Alphabet stock cruises toward best month in 3 years as it ups the ante in AI

Wall Street has embraced Alphabet Inc.’s artificial-intelligence initiatives in a big way lately — so much so that its stock is on its way to its best monthly performance since the early days of the pandemic.

Alphabet shares GOOG GOOGL are up 15.4% so far in May and on track to log their largest monthly percentage increase since April 2020, when they rose 17.5%, according to Dow Jones Market Data. The stock is essentially neck-and-neck with Amazon.com Inc. AMZN in leading the big five consumer tech names on a month-to-date…