichai said during an April 7 interview with Stripe<\/a> co-founder John Collison<\/a> and investor Elad Gil<\/a>. \u201cNow, with the A.I. shift, there are more opportunities on which we can deploy capital in a good way, and so we are doing that<\/a>,\u201d said the CEO.<\/p>\n SpaceX, Elon Musk\u2019s space company, has become one of Google\u2019s most lucrative holdings. The firm merged with Musk\u2019s A.I. venture xAI earlier this year, pushing its valuation above $1 trillion. SpaceX confidentially filed to go public as soon as June, reportedly targeting a record-breaking\u00a0$1.75 trillion\u00a0valuation. Google invested roughly\u00a0$900 million\u00a0in SpaceX in 2015 and still holds an estimated\u00a07 percent stake\u2014a position that could earn the company more than\u00a0$100 billion\u00a0when the IPO lands.<\/p>\n The payoff has already begun. In early 2025, Alphabet reported that unrealized gains from one private holding contributed\u00a0$8 billion to quarterly profit, around a quarter of its net income. Bloomberg later identified that company as SpaceX.<\/a><\/p>\n Another windfall is expected from Anthropic. Google first invested $2 billion\u00a0in 2023 and now owns about\u00a014 percent\u00a0of the company<\/a>. Once valued in the millions, Anthropic\u2019s worth surged to\u00a0$380 billion earlier this year, and it\u2019s reportedly exploring an IPO in the fourth quarter of this year<\/a>. The market debut could give Google one of its largest returns outside its core business in years.<\/p>\n Those gains come as Google\u2019s own A.I. products, like Gemini and Vertex, face fierce competition from OpenAI<\/a> (which Google hasn\u2019t invested in) and Microsoft. Meanwhile, the company\u2019s venture and growth arms continue to rack up strong performance. Google participated in funding rounds totaling $21.6 billion in 2025,<\/a> the highest since 2021, with nearly half focused on A.I. ventures, including Anthropic and Physical Intelligence<\/a>.<\/p>\n Pichai said the company will keep pursuing early-stage tech bets with long-term potential. \u201cYou want to be good stewards of capital,\u201d he told Gil and Collison, citing SpaceX and Anthropic as examples. \u201cTo the extent you\u2019re bullish on [return on invested capital], you want to invest every last dollar you can there.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pichai\u2019s bets on outside A.I. startups may be more lucrative than Google\u2019s internal projects. Jakub Porzycki\/NurPhoto via Getty…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20152,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[153],"tags":[587,552,474,14839,995,812,3943,14838,613,14840,207,997,14841,608,584],"class_list":{"0":"post-20151","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sundar-pichai","8":"tag-anthropic","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-elad-gil","12":"tag-finance","13":"tag-google","14":"tag-ipos","15":"tag-john-collison","16":"tag-openai","17":"tag-physical-intelligence","18":"tag-spacex","19":"tag-startups","20":"tag-stripe","21":"tag-sundar-pichai","22":"tag-technology"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116381118824487734","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}