Alphabet shares rise on earnings beats boosted by cloud revenue

Google parent Alphabet reported third-quarter earnings that beat on top and bottom lines with strong revenue growth from the company's cloud unit.

The company's shares rose as much as 6% in after-hours trading.

Here are the results:

Here are other numbers Wall Street was watching:

Alphabet's revenue grew 15% year over year, which is stronger than the same quarter last year.

The company reported blowout cloud revenue at $11.35 billion, up nearly 35% from the $8.41 billion a year ago. The company attributed its strong cloud results to its artificial intelligence offerings, which include subscriptions for enterprise customers.

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai opened his call with investors saying the company's "full stack" of AI products is now operating at scale and being used by Google's billions of users and "creating a virtuous cycle."

The search company's strong quarter kicks off a big week of earnings for tech's megacap companies. Meta and Microsoft report on Wednesday, followed by Apple and Amazon on Thursday.

Alphabet's net income increased to $26.3 billion, or $2.12 per share, compared to $19.7 billion, or $1.55 per share, in the year-ago quarter.

Google's search business generated $49.4 billion in revenue. That was up 12.3% from a year ago, and the search business remains the largest contributor to revenue growth for the company, said Alphabet Chief Financial Officer Anat Ashkenazi on the call.

Alphabet plans to build on existing cost-cutting efforts around using AI to streamline workflow and manage headcount and the company's physical footprint, Ashkenazi said.

"I plan to build on these efforts but also evaluate where we might be able to accelerate work and where we might need to pivot to free up capital for more attractive