TLDR
- Alphabet stock has fallen around 11.6% over the past 30 days, with an 8% drop last week alone.
- Two prominent DeepMind researchers — including Nobel Prize-winner John Jumper — have left for rivals Anthropic and OpenAI.
- Jefferies reiterated a Buy rating with a $445 price target, calling the pullback “tactical rather than fundamental.”
- Alphabet posted strong Q1 earnings with EPS of $5.11 and revenue of $109.9 billion, both above estimates.
- 47 of 54 analysts rate GOOGL a Buy or Strong Buy, with an average price target of $413.13.
Alphabet (GOOGL) stock opened at $337.39 on Monday, down roughly 11.6% over the past 30 days, after a wave of high-profile AI talent exits rattled investor confidence.
The selloff accelerated last week with an 8% single-week drop, following news that John Jumper, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist and Google DeepMind VP, is leaving to join Anthropic.
Jumper is the second prominent researcher to exit DeepMind in quick succession. Before him, Gemini co-lead Noam Shazeer departed for OpenAI — less than two years after Google effectively paid around $2.7 billion via the Character.AI deal to bring him back.
Alphabet’s Head of AI Go-to-Market has also left for OpenAI.
These exits have stoked concerns that Google is losing ground in the AI race to a new wave of well-funded upstarts gearing up for IPOs.
Jefferies Says Don’t Panic
Jefferies analyst Brent Thill isn’t hitting the alarm button. He reiterated a Buy rating on June 22, keeping his $445 price target intact and using the dip to reassert his bullish conviction.
Thill laid out three reasons behind the stock’s decline: the talent exits, portfolio managers rotating out of Mag 7 names ahead of anticipated frontier AI lab listings, and a valuation multiple that had simply come off elevated levels.
On the talent issue specifically, he said the “musical-chairs dynamic” of researchers moving between labs is an industry-wide story, not a Google-specific one.
He also pointed to the company’s recent $85 billion equity raise as a “near-term overhang,” noting it signals elevated AI capital spending and a supply/demand imbalance in the market.
Still, Thill sees the rotation as tactical. “Headline-driven pullbacks like this one create noise, but the bottom line is unchanged: the AI franchise is intact, the bench is deep,” he wrote.
Strong Fundamentals Still in Place
Whatever the noise around talent, the underlying numbers remain solid. Alphabet reported Q1 EPS of $5.11, beating the $2.64 consensus estimate by a wide margin. Revenue came in at $109.9 billion, ahead of the $106.98 billion expected.
Net margin was 37.92% and return on equity hit 38.99%. Analysts expect full-year EPS of $14.30.
Thill’s broader case rests on Alphabet’s distribution muscle — five products with over three billion users each — combined with its TPU chip advantage, which structurally lowers compute costs. A “competitive Gemini,” he argues, is enough. It doesn’t need to top the model leaderboard.
The stock’s consensus picture broadly agrees. Out of 54 analysts, 47 rate GOOGL a Buy or Strong Buy, with just five Holds.
The average 12-month price target sits at $413.13 — roughly 27% above current levels. Guggenheim has a $450 target, Loop Capital is at $490, and Needham reissued its Buy at $450 as recently as June 3.
Alphabet also raised its quarterly dividend to $0.22 per share, paid June 15, up from $0.21 the prior quarter.
The stock’s 52-week range runs from $171.73 to $408.61, with a 50-day moving average of $368.94.
🚨 Our JUNE Stock Picks Are Live!
A new month means new opportunities. Our analysts have just released their top stock picks for June, highlighting companies with strong momentum that rank highly on our KO Score algorithm. We’re also now sharing trade ideas for both long-term and short-term investors, giving you more ways to spot potential opportunities in the market.
Sign up to Knockout Stocks today and get 50% off to unlock the full list and see which stocks made the cut.
Use coupon code Special50 for your exclusive discount!
Get 3 Free Stock Ebooks
Discover top-performing stocks in AI, Crypto, and Technology with expert analysis.
- Top 10 AI Stocks - Leading AI companies
- Top 10 Crypto Stocks - Blockchain leaders
- Top 10 Tech Stocks - Tech giants
