From a purely business financials perspective, a large part of the reason for the sell-off stemmed from slowing growth in data centres revenue. Google’s cloud business is a huge money driver and posted a 30 per cent increase in revenues, totalling nearly $12bn (£9.6bn).

Alphabet shares fell 8% on Wednesday as investors balked at the Google parent's slowing cloud growth and planned $75 billion capital spending for the year, underscoring growing fears over Big Tech's escalating artificial intelligence costs.

This is a significant increase, and it shows that Alphabet is throwing the kitchen sink at its A.I. plans,” said Kathleen Brooks, research director at XTB, in an analyst note. What worries investors more is that Alphabet is spending money more quickly than making it.

The quarter before, for instance, Alphabet beat Wall Street’s EPS estimates by nearly 15 percent, as the chart below from Public.com illustrates.  Notably, Alphabet also announced $75 billion in capital expenditures for 2025 to continue investing in artificial intelligence.

China's anti-monopoly regulator said on Tuesday it had launched an investigation into Alphabet's Google, minutes after an additional 10% tariff on Chinese goods imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump came into effect.