It’s Christmas in February for AI investors. Last night Alphabet (Nasdaq: GOOGL) reported earnings and investors weren’t happy with the results in spite of Google touting leadership in several areas of AI. The stock is down 8.1% as of 3 p.m. ET. 

Yet, the earnings had a very important piece of good news for stocks building out AI infrastructure. Google said they plan to spend $75 billion on capital expenditures this year. That is significantly above the $57 billion in spend Wall Street was projecting. Let’s dig into why Google’s earnings are driving the returns of stocks like Marvell (Nasdaq: MRVL), Vertiv (NYSE: VRT), and NVIDIA (Nasdaq: NVDA). 

Why Marvell Is Up Big Today 

Last night after Google reported, I dug into the numbers and analyzed why Broadcom (Nasdaq: AVGO) and Celestica (NYSE: CLS) would likely be up big today. That prediction is proving accurate as Celestica is up 7.5% so far today while Broadcom is up 5.6%. 

Those two companies have close relationships with Google, so they’re tied more directly to the company upping its capital expenditure plans. Yet, Google is just the latest company to take spending plans up well above what Wall Street was projecting just a month ago. 

For example, Meta (Nasdaq: META) projected spending this year of $60 to $65 million on data centers, well above Wall Street’s prior forecast of $48 billion. Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) joined the Stargate Project and will likely spend significantly more than Wall Street expected as well.

Marvell doesn’t design chips for Meta or Google. However, it has a valuable partnership with Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) custom designing everything from AI accelerators to networking products like digital signal processors. 

Amazon reports earnings tomorrow, but it’s likely they’ll also signal higher capital expenditure plans than Wall Street was expecting, so today’s news of general enthusiasm for stocks involved in the buildout of AI infrastructure will benefit Marvell. The company also has a valuable partnership with Microsoft that has yet to ramp to significant revenue generation. 

NVIDIA and Vertiv Are Also Jumping 

NVIDIA shares are also on the rise today, up 4.5%.

Google promoted the efficiency of their custom TPUs during their earnings call last night. That could be considered a negative to NVIDIA, as the main battle taking shape in the AI processor space is NVIDIA’s general-purpose chips versus custom chips from Marvell and Broadcom that are ramping across almost every hyperscaler. 

Yet, Google’s guidance broadly points to rising demand for AI compute. Even with Google continuing to invest in their TPUs, a healthy chunk of their $75 billion in spending this year will flow to NVIDIA.

Last night also further cemented NVIDIA’s dominance over AMD (Nasdaq: AMD).

The company announced earnings last night and gave commentary and outlook on AI GPU sales that disappointed Wall Street. This just provides more evidence that AMD is a distant rival to NVIDIA and the race for data center riches is between NVIDIA selling more general processors and networking gear versus hyperscalers custom chips. 

Other stocks in the ‘AI infrastructure trade’ are rallying today as well. Vertiv fell especially hard after the DeepSeek panic swept the markets last Monday, the stock was down more than 30% in a single day. 

Its rebound continues today, with the stock up 7%. Vertiv’s liquid cooling solutions are used in NVIDIA’s Blackwell systems that are reaching mass production, but they’re also needed for custom chips like Google’s TPU. Hyperscalers like Meta and Google both announcing data center spend that’s 30% above recent Wall Street consensus is a massive tailwind for the company. 

Other big winners today include companies in the optical space. Keep an eye on Coherent (Nasdaq: COHR). The company reports earnings after the market close and could shape the direction of ‘AI infrastructure stocks’ in tomorrow’s trading. 

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