Alphabet takes hold of the loan market
Alphabet is issuing rare 100-year bonds to lock in funding for AI, data center and cloud ambitions.
Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc. has issued a rare 100-year bond as part of a multi-currency debt offering worth about $32 billion. The move comes as the Mountain View, California-based company attempts to increase spending on AI and data-center capacity.
Ultra-long maturities remain highly unusual among technology companies, with Motorola’s 1997 century bond generally considered the closest precedent in this area.
Alphabet’s century bonds were denominated in British pounds and ultimately had a size of approximately £1 billion. “They have chosen sterling bonds not only to expand the investor pool, but also because they may believe that the real value of what they have to repay will fall over time,” said Michael Brown, an analyst at Pepperstone.
Beyond the tranche of the century, Mountain View, California-based Alphabet issued a series of short-term bonds in dollars, pounds and Swiss francs, with maturities ranging from three years to several decades.
The financing package comes as Alphabet accelerates investments in artificial intelligence, including data centers, custom chips and expanded cloud computing capacity.
In its most recent earnings call, the company indicated that capital spending could reach approximately $175 billion to $185 billion in 2026, underscoring the scale of computing resources needed to support increasingly complex AI systems.
Against this backdrop, issuing ultra-long debt helps Alphabet maintain liquidity while locking in financing costs over an extended time frame. “It’s one of the few corporates that can issue credibly in that period,” said Bruno Schneller, managing partner of Arlen Capital Management.
The century bond also signals Alphabet’s push beyond traditional equity investors, tapping long-horizon institutional capital like pension funds and insurers, whose liabilities favor ultra-long assets — reinforcing a broader shift toward infrastructure-style financing as AI investments accelerate.
