Alphabet is raising about $3.8B through its first-ever Hong Kong and Singapore dollar bonds, according to term sheets seen by Reuters , beating its own target after investors placed more than $7B in orders.
Google’s parent is selling HK$16B ($2B) of Hong Kong dollar bonds and S$2.28B ($1.8B) in Singapore dollars across seven tranches. It had aimed for $3B combined, per Reuters’ reporting on Wednesday, but order books exceeding HK$32.5B and S$4B let it upsize, with pricing tightening across every maturity.
The Hong Kong paper runs from two-year bonds at a 4.35% reoffer yield to 10-year bonds at 5.20%; the Singapore side stretches to a 30-year tranche at 3.80%. All came in tighter than initial guidance. The bonds settle on November 19 and are expected to be rated Aa2 by Moody’s and AA+ by S&P.
HSBC and JPMorgan coordinated the sale, with Bank of China (Hong Kong), ICBC, and Standard Chartered arranging the Hong Kong leg, and DBS, OCBC, and United Overseas Bank the Singapore one. Proceeds go to general corporate purposes, which may include repaying debt.
That last clause is almost funny, because the debt keeps coming. Alphabet raised €6B in euro bonds last week, sold $25B in August in a US deal it said would become a twice-yearly habit, and added A$5.5B in Australian dollars the same month.
Over the past two years it has borrowed in dollars, euros, pounds, Swiss francs, yen, and Canadian dollars, and even sold a 100-year bond, taking its total issuance since the start of 2025 past $114B, the most of any AI-related borrower.
The cause sits on the balance sheet. Alphabet has lifted its 2026 capital budget to as much as $205B for data centres and chips, and last year posted its first negative free cash flow since its 2004 listing.
Cash alone no longer covers the AI bill, for Alphabet or anyone else: Big Tech’s AI debt pile passed $350B this summer, and the IMF says hyperscalers now account for a tenth of the world’s investment-grade bond issuance, up from under 1% in 2024.
Hence the novelty currencies. Each new market is a fresh pool of lenders that has not yet had its fill of AI paper, and Hong Kong and Singapore savers are merely the latest. The order books say the appetite is still there; the pace of issuance says Alphabet intends to test exactly how deep it runs.
Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.
