Alphabet stock adds $136 billion in market value after it unveils quantum computing breakthrough

Sundar Pichai (left) and Daniel Sank pose with one of Google’s quantum computers in the company’s Santa Barbara lab in California, October 2019.

Alphabet stock surged on Tuesday, a day after the tech giant revealed a breakthrough in quantum computing.

The Google parent company unveiled its new Willow chip on Monday, which it said can perform a benchmark computation test in under five minutes, compared to the 10 septillion years—longer than the universe’s known existence—that it would take for the current fastest supercomputers to complete.

Alphabet stock jumped as much as 6%, adding about $136 billion to its market valuation and representing its best intra-day gain since April 26. The stock had pared its gain to about 5% by 1:00 p.m. ET.

Even Tesla CEO and SpaceX co-founder Elon Musk was excited by the news.

In a series of posts on X, Musk responded to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai regarding the news and talked about launching a “quantum cluster” in space via SpaceX’s Starship.

Wow

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2024

The gain in Alphabet stock on Tuesday also coincided with an upbeat analyst update. Piper Sandler senior research analyst Thomas Champion rated the firm a “top pick” heading into 2025.

“Our recent surveys suggest GOOGL is headed for a product-driven resurgence,” Champion said, highlighting that 75% of surveyed ad buyers said AI tools like Gemini would be disruptive in 2025.

That’s on top of Champion’s growing conviction that Google’s Cloud and YouTube subscriptions will continue to grow at an elevated pace next year, firming up his confidence in his bullish outlook for the stock.

Piper Sandler rates Alphabet at “Overweight” with a $210 price target, representing potential upside of 14% from current levels.