Alphabet reported gains in net profit and revenue fuelled by cloud in Q2 and announced long-time CFO Ruth Porat will transition into a newly created position from September.

Porat has served as finance chief for eight years and will become president and chief investment officer, while retaining the CFO post until a successor is found, with a search already underway.

In her new role, Porat will be responsible for the company’s riskier Other Bets portfolio, along with wider investments globally.

This will mean communicating with politicians and regulators about employment, competitiveness, infrastructure expansion and other areas. She will continue to report to CEO Sundar Pichai.

Revenue in Q2 2023 rose 7 per cent year-on-year to $74.6 billion, with net income increasing from $16 billion to $18.4 billion.

Advertising revenue grew 3 per cent to $58.1 billion, while Google Search and Other sales rose from $40.7 billion to $42.6 billion.

Cloud was a stand-out unit, with revenue increasing 28 per cent to $8 billion.

Other bets sales were $285 million compared with $193 million.

On its earnings call, Porat addressed the ongoing hype around AI, warning it will be a “primary driver” of increased costs as the company adds data centre capacity, and invests in GPUs and TPUs.

She said Alphabet expected “elevated levels of investment in our technical infrastructure and that would be increasing through the back half of 2023 and continuing to grow in 2024”.

Pichai added the company had been sharpening its focus to take advantage of the AI opportunities ahead, “investing responsibly with great discipline and finding areas where we can operate more cost effectively”.