Liz’s view
The AI bill is coming due.
For years, Alphabet did what most big companies do when flush with cash: It bought back stock. But after averaging $14 billion per quarter in buybacks over the past five years, the most profitable company in the US didn’t buy back a single share in the first quarter.
And this week, it announced plans to sell $85 billion in new shares — its first equity raise since 2005 (a year after it went public).
Investors took the dilution, estimated at 1% to 3% depending on the final terms of convertible preferred stock, in stride, presumably calmed by the presence of Berkshire Hathaway as anchor investor. The changes reveal something the byzantine financing structures around the AI buildout have worked hard to obscure: Stockholders are the ultimate risk-bearers for any corporate moonshot, and they’re increasingly handed the bill.
The spending numbers are staggering. Meta, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon doubled their combined capex to $450 billion in 2025 to pay for the AI buildout; analysts expect spending to top $700 billion this year. In the salad days of 2024, that spending was comfortably covered by their cash-cow businesses in advertising, cloud, e-commerce, and software.
By the middle of last year, even those gushers weren’t enough, so the companies turned to the bond market and started shifting costs off their balance sheets — Meta’s $27 billion Louisiana data center campus, Alphabet’s chip joint venture with Blackstone, and a growing web of off-ledger arrangements that have kept the spending out of sight.
Now, as AI costs march higher, they’re resorting to selling fresh stock. In addition to Alphabet’s offering, Oracle plans to raise as much as $25 billion in equity and equity-like securities this year, and Amazon has hinted it might do the same — turning to the most expensive option and the one CFOs typically reach for last. There’s a reason private-equity shops put as little equity, and as much debt, as possible on their buyouts.
Even if that capital funds home runs, profits will be spread across more shares. Companies’ share counts are likely to soar after shrinking for years. Increased issuance of higher comp to lure AI talent will pad them, too.
We may live in the golden age of “capital solutions” with seemingly endless amounts of go-anywhere money hawking creative solutions. But here we are, anyway, with shareholders subsidizing token supply.
Notable
- The EU’s data center plans are faltering due to funding delays, distancing some potential partners, Bloomberg reported.
- Intel is partnering with electronics manufacturer firm Foxconn to address critical data center scaling bottlenecks, The Wall Street Journal reported.