Google posts record earnings on chip business
Brian opened with Google’s Q1 earnings: Alphabet reported a 22% surge in revenue to $110 billion with net income of $62.6 billion, an 81% increase year over year. The surprise was the source of growth. Google revealed for the first time how much revenue comes from their chip business.
Google makes TPU chips, tensor processing units, as their alternative to Nvidia. The vertical integration from silicon to selling point gives Google advantages competitors cannot match.
Everybody’s making chips, right? Google can make the chips to serve their own vertically integrated circumstance. They own it from the silicon all the way to the selling point.
Andy Hoar, Master B2B
The stock took a slight hit because Google announced they will spend $190 billion on AI infrastructure in 2026, double their 2025 number. Amazon similarly announced $200 billion in AI investment. The hosts described it as a land grab among four or five hyperscalers battling for control of AI infrastructure.
The AI monetization mystery
Brian raised a question the hosts have discussed before: how is Google’s AI search component not cannibalizing traditional search? Both admitted they use AI search themselves, get answers, and never look at other results. If users behave that way, how does Google monetize?
Andy’s view was that Google has the advantage because ChatGPT has no experience selling ads. Anthropic takes a moral stand on advertising and focuses on enterprise. Google operates in the consumer space where ads dominate. The hosts agreed that paid advertising in answer engines is inevitable, just a matter of when and how.
ChatGPT as the Netscape of AI
Andy drew a parallel that gave the hosts pause. ChatGPT may be becoming the Netscape of the AI space, the company that rose into the upper atmosphere and then fell to earth. ChatGPT reportedly had a down round with slipping valuation. They missed expected numbers for the year.
I hope that doesn’t happen to ChatGPT because we need the competition. But they’re going to go public and people are losing faith.
Andy Hoar, Master B2B
The B2B implication is that practitioners need to understand the shifting landscape of AI providers. Depending heavily on any single provider carries risk when the competitive dynamics are this fluid.
Introducing Bot 2 Bot
The main topic was Andy’s new book Bot 2 Bot: The New Future of B2B eCommerce. The book follows his 2015 work Death of a B2B Salesman, which predicted the disappearance of order takers. That prediction largely came true as self-service replaced phone calls to Betty.
Bot 2 Bot covers AI’s impact on B2B specifically. Seven chapters address organizational design, customer service, technology, channels, and content and data. The book includes dozens of interviews and executive insights from the Master B2B community.
The half-life problem
Andy described a challenge unique to writing about AI: the half-life of content is extremely short. One company mentioned in the book, a casual reference written five or six months ago, no longer exists. They had to remove the reference before publication.
Despite the velocity of change, Andy argued the book provides value by conceptualizing and contextualizing what is happening. A 12-month checklist helps practitioners orient themselves. The principles hold even as specific tools and companies change.
What this means for B2B practitioners
The takeaway is that AI is reshaping B2B commerce at a pace that makes traditional analysis difficult. Practitioners need frameworks for understanding change, not just lists of current tools. Andy’s book aims to provide that framework. Meanwhile, the infrastructure battle among hyperscalers will determine which AI capabilities are available and at what cost, making these earnings reports and investment announcements directly relevant to B2B strategy.