I've been watching the artificial intelligence and investing space pretty closely lately, and there's one company that keeps standing out to me when I'm thinking about where to actually put money to work right now.

Alphabet has basically been building toward this AI moment for over a decade. What's interesting is how embedded AI has become across their entire business. You've got Gemini, their large language models, baked into everything from search to productivity tools. Their ad business is getting smarter too—AI is helping customers target better and get more bang for their ad spend.

But it's not just about consumer products. Google DeepMind is doing serious research work, they're building their own chips called Tensor Processing Units, and Google Cloud is becoming this infrastructure layer where other companies are building their own AI applications. They're basically playing the artificial intelligence and investing game from multiple angles at once.

Here's what caught my attention though. Despite being one of the most straightforward ways to get exposure to the AI trend, the valuation doesn't look crazy. Trading at around 23.4x forward earnings, it feels like there's actually room here. That's the kind of setup that doesn't come around all the time with companies this dominant.

Look, artificial intelligence and investing can feel overwhelming with all the hype right now. But if you're actually trying to build a position in this space, you could do a lot worse than looking at a company that's already operating across the entire AI ecosystem—from research to chips to cloud infrastructure to consumer products. That's a pretty rare combination.

The real question is whether you're thinking about artificial intelligence and investing as a long-term play or just chasing the current wave. If it's the former, this one's worth serious consideration before we get too far into 2026.