Post #4112596

📉 In June, Alphabet did something it has never done at this scale: sold $84.75B in new stock to help fund its AI data center buildout. Here's what's actually going on with the numbers. The raise: $18B common stock, $16.75B convertible preferred, a $40B at-the-market program, and a $10B private placement anchored by Berkshire Hathaway at around $350 a share. The context: 2026 capex guidance is now $195-205B, roughly double 2025's $91B. Free cash flow went negative in Q2. Long-term debt went from $10.9B in 2024 to $98B by June 2026. Total liabilities more than doubled to $281B. The circular part: Google is investing up to $40B in Anthropic. Anthropic has committed to spend $200B on Google Cloud over five years, reportedly over 40% of Google's $460B cloud backlog. Google is also backstopping $35B in chip financing for Anthropic's data centers. Money goes out as investment, comes back as cloud revenue. One detail most coverage missed: about $30B of the $40B at-the-market program is earmarked for tax obligations on employee stock vesting, not data centers. Whether this is a bubble or a land grab is genuinely unresolved. The spending is real, the demand is real, and so is the circularity. Sources: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/01/alphabet-to-raise-80-billion-from-stock-sales-to-fund-ai-buildout.html https://www.reuters.com/business/anthropic-commits-spending-200-billion-googles-cloud-chips-information-reports-2026-05-05/ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-09/google-s-backstops-underpin-35-billion-chip-deal-for-anthropic #AI #finance #Google