Alphabet Inc. is looking to raise as much as $25 billion from its latest US investment-grade bond offering, a deal that is testing investor appetite for AI-related debt following a July selloff.
No final decision has been made on the size, according to people familiar with the matter, asking not to be identified as they’re not authorized to speak publicly.
The Google and YouTube parent also communicated to investors on Thursday, via its bond dealers, that it plans to hold US debt sales twice annually, some of the people said. The message was likely aimed at calming investor concerns over new tech debt supply hitting the market.
Alphabet sold $20 billion of notes in February, before pricing bonds in Swiss francs, British pounds, euros, Canadian dollars and Japanese yen. Alphabet ultimately issued sold more than $50 billion of debt in the first half of 2026, as well as nearly $85 billion of shares.
Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., and Wells Fargo & Co. — three of Thursday’s bond sale managers, declined to comment on the pace of Alphabet debt issuance. Alphabet and the deal’s other managers — Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley — didn’t respond.
Alphabet’s latest offering comes two weeks after the company raised 2026 spending outlook, triggering fresh worries about whether massive artificial-intelligence investments will pay off. But the environment improved as August began, helped by gains in US Treasuries.
“We’ve had a few days now of positive reactions from investors across corporates and especially technology,” said Brett Kozlowski, portfolio manager at GW&K Investment Management. “But another large debt deal will still test the depth of that and be worth watching.”
Thursday’s offering is in as many as 10 parts, with maturities ranging from two to 40 years, the people said.
Initial price talk for the longest-tenored tranche is a premium of about 1.55 percentage points above Treasuries. Overall, they involve spreads of as much as 0.4 percentage point above existing Alphabet debt, a more-generous concession than is typically seen in the investment-grade bond market. Most high-grade bond deals do see pricing tighten during the sale process.
“These deals need higher concessions due to investor appetite softening,” said Tony Trzcinka, a portfolio manager at Impax Asset Management. “Market execution will test whether they can pull off tighter spreads without sweetening the terms.”
The bonds that Alphabet sold in February weakened during Thursday’s trading and are trading wider than where they priced, according to Trace data.
Investor appetite for AI-related bonds to help fund capital expenditures cooled in July as Alphabet increased its spending forecast to as much as $205 billion, more than double 2025’s outlays. Capital spending contributed to Alphabet last month posting its first quarter of negative cash flow since its 2004 initial public offering.
A BlackRock Inc.-linked firm last week sold $12.5 billion of bonds tied to a Meta Platforms Inc. data center project in Texas. Early demand was lackluster and the deal was a rare high-grade transaction to price at initial talk.
That followed soft interest for an offering by Amazon.com Inc and spreads widening in the secondary market for newly issued AI-related notes from firms including SpaceX.
