3 Billionaire Investors Just Bought the Same Stock. Should You?

Warren Buffett, Bill Ackman, and Stanley Druckenmiller all rotated into the same stock last quarter, but the bear case raises a concern most investors are overlooking before they follow suit.

Published August 25, 2026, 1:00pm ET · 3 min read

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Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG | GOOG Price Prediction) has become the billionaire trade of 2026. Recent 13F cycles show Warren Buffett was far from the only billionaire buying Alphabet stock in Q2, joining Bill Ackman and Stanley Druckenmiller rotating into the search giant.

Our 24/7 Wall St. price target for Alphabet is $437.39, implying 27.99% upside from the current $341.75 share price. The model rates GOOG a buy with 90% confidence.

A financial infographic titled
24/7 Wall St.
Metric Value
Current Price $341.75
24/7 Wall St. Price Target $437.39
Upside 27.99%
Recommendation BUY
Confidence Level 90%
GOOG price target

Cloud Acceleration and Billionaire Buying Set the Backdrop

GOOG gained 70.83% over the trailing year against 9.05% year-to-date, though shares consolidated recently, off 0.52% over the past week.

The Q2 FY2026 report delivered $119.80 billion in revenue, up 24.23% year over year, with EPS of $9.11 against a $3.04 estimate. Google Cloud accelerated to 82% growth with $24.8 billion in revenue and a 35.6% operating margin, while cloud backlog hit $514 billion. This backdrop explains why multiple billionaires are piling in.

GOOG analyst ratings

Bull Case: A Path Toward $454

Bulls see a $454.48 upside scenario, roughly 33% above spot. Google Cloud is compounding, with nearly 90% of the Fortune 100 using Gemini Enterprise. The Gemini App has 950 million monthly active users, and API traffic scaled to 22 billion tokens per minute, up from 16 billion just a quarter earlier.

TPU system sales, Waymo’s 500,000+ weekly rides, and 350 million paid subscriptions add optionality. On the sell side, 13 strong buys, 44 buys, 6 holds, and zero sells form one of the cleanest analyst books in mega-cap tech.

GOOG price scenario

Bear Case: What Could Drag GOOG to $362

The bear scenario points to $361.62, essentially flat to today. The chief concern is capex intensity. Q2 free cash flow ran to negative $5.855 billion, with capex up 100.14% year over year to $44.92 billion. Long-term debt climbed from roughly $16 billion a year ago to about $100 billion, buybacks were suspended, and CFO Anat Ashkenazi warned third-party capacity will “put some pressure on operating margins for cloud.”

Bulls counter that this spending funds a supply-constrained AI backlog, so the free-cash-flow drop reads as strategic reinvestment (and it is worth remembering the picks-and-shovels names on the other side of that spending, which we broke down in a free report on seven AI infrastructure suppliers that aren’t chipmakers).

How Alphabet Compares to Microsoft and Meta

Alphabet screens cheap against Magnificent Seven peers on trailing earnings. Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) fetches a trailing P/E of roughly 27, backed by Azure crossing $100 billion in annual revenue and a $678 billion commercial RPO backlog. That backlog rivals Alphabet’s $514 billion, yet MSFT trades at nearly double the multiple.

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) sits at P/E near 20, but Q2 EPS missed expectations on a cost surge, and Reality Labs remains a multi-billion drag. Against this set, GOOG’s P/E of 14 makes our 24/7 Wall St. price target look conservative.

Company Trailing P/E Recent Quarter Revenue Growth
Alphabet 14 24.23%
Microsoft 27 17.75%
Meta 20 27.96%

Bottom Line: Why the Billionaire Trade Has Legs

Our 24/7 Wall St. price target of $437.39 offers GOOG one of the cleanest risk/reward setups in mega-cap tech, well above the bear scenario. The constructive path requires free cash flow stabilizing in H2 2026 and cloud margins holding above 30%.

The risk case builds if capex creeps beyond $175 to $185 billion 2026 guidance without a clear TPU revenue ramp in 2027. The buy call carries 90% confidence.

Here is where our model projects GOOG could trade, assuming current growth trajectories and market conditions hold.

Year 24/7 Wall St. Price Target
2026 $437
2027 $523
2028 $584
2029 $660
2030 $699

These projections assume Alphabet executes on its AI-first strategy. Significant upside or downside could result from Waymo commercialization, antitrust remedies in Search, or a sharper-than-expected step-down in AI capex intensity.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

Vandita Jadeja

Vandita Jadeja is a financial publisher with over a decade of experience writing about financial topics, including investment, savings, retirement, insurance and banking. Vandita is a Chartered Accountant who loves to debunk financial concepts for readers.

Her work has appeared on sites that include The Motley Fool, InvestorPlace, and Benzinga. She covers investing and focuses on stock picks and price prediction for 24/7 Wall St.

When not looking for the next stock investment opportunity, she can be found traveling, reading, chasing sunsets and enjoying her iced latte.

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