YouTube Surpasses $60 Billion in Revenue, Eclipsing Netflix as the World’s Largest

Entertainment Platform

Alphabet exceeds $400 billion in annual revenue for the first time, propelled by an AI-centric strategy that is reshaping the global media and technology landscape

Alphabet disclosed YouTube’s total revenue for the first time in its Q4 2025 earnings report. Combining advertising and subscription income, YouTube generated more than $60 billion in full-year 2025 revenue—significantly exceeding Netflix’s $45.18 billion and trailing only Disney ($95.7 billion) among entertainment companies. The disclosure itself is a strategic signal: YouTube is no longer merely a division within Google’s advertising empire, but a standalone media powerhouse with diversified revenue streams rivaling the world’s largest entertainment conglomerates.

On the earnings call, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai underscored that the company’s annual revenue surpassed $400 billion for the first time, with AI investments and infrastructure driving growth across every business unit. The launch of Gemini 3 in December 2025 was described as a pivotal milestone, accelerating momentum in Search, Cloud, YouTube, and Waymo alike. With 2026 capital expenditure guidance of $175–185 billion—roughly double the 2025 figure—Alphabet is making an unmistakable bet that AI will define the next era of the media, technology, and entertainment industries.

1. YouTube: The $60 Billion Platform

1.1  What the Revenue Disclosure Reveals

Until this quarter, Alphabet had only disclosed YouTube’s advertising revenue as a separate line item. The decision to break out total revenue—inclusive of YouTube Premium, YouTube TV, and YouTube Music Premium subscriptions—signals confidence in the platform’s scale and strategic importance. At $60 billion-plus, YouTube’s hybrid model of ad-supported free content and premium subscriptions has produced a revenue base approximately one-third larger than Netflix’s subscription-centric business.

Alphabet reported 325 million paid subscriptions across its consumer services in Q4, including YouTube Premium, YouTube TV, and Google One—up from 300 million in the prior quarter. YouTube Music Premium showed particularly strong growth trajectory, and YouTube TV is preparing to launch over 10 genre-specific, lower-cost plans covering sports, entertainment, and news.

1.2  Q4 Ad Revenue: Record High, but Below Expectations

[Figure] YouTube Quarterly Ad Revenue, Q1 2023–Q4 2025  |  Source: Alphabet Quarterly Filings

YouTube’s global advertising revenue reached $11.38 billion in Q4 2025, up 8.7% year-over-year from $10.47 billion and an all-time quarterly record. The prior quarter (Q3 2025) came in at $10.3 billion. However, the result fell short of the $11.84 billion consensus estimate compiled by StreetAccount, largely attributed to lower political advertising spend compared to the election-heavy Q4 2024 period. Alphabet’s stock dipped modestly in after-hours trading following the announcement.

1.3  Content Strategy: From the Oscars to the BBC

YouTube has held the position of the number-one streaming platform in the U.S. for nearly three years, according to Nielsen. The platform secured exclusive global rights to the Academy Awards ceremony from 2029 through 2033, wresting the media rights from ABC. In a separate partnership announced in January, the BBC committed to producing original content exclusively for YouTube and launching new channels targeting children and young adults—a landmark acknowledgment by a legacy public broadcaster of YouTube’s primacy as a distribution platform.

The NFL Sunday Ticket out-of-market package achieved its highest paid-subscriber total in product history. These marquee content deals illustrate YouTube’s evolution from a user-generated content platform into a destination for premium, appointment-viewing entertainment.

1.4  Podcasts, Shorts, and Format Diversification

In October 2025, viewers watched more than 700 million hours of podcasts on YouTube via TV devices, up approximately 70–75% year-over-year—cementing YouTube’s dominance in the video-podcast arena. YouTube Shorts, the platform’s short-form format, now averages 200 billion daily views. Image posts and other formats will be integrated into the Shorts feed this year, expanding YouTube’s competitive surface against TikTok and Instagram Reels.

YouTube TV will soon introduce a fully customizable multiview feature, allowing subscribers to watch multiple live channels simultaneously on a single screen—a direct play for the sports-viewing audience that increasingly expects multi-screen, interactive experiences.

