Big tech has a new favorite way to fund its AI ambitions: print shares and hope someone buys them. The problem is that “someone” needs very deep pockets, and Wall Street is starting to wonder if those pockets are deep enough.
Alphabet is planning to raise $85 billion through stock sales in the next quarter. That would make it the largest equity issuance on record. Not the largest tech offering. Not the largest this year. The largest, period.
And Alphabet isn’t alone. Meta is reportedly considering a stock offering in the tens of billions to fund its own AI initiatives. Meanwhile, pending IPOs from SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI could collectively add nearly $4 trillion in market capitalization to public markets.
The supply problem nobody wants to talk about
For years, big tech funded its growth through cash flows and balance sheets. AI changed the math. Big tech’s AI-related debt issuance reached $121 billion in 2025, more than four times the prior five-year average. Projections suggest an additional $1.5 trillion in AI-centric debt could be issued in the coming years.
