Alphabet burnishes one of its best weapons in the battle for AI supremacy

Alphabet has squashed concerns that artificial intelligence will destroy its Google tech empire. One of its biggest weapons in the fight: homegrown silicon chips. Google's in-house tensor processing units (TPUs) serve as the engine to the company's Gemini chatbot, which has bolstered its image in the past year against rivals like OpenAI's ChatGPT. They also represent an integral part of Google's fast-growing cloud-computing business, where customers — including buzzy AI startup Anthropic — rent access to the chips; in some cases, they can now buy TPUs for their own data centers. Google also has a new AI compute venture with asset management giant Blackstone, built around the TPU. Google's compute business is seeing strong demand, with Wall Street projecting Google Cloud revenue to surge roughly 64% this year, to $96 billion, according to FactSet. Analysts see robust expansion continuing in 2027, with growth modeled above 50%. With demand for AI computing power surging, Google's TPUs are increasingly seen as a compelling alternative to Nvidia's market-leading graphics processing units (GPUs). They position Alphabet as a major force in AI infrastructure, even as Google Cloud still trails Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure in revenue. That status benefits both Google's internal AI efforts and helps win outside customers — a lucrative one-two punch that figures into Jim Cramer's admiration for the stock. …