Alphabet shares dropped after the search giant fell short of Wall Street's fourth-quarter revenue expectations and announced big spending plans

Alphabet shares fell 8% on Wednesday as investors balked at the Google parent's slowing cloud growth and planned $75 billion capital spending for the year, underscoring growing fears over Big Tech's escalating artificial intelligence costs.

Google parent Alphabet Inc. posted fourth-quarter revenue that missed analysts’ expectations after growth in its cloud business slowed, raising concern from investors about the billions the company is spending on artificial intelligence.