Startups

Alphabet upsizes equity raise to $84.75 billion, the largest stock sale on record, to fund AI compute

Google's parent expanded its offering from $80B to $84.75B after demand swelled, with a $10B Berkshire Hathaway placement anchoring a buildout that could push 2026 capex to $190 billion.

By Giulia Donatello · Startups & funding · 2026-06-07 · 3 min read

Photo: Unsplash / Maxim Hopman — Stock market trading chart on a digital screen showing rising lines

Alphabet priced an $84.75 billion equity raise on June 2, upsized from the $80 billion it floated only two days earlier, in what bankers say is the largest equity capital markets transaction ever recorded. The prior benchmark, Petroleo Brasileiro SA’s roughly $70 billion stock sale in 2010, belonged to a state oil major raising money to drill the pre-salt fields. Sixteen years later, the new record belongs to a search company buying GPUs.

The structure is doing a lot of work. Alphabet’s Form 8-K lays out a $40 billion at-the-market program, an $18 billion tranche of Class A common and Class C capital stock (upsized from $15 billion), $16.75 billion in depositary shares representing interests in mandatory convertible preferred stock (also upsized from $15 billion), and a $10 billion private placement to Berkshire Hathaway. Underwriters got an over-allotment option on 50 million additional depositary shares, split evenly across the two series. Closings are set for June 4 on the common and capital stock, June 5 on the depositary shares.

The Berkshire anchor is the tell. A $10 billion placement from the holding company once run by Warren Buffett, an institution whose entire posture has historically been skepticism of expensive technology bets, functions as syndicate cover for everyone else in the book. If Omaha is in, the price is defensible.

Alphabet’s framing in the filing is unusually direct. The company described itself as “experiencing strong demand for its AI solutions and services from enterprises and consumers, at levels that are exceeding the company’s available supply,” and said the proceeds will “expand its foundational infrastructure to support the significant growth opportunity ahead.” Use of proceeds is listed as “general corporate purposes, including capital expenditures to scale AI infrastructure and global compute.”

That last line is the whole story. In April, Alphabet had already lifted its 2026 capex guidance to as much as $190 billion. The $84.75 billion raise sits on top of that, not inside it. A company that throws off more free cash flow than most sovereign budgets is now issuing equity, diluting existing holders, to keep pace with compute demand it can’t meet from operating cash alone.

The 2010 record was set by a country trying to fund an oil field. The 2026 record is being set to fund a substrate.

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