What does it take to become the largest business in the world? If you asked this question 30 years ago, the answer would have been oil, retail, or manufacturing. Today, the answer is technology — specifically, artificial intelligence.
In this case study, we break down why Google (Alphabet) is positioned to become the largest business in the world within the next decade, surpassing Microsoft, Apple, and Nvidia.
The $2 Trillion Growth
Google grew $2 trillion in market cap in less than a year.
To put that in perspective, Amazon’s entire market cap is approximately $2.4 trillion. Google added nearly the equivalent of Amazon’s total value in under twelve months.
This growth tells us one thing: investors are betting heavily on artificial intelligence. It does not necessarily mean the AI market is growing proportionally or that consumers are using AI tools daily. It simply means capital is flowing toward companies positioned to dominate the AI era.
The question for investors and founders alike: which company is best positioned to become the largest business in the world?
What Makes the Largest Business in the World?
Throughout history, the largest business in the world has always controlled critical infrastructure.
- Standard Oil controlled energy distribution.
- AT&T controlled communications.
- Microsoft controlled the operating systems that powered every personal computer.
- Apple controlled the smartphone ecosystem.
The pattern is consistent: market dominance comes from owning the layer that everything else depends on.
In the AI era, two layers matter most: the software (models, applications, platforms) and the hardware (chips that run the computations).
Most companies have one. Google is building both.
Google’s Software Dominance
Google’s AI software portfolio is arguably the most comprehensive in the market:
- Gemini competes directly with OpenAI’s GPT models
- Veo competes with RunwayML for video generation
- NotebookLM is reshaping how students and professionals interact with documents
- Google Search, YouTube, Android, Chrome, and Gmail provide distribution channels that no competitor can match
When Google releases an AI feature, it immediately reaches billions of users. OpenAI has to convince users to download a new app. Google simply updates products people already use daily.
This distribution advantage is often underestimated. But it is precisely how Microsoft became the largest business in the world in the 1990s — not by having the best product, but by having the most ubiquitous one.
Google’s Hardware Play: TPUs Explained
Here is where Google separates from every other AI company.
Since 2015, Google has been designing and manufacturing its own AI chips called Tensor Processing Units (TPUs). While Nvidia dominates the broader market, Google has quietly built a decade of expertise in purpose-built AI hardware.
In April 2025, Google released their seventh-generation TPU: Ironwood.
Unlike Nvidia’s GPUs, which were originally designed for graphics and later adapted for AI, TPUs were built from the ground up specifically for machine learning workloads. This specialization creates efficiency advantages that general-purpose chips cannot match.
For founders building AI companies, understanding this hardware landscape is critical. Your infrastructure costs will determine your unit economics, and the chip market is shifting faster than most financial models account for.
If you are building financial projections for an AI startup, our team can help you model these infrastructure scenarios accurately. [Link to financial modeling services]
The Numbers Behind Google’s Chip Business Strategy
The data supporting Google’s hardware ambitions is substantial:
- Ironwood scales up to 9,216 chips in a single superpod
- Total compute power: 42.5 Exaflops (24x more than the world’s largest supercomputer)
- TPUs are approximately 2x cheaper than Nvidia GPUs at comparable scale
- Independent benchmarks show 60-65% better efficiency than Nvidia hardware for specific workloads
- Morgan Stanley forecasts Google will produce 7 million TPUs by 2028, generating $13 billion in new revenue
Perhaps most significant: Meta is reportedly in discussions to spend billions integrating Google’s TPUs into their data centers, with deployment planned for 2027.
When Nvidia’s largest customers begin diversifying their chip supply, the market dynamics are shifting.
Why No Other Large Business Has This Package
To become the largest business in the world, a company typically needs an unfair advantage that compounds over time.
Consider the current competitive landscape:
- Microsoft has access to OpenAI’s models through their partnership. However, they purchase chips from Nvidia and license AI technology from an external company. Two critical dependencies.
- Nvidia manufactures the most sought-after AI chips globally. However, they have no consumer AI products, no search engine, no video platform, no mobile operating system, and no cloud services at Google’s scale.
- Apple designs exceptional hardware and controls a premium ecosystem. However, their AI capabilities lag visibly behind competitors, and they have no presence in cloud infrastructure or enterprise AI services.
Google has consumer AI products used by billions, enterprise cloud services, a decade of proprietary chip development, and distribution channels across search, video, mobile, and productivity software.
No other company controls both the software layer and the hardware layer simultaneously at this scale.
Historical Patterns: who becomes the largest business in the world?
Business history offers instructive parallels.
In the 1990s, conventional wisdom suggested hardware companies would dominate the technology era. IBM, Dell, and Compaq were considered the obvious winners.
Microsoft became the largest business in the world instead. Why? Because software — the operating system — became the layer everything else depended on.
Today, conventional wisdom suggests Nvidia will dominate the AI era because they make the chips.
But what if the pattern repeats? What if the company that controls both the AI software and manufactures competitive chips emerges as the winner?
Google is the only company positioned for that outcome.
Final Thoughts
Predicting which company will become the largest business in the world is inherently speculative. Thirty years ago, few would have predicted Nvidia’s current position.
However, the evidence suggests Google has assembled a combination of assets — software, hardware, distribution, and capital — that no competitor currently matches.
Whether they execute on this opportunity is another question. But the pieces are in place.
That is our case study. We’re financial analysts by our nature. So these case studies are fun to create. What do you think — is Google’s path to the top as clear as we suggest, or are we missing something? Shoot us an email.