Alphabet’s record-breaking $85B raise for Google’s AI business is a helluva good signal

Alphabet 创纪录的 850 亿美元融资：谷歌 AI 业务的重大利好信号

If Alphabet’s record-breaking $85 billion stock sale signals investor appetite for AI-related offerings — and it does — we can safely say that investors are voracious. 如果说 Alphabet 创纪录的 850 亿美元股票发售预示着投资者对人工智能相关产品的胃口——事实确实如此——那么我们可以肯定地说，投资者们正处于“饥渴”状态。

Google’s parent company had initially intended to sell a first tranche of $40 billion worth of various equity instruments — two different classes of shares, plus smaller “depositary shares” priced to be accessible to a broader range of investors. But the offering was so oversubscribed that it raised $45 billion instead, CEO Sundar Pichai said in a post on X on Monday. 谷歌母公司最初计划出售价值 400 亿美元的首批各类股权工具，包括两类不同的股票，以及定价更亲民、旨在吸引更广泛投资者的“存托股”。但据首席执行官桑达尔·皮查伊（Sundar Pichai）周一在 X 上发布的帖子称，此次发售因超额认购，最终筹集了 450 亿美元。

Among the buyers: Berkshire Hathaway, still known for its love of value investing, picked up $10 billion worth. Alphabet plans to sell another $40 billion worth next quarter, for $85 billion total. Even $80 billion would have topped the record for equity offerings previously set by Brazilian oil producer Petroleo Brasileiro SA, which raised $70 billion in 2010, Bloomberg reports. 在买家之中，以推崇价值投资而闻名的伯克希尔·哈撒韦公司（Berkshire Hathaway）购入了价值 100 亿美元的股票。Alphabet 计划在下个季度再出售价值 400 亿美元的股票，总额将达到 850 亿美元。据彭博社报道，即便只是 800 亿美元，也足以打破巴西石油公司（Petroleo Brasileiro SA）在 2010 年创下的 700 亿美元股权融资纪录。

Now, it’s true that these investors are buying shares of Alphabet, not shares in a younger, possibly debt-riddled AI startup. Alphabet is a very healthy business: $110 billion in revenue (with high profit margins) in Q1 alone, up 22% year-over-year. Still, the money from this stock sale is earmarked for AI. “Part of our multi-year investment strategy to meet the AI opportunity ahead and support the demand we’re seeing from enterprises and consumers,” as Pichai described it. 诚然，这些投资者购买的是 Alphabet 的股票，而非一家年轻且可能债台高筑的 AI 初创公司的股份。Alphabet 是一家非常健康的企业：仅第一季度营收就达到 1100 亿美元（且利润率很高），同比增长 22%。尽管如此，此次股票发售筹集的资金仍被指定用于 AI 领域。正如皮查伊所描述的那样，这是“我们多年投资战略的一部分，旨在抓住未来的人工智能机遇，并满足我们从企业和消费者那里看到的市场需求。”

At Google I/O last month, he said the company expects to spend between $180 billion and $190 billion on capital expenditures — largely on AI infrastructure and data centers — before the year is out. 在上个月的 Google I/O 大会上，他表示公司预计在今年年底前，资本支出将达到 1800 亿至 1900 亿美元，主要用于 AI 基础设施和数据中心建设。

The timing matters beyond Alphabet itself. As Anthropic gets ready to go public, this enormously successful stock sale is a very good sign for the broader AI IPO pipeline. It indicates that public investors, particularly the deep-pocketed institutional ones, are ready to pony up. The upcoming SpaceX IPO is expected to smash records for cash raised and valuation, and Anthropic’s deal is expected to do the same, possibly surpassing SpaceX. OpenAI is also waiting in the wings. 这一时机的影响力远超 Alphabet 本身。随着 Anthropic 准备上市，这次极其成功的股票发售对于更广泛的 AI IPO 渠道来说是一个非常好的信号。它表明公开市场投资者，尤其是财力雄厚的机构投资者，已经准备好投入资金。即将到来的 SpaceX IPO 预计将打破融资和估值纪录，而 Anthropic 的交易预计也将达到同样水平，甚至可能超越 SpaceX。OpenAI 也在蓄势待发。

But all of this rests on public investors’ appetite — not just private VCs — remaining strong, and then staying that way. An unprecedented nearly $8 trillion in AI spending has been committed over the next five years. That money has to come from somewhere — and that somewhere includes individual company revenues, loans, and capital raised through stock sales. Whether public markets have the stomach to absorb that much, for that long, is the question that every AI company eyeing an IPO should be thinking about right now. 但这一切都取决于公开市场投资者（不仅仅是私人风投）的胃口能否保持强劲，并持续下去。未来五年，全球已承诺投入近 8 万亿美元用于 AI 支出，这创下了历史纪录。这些钱必须有来源，而这些来源包括公司自身营收、贷款以及通过股票发售筹集的资本。公开市场是否有足够的胃口在如此长的时间内消化如此庞大的资金，是每一家着眼于 IPO 的 AI 公司现在都应该思考的问题。