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Alphabet Raising $80BN In Equity To Fund Capex, Including $40BN ATM Offering And $10BN Deeply Discounted Deal With Berkshire

As we have discussed ad nauseam in the past years, perhaps the biggest mystery surrounding the entire AI supercycle, is where will the hyperscalers find the funds to pay for the trillions in projected capital spending now that most of their Free Cash Flow is flat or negative (with the exception of Microsoft).

And while many are forced to resort to aggressive debt issuance with Morgan Stanley estimating that credit markets will fund $1.5 trillion of global data center spending through 2028...

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... or participating in murky rating-boosting SPV deals, which as we discussed recently indicate an unwillingness to exhibit AI related assets on their balance sheets something others are also catching up to...

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... others opt to sell stock instead.

That's what Google parent Alphabet did after the close today when it announced it was raising $80 billion in equity offerings, including an investment deal with Berkshire Hathaway, to help fund its massive AI capex plans.

The offering includes a $40 billion so-called at-the-market (ATM) program, traditionally reserved for short-squeezed meme stocks selling directly to retail for which there is no clear institutional demand, to sell shares from time to time beginning in the third quarter, according to a statement Monday. 

The company will also offer $30 billion in underwritten offerings of shares and mandatory convertible preferred stock, as well as a $10 billion private placement with Berkshire.

“AI is driving an expansionary moment for Alphabet,” the company said in the statement. “By scaling its investments, the company seeks to expand its foundational infrastructure to support the significant growth opportunity ahead.”

Alphabet intends to use the proceeds from the various offerings for "general corporate purposes, including capital expenditures to scale AI infrastructure and global compute." Remarkably, Google revealed that it will use the bulk of the ATM offering to pay for tax obligations related to vesting of employee equity awards. In other words, the multi-trillion company is using retail investors to pay taxes.

The mandatory convertible stock and the underwritten common equity offerings are expected to price Tuesday after the market closes in New York, according to terms of the deal seen by Bloomberg News.

Berkshire Hathaway started building a stake in Google’s parent last year, and held Class A and Class C shares collectively worth about $16.6 billion as of the end of March, according to regulatory filings. To incentivize Berkshire to invest alongside the ATM offering, Google agreed to sell $10 billion to Berkshire at a solid discount to its closing price of $376, namely a ~6% discount for the $5 billion Class A Common Stock, and an almost 8% discount for the $5 billion Class C offering at $348.20.

This is the second notable investment by Berkshire in just two days as the company starts to put its massive cash hoard to use.

Greg Abel, who took over the reins of the firm after Warren Buffett retired last year, has started to invest its record $397 billion cash pile. On Sunday, Berkshire announced its intention to buy home builder Taylor Morrison for $6.8 billion, providing a vote of confidence in the US housing market.

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/01/2026 - 18:45

Los Angeles County lost over 54,000 residents in a single year as billionaires flee to zero-income-tax Florida

"Debug": Google Seeks Federal Approval To Release Millions Of Mosquitoes In California, Florida

Authored by Jacob Burg via The Epoch Times,

Google is seeking federal approval for a new program called "Debug" that would release up to 32 million mosquitoes in California and Florida to combat disease-carrying mosquitoes already found in the wild.

A laboratory technician holds a mosquito at the World Mosquito Program factory in Medellín, Colombia, on June 4, 2024. Scientists have long released biologically modified mosquitoes to curb transmission of diseases such as chikungunya. Jaime Saldarriaga/AFP via Getty Images

Pitched as a program to "stop bad mosquitoes by raising and releasing good ones," Google's Debug brings together a group of scientists and engineers to create technology to breed and release sterile mosquitoes to try to eliminate the ones that transmit diseases to animals and humans.

The Federal Register noted on May 1 that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is reviewing Google's request for an experimental permit under section 5 of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. Public comment on the permit request must be received by June 5.

Despite their small size, mosquitoes are considered the "deadliest animal" in the world, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). There are more than 3,700 types of mosquitoes worldwide, and some are more dangerous than others.

The species Google's Debug is targeting - Aedes aegypti - carries dengue, Zika, yellow fever, and chikungunya. Some mosquitoes carry West Nile virus, malaria, and lymphatic filariasis, killing more humans than any other creature worldwide.

Malaria alone killed at least 597,000 people throughout 83 countries in 2023, the last year the data were available. That same year, the United States saw cases of "locally acquired" mosquito-transmitted malaria for the first time in two decades.

