Google $GOOGL ( ▲ 6.31% ) is trading higher premarket after its cloud division revealed a “significant, multi-million-dollar contract” with NATO’s Communication and Information Agency to deliver AI-enabled sovereign cloud capabilities. The partnership will use Google Distributed Cloud to help the Joint Analysis, Training, and Education Center modernize operations and manage classified workloads in the coming months. Google emphasized that this sovereign cloud setup lives in a hardened, air-gapped environment, isolated from both the internet and the public cloud.
The contract is tiny compared to the hundred-billion-dollar AI compute mega-deals flying around, but it opens a massive strategic door. Governments and global agencies need secure, high-performance cloud infrastructure, and Google wants to be the one holding those keys.
The momentum does not stop there. Alphabet has been the runaway leader of the BATMMAAN stocks this year, up nearly 60 percent in 2025. It is a remarkable six-month turnaround for a company that some investors thought was drifting. Concerns over Google Search losing ground to ChatGPT, early AI bets that had not yet paid off, and the looming threat of an antitrust breakup created real pressure.
Then Gemini 3 arrived. The model impressed users, leaderboard watchers, and even spooked OpenAI’s Sam Altman, pushing Google stock to record highs and convincing investors that the company’s AI moat may actually be getting deeper. The relief was amplified when the nuclear antitrust option of breaking up Alphabet was effectively taken off the table in September.
Beyond the AI glow-up, Google is stacking wins. Its new TPU chip is 30 times more power efficient than the 2018 version, an important edge at a time when Nvidia $NVDA ( ▲ 2.05% ) chips are scarce. Waymo has expanded into freeways and new cities with a 2,500-car autonomous fleet that surpasses Tesla’s footprint. Search is pulling in record revenue, Google Cloud is securing deal after deal, including today’s NATO news, and YouTube continues to dominate TV viewership.
As one user joked online, maybe the next Google is… Google.