(Bloomberg/Davey Alba and Carmen Arroyo) — Alphabet Inc. sales topped quarterly Wall Street estimates, fueled by a surge in demand for its cloud and artificial intelligence services. Shares rose as much as 7.5% in extended trading.

Third-quarter sales, excluding partner payouts, rose to $87.5 billion, Alphabet said in a statement Wednesday. That topped the $85.1 billion expected on average by analysts, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Net income was $2.87 per share, compared with Wall Street’s estimate of $2.26.

The company is investing record amounts to try to push progress in AI, and infuse answers and assistance from its large language model, Gemini, into its popular products including search. The company said capital expenditures for the year will be $91 billion to $93 billio

See Full Page