Alphabet’s £1 billion century bond, issued in the sterling market earlier this year as part of a global debt binge, has slipped below 90 pence on the pound for the first time. That means investors who bought the 100-year bond at face value have already watched roughly 10% of their principal evaporate in a matter of months.

For a bond that was massively oversubscribed at launch, with demand reportedly reaching 10 times the offering size, the mood has shifted quickly.

A century bond for the AI age

Alphabet issued the bond in February 2026 as part of a larger multi-currency debt offering that exceeded $30 billion. The century bond was the headline act, marking the first 100-year bond from a major tech company since Motorola pulled off the same trick back in 1997.

The purpose was straightforward: fuel Alphabet’s enormous AI infrastructure buildout. The company has projected capital expenditures of roughly $175 billion to $185 billion for 2026, which would represent approximately double the capital spending from the prior year.

What went wrong

Here’s the thing about ultra-long-duration bonds: they are exquisitely sensitive to interest rate movements. When rates rise even modestly, the present value of cash flows stretching out 100 years gets hammered. The further out the maturity, the more violent the reaction.

The broader fixed-income environment has not been kind to long-duration holders. Shifting interest rate expectations and evolving credit conditions have pressured bonds across the curve, but century bonds sit at the extreme end of that sensitivity spectrum. Alphabet’s credit quality hasn’t deteriorated. This isn’t a story about Google suddenly becoming a risky borrower. It’s a story about duration risk doing exactly what duration risk does.

Why crypto investors should care

There were no references to crypto assets or tokens in any of the bond’s documentation or related market commentary.

The $30 billion-plus debt offering from Alphabet illustrates just how aggressively traditional tech companies are deploying capital toward AI infrastructure. Alphabet’s projected $175 billion to $185 billion in AI-related capital expenditures for this year alone dwarfs the entire market capitalization of most crypto projects.