Who is the mysterious client behind Google Cloud’s “exploding orders,” placing over 100 billion yuan in orders!?
The biggest suspense in Alphabet’s Q1 2026 earnings report, released after the close on April 29, is not the 22% total revenue growth, nor the explosive 63% year-on-year increase in Google Cloud’s single-quarter revenue to $20.03 billion, but rather the sudden surge in Cloud backlog (Remaining Performance Obligations, RPO) and where it came from.
Alphabet Cloud’s backlog jumped from $240 billion at the end of 2025 to over $460 billion, with a net increase of about $220 billion in a single quarter—nearly doubling sequentially.
This scale is almost impossible to accumulate from hundreds of small- and medium-sized contracts; according to the common “computing power economics” in the industry, it must contain at least one long-term contract worth tens of billions of dollars.
However, in Google’s letter to shareholders, they glossed over this with just the phrase “a wide breadth of customers,” without mentioning any client by name.
Google’s share price rose about 4% after hours, with the market accepting this silence with real money—yet the identity of the unnamed “super client” has become the biggest mystery of this US earnings season.
Disclaimer: The content of this article solely reflects the author's opinion and does not represent the platform in any capacity. This article is not intended to serve as a reference for making investment decisions.
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