Las acciones de Alphabet caen después de anunciar la venta de acciones por $80 mil millones, ya que la IA amenaza con aumentar el desempleo juvenil

Time to wrap up…

Google's parent company, Alphabet, has said it plans to raise up to $80bn (£59bn) in equity to fund its vast artificial intelligence infrastructure investments, raising further questions over the economics of the AI boom.

The move, the largest equity fundraising ever according to analysts, includes a $10bn share sale to the US investment group Berkshire Hathaway, which was led until last year by the investment guru Warren Buffett.

Alphabet, which is behind the Gemini system that has been increasing its share of the AI chatbot market, said it would use the money to expand its “world-class AI compute infrastructure to meet its unprecedented customer demandâ€.

The California-based company said: “AI is driving an expansionary moment for Alphabet. The company is experiencing strong demand for its AI solutions and services from enterprises and consumers, at levels that are exceeding the company's available supply. By scaling its investments, the company seeks to expand its foundational infrastructure to support the significant growth opportunity ahead.â€

Nicholas Hyett, the lead alternatives analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said the planned stock sale was much larger than previous secondary share sales, and would also raise more money than the largest stock market flotations, known as initial public offering (IPOs).

The British Chambers of Commerce has warned that youth unemployment in the UK will rise in 2026 and 2027, due to higher taxes, minimum wage rises and the rise of AI.

In other news:

Alphabet's shares are recovering some of their earlier losses.

They're now down 1.4%, at $370.99.

Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey has told MPs it is important to get inflation back to target.

Testifying to the House of Lords' Economic Affairs Committee, Bailey said:

“We have to focus more on how we manage the path back to target, and … ultimately get there because we've got to give the public confidence that the target is for real.â€

The answer to above-target inflation is not to lift the target….

Surprisingly, the number of job vacancies across the US economy has jumped.

There were 7.6 million job openings available in April, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported, up from around 6.88m in March.

That might calm concerns that AI systems are hitting hiring and driving up unemployment.

In April, the number of job openings increased in professional and business services (+668,000), but decreased in finance and insurance (-135,000), the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported.

Shares in US chip firm Marvell have jumped by 23% in early trading, after Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang said Marvell could be “the next trillion-dollar company.†(see earlier post).

The tech-focused Nasdaq Composite share index has dipped by 0.27% in early trading, with Alphabet among the big fallers.

Alphabet's planned $80bn equity raise, and AI rival Anthropic's IPO filing last night, shows tech firms are making “a decisive shift back toward public markets†as their funding demands accelerate.

So says Michael Field, chief equity analyst at investment research group Morningstar, adding:

“Last year the talk was about unicorns and the advantages of remaining private. This year that narrative has been turned on its head, most recently with announcements from Anthropic and Alphabet.

“It's no coincidence that Anthropic is now filing for an IPO at the same time as OpenAI and SpaceX. At the same time, Alphabet is reversing its long-held capital allocation policy of buying back shares and issuing $80 billion in equity.

“The game has changed. These companies are now burning through cash to win the AI race and public equity is the cheapest source available, particularly in a rising interest rate environment.

Over on Wall Street, shares in Alphabet have dropped at the start of trading after it announced $80bn of share sales last night.

Alphabet's share price is down by 4% in early trading to $361.10.

That's down from its closing level of $376.37 on Monday night, which valued Google's parent company at over $4.5trn.

As explained in the introduction of this blog, Alphabet is raising $40bn to fund its “AI infrastructure and global computeâ€, plus another $40bn to cover costs such as “tax obligations associated with vesting of employee equity awardsâ€.

Analysts say this secondary share offering is the largest on record, dwarfing the amount raise in the world's largest IPOs.

Though economists still debate whether AI will destroy jobs or create them, the prevailing mood in Silicon Valley is far more pessimistic, writes Harvard professor Ken Rogoff:

Either your startup makes it within the next five to ten years, the conventional wisdom holds, or you'd better pray the government provides a generous universal basic income.

Despite President Donald Trump's efforts to pull Silicon Valley into the Maga orbit, American-style progressivism continues to dominate Bay Area culture. Most of California's young tech strivers still see themselves as dyed-in-the-wool progressives –enthusiastic supporters of taxing the rich, at least until they become rich themselves.

Yet for all their virtue signaling, Silicon Valley elites seem strangely oblivious to the fact that the vast majority of people left behind by the rise of AI will not live in the US. Nor will they live in countries that have secured a place in the AI supply chain, such as South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan.

While South Korean firms such as Samsung and semiconductor company SK Hynix have become trillion-dollar giants on the back of AI's insatiable demand for advanced memory chips, Europe has produced far fewer success stories. ASML, the Dutch firm that holds a near-monopoly on the high-end lithography machines needed to manufacture the world's most advanced semiconductors, is a rare exception. The picture is even bleaker in Africa and Latin America, which have yet to produce anything remotely comparable

British Land, one of the UK's biggest property developers, has appointed Joanne McNamara as its new chief executive, a senior executive from the real estate arm of a Canadian pension fund.

She will succeed Simon Carter, who quit in January after over five years as CEO of British Land and 18 years at the company. He is taking the reins at P3 Logistics Parks, an investor, manager and developer of warehouses in Europe owned by Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC.

McNamara currently runs the European business at Oxford Properties, a global real estate investor, developer and manager owned by the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, one of Canada's largest pension funds.

