TD Cowen reaffirmed its Buy recommendation on Alphabet Inc. and left its price target unchanged at $365.00, pointing to stronger usage metrics at the company’s autonomous driving unit, Waymo. At the time of the call, Alphabet was trading around $307.75, meaning the analyst target translates to nearly 19% potential upside from the prevailing share price.
InvestingPro valuation data cited by the research note shows Alphabet at a price-to-earnings ratio of 28.05, a level the analyst team described as low relative to the company’s near-term earnings expansion prospects. InvestingPro also assigns Alphabet an overall financial health score of "GREAT," reflecting trailing revenues of $402.84 billion and 15.09% growth over the last twelve months. For investors seeking deeper metric-level analysis, a Pro Research Report is available to subscribers with further ProTips and financial detail.
Operational momentum at Waymo
TD Cowen highlighted a set of operational indicators that underpinned its continued bullish stance on Alphabet. In December 2025, Waymo vehicles completed 1.26 million passenger trips in California, up from 1.02 million recorded in September 2025. The firm also reported that passenger miles per trip increased by 3.8% quarter-over-quarter in the fourth quarter of 2025, a change the analyst attributed to geographic expansion and newly enabled freeway access in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Utilization metrics also improved on a year-over-year basis. Average minutes between trips tightened to 18 minutes per trip in December 2025, compared with 27 minutes per trip in the same month a year earlier. TD Cowen’s operational analysis suggests Waymo now facilitates more than 280,000 weekly trips across California, evidence the research team used to support its revenue and adoption assumptions.
Corporate developments and strategic moves
Beyond autonomous driving, the research note referenced several corporate items affecting Alphabet’s business landscape. The European Union granted unconditional approval for the company’s $32 billion acquisition of cybersecurity firm Wiz, which the note described as Alphabet’s largest deal to date and likely to strengthen its cybersecurity and cloud offerings. At the same time, regulators in the EU have opened a new antitrust probe examining allegations that Google inflated ad auction prices on its search platform, a development that could have implications for advertising businesses.
Alphabet is also reported to be preparing a rare 100-year sterling bond issuance, its first denominated in sterling, intended to help fund artificial intelligence investments. Separately, the company’s Google and Apple reportedly committed to making their app marketplace practices more transparent following scrutiny from the UK Competition and Markets Authority.
On the technology front, Waymo has begun using DeepMind’s Genie 3 artificial intelligence to generate virtual environments for training its autonomous driving systems, a tactical move that TD Cowen noted when assessing operational scalability and product development cadence.
Outlook considerations
TD Cowen’s reiteration of the Buy rating rests on improving Waymo utilization and geographic expansion, complemented by Alphabet’s broad revenue base and continued investment in AI and security capabilities. The research team’s view factors these operational gains into a $365 price target, while market participants will watch regulatory and antitrust developments closely for potential impacts on ad revenue and broader business lines.