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Alphabet announces $80B equity capital raise to expand AI infra and compute

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Re: Alphabet announces $80B equity capital raise to expand AI infra and compute

#21

Post by CamperBob2 »

bel8 wrote: post #17
plmpsu wrote: post #6

Quoting: In addition, Alphabet has reached an agreement to sell $10 billion of stock to Berkshire Hathaway Inc. in a private placement, comprised of $5 billion in Class A Common Stock at a price of $351.81 per share and $5 billion in Class C Capital Stock at a price of $348.20 per share. This investment by Berkshire Hathaway adds to the position it has built since Q3 2025.

They know Google has a ton of data to train LLMs on. Recently I have been asking YouTube's new AI about some videos ("when is Steam metrics mentioned in the video?" for example), which means they also index videos. This is an unthinkable amount of data. I'm actually impressed at how bad Alphabet is with LLMs since they invented the thing as we know AND have all the data to train on, yet OpenAI and Anthropic are eatin…

Not only that, but the same webmasters who try to shoo AI crawlers away actively court Google's bots.

Re: Alphabet announces $80B equity capital raise to expand AI infra and compute

#23

Post by mitchell_h »

bel8 wrote: post #17
plmpsu wrote: post #6

Quoting: In addition, Alphabet has reached an agreement to sell $10 billion of stock to Berkshire Hathaway Inc. in a private placement, comprised of $5 billion in Class A Common Stock at a price of $351.81 per share and $5 billion in Class C Capital Stock at a price of $348.20 per share. This investment by Berkshire Hathaway adds to the position it has built since Q3 2025.

They know Google has a ton of data to train LLMs on. Recently I have been asking YouTube's new AI about some videos ("when is Steam metrics mentioned in the video?" for example), which means they also index videos. This is an unthinkable amount of data. I'm actually impressed at how bad Alphabet is with LLMs since they invented the thing as we know AND have all the data to train on, yet OpenAI and Anthropic are eatin…

I use anthropic's models daily, and sometimes switch to Gemini. Google is losing the marketing front BADLY, but their AI service is surprisingly great. It's far cheaper than anthropic for one. and for my kind of research it's just better.

Re: Alphabet announces $80B equity capital raise to expand AI infra and compute

#24

Post by MagicMoonlight »

bel8 wrote: post #17
plmpsu wrote: post #6

Quoting: In addition, Alphabet has reached an agreement to sell $10 billion of stock to Berkshire Hathaway Inc. in a private placement, comprised of $5 billion in Class A Common Stock at a price of $351.81 per share and $5 billion in Class C Capital Stock at a price of $348.20 per share. This investment by Berkshire Hathaway adds to the position it has built since Q3 2025.

They know Google has a ton of data to train LLMs on. Recently I have been asking YouTube's new AI about some videos ("when is Steam metrics mentioned in the video?" for example), which means they also index videos. This is an unthinkable amount of data. I'm actually impressed at how bad Alphabet is with LLMs since they invented the thing as we know AND have all the data to train on, yet OpenAI and Anthropic are eatin…

Everyone mocked them for paying for YouTube for years with no real income. Now it’s the most valuable data source in the world.

Re: Alphabet announces $80B equity capital raise to expand AI infra and compute

#26

Post by jonwachob91 »

bel8 wrote: post #17
plmpsu wrote: post #6

Quoting: In addition, Alphabet has reached an agreement to sell $10 billion of stock to Berkshire Hathaway Inc. in a private placement, comprised of $5 billion in Class A Common Stock at a price of $351.81 per share and $5 billion in Class C Capital Stock at a price of $348.20 per share. This investment by Berkshire Hathaway adds to the position it has built since Q3 2025.

They know Google has a ton of data to train LLMs on. Recently I have been asking YouTube's new AI about some videos ("when is Steam metrics mentioned in the video?" for example), which means they also index videos. This is an unthinkable amount of data. I'm actually impressed at how bad Alphabet is with LLMs since they invented the thing as we know AND have all the data to train on, yet OpenAI and Anthropic are eatin…

I've also asked the youtube ai about when some things are mentioned in videos, and upon verification the ai is just hallucinating.

Re: Alphabet announces $80B equity capital raise to expand AI infra and compute

#27

Post by nostrademons »

addaon wrote: post #12
tptacek wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I mean, you'd expect this move to mechanically push share prices down.

Why? There’s $80B of dilution from new shares issued, so to keep share prices constant market cap would have to increase by $80B. Simultaneously, there $80B in additional assets on the balance sheet, so if the company was previously correctly valued at $N market cap it would now be correctly valued at $N+$80B market cap, right? My intuition is that capital raises, just like stock buybacks, should be first-order (“mec…

First-order, yes.

In practice there's a lot of issues with asymmetric information. The company knows its own operations and financial position better than random traders on Wall Street. It is rational for it to buy back stock when the market value is lower than the true intrinsic value of the company, and to sell stock when the market value is higher than the true intrinsic value of the company. Therefore, traders often treat buybacks as a signal that the company is "cheap" (at least in the company's own view) and pump up the price accordingly, and treat stock issuances as a sign that company management believes that the stock is "expensive" and push it down accordingly. Company management has more inside information than market participants do, but is usually prohibited from trading on it. Stock issuances and stock buybacks are one of the few cases where insider-initiated trading is legal, because the benefits accrue to the company as a whole rather than a few individuals.

Re: Alphabet announces $80B equity capital raise to expand AI infra and compute

#28

Post by bix6 »

> The ATM program is intended primarily to facilitate, for a period of time, an administrative change in how Alphabet meets tax obligations associated with employee equity grants. This approach will mimic a “sell to cover” model: upon vesting of restricted stock units, shares will still be delivered to employees net of taxes, and the company will use corporate cash to settle taxes on behalf of employees. The company intends to issue stock for equivalent proceeds through its ATM program.

This is an interesting change. Essentially just gives more timing control?

Re: Alphabet announces $80B equity capital raise to expand AI infra and compute

#29

Post by sandeepkd »

chatmasta wrote: post #9
swiftcoder wrote: post #4

How is Alphabet suddenly short of capital?

You don’t raise money because you’re short on capital. You raise when you’re in a position of power and capital is cheap.

Or if you think that you may not be able to raise this kind of money if the AI story goes down after all these IPOs

Re: Alphabet announces $80B equity capital raise to expand AI infra and compute

#30

Post by cj »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #21
bel8 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They know Google has a ton of data to train LLMs on. Recently I have been asking YouTube's new AI about some videos ("when is Steam metrics mentioned in the video?" for example), which means they also index videos. This is an unthinkable amount of data. I'm actually impressed at how bad Alphabet is with LLMs since they invented the thing as we know AND have all the data to train on, yet OpenAI and Anthropic are eatin…

Not only that, but the same webmasters who try to shoo AI crawlers away actively court Google's bots.

Really? Every business owner I know outside of HN wants to be discoverable by LLMs.
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