She will be one of just a handful of female bosses at FTSE 100 companies, and a rare female leader in the male-dominated real estate sector.

McNamara has more than 20 years' experience in real restate, and joined Oxford Properties in 2010 as one of its first team members in London, where she built a 70-plus European team and a portfolio of offices, retail, housing and warehouses worth £8bn. She previously worked at the developer Hammerson and the investment group DTZ.

She is expected to join British Land by the end of November at the latest after her notice period.

“Joanne is one of Europe's most respected real estate professionals,†said William Rucker, chair of British Land. “With her deep expertise of real estate, valuable experience in the world of private capital and a strong reputation for decisive leadership, she is exceptionally well placed to drive the business forward.â€

McNamara said:

“British Land is a business that I have always admired, with an impressive track record of delivering and managing best in class places across the UK and an expert team at its helm.â€

British Land and Oxford Properties teamed to build the Leadenhall Building in the City, known as the Cheesegrater, which opened in July 2014

Iran's year-on-year inflation reached a record high in May, the worst since World War II, Associated Press report.

The Iranian consumer price index rose 77.2% in May compared to the previous year.

Inflation in daily and general needs — like medicine, taxi fares, tobacco and communication fees — rose 113.8% from the year before.

The AI boom is one of two issues dominating the markets at the moment.

The other is the Middle East conflict, where investors are looking for signs of a breakthrough in the US-Iran peace talks.

Today, the oil price has dipped by around 1% after Donald Trump hailed an agreement to de-escalate the fighting in Lebanon.

Trump said Hezbollah, through intermediaries, had pledged not to attack Israel, while Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to pull back any troops preparing to attack Beirut.

That's helped to push Brent crude down to $93.90 a barrel, a day after oil prices jumped as relations between Tehran and Washington DC appeared to deteriorate.

Stock markets are a little higher today too, with the FTSE 100 share index up 0.3%.

“Oil down, markets up – these are welcome movements for investors after three months of uncertainty around the Iran war,†says Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, adding:

“Brent crude fell 1.1% to $93.90 after Israel halted strikes on Lebanon, raising hopes that a peace deal is still plausible.

The further the oil price retreats from the $100 per barrel level, the greater investors' risk appetite. This explains why miners and consumer cyclical stocks led the charge on the FTSE 100. Defensive-style sectors including healthcare and utilities didn't fare as well as there was classic portfolio rotation.

Shares in semiconductor firm Marvell Technology have surged by 25% in premarket trading after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang called the chipmaker the next “trillion-dollar company.â€

Huang made the comments at the Computex trade show in Taipei, where he was appearing alongside Marvell CEO Matt Murphy.

Huang explained that Marvell's networking and connectivity chips are essential to data centres; they share computing tasks between thousands of connected chips, saying:

“When you take a computing problem, and you disaggregate it into a lot of parts, and you distribute it across the entire data center, what's necessary is connectivity.

That's the reason why Matt's doing so well. That's the reason why Marvel is so essential.â€

Before Huang's comment, Marvell's was valued at almost $192bn.

Last week, chipmakers SK Hynix and Micron hit the $1tn mark for the first time.

Alphabet's new $80bn share sale appears to be the largest equity raising ever, suggests Nicholas Hyett​, lead alternatives analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.

Hyett explains that the stock sale is much larger than previous secondary share sales of this time, and is also raising more money than the largest stock market flotations (‘initial public offerings', os IPOs).

Hyett says:

“Alphabet's $80bn fundraise dwarf's the world's largest IPOs, often the moment of maximum excitement when companies seek to fill their financial warchests. In fact, if successful, it would raise more than the world's three largest initial public offerings put together – Saudi Aramco raised $25.6bn when it debuted on the Saudi exchange in 2019; Alibaba raised $21.8bn on NYSE in 2014, and SoftBank raised $21.3bn when it listed in Tokyo in 2018.

We can't think of a secondary issue that would even come close to matching the ambition of this fundraise – $80bn would be enough to buy the 137^th member of the S&P 500 outright, and there just aren't many companies in the world that have the ability to spend that amount of money productively.â€

Wessex Water has announced the retirement of its chief financial officer, Andy Pymer, in the latest shake-up at the top of the utility owned by Malaysian group YTL.

Pymer will be replaced later this year by Richard Eadie, executive finance director at Anglian Water Services. Eadie will serve under Ruth Jefferson, who replaced long-serving chief executive Colin Skellett in October 2024.

Pymer served as chief financial officer from 2020, during one of the most turbulent and scandal-hit periods ever for the water industry.

The pay of Pymer and Jefferson came under scrutiny after the Guardian reported on previously undisclosed payments, worth a combined £50,000. The payments were made to the pair by other companies in the YTL Group in the same year that the company was banned from paying bonuses – although Wessex denied they were bonus payments. Pymer's pay for the last financial year from the regulated water company was £249,000.

The Guardian's reporting on the pay arrangements prompted questions in parliament. A junior environment minister, Emma Hardy, said the Wessex situation “baffles meâ€.

She added:

“If performance is not good enough, people should not get a bonus.â€

Ruth Jefferson, Wessex's chief executive, said that Pymer “has made an outstanding contribution to Wessex Water over more than three decades, and it has been a great pleasure to work alongside him.â€