On June 1, local time, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, announced it’s looking to raise $80 billion through an equity offering to fuel its AI infrastructure expansion. Alphabet said it’s struck a deal with Berkshire Hathaway, which will invest $10 billion through a private placement. Once the deal closes, Berkshire’s stake in Alphabet will climb even higher—marking its biggest single tech investment in nearly three years.
Berkshire Hathaway first dipped its toes into Alphabet back in the third quarter of 2025, buying about 17.85 million shares of Class C stock worth nearly $4.3 billion at the time, making it the tenth-largest holding in its portfolio.
Then in Q1 of this year, Berkshire went all in—boosting its stake by a whopping 204%, pushing the value to $15.6 billion and making it the seventh-largest holding. This latest investment is seen as doubling down on the bet that AI computing power and infrastructure are the future.
At last month’s Berkshire shareholder meeting, new CEO Abel laid out his vision for managing the company’s massive stock portfolio for the first time. He stressed a concentrated approach—building around a handful of core heavy hitters like Apple, American Express, Moody’s, and Coca-Cola. Beyond those bedrock picks, he also mentioned other key positions, including Google.
This year, to keep up with the ever-growing tab for AI investments, Alphabet has been tapping every possible funding avenue.
Earlier, on May 14, Alphabet wrapped up a ¥576.5 billion (about $3.6 billion) yen bond sale to back its AI investments—a record for any non-Japanese company issuing samurai bonds.
On February 11, Alphabet kicked off its second big bond offering of the year, planning to tap multiple currency markets globally. The real head-turner was a 100-year sterling bond worth £1 billion (about $1.367 billion) in the UK market—a rare “century bond” that saw subscriptions nearly 10 times the offering size. It was the first time in nearly 30 years a tech company jumped into the 100-year bond game; the last was Motorola back in 1997.
Alphabet’s concurrent dollar bond issuance also saw a frenzy, originally aimed at raising $15 billion but eventually bumped up to $20 billion after orders topped $100 billion. On top of that, the company also rolled out Swiss franc bonds with various maturities.
Here’s the kicker: despite all this borrowing, Alphabet still sits on over $125 billion in cash on its balance sheet.
In its latest Q1 earnings report, Alphabet raised its fiscal 2026 capital expenditure guidance to between $180 billion and $190 billion—up from the previous estimate of $175 billion to $185 billion. The quarter itself saw capital spending of $35.7 billion, covering real estate, servers, data centers, and other infrastructure. For context, the company’s full-year 2025 capex was $91.45 billion, meaning 2026 spending is on track to roughly double year-over-year.
On April 29, Alphabet reported fiscal Q1 2026 earnings, posting revenue of $109.9 billion, up 22% year-over-year—marking the 11th straight quarter of double-digit growth. Net income attributable to shareholders hit $62.578 billion, a massive 81% jump. Revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs came in at $94.67 billion, up 24% year-over-year, with Google Services revenue at $89.64 billion (up 16%) and Google Cloud revenue at $20.03 billion (up 63%). Operating income was $39.70 billion, up 30%.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said on the earnings call: “Our investment in AI and our full-stack approach is lighting up every part of the business. Search is strong—revenue up 19% year-over-year, with AI experiences driving usage and queries hitting all-time highs. Google Cloud revenue grew 63%, with backlog nearly doubling quarter-on-quarter to over $460 billion.”
Pichai pointed out that, fueled by the Gemini app, this was the strongest quarter ever for consumer AI subscription plans—total paid subscribers hit 350 million, with YouTube and Google One as the main drivers. Meanwhile, the enterprise-focused Gemini Enterprise is seeing solid momentum, with paid monthly active users up 40% quarter-over-quarter, and Waymo’s weekly fully self-driving trips finally broke the 500,000 mark. “Through direct API calls from customers, our own models (like Gemini) are now processing over 16 billion tokens per minute, up 60% year-over-year.”
On May 14, the world’s top three companies by market cap—Nvidia, Google, and Apple—all hit fresh stock price and valuation highs at the same time. Nvidia closed at $225.83 per share, up 2.29%, with a market cap of $5.47 trillion, firmly holding the top spot. Alphabet neared $400 per share, up nearly 4%, hitting a market cap of $4.83 trillion—second globally. Apple closed at $298.87 per share, up 1.38%, with a market cap of $4.39 trillion, ranking third.
On June 2, Alphabet closed at $376.37 per share, giving it a market cap of $4.56 trillion.
