Alphabet, the parent company of Google, entered the U.S. investment-grade debt market with a $20 billion sale on Monday, part of a seven-tranche senior unsecured note package, according to International Financing Review data. The company is also preparing a debut sterling offering that could include a rare 100-year bond, a report said, with people familiar with the matter cited as the source of that detail.
The U.S. dollar note sale arrives amid a pronounced uptick in borrowing by AI-focused technology firms that analysts expect will push corporate bond issuance to record levels this year. Market participants view the deals as a means to fund sharply higher capital expenditure tied to expanding data-center footprints and increased processor needs for AI workloads.
Alphabet did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The company’s latest move follows a $25 billion note sale by Oracle disclosed in a securities filing on February 2. Oracle likewise did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Across last year, the five major AI hyperscalers - Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and Oracle - issued $121 billion of U.S. corporate bonds, according to a report from BofA Securities in January. Individual transactions last year included Oracle’s $18 billion sale in September, Meta’s $30 billion issuance in October - the largest single non-M&A high-grade bond sale on record - and November offerings from Alphabet ($17.5 billion) and Amazon ($15 billion).
Forecasts published in recent weeks underscore how those transactions are shaping expectations for 2026. A Moody’s Ratings report dated January 12 projects the Big Six U.S. hyperscalers will spend a combined $500 billion this year. Barclays analysts, in a January note, raised their outlook for total U.S. corporate bond issuance to $2.46 trillion for the year, an increase of 11.8% relative to 2025.
Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley analysts estimate hyperscaler bond issuance could reach $400 billion this year to help finance the projected capital spending, and they forecast that AI-related issuance might drive as much as $2.3 trillion of debt supply in 2026.
Market professionals characterize the opening deals from Oracle and Alphabet as unsurprising but material. One high-yield bond portfolio manager, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the transactions are consistent with "one of the biggest capex spends we’re experiencing in our lifetimes." The manager declined to be named when discussing specific companies.
The fast pace of AI-related expenditures is already influencing other corners of the market. The release of the Claude model by Anthropic sparked a selloff in publicly traded software companies, illustrating how new product introductions and competitive dynamics can affect software-sector cash flows.
"AI seems to have gone and dug new sources that weren’t evident and eaten in to cash flows of software companies," said Karthik Nandyal, co-founder of CredCore, an AI-based platform for credit investors. "Much of the pricing we have done and that our customers have done as early as January 2025, many of those suddenly need to be redone and reanalyzed as of January 2026."
Embedded in the coverage of market moves are vendor tools and services that claim to evaluate stocks in this changing environment. One such service markets an AI-driven selection process that reviews Microsoft and thousands of other companies across more than 100 financial metrics to identify opportunities based on fundamentals, momentum, and valuation. That service highlights past winners and says it applies the same data-driven approach to current opportunities.
As large technology companies continue to turn to the bond market for financing, analysts and investors will be watching issuance levels, corporate spending plans, and credit dynamics closely. The size and frequency of deals from hyperscalers will likely remain a central factor shaping the overall U.S. corporate debt supply picture for the year.