Alphabet Earnings Loom as Investors Weigh AI Ranking, Founder Tax Risk Against Meta's Turmoil

Alphabet (GOOGL) reports earnings this week with advantages its peers lack, D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria wrote Monday, noting Google's capital-spending concerns were largely addressed at its second-quarter report. Unlike Meta (META), which posted its first negative free cash flow since 2012 and unveiled a no-voting-rights Class C share plan, Google's co-founders face no pressure to sell stock. Sergey Brin and Larry Page left California before a January 1, 2026 deadline tied to the state's Proposition 40 billionaire tax, avoiding the overhang that has weighed on Meta shares, Luria said. Luria expects Alphabet to discuss reclaiming AI leadership. Google ranks second in chatbots behind ChatGPT, third in enterprise AI behind Anthropic and OpenAI, and trails Meta's Muse in personal AI assistants, he wrote.