Alphabet stock surges on Gemini 3 AI model optimism

Alphabet stock jumped 5% on Wednesday after Google debuted its latest artificial intelligence model, Gemini 3, sparking optimism from investors.

The new model is an improvement on its predecessor, Gemini 2.5, which Google released about eight months ago.

Google said Gemini 3 allows users to get better answers to more complex questions and doesn’t need as much prompting to determine the context and intent behind their requests.

Gemini 3 will be integrated into Google’s search products, the Gemini app and enterprise services.

Analysts at D.A. Davidson said in a Tuesday note that they were quickly impressed by Gemini 3, calling it a “genuinely strong model” and “the current state-of-the-art” based on preliminary testing and how it scored against AI benchmarks.

“We’d go as far to say that this latest model from [Google DeepMind] meaningfully moves the frontier forward, with capabilities that in certain areas far exceed what we’ve typically come to expect from this generation of frontier models,” the analysts wrote. The firm has a neutral rating on Alphabet shares.

With Gemini 3, Google is competing against OpenAI, which kicked off the generative AI boom with the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, and offers its GPT-5 model.

Other players like Anthropic, the creator of the Claude chatbot and Sonnet 4.5 model, have gained popularity.

Bank of America Securities analysts said Gemini 3 represents “another positive step” for Google to close any “perceived LLM performance gap” to its AI competitors.

“Healthy adoption metrics for AI Overviews and Gemini indicate Google is successfully funneling users into its AI surfaces, despite growing competition, and should help ease concerns around potential search disruption,” according to the analysts, which have a buy rating on Alphabet stock. “While still early to assess the full capabilities of the new model, a few early reviews were positive.”