Google just had its first negative cash flow quarter due to massive AI spending
Google has reported its financial results for the second quarter of 2026 (PDF), and as usual, the search giant raked in an unfathomable amount of money. Google saw total revenue of $119.8 billion, beating analyst expectations by a comfortable margin. Despite that, the company's stock has taken a hit. Along with all that revenue, Google has announced a further increase in its AI-fueled capital expenditures (or capex). The company is actually spending so much on AI infrastructure that it has negat
Google reported record revenue but spent so much on artificial intelligence infrastructure that it had negative cash flow for the first time since going public, spending $44.9 billion on AI expansion in a single quarter while bringing in $39.1 billion in operating cash flow. The company significantly raised its planned capital spending for the year to as much as $205 billion, more than double what it previously told investors to expect, as it races to build and run data centers powering AI models. While Google remains highly profitable with over $100 billion in reserves, the shift matters because free cash flow is a key metric of business health and shows how the broader tech industry is prioritizing massive AI spending over immediate returns. Google's stock price dropped about 4.5 percent on the news, reflecting investor concerns about whether such enormous AI expenditures will eventually pay off.
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