Alphabet stock pops 4% on Dow debut, but the tech giant faces major AI questions

Alphabet shares rose 4% Monday as the company officially joined the Dow Jones Industrial Average , replacing Verizon and adding a symbolic blue-chip designation. The move comes despite continued pressure on the stock. Even with Monday's gain, Alphabet is still tracking for its worst month since February of last year, with six of the past seven weeks in the red. That marks a sharp reversal from May, when the company briefly eclipsed Nvidia after hours to become the world's most valuable company by market capitalization. Alphabet's Dow inclusion is more symbolic than mechanical. The stock is already in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100, where most benchmarked assets sit, limiting the amount of forced fund buying tied to the index change. Recent Dow additions have also struggled after joining: Nvidia, Salesforce and Apple all traded lower 60 days after entering the index. Weakness in Google shares comes as investors question the payoff from the company's AI spending, with lower-cost Chinese models improving, Google DeepMind researchers tied to Gemini and coding tools leaving for rivals like Anthropic and OpenAI , and compute access emerging as both a customer constraint and a recruiting issue. Alphabet reportedly does not have enough compute capacity to meet demand from enterprise customers such as Meta , and is turning to infrastructure rivals, including SpaceX , to help close the gap. Alphabet did not respond to multiple requests for comment on reports about Meta's Gemini usage. …