Subject: Ben Thompson
The Google Capital Company

"Google has to date funded its massive AI-related capital expenditures with free cash flow, and while the company does have around $81 billion in debt, that is more than balanced by $126 billion of cash. In other words, Google’s capacity to issue more debt — and to reap the financial benefits of doing so (because interest is tax-deductible) — is substantial.

That leads to what may be the Occam’s Razor explanation: Google is also going to start issuing a lot more debt as well, which is to say that everyone continues to underestimate the amount of demand there is for compute. Of course that’s not far off from a more bearish interpretation: Google is uncertain about the return on investment of all that capex, and would prefer to share the risk (along with the upside). If there isn’t a substantial debt issuance down the road then this might be the right answer.

The second question is why is Berkshire Hathaway suddenly, after all these years, interested in Google, and at only a slight discount to its all-time high price? Does it really just come down to the fact that Buffett is no longer making investment decisions, and Greg Abel, his successor as CEO, is?<"i/>

https://stratechery.com/2026/t...