Alphabet, Amazon and Meta Are Selling Bonds That Mature in 2075 — Here’s the Catch

Big Tech wants to borrow your money for the rest of the century. Alphabet has bonds outstanding running to 2075, Amazon’s stretch to 2065, and Meta is paying over 7% on its own 2065 paper, according to FactSet data reported by The Street Sheet. The pitch is straightforward: credit quality without the skimpy yield that normally comes with it — Microsoft, for comparison, carries a higher credit rating than the US government itself. Supply is part of what’s pushing yields up, with Goldman Sachs credit strategists projecting roughly $400 billion of hyperscaler bond issuance globally in 2027 alone as AI capital spending accelerates.

The catch is in the compensation. High-grade corporate bonds maturing 20-plus years out are currently paying about one percentage point of spread over Treasurys — roughly half the cushion they offered back in 2022. That’s fifty years of technology-cycle risk, priced at close to the thinnest premium available in years. Analysts at Morgan Stanley point to a better-paid alternative one step down the capital structure: bonds issued by the joint ventures and real-estate-backed firms actually building the data centers these hyperscalers will lease, which carry half a point to nearly two points of extra yield over the tenants’ own paper.

The lesson isn’t that AAA-rated tech debt is a bad investment — it’s that a top credit rating and a well-known logo aren’t the same thing as being paid fairly for the risk you’re taking on. Fifty-year duration is fifty years of interest-rate risk, obsolescence risk, and reinvestment risk, regardless of whose name is on the bond. A diversified fixed-income allocation looks past the label to what the yield is actually compensating for.