Alphabet Seeks $11 Billion From Pound, Swiss Franc Bond Sales
(Bloomberg) — Alphabet Inc. is selling over $11 billion in sterling and Swiss franc-denominated bonds, including an ultra-rare issue of a 100-year note, following a bumper deal in the US.
The sterling offering is set to be a record £5.5 billion ($7.5 billion) and includes tenors of three to 32 years as well as the 100-year bond, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified. The Google parent drew a record £30 billion of bids for the deal, they said.
The Swiss offering will be a minimum of 2.75 billion Swiss francs ($3.6 billion) across various maturities. Both deals are expected to price later today and follow a seven-part dollar debt sale that raised $20 billion on Monday and saw among the strongest ever orders for a corporate bond offering.
Read: Alphabet Embarks on Global Bond Spree to Fund Record Spending
The mega debt spree comes after Alphabet said its capital expenditures will reach as much as $185 billion this year — double what it spent last year — to finance its ambitions in artificial intelligence. Other tech firms have also announced huge spending plans for 2026, while Morgan Stanley expects borrowing by the massive cloud-computing companies known as hyperscalers to reach $400 billion this year, up from $165 billion in 2025.
Still, those massive borrowing needs have started to raise some concerns about potential pressure on bond valuations.
100-Year Bond
Alphabet’s 100-year note is the first sale with such an extreme maturity by a technology firm since Motorola sold this type of debt in 1997, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The market for 100-year bonds is dominated by governments and institutions like universities. For corporates, potential acquisitions, outdated business models and technological obsolescence make such deals a rarity.
“I could not justify taking such a long maturity bond in most companies — especially not one subject to an ever-changing landscape,” said Alex Ralph, co-portfolio manager of Nedgroup Investments Global Strategic Bond Fund. “100-year bonds tend to have a habit of calling the top of a market as well.”
Still, demand from UK pension funds and insurers has made sterling a go-to market for issuers seeking longer-dated funding.
Investors turned out in force for the £1 billion tranche, which attracted a record £9.5 billion of bids, according to people familiar with the matter. It’s set to price at 120 basis points over gilts while the level on the £750m million shortest tranche has been set at 45 basis points over the government benchmark.
Global corporates have also been turning to the Swiss franc bond market in recent years to diversify their debt-raising programs. In 2025, US firms including Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. and construction equipment maker Caterpillar Inc. sold Swiss franc debt.
Alphabet tapped the euro bond market as recently as November, raising €6.5 billion ($7.7 billion). That deal, added to an issue earlier in the year, made it the biggest borrower in the euro market in 2025, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The previous record corporate bond sale in the sterling market came from National Grid Plc in 2016 with a £3 billion four-part sale, while in the Swiss market Roche Holding AG raised a record 3 billion Swiss francs in a 2022 deal.
Bank of America Corp., Goldman Sachs Group Inc and JPMorgan Chase & Co. are arranging both the sterling and Swiss franc offerings, with Barclays Plc, HSBC Holdings Plc and NatWest Group Plc also on the sterling deal. BNP Paribas SA and Deutsche Bank AG are on the Swiss franc issue.
(Updates with deals sizes.)
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