The century bond will be denominated in sterling, alongside four additional tranches in the same currency, according to a person familiar with the matter, News.Az reports, citing Bloomberg.
The offering, which would represent Alphabet’s debut sale in sterling, could be priced as early as tomorrow, the source said, requesting anonymity.
According to data compiled by Bloomberg, this would be the first bond with such an extreme maturity issued by a technology company since Motorola sold a 100-year bond in 1997. The market for century bonds is typically dominated by governments and institutions such as universities. For corporate issuers, risks including acquisitions, shifting business models, and technological obsolescence have historically made such long maturities uncommon.
However, as technology companies raise increasingly large amounts of capital to remain competitive in building artificial intelligence capabilities, even ultra-rare financing structures are re-emerging.
“They want to tap every kind of investor possible, from the structured finance investor to the super long-dated investor,” said Gordon Kerr, European macro strategist at KBRA. He added that the primary buyers of 100-year bonds are typically insurance companies and pension funds, noting that “the guy who underwrites it is probably not going to be the guy who’s there when it gets repaid.”
Strong demand from UK pension funds and insurers has made the sterling market an attractive destination for issuers seeking long-term funding. Still, excluding government borrowers, only Electricite de France SA, the University of Oxford, and the charitable foundation Wellcome Trust Ltd have previously issued 100-year bonds in sterling, according to Bloomberg data.
All of those bonds were issued in 2021, a year when sterling high-grade yields fell to record lows, based on Bloomberg indexes. Due to their very high duration—a measure of sensitivity to interest-rate changes—those bonds are now trading well below face value.
The lowest-coupon issue among them, sold by Wellcome Trust, is currently indicated at 44.6 pence on the pound, according to Bloomberg data. Bond prices move inversely to yields.
Not all super-long bonds endure. Troubled retailer J.C. Penney Co. filed for bankruptcy in 2020, just 23 years after issuing its own century bond.
Alphabet’s planned 100-year bond comes alongside a multi-tranche offering in the US dollar market. The company has already begun marketing a seven-part dollar transaction expected to be priced later today. It is also planning to raise debut notes in Swiss francs, according to another person familiar with the matter.
Alphabet last accessed the US bond market in November, raising $17.5 billion in a deal that attracted approximately $90 billion in orders. As part of that issuance, the company sold a 50-year bond—the longest corporate technology bond offering in US dollars last year, based on Bloomberg-compiled data—which has since tightened in secondary markets. The company also issued €6.5 billion ($7.7 billion) of notes in Europe at that time.
The latest debt sale comes less than a week after Alphabet announced that its capital expenditures could reach up to $185 billion this year—double its spending last year—to support its artificial intelligence ambitions.
Other technology firms, including Meta Platforms Inc. and Microsoft Corp., have also unveiled significant spending plans for 2026. Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley expects borrowing by major cloud-computing companies, often referred to as hyperscalers, to reach $400 billion this year, up from $165 billion in 2025.
