Alphabet GOOGL

Alphabet Inc., the parental unit of the digital universe, was birthed in 2015 by Google's dynamic duo Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who decided that one behemoth wasn’t enough and carved out a new holding company for their vast empire. Known for herding everything from autonomous cars to health tech under one alphabet soup of divisions, Alphabet’s defining moments include the corporate shuffle that made the behemoth more manageable and the audacious leap into moonshot projects. Its valuation dances around the trillion-dollar mark like a rich kid showing off a new toy. Alphabet boasts a trophy case of awards from innovation accolades to tech giant of the year, but let’s not forget the controversy: antitrust investigations in Europe, privacy scandals that make your data cringe, and allegations of insidious market manipulation that are as uncomfortable as a high school reunion. With Sundar Pichai at the helm as CEO, Alphabet strives to steer its sprawling empire through choppy regulatory waters while maintaining its lustrous aura of digital omnipotence. As for Google’s original brain trust, they now luxuriate in the background, letting Pichai handle the messy business of running a tech empire that is equal parts visionary and vexing.