1.5  AI Is Reshaping the YouTube Ecosystem

YouTube CEO Neal Mohan highlighted in his 2026 community letter that AI is transforming the experience for both creators and viewers. In December 2025, more than one million channels used YouTube’s AI creation tools on a daily basis. During the same month, over 20 million viewers engaged with the Gemini-powered “Ask” tool to explore topics related to the content they watched.

At the same time, Mohan acknowledged the challenge of “AI slop”—low-quality, repetitive content generated by artificial intelligence—and stated that YouTube is actively working to reduce its spread. This dual emphasis on empowering creators with AI tools while maintaining content quality standards represents one of the defining platform governance challenges ahead.

2. Alphabet: AI-Driven Growth Across the Board

2.1  Q4 Financial Highlights

Alphabet posted Q4 2025 revenue of $113.8 billion, up 18% year-over-year, with net income of $34.4 billion (up 30%) and EPS of $2.82—comfortably above Wall Street consensus estimates of $111.43 billion in revenue and $2.63 EPS. Full-year revenue exceeded $400 billion for the first time in company history, underscoring the breadth and acceleration of growth across both Google Services and Google Cloud.

2.2  Search: The Expansionary Moment

Google Search revenue grew 17% year-over-year in Q4, accelerating from prior quarters. Pichai credited the integration of Gemini 3 into AI Mode and AI Overviews, which he described as an “expansionary moment” for Search. In the U.S., daily AI Mode queries per user have doubled since launch, with queries running three times longer than traditional searches. One in six AI Mode queries now uses non-text input—voice or images—and Circle to Search is available on over 580 million Android devices.

The company shipped more than 250 product launches within AI Mode and AI Overviews in Q4 alone, signaling an aggressive pace of innovation that aims to redefine the search experience before competitors can gain a foothold.

2.3  Google Cloud: $70B+ Run Rate, 48% Growth

Google Cloud revenue grew 48% year-over-year, reaching an annual run rate exceeding $70 billion. Backlog surged 55% quarter-over-quarter to $240 billion, driven by demand for AI products. Nearly 75% of Cloud customers now use Alphabet’s vertically optimized AI solutions, and those AI customers consume 1.8 times as many products as non-AI customers.

More than 120,000 enterprises use Gemini, including 95% of the top 20 and over 80% of the top 100 SaaS companies—names such as Salesforce, Shopify, Airbus, and Honeywell. Revenue from products built on generative AI models grew nearly 400% year-over-year in Q4, significantly accelerating from the prior quarter.

In a notable development, Pichai confirmed that Apple has selected Google as its preferred cloud provider and will collaborate on developing next-generation Apple Foundation Models based on Gemini technology—a partnership that could reshape the competitive dynamics between the two tech giants.

2.4  The Gemini Ecosystem: 750M MAU, Enterprise Penetration

The Gemini App surpassed 750 million monthly active users, with per-user engagement rising markedly since the December launch of Gemini 3. Gemini 3 Pro has seen the fastest adoption of any model in Alphabet’s history, processing three times as many daily tokens on average as its predecessor, 2.5 Pro. First-party models now process over 10 billion tokens per minute via direct API use.

In the enterprise segment, Gemini Enterprise has been deployed to more than 2,800 companies with over 8 million paid seats. BNY, Virgin Voyages, Wendy’s, Kroger, and Woolworths Group are among the clients, with the platform managing over 5 billion customer interactions in Q4—up 65% year-over-year. Revenue from AI solutions built by software partners grew nearly 300% year-over-year.

2.5  Infrastructure Investment: $175–185B CapEx for 2026

Alphabet guided 2026 capital expenditure to $175–185 billion, potentially double the $91.4 billion spent in 2025. The company will be among the first cloud providers to offer NVIDIA’s latest Vera Rubin GPU platform, alongside its own seventh-generation Ironwood TPU. Notably, Alphabet achieved a 78% reduction in Gemini serving unit costs over 2025 through model optimizations and efficiency improvements.

