Alphabet weighs a $25 billion bond sale to fund its swelling AI capital spending

Alphabet is weighing a bond sale of $20 billion to $25 billion, its third trip to the debt market in nine months, to help fund its artificial-intelligence build-out, according to people familiar with the plans.

The offering could come in as many as 10 tranches with maturities running from two to 40 years, the people said. The size signals how heavily AI infrastructure is now weighing on even the strongest corporate balance sheets.

The context is Alphabet’s own spending trajectory. The Google parent raised its 2026 capital-expenditure forecast for the second time this year, to $195 billion to $205 billion from $180 billion to $190 billion, and posted its first-ever negative free cash flow in the second quarter. In June, it raised roughly $85 billion through equity offerings, including a $10 billion private placement from Berkshire Hathaway.

Alphabet is not alone in borrowing to build. The largest cloud providers, among them Amazon, Meta and Oracle, have issued about $194 billion in bonds through July 2026, a 79 percent jump from roughly $108 billion in the same stretch of 2025, as Big Tech is projected to spend more than $730 billion on AI this year.

Whether the debt pays off depends on demand that has yet to fully materialize. A bond sale locks in fixed obligations against revenue from AI products and cloud capacity that is still ramping. Alphabet had not publicly confirmed the offering or its terms.