A "locally acquired" case of malaria means the victim was bitten by a mosquito carrying the parasite in the United States, rather than contracting the illness abroad while traveling.

There are roughly 2,000 cases of malaria reported in the United States every year, with most of them coming from people traveling overseas in places where malaria is rampant. West Nile virus is the leading culprit of mosquito-borne disease in the United States. More than 120 deaths are reported each year, with roughly 2,000 people experiencing the illness.

In Debug's landing page, Google notes that most mosquito-transmitted diseases lack effective vaccines or treatments.

"Attacking mosquitoes with pesticides is unsustainable because they're becoming less effective over time and can be toxic. Clearing standing water is not enough because people can never find all the places that mosquitoes breed," Google states on the project's website. "We need a new approach."

Google said it is using male mosquitoes carrying a naturally occurring bacterium, Wolbachia, that prevents them from reproducing with female mosquitoes in the wild. Since only female mosquitoes can bite and spread disease, the goal is to continually reduce the number of "bad mosquitoes" over time.

Google's technique "uses a naturally occurring bacteria and uses no chemicals, no toxins and doesn't involve genetic modification. Similar approaches have been used to safely combat other pests for decades," Google states. "We're combining the Debug team's scientific and engineering expertise with the help of international partners to raise and release lots of good bugs and stop bad mosquitoes that can spread disease."

Google said its Debug program has already completed multiple field trials with "promising results."

"Male mosquitoes don't bite, so residents within a trial area shouldn't notice any increase in nuisance biting mosquitoes," Google states on the project's FAQ page. "We expect to see a population decrease within weeks to months of the initial releases. The number of released male mosquitoes should also reduce over time as the neighborhood population decreases."

At least one lawmaker has criticized the company's approach.

In a May 31 post on X, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) said:

This close-up photograph shows a mosquito in Montlouis-sur-Loire, central France, on Oct. 21, 2022. Guillaume Souvant/AFP via Getty Images Tyler Durden Mon, 06/01/2026 - 18:25

“This lunatic drank so much of his own Kool-Aid that he is going to give all of us a diabetic shock.”

GoPro Warns It May Not Survive As AI Memory Crunch Bites

GoPro shares have been under pressure since last fall, when memory prices began to soar as AI data center buildouts tightened global supply and diverted capacity away from consumer electronics.

On Monday, GoPro filed an 8-K with the SEC, warning of "substantial doubt" about its ability to continue as a going concern and stating that it expects to file an update to its financial statements.

The action-camera maker, once a $12 billion-plus Wall Street MoMo darling after its 2014 IPO, has plunged into micro-cap territory, with a total market cap of around $190 million as of late Monday afternoon.

Revenue plunged 26% in the first quarter. The company has already needed lender waivers after breaching loan covenants, and it does not expect to comply with several future covenants.

Last month, GoPro's own filing warned of an "unprecedented increase and volatility in memory component costs."

The AI memory boom has crushed GoPro, and the market punished GoPro shares as early as last fall, when the memory price spike began.

Bloomberg noted that in April, one of GoPro's suppliers planned to reduce memory supply, which dented the company's forecasted sales. This only suggests higher input costs, weaker margins, and reduced pricing flexibility.

GoPro is seeking to pivot away from its consumer-camera market, exploring aerospace and defense as potential new markets and product categories.

By the way, it's easier just to wear Meta RayBans for action sports ... 

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/01/2026 - 18:00

Bet $20, get $350 in bonus bets using the Fanatics Sportsbook promo code NYPOST.

As Saint Mary’s players celebrated the greatest baseball upset in school history, sprinting into the outfield to mob one another inside a stunned Jackie Robinson Stadium, UCLA fans turned toward the aisle to depart. It was time to bid farewell to a surreal season in which the Bruins experienced some of the greatest highs and...

It's no slam dunk that Donald Trump will actually attend an NBA Finals game.

Treasures abound beneath city streets for anyone brave or crazy enough to explore the murky depths of the Big Apple’s sprawling 7,500-mile sewer system — all in search of a wayward wallet or piece of jewelry that may have fallen through a grate above. Those temptations were put on full display last week by two...

Legendary Knicks announcer Marv Albert, 84, stayed away from the mic even though NBC was interested in bringing him back for a night.

The edgy HBO drama was Sam Levinson’s singular vision. He was its creator / writer / director, and didn’t have a writers’ room. That’s becoming a rarity.

