Alphabet's “Other Bets”, which includes Waymo, Fiber, Verily, and others, had Q3 revenue of $155M, with operating losses rising to $941M, from $727M YoY
Jennifer Elias / CNBC :
Context & Ripple Effects
A year earlier, Other Bets lost $732M on $145M of revenue; by Q1 2019 the segment was already running an $868M quarterly loss. This Q3 print — $155M in revenue against $941M of operating losses — extends that arc: spending is compounding far faster than any of the bets (Waymo, Verily, Fiber) are monetizing.
What makes this quarter worth watching is where the series goes next. The following years show losses breaking through $1.1B per quarter while revenue stays boxed between roughly $150M and $200M — including a Q2 2020 quarter where revenue actually fell year-over-year — before a Q4 2020 loss that narrowed sharply from a $2B prior-year figure hints Alphabet eventually forced some discipline on the portfolio.
First-order effects
- Alphabet is now absorbing roughly six dollars of operating loss for every dollar of Other Bets revenue, making the segment's burn rate — not its growth — the headline number investors track each quarter.
Second-order effects
- With Waymo widely seen as the largest bet in the portfolio, sustained nine-figure quarterly losses put each unit under pressure to show a path to standalone economics or risk funding prioritization inside Alphabet.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern in the coverage holds — losses crossing $1B per quarter against sub-$200M revenue — moonshots stop being an earnings afterthought and become a recurring governance question: which bets get capitalized indefinitely, restructured, or quietly wound down.
The trend: Alphabet's Other Bets are settling into a structurally unprofitable middle stage: billion-dollar annualized burns with revenue that refuses to scale, forcing periodic portfolio triage.