Alphabet Plans First Hong Kong and Singapore Dollar Bonds to Raise About $3 Billion

The Google parent is borrowing heavily, and in more currencies, to pay for data centres and other AI computing infrastructure. In an October 29 filing, Alphabet said it had issued $45 billion of US dollar notes and $35.8 billion of foreign currency notes in the nine months to the end of September. It raised €6 billion ($6.7 billion) in euro bonds last week, after selling $25 billion of US dollar bonds and A$5.5 billion ($3.8 billion) of Australian dollar bonds in August. Tapping the Hong Kong and Singapore markets would add two more pools of lenders.

One of the people said the sales would likely raise at least $2.2 billion, with Alphabet considering minimum sizes of HK$8 billion ($1 billion) for the Hong Kong dollar tranche and S$1.5 billion ($1.2 billion) for the Singapore dollar tranche. Final size, timing and pricing have not been set. The deal could be launched as early as Thursday, with bookbuilding and pricing during Asian trading hours, and the bonds are expected to settle on November 19, the person said.

Alphabet has mandated HSBC and JPMorgan as joint global coordinators, according to a term sheet seen by Reuters. Bank of China (Hong Kong), ICBC (Asia) and Standard Chartered are also working on the Hong Kong dollar sale, and DBS, OCBC and UOB on the Singapore dollar portion. The Hong Kong dollar bonds could carry two-, five- and 10-year maturities, while the Singapore dollar bonds could also include a 30-year tranche. The term sheet showed the notes are expected to be rated Aa2 by Moody's and AA+ by S&P.

Alphabet did not immediately respond to a request for comment, according to Reuters.

Other large technology companies have also been raising debt to fund AI spending. Meta completed a $15 billion US bond sale last week, and Oracle sold $10 billion of bonds. Pricing on the Asian deal, expected as soon as Thursday, will show how much of a premium investors now want to lend to the biggest AI spenders in local currencies.