Goldman Sachs rushes to secure Berkshire backing for Alphabet stock deal

A weekend call to Berkshire Hathaway became the key move in Goldman Sachs’ push to land Alphabet’s giant AI financing, giving the bank the $10 billion anchor investment that helped make an unusually large stock deal look durable instead of improvised.

Alphabet said on June 1 that it planned $80 billion in equity offerings to fund AI compute infrastructure. The package included a $30 billion concurrent underwritten offering, a $40 billion at-the-market program expected to begin in the third quarter of 2026, and a $10 billion private placement to Berkshire. Berkshire’s purchase was split evenly between $5 billion of Class A stock at $351.81 a share and $5 billion of Class C stock at $348.20 a share, and Alphabet said the investment added to a position Berkshire had been building since the third quarter of 2025.

The company said it would use the proceeds for general corporate purposes and capital expenditures to scale AI infrastructure and global compute. Roughly $30 billion of ATM proceeds were expected to help meet 2026 employee-equity tax obligations. In a June investor presentation, Alphabet said the underwritten offering was oversubscribed and that about $35 billion had been priced and allocated, implying an expected total of roughly $85 billion. Alphabet also said 2026 capital expenditures would run between $180 billion and $190 billion, about six times the roughly $31 billion it spent in 2022, and that 2027 capex was expected to rise significantly again.

Goldman, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley served as joint book-running managers for the underwritten piece, while Goldman also acted as placement agent for Berkshire’s private placement. Goldman Sachs International co-chief executive Anthony Gutman called the transaction “unprecedented territory,” a remark that captured both the size of the financing and the pressure on bankers to assemble investor support quickly enough to keep the market orderly.

The deal also carried a broader message for Goldman employees across equity capital markets, syndicate, technology coverage and wealth management: the biggest AI financings are becoming exercises in relationship management as much as balance-sheet capacity. Berkshire’s backing, now under new CEO Greg Abel after Warren Buffett’s long run, landed the same week Abel agreed to buy homebuilder Taylor Morrison for $6.8 billion in cash. That kind of high-profile commitment can reset investor psychology fast, and in this case it showed how much of Goldman’s edge still comes from senior access, speed and the ability to build confidence around a giant issuer when public markets are being asked to absorb unprecedented AI spending.