To fund AI, Google is doing something unseen since 2004

Alphabet, the parent company in of Google, announced an $80 billion capital raise to finance the development of its artificial intelligence infrastructure (AI). An investment of $10 billion has already been planned, which has somewhat reassured the markets. It should be said that Google’s ambitions in artificial intelligence are significant.Its investments must therefore match its ambitions.

Google announces an $80 billion capital raise

Having generated $164 billion in cash flow in 2025 through its activities, Alphabet, Google’s parent company, announced an $80 billion capital raise (approximately €68 billion) to finance the development of its artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure.

This is a rare strategic plan for Google. Since its IPO in 2004, this is the first time the company has made a significant share offering on the market. However, these $80 billion will represent only 1% of its market capitalization (which stood at more than $4.5 trillion at Monday’s close), but this does not rule out the risk of diluting its share price and dampening market enthusiasm. Alphabet stock also immediately lost nearly 2% in trading after the market close. However, the Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate has already committed to purchasing $10 billion worth of securities, which prevented a panic sell-off.

Massive investment in data centers

With this $80 billion capital raise, Google plans to finance the processors and servers designed to store and process data related to AI models.For Google, this is not just about financing the development of its artificial intelligence models, such as Gemini, but above all about boosting the infrastructure of its Google Cloud division, which hosts them. On top of that, the group is positioning itself as a provider of cloud infrastructure for third-party companies. With artificial intelligence developing at breakneck speed, Google needs data centers to store the astronomical amounts of data related to the sector. The company is even considering developing data centers in orbit with its Suncatcher project. The investments therefore have to match the scale of the objectives—that is, they need to be stratospheric.

More broadly, Google has announced investments of between $180 billion and $190 billion, largely in its AI-related activities, which represents double its investments last year ($91 billion). The company expects spending to “increase significantly” in 2027.

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Source: Le Monde