Do you think you\u2019ll still be using Google in the year 2126? Bond investors are betting you will be. Google\u2019s parent company, Alphabet, is selling a 100-year note as part of a massive debt raise meant to help pay for the company\u2019s massive AI buildout.<\/p>\n
According to a report from Bloomberg, in the last 24 hours, Alphabet has managed to secure about $32 billion<\/a> in funding by selling bonds of various currencies\u2014effectively IOUs that\u2019ll get paid back with interest\u2014including $20 billion in US dollar bonds<\/a> spread across seven different tranches that come due at different times. Some will need to be paid back in as little as three years from now, some pushing out 40 years\u2014a long lead time, but still shorter than Trump\u2019s proposed 50-year mortgages.<\/p>\n Alphabet\u2019s bond sell-off attracted a significant amount of attention\u2014so much so that the terms seemingly turned out even more favorable than Google had imagined. Per Bloomberg<\/a>, the company set out to raise about $15 billion on those USD bonds, but attracted so many orders that it went for another $5 billion on top of that. It also got the premium to swing in its direction, too. On those three-year bonds, the return is only expected to be about 0.27% higher than US Treasuries\u2014historically one of the safest investments available. Even on those 40-year bonds, the premium is just 0.95% higher than the expected return from Treasuries, per Euronews<\/a>. Basically, investors think investing in Google is about as risky as investing in the US government. Honestly, at the moment, hard to argue with them.<\/p>\n What feels considerably less safe is the issuance of a 100-year bond, which is being offered in the UK\u2019s sterling. By comparison to some of Alphabet\u2019s other debt raises, the price on the century note is much lower\u2014just \u00a31 billion (or about $1.36 billion USD). Despite that, the company is getting arguably better rates on the 100-year bet. Per Bloomberg<\/a>, it was priced to sell with interest rates at about 1.2% above the expected return on a 100-year UK government bond. So it seems the markets believe Google is only very slightly less likely to outlast the British Empire at this point.<\/p>\n The issuance of a 100-year bond is exceedingly rare, basically for all the reasons you can imagine. Betting on any company to last 100 years is a real long shot\u2014especially when they operate in an industry like tech, where they can theoretically be made obsolete if they\u2019re on the wrong side of a technological breakthrough.<\/p>\n For reference, Bloomberg reported<\/a> that no tech company has issued a century-long note for nearly three decades, when Motorola sold the same type of debt in 1997. As Michael Burry, the guy from\u00a0The Big Short, pointed out on Twitter<\/a>, Motorola went from being one of the top 25 most profitable companies in America at the time to getting overtaken in cell phone sales by Nokia<\/a> just one year later. Now the company is well outside the top 300<\/a> in market capitalization. The bond, which still doesn\u2019t reach its maturity date for another 70 years, currently trades at 80% of its face value, according to TradingView<\/a>.<\/p>\n So who is putting their bets on Google not to be the Motorola of the modern era? Insurance companies and pension funds, mostly, according to Bloomberg<\/a>. So don\u2019t worry, it\u2019s just your retirement account getting pushed into the center of the table for this bet.<\/p>\n Google is far from the only company setting out to spend other people\u2019s money to pay for its planned massive spending on AI infrastructure and buildout. Oracle just closed its own $25 billion debt sale earlier this year, and Reuters reported<\/a> that the five major AI hyperscalers \u2014Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Oracle\u2014issued a combined\u00a0 $121 billion in corporate bonds last year. That\u2019ll all go toward paying for building data centers and ramping up AI training. Reuters reported<\/a> that the same five companies have pledged more than $500 billion in combined capital expenditure this year.<\/p>\n Seems like an economy-crashing amount of money if those bets fail. Ready for the banks to put all your money on black and let it ride?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Do you think you\u2019ll still be using Google in the year 2126? 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