Business & Economics
Alphabet Floats £1 Billion Century Bond Amid $32 Billion, Three-Currency AI Funding Blitz
In less than 24 hours on 9-10 Feb 2026, Alphabet sold about $32 billion in dollar, sterling and Swiss-franc bonds—including a rare £1 billion 100-year tranche—to bankroll a planned $185 billion AI capex surge.
Focusing Facts
- The sterling sale totalled £5.5 billion, with the 100-year slice priced at +120 bp over the 2073 UK gilt and oversubscribed ≈10× (£9.5–10 billion of orders).
- A day earlier, Alphabet upsized a seven-part U.S. dollar offering to $20 billion after demand topped $100 billion; maturities run 2029-2066.
- An additional 3.055 billion Swiss-franc five-part deal (3–25 yrs) rounds out the programme, giving Alphabet active curves in USD, GBP, CHF and last year’s €6.5 billion issue.
Context
Private companies issuing 100-year debt is historically rare: Motorola’s 1997 dollar century bond ($0.3 bn) and IBM’s 1996 issue are the tech sector’s only precedents, while Argentina’s 2117 sovereign bond famously defaulted within three years. Alphabet’s move echoes the late-19th-century railroad era when dominant firms financed vast physical networks with ultra-long bonds, and more recently Austria’s 2120 note (0.85%, 2020) that has since lost >70% of its value as rates normalised. The offering underscores two secular shifts: (1) Big Tech’s transition from “asset-light” software margins to capital-hungry, quasi-utility AI infrastructure, and (2) the bond market’s willingness—driven by pension and re-insurance liability matching—to treat a $4 trillion platform company as infrastructure on par with sovereigns. On a 100-year horizon this moment may prove either a watershed, cementing megaplatforms as enduring public-utility-like entities, or a sign of exuberance near the apex of an AI investment cycle whose pay-offs remain uncertain across technological epochs measured in mere decades.
Perspectives
U.S. business-finance media
e.g., Bloomberg Business, Markets Insider — Present Alphabet’s ultra-long bond as a textbook display of market dominance and a prized diversification play for yield-hungry investors. Catering to professional investors, they highlight oversubscription and spread compression while downplaying execution risk so as to reinforce a bullish market narrative that keeps readership and advertisers engaged.
International wire services carried by CNA/Reuters
International wire services carried by CNA/Reuters — Cast the century bond as emblematic of Big Tech’s costly AI arms-race and flag that debt-fuelled spending is racing ahead of demonstrable productivity gains. Wire reports strive for balanced coverage but emphasize cautionary analyst quotes to appear sober-minded, which can overstate downside risk and generate headline urgency for wide syndication.
Tech-industry and analytic commentary sites
e.g., Ars Technica, Axios — Situate the issuance in a wider narrative of an overheating AI build-out, noting investors’ worry that lofty capex and century-long obligations may outlast Alphabet’s competitive edge. To stand out from mainstream finance coverage, tech outlets often foreground contrarian voices and possible bubbles, which can tilt the story toward skepticism even when demand for the bonds is strong.