5-star analyst revamps Google stock target on three-shot case | Official Website of Louis Velazquez, entrepreneur, finance guy and tech innovator

Google-parent Alphabet (GOOGL) stock just got a fresh vote of confidence from a 5-star analyst who hasn’t been easy to impress.

Loop Capital analyst Rob Sanderson, who has long been cautious on Google, just flipped his hold rating on the stock to buy, bumping his price target to $320, up from $260, calling for double-digit upside, despite the stock’s meteoric ascent this year.

His argument behind the upgrade is simple, but unusually forceful: Google has effectively “climbed the wall of worry,” proving that its search dominance isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

On top of that, Google Cloud is accelerating more quickly than AWS and Azure, while the company’s in-house TPU chips offer it a structural cost advantage unlike any company in the AI infrastructure race.

Put simply, the upgrade is centered on a potent three-point case that says Google isn’t just surviving the AI era, but spearheading it.

Loop Capital boosts Google stock target on a rare three-point edge.

Photo by CAMILLE COHEN on Getty Images

Who is Rob Sanderson?

Rob Sanderson is a veteran Big Tech analyst who is perhaps one of the most respected voices on Wall Street covering Alphabet.

He commands a 5-star rating on TipRanks, having built a long track record covering Google, Amazon, Meta, and the broader internet space.

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His calls on Google, in particular, proved remarkably successful, as TipRanks data points to an 86% success rate along with an average return of over 16% across his ratings.

That level of consistency lends significant weight to his latest upgrade.

The 3-peat case behind the upgrade

Google didn’t get its upgrade just on the back of a shiny new metric or a lucky quarter. Sanderson’s core argument is built on a clean, three-part story that has essentially been hidden in plain sight.

Though everyone spent the early half of 2025 arguing over chatbot doom scenarios, Google was able to stack major wins across its core business, its fastest-growing division, and its underlying AI hardware.

Search stayed strong when bears wanted it broken

Search revenue continues to grow by double-digit rates for Google, which underscores the point that users never abandoned Google as their default starting point.

Sanderson puts it perfectly in that Google efficiently “climbed the wall of worry,” which means that the fears of mass user migration just never hit reality.

Advertising numbers kept spending, while the click volumes didn’t erode, with search continuing to act as a cash cow.

The addition of AI features only strengthened its case, with AI Overviews now boasting over 2 billion users, and AI Mode already surpassing 100 million.

Google Cloud is accelerating and could outgrow AWS through 2027

The second major pillar of the upgrade is what’s happening inside Google Cloud, which is now growing at a much quicker clip than AWS and Azure off a much smaller base.

Its cloud backlog has effectively doubled over the past five quarters, underscoring how AI workloads continue to boost its powerful recurring business.

In September, Reuters reported, Google Cloud revealed an eye-popping $106 billion sales backlog, with nearly 55% customers expected to convert into sales within a couple of years.

Sanderson takes one step further, arguing GCP might “meaningfully outgrow AWS through 2027,” a high-stakes claim in a space that’s typically been ruled by Amazon.

Alphabet’s TPUs are a structural advantage

The final and perhaps the important piece of the puzzle is Google’s underappreciated hardware edge in its TPUs (custom AI accelerators).

With Google building its own chips, it can offer AI compute at a significantly better price-performance ratio compared to generic GPUs. Meanwhile, opening up TPUs to external customers gives it a major edge in large infrastructure deals.

Google’s in-house TPUs provide a significant cost advantage, with some estimates indicating that its AI compute is approximately 20% of the cost of high-end Nvidia setups. In fact, its newer chips, such as Trillium and Ironwood, boost performance even further, and customers are taking notice.