The announcement of the planned acquisition of Intersect, a data center and energy infrastructure provider, further signals the scale of Alphabet’s infrastructure buildout. These investment levels represent a new threshold in the AI infrastructure arms race among hyperscalers.

2.6  Waymo: Autonomous Mobility at Scale

Waymo completed its largest investment round to date this week and has surpassed 20 million fully autonomous trips, providing more than 400,000 rides per week. Its sixth market, Miami, launched two weeks ago, with expansion planned to additional U.S. cities as well as the U.K. and Japan. The deployment of service to airports and freeways marks a significant expansion of autonomous driving’s practical commercial scope.

3. Key Product Launches and Strategic Initiatives

3.1  Google Antigravity

Alphabet unveiled Google Antigravity, a new development platform where AI agents can autonomously plan and execute complex software tasks. Launched approximately two months ago, the platform has already attracted more than 1.5 million weekly active users—a rapid adoption curve that suggests significant demand for AI-assisted software development tools.

3.2  Universal Commerce Protocol

In collaboration with retail industry leaders, Alphabet introduced the Universal Commerce Protocol, an open standard designed to enable agentic commerce—where AI agents autonomously navigate shopping processes on behalf of consumers. This initiative positions Alphabet at the center of what could become the foundational infrastructure for AI-mediated retail transactions.

3.3  Project Genie and Chrome Auto Browse

Project Genie leverages Genie 3, a general-purpose world model, to allow users to create and explore interactive worlds generated in real time. Chrome Auto Browse reimagines the Chrome browser as an AI-first, agentic browsing experience. Together, these products illustrate Alphabet’s strategy of embedding AI capabilities across the entire consumer software stack.

4. Industry Implications

4.1  YouTube’s Revenue Disclosure as Strategic Signaling

The decision to disclose YouTube’s total revenue is not merely an accounting change—it is a strategic signal to advertisers, content partners, and investors that YouTube has achieved the scale and revenue diversification of a standalone major media company. At $60 billion-plus, YouTube now commands a revenue base that surpasses all but the largest media conglomerates globally.

4.2  The FAST Market and Global Content Opportunities

YouTube TV’s expansion into genre-specific, lower-cost packages aligns directly with the broader FAST (Free Ad-Supported Streaming TV) market trajectory. With the global FAST market projected to grow from $5.8 billion in 2025 to $10.6 billion by 2030, the convergence of YouTube’s scale, advertising infrastructure, and content partnerships creates significant opportunities for global content distributors—including Korean content (K-content) producers seeking expanded international reach.

4.3  AI and the Future of the Creator Economy

The fact that one million channels use AI creation tools daily and 20 million viewers engage with AI-powered discovery features indicates a fundamental shift in both content production and consumption. YouTube’s simultaneous effort to combat AI-generated low-quality content suggests that platform governance—balancing innovation enablement with quality control—will be a defining challenge for the media industry in 2026 and beyond.

4.4  Alphabet’s Full-Stack AI Strategy and Competitive Landscape

From infrastructure (TPUs, GPUs) to models (Gemini) to platforms (Cloud, Search, YouTube) to applications (Workspace, Waymo), Alphabet’s full-stack AI strategy represents the broadest portfolio among the hyperscalers. The $175–185 billion CapEx commitment for 2026 signals that the AI infrastructure competition has entered a new dimension. With Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon each pursuing their own massive AI investment programs, the scale of capital deployment across the industry is unprecedented and will have far-reaching implications for content creation, distribution, and monetization.

Editor’s Note

This analysis synthesizes Alphabet’s Q4 2025 earnings materials, CEO Sundar Pichai’s prepared remarks on the earnings call, and reporting from Variety (Todd Spangler) and The Hollywood Reporter (Caitlin Huston), published February 4, 2026.

YouTube’s emergence as a $60 billion-plus revenue platform, combined with Alphabet’s first-ever $400 billion annual revenue milestone and its massive AI infrastructure commitments, marks a structural inflection point for the global media, entertainment, and technology industries. The implications for content creators, distributors, advertisers, and technology partners worldwide warrant close and continued attention.