Harvard University Stock Portfolio 2026: Top 5 Picks

3. Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL)

Harvard’s Stake: $177,413,018

Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) is proving the AI doubters wrong. The fear was that AI would cannibalize Google Search. The reality is the opposite. Search is growing faster because of AI, not slower.

In Q1, Google Search revenue rose about 19%. Users are not abandoning Google. They are using it more. AI Overviews and AI Mode are driving deeper engagement, not replacing it. YouTube is benefiting too. Ad revenue grew 11%, supported by AI-driven targeting that is making ads more relevant and more effective.

Gemini is scaling rapidly. The standalone app has reached approximately 750 million monthly active users. When you include Google Search AI Overviews and AI Mode, Gemini’s models now power over 2 billion monthly users. Enterprise adoption is also accelerating. More than 8 million paid enterprise seats have been sold across thousands of companies. Over 13 million developers globally are now building on Gemini. These are not small numbers.

Google Cloud is the biggest catalyst in the story. Revenue grew 63% in Q1. Operating margins are expanding sharply as the business shifts toward higher-value enterprise workloads. The Cloud backlog stands at approximately $460 billion. That is not potential revenue. That is contracted, visible, future revenue. It gives enormous confidence in the growth runway ahead.

Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) also has a hardware advantage that is often overlooked. Its custom TPU chips reduce its dependence on external AI compute and improve cost efficiency. As AI workloads scale, this becomes an increasingly powerful edge.

L1 Capital International Fund stated the following regarding Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) in its Q1 2026 investor letter:

Portfolio adjustments during the March 2026 quarter were relatively modest, but deliberate. We trimmed investments in AerCap, Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL), HCA Healthcare and Weir Group at prices around the top end of our assessed fair value range, with all of these businesses benefitting from positive sentiment intra-quarter. Alphabet’s share price has more than doubled over the past 12 months. This reflects strong performance in core Search, continued momentum in Google Cloud Platform, and better-than-expected progress in AI (Gemini). Today Alphabet has a market capitalisation approaching US$4 trillion. Share prices and fair value are not always aligned, even for the world’s largest companies.