The edgy HBO drama was Sam Levinson’s singular vision. He was its creator / writer / director, and didn’t have a writers room. That’s becoming a rarity.

It was ripe for the picking. 

Homeless maniac Shawnee Moore stabbed a 75-year-old woman in the neck as she waited for an Uber in Brooklyn after the nutjob eerily grunted "hello" to her, cops and sources said Monday.

California Legislators Shriek: 'Stop Nick Shirley!'

Authored by Mike McDaniel via AmericanThinker.com,

Without the second Trump Administration, we would surely not have discovered, and most importantly, acted upon, the fraud being committed around the country, most notably in blue states like Minnesota and California. So much has been discovered so rapidly, President Trump appointed Vice President Vance to head an anti-fraud task force, and the DOJ hired additional prosecutors to handle the dramatically increasing number of cases. Federal officials are suggesting the sheer amount of fraud, discovered and yet to be discovered, is so staggering clawing back that money could balance the federal budget.

Instrumental in exposing sufficient fraud so it could no longer be ignored by local or state officials is independent journalist Nick Shirley, who exposed the infamous “Quality Learing Center” day care fraud in Minneapolis, as well as many less well-known fraudulent day cares. So effective was Shirley, and so quickly did his work anger local fraudsters and state officials, Shirley received so many death threats he apparently decided to give California a try. This was the immediate result: 

Graphic: X Post

Independent journalist Nick Shirley has released a devastating 40-minute investigative video that exposes what appears to be massive waste and potential fraud in California’s hospice, Medi-Cal, and daycare programs. His report, now viewed more than 7.7 million times on X, uncovers over $170 million in questionable billings tied to ghost hospice and daycare operations that show virtually no signs of actually caring for patients or children.

Shirley found that focusing mostly on Victory Blvd. in Van Nuys:

Graphic: X Post

In Minnesota and California, honest public employees tried for years to expose fraud, but their superiors and the state Attorney General’s Office ignored them. But with Shirley’s discovery of incredible levels of fraud, the California Legislature was prodded into action: they’re criminalizing exposing fraud:  

Independent journalist Nick Shirley accused California lawmakers of trying to shield taxpayer-funded organizations from scrutiny after the state Assembly advanced AB 2624, dubbed the "Stop Nick Shirley Act," a bill the author says is intended to protect immigration service providers from harassment and threats.

"I obviously hit a nerve," Shirley said during an appearance Wednesday night on "Fox News @ Night" with Trace Gallagher.

"What's interesting about this, this bill is it's protecting NGOs and nonprofits," Shirley said. "These are organizations and groups that receive our tax dollars, yet they want to make it so we can't find out what they're doing with our tax dollars."

Shirley argued the proposal would discourage investigations into organizations receiving public funds.

And that’s obviously the point of the legislation. But why would legislators, people sworn to protect the public, presumably at least in part by catching criminals defrauding taxpayers of billions, want to protect those criminals? It’s a puzzler, unless, perhaps, those NGOs and nonprofits are primary funding sources of the Democrat Party and Democrat politicians? But surely that can’t be happening in a single-party state like California, where corruption is all but nonexistent? Shirley explained:

"The Somalis in Minnesota, they stole hundreds of millions, billions of dollars, and then the hospice fraud that took place inside California," Shirley said.

"Everyone was saying that was bogus. And then her husband actually tried to take credit for exposing the hospice fraud after I had went and exposed the hospice fraud."

Shirley was referring to Assemblymember Mia Bonta's husband, California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who has not responded to Fox News Digital's request for comment.

"The fraud has been going on for so long. These fraudsters thought they could get away with it for so long that so many people started committing this fraud."

Graphic: X Post

What’s really amazing, though utterly unsurprising, is Shirley is only talking about hospice fraud. That’s only the shrink-wrap packaging on the box of a 100-story-tall fraud package.

To paraphrase Shakespeare, something is rotten in the bluer than blue state of California.

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/01/2026 - 17:40

Renegade, not Golden Tempo, is the favorite to win the Belmont Stakes.

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A well-stocked anti-ICE coalition tent outside New Jersey's embattled Delaney Hall immigration detention center was raided by federal authorities Monday — exposing what activists were keeping inside as mayhem continues to plague the area.

With the race effectively deadlocked, even modest shifts among one group of voters could help determine who emerges from one of the most competitive mayoral primaries Los Angeles has seen in years.