Lots of people are concerned about an artificial intelligence (AI) bubble. We can debate all day whether there is or not; both sides of that argument have good points. But even if there is a bubble and if it does pop, that doesn't mean AI stocks are going to zero and the technology is simply done anymore than the dot-com crash did for the internet.
There are plenty of AI companies that are not only likely to survive a potential bubble burst but that are likely to thrive regardless of broader market conditions and that could make you a millionaire in the process.
And the company I'd like to talk about in this article is perhaps the most promising AI stocks on the market right now. And I'm willing to bet you've heard of it before.
Image source: Getty Images.
The old guard
Alphabet (GOOG +1.38%), Google's parent company, is a veteran of the dot-com crash, weathering that storm and emerging as the world's preferred search engine. When's the last time you heard anyone mention Ask Jeeves? Exactly.
Today, Alphabet is becoming a standout among the other big tech companies in AI. The company's headline generative AI product, Google Gemini, is rapidly gaining market share in the enterprise large language model (LLM) space.
As reported by Menlo Ventures, it controls 21% of the market and rising while ChatGPT holds 27% market share and falling. It would not surprise me at all if Gemini overtook ChatGPT this year.
Anthropic's Claude LLM controls 40% of the market but even there it benefits Alphabet, as Anthropic is expanding its use of Alphabet's tensor processing unit (TPU).
The TPU, developed in collaboration with Broadcom is one of the very few competitors to Nvidia's graphics processing unit (GPU). It gives Alphabet a presence in both the hardware and software sides of the AI industry.
But Google's main edge over the competition is its sheer size and the resources it has to throw at AI development.
NASDAQ: GOOG
Key Data Points
Richer than Midas
For 2025, Alphabet generated $402.8 billion in revenue, up 15% over 2024. Operating income neared $130 billion for the year and the company's operating margin came in at 32%. Earnings per share (EPS ) surged an incredible 34% over 2025 to $10.81.
The concern Wall Street had about its latest results is a reasonable one, though. Alphabet anticipates $175-$185 billion in capital expenditure (capex) for 2026, which blew right past analyst expectations. The reason why is simple -- data centers are neither cheap to build nor to maintain.
But if anyone can afford to build vast numbers of data centers without straining itself financially, it's Alphabet. Even as the company built out its data center capacity in 2025, it still managed to grow its cash reserves by 30% to $30.7 billion.
And to further finance its AI efforts, Alphabet is issuing a very old-fashioned sort of investment in the form of a 100-year bond.
Century bonds
Only a handful of companies and countries have issued bonds with maturities that far out. Disney and Coca-Cola both have. Argentina, Austria, and Mexico have also issued them. There's even a 400-year-old bond from the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands that still pays interest.
Alphabet's goal is to raise $20 billion from its bond sale, which is not all 100-year bonds but does include them. But even with its previous $2.5 billion bond sale in November 2025, Alphabet's long-term debt stands at $46.5 billion while its total liabilities stand at $180 billion.
Its total current assets stand at $206 billion, including its $30 billion in cash reserves. So I'm not particularly worried about Alphabet taking on more debt or its ability to continue paying its current debts.
That's especially true considering Alphabet's immense profitability and its continued explosive growth. Gemini is just getting started and should grow into an even bigger revenue stream for Alphabet than it already is. The company's CEO Sundar Pichai noted that Gemini's monthly active users had climbed 100 million quarter over quarter for Q4 2025 to hit 750 million total.
You also need to consider that Alphabet is one of the dominant advertisers in the world and in its latest quarter, its ad revenue grew 13.5% to $82.28 billion. So its revenue streams are as diverse as they are rapidly growing.
In short, Alphabet's big investments have been paying strong returns already so a very big investment isn't as risky as it may sound at first blush. Especially not for a company of its stature and with access to its vast resources.
Alphabet has the resources to dominate the AI industry. Neither OpenAI nor Anthropic have even achieved profitability yet, let alone the financial strength to confidently sell $20 billion in bonds. And due to its diversified revenue streams, Alphabet is both a bet on AI and a hedge against any potential AI bubble in one.
Give it a look if you want to play AI, but don't want to take on a lot of risk.
