Weekly "Focus" and Septillion (a Very Big Number)

A million – 6 zeros. A billion – 9 zeros. A trillion – 12 zeros. But until this week, I had never heard of a “Septillion”, which is a number with 24 zeros. The term came to light as Google announced an incredible breakthrough in computing power as their newest “Willow” quantum computing chip was able to solve a math calculation in under 5 minutes that previously would have taken a supercomputer 10 Septillion years. Last week, Google also announced that they have developed a 15-day weather forecast model besting anything currently available. They used Artificial Intelligence to train the model on 4 decades of temperature, wind speed and air pressure. These announcements have helped propel Alphabet (the parent company of Google) to a new record level in the stock market with a market value more than US$2.3 trillion.

 

	Return in 2024	Dividend Yield
Alphabet* (GOOGL)	+38.4%	0.4%

Source: FactSet, Values as of December 12, 2024

 

This week’s "Focus" from our economics team is attached.

 

Have a great weekend,

 

Brad

Senior Portfolio Manager and Senior Investment Advisor