附近上门

听If had a theme song, radio playlist favorite 鈥�鈥� might be an appropriate choice. The company recently topped the $4 trillion market cap level 鈥� making it one of only two currently in that category. It鈥檚 ubiquitous in our daily lives, makes tons of money, and doesn鈥檛 shy away from moonshot goals.

But Google has never been one to take its lead as a given. Over the years, the company and its venture arm has been among the tech industry鈥檚 most active startup investors and highest spending acquirers, 附近上门 data shows.

Recent quarters have been particularly busy. In 2025, the company partook in the largest number of funding rounds in years. Those rounds also had the highest collective value since the market peak four years ago.

This year is also off to a brisk start with the company’s most famous spinout 鈥� 鈥� raising $16 billion this week in a new round valuing the autonomous driving company and robotaxi operator at $126 billion post-money. Google’s and participated in the financing but were not lead investors. Last year, Waymo said it more than tripled its annual volume to 15 million rides.

Beyond that, Google has also been a prodigious lead investor. Last year, it led or co-led 67 known rounds valued at more than $5 billion.听

Last year鈥檚 biggest rounds were a reported $1 billion for and a $600 million -led Series B for , a developer of AI software to power robots. This year, Google co-led a $300 million financing, alongside and , in AI inference startup .

Purchases are few but very expensive

In recent years, we鈥檝e noticed that the most valuable technology companies aren鈥檛 acquiring very many venture-backed startups, even if they keep investing in them.

That said, fewer deals doesn鈥檛 always mean less spending. This is particularly true for Google, which last spring announced plans to buy cloud security provider for $32 billion in what stands to be the largest startup acquisition of all time.

That alone would have been enough for the year. But as 2025 was winding to a close, swooped in with another jumbo M&A deal, data center energy provider for $4.75 billion in cash plus assumption of debt. Notably, both deals are outside Google鈥檚 core areas like search and advertising, which likely reflects desire to lessen antitrust scrutiny.

The money to do anything

It鈥檚 worth noting that when a company is valued in the trillions and has reliable profits and deep cash reserves to boot, it鈥檚 the opposite of financially restrained. Google has the ability to buy or invest in anything, at essentially any price. Given this, it鈥檚 instructive to look at what it鈥檚 not spending on, as well as where it鈥檚 directing capital.

For a tech giant, Google and Alphabet show little interest in acquiring companies with expertise in their most famous business segments. This could presumably be due to antitrust concerns or a confidence that these are areas they鈥檝e got covered in-house. However, they are still quite aware of stress points 鈥� such as security and AI infrastructure 鈥� in which an outside company鈥檚 expertise and track record could offer big benefits.

Related reading:

• The Big 5 Still Aren鈥檛 Buying Many Startups

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