In the quarter just reported, Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL | GOOGL Price Prediction) posted $112.1 billion in net income. That is more than Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), or NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) earned in their most recent three months. On paper, Sundar Pichai runs the most profitable company in America right now. The paper is doing a lot of the work.
The Ranking, Most Recent Quarter
Line up the five most valuable US companies by their latest reported quarterly net income and the order is not the one investors carry in their heads. Alphabet leads at $112.1 billion for the June quarter, up 298% year over year. Amazon is second at $62.6 billion. NVIDIA, whose fiscal quarter ended in April, comes in third at $58.3 billion. Microsoft, closing its fiscal year in June, booked $35.8 billion, up 31%. Apple, on the same June calendar, brought in $29.8 billion on $109.4 billion of revenue, its strongest June quarter on record.
The SpaceX and Anthropic Twist
Three of those four leading numbers are contaminated. Alphabet’s $112.1 billion includes roughly $99 billion in unrealized equity gains, dominated by a SpaceX stake marked up to $94 billion after SpaceX’s June 2026 IPO. That position originated as a $900 million investment in 2015, and most of the shares are still locked up and unsellable. Strip the markup out and Alphabet’s operating income was $40.8 billion, up 30%, with Google Cloud revenue at $24.8 billion, up 82%. Amazon’s headline is even more distorted: $53.4 billion of its $62.6 billion was a non-cash, non-operating gain on its Anthropic stake. Microsoft’s number benefited from a smaller $3.2 billion Anthropic-related mark. These are accounting profits triggered by other companies’ funding rounds, not cash the businesses generated.
NVIDIA’s Number Is the One That Isn’t Wearing Makeup
Which brings you to Jensen Huang’s quarter. NVIDIA’s $58.3 billion in net income, up 211%, has no comparable one-time gain propping it up. It came from $81.6 billion in revenue, a 75.0% non-GAAP gross margin, and $48.6 billion in free cash flow in a single quarter. Data Center revenue alone was $75.2 billion, with Data Center Networking up 199%. Huang called the AI factory buildout “the largest infrastructure expansion in human history”. It is also, right now, the cleanest profit engine in corporate America. On a real, cash-generating basis this quarter, NVIDIA’s third-place number is arguably the most impressive of the five.
Apple and Microsoft, on Merit
The operating stories under Apple and Microsoft still deserve their credit. Tim Cook’s June quarter delivered $54.25 billion in iPhone revenue and double-digit growth in every geographic segment. Satya Nadella took Azure across $100 billion in annual revenue for the first time, with the segment growing 43%, and Microsoft 365 Copilot at over 30 million paid seats. Commercial remaining performance obligations closed the year at $678 billion, up 84%. Neither company needed a mark-up to look excellent.
What to Watch
“Most profitable company in America” is now a moving target distorted by which private AI or space stake got repriced last quarter. Alphabet wears the crown today. Amazon and Microsoft rode the same trick to lesser degrees. The signal to watch next is NVIDIA’s Q2 FY2027 report, guided to $91.0 billion in revenue with the 75% gross margin intact, and whether Alphabet resumes the buyback it suspended in Q2. When the mark-to-market tide goes out, only one of these five keeps the number.
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