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If Alphabet's record-breaking, $85 billion stock sale signals investor appetite for AI-related offerings, we can see that investors are ready to chow.
If Alphabet’s record-breaking, $85 billion stock sale signals investor appetite for AI-related offerings — and it does — we can safely say that investors are voracious.
Google’s parent company had initially intended to sell a first tranche of $40 billion worth of various equity instruments — two different classes of shares, plus smaller “depositary shares” priced to be accessible to a broader range of investors. But the offering was so oversubscribed that it raised $45 billion instead, CEO Sundar Pichai said in a post on X on Monday. Among the buyers: Berkshire Hathaway, still known for its love of value investing, picked up $10 billion worth.
Alphabet plans to sell another $40 billion worth its next quarter, for $85 billion total.
Even $80 billion would have topped the record for equity offerings previously set by Brazilian oil producer Petroleo Brasileiro SA, which raised $70 billion in 2010, Bloomberg reports.
Now, it’s true that these investors are buying shares of Alphabet, not shares in a younger, possibly debt-riddled AI startup. Alphabet is a very healthy business: $110 billion in revenue (with high profit margins) in Q1 alone, up 22% year-over-year.
Still, the money from this stock sale is earmarked for AI. “Part of our multi-year investment strategy to meet the AI opportunity ahead and support the demand we’re seeing from enterprises and consumers,” as Pichai described it. At Google I/O last month, he said that the company expects to spend between $180 billion and $190 billion on capital expenditures — largely on AI infrastructure and data centers — before the year is out.
