Alphabet reports its “Other Bets” lost $1.16B in Q3, up 25% YoY from $1.29B, on $209M revenue, up 15% YoY from $182M
Abner Li / 9to5Google :
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the sixth year of Alphabet's quarterly Other Bets scorecard, and the shape has barely moved: back in October 2016 the division lost $865M on $197M of revenue, and every quarter since has paired roughly $150–230M of sales with a nine-figure-to-$2B loss. Last year's Q3 was a $1.29B loss on $182M of revenue, generated primarily by Verily and Fiber.
The Q3 2022 print continues that template — $209M of revenue against a $1.16B loss — and the following quarter's report showed the burn accelerating again to a $1.63B loss on $226M. After six years, the division's economics are stable enough to treat as structural rather than transitional.
First-order effects
- Alphabet's core advertising business absorbs another ~$1.2B quarterly subsidy for Waymo, Verily, and Fiber, whose combined revenue remains under a quarter-billion dollars.
Second-order effects
- With losses oscillating between $1.1B and $2B across six years of coverage, each unit faces mounting internal pressure to show standalone commercial traction — Verily and Fiber are already carrying most of the division's revenue — or risk capital being redirected toward the core business during the 2022 ad-market slowdown.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points to Other Bets hardening into a permanently subsidized long-duration R&D arm rather than a portfolio of near-term businesses, with Alphabet's segment disclosures keeping the cost of that option book visible to investors every quarter.
The trend: Alphabet's moonshot division has settled into a durable ~$200M-revenue, billion-dollar-loss quarterly profile sustained by ad profits, making Other Bets a standing bet on commercialization timelines rather than a turnaround story.