An artificial intelligence hyperscaler is tapping Aussie investors to help fund its billion-dollar data centre rollout, capping a record year for Australian-dollar bond deals.
Google’s parent company Alphabet has hired ANZ, Deutsche Bank, RBC Capital Markets and TD Securities as joint lead managers to handle its first Australian dollar bond issue, ANZ confirmed to AAP.
The US tech giant is considering issuing three, five-, 10- and 20-year bonds. It is not clear how much money the company hopes to raise, but it will be in the billions.
It would be the first US large-cap tech company to issue an Australian-dollar bond in almost a decade, Betashares’ head of fixed income Chamath De Silva said.
Apple was the last to do so, raising a total of $3.7 billion from bond issuances in 2015 and 2016.
Australian-dollar bonds issued by foreign companies are known as “kangaroo bonds” or “matilda bonds”, and 2026 has been a record year for the offerings in global debt markets.
Companies including UK green energy giant SSE, Spanish bank CaixaBank, Singapore Airlines and the government of Portugal have raised around $60 billion in kangaroo bonds so far in 2026, up more than 40 per cent from 2025.
Mr De Silva said global investors and issuers were paying greater attention to the Australian bond market, and Australia’s fiscal position stood out at a time when concerns around debt sustainability were rising globally.
Australia’s investment-grade credit market has had no exposure to US large-cap technology companies following the maturity of Apple’s bonds earlier in 2026.
“An Alphabet transaction would begin to change that, broadening the opportunity set for Australian investors while increasing technology representation in the Australian corporate bond market,” Mr De Silva said.
Alphabet’s bond issue might also prove to be the start of a broader trend that could fundamentally alter the composition of Australia’s corporate bond market, giving local investors greater access to world-leading technology companies without having to invest offshore, Mr De Silva said.
Alphabet has been aggressively tapping international debt markets to finance its massive expansion into AI, data centres and cloud intelligence.
It has issued bonds in British pounds, Canadian dollars, Swiss francs, Japanese yen and euros in 2026.
Its British bond offering was for a billion pounds ($A1.9 billion) for 100 years – one of the longest-dated bond issuances executed by a tech company.
Its Canadian deal for $C6.5 billion ($A6.6 billion) briefly set new records until Amazon issued a bigger bond a few weeks later.
Alphabet also raised $US25 billion ($A35 billion) in a US bond sale in early August and $US80 billion ($A113 billion) through equity offerings in June.
The tech behemoth plans to spend between $US195 billion and $US205 billion on AI data centres, servers, networking equipment and chips in 2026 – a sixfold increase over its capital expenditure from 2022.
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