Status: Scaling / Under Development | Location: Multi-campus (Global rollout managed from Mountain View, CA, Council Bluffs
Alphabet’s $185 billion capital expenditure guidance for 2026 represents a fundamental pivot from a software-first entity to a massive, energy-intensive "infrastructure utility." This expansion is designed to facilitate a transition from static AI models to multi-trillion parameter agentic AI (Gemini 4) and sovereign cloud services.
The $20 Billion "Century Bond" Financing
To fuel this $185 billion ceiling (nearly double its 2025 spend), Alphabet successfully priced a $20 billion seven-part bond offering on February 9, 2026.
Landmark Debt: The issuance included a 100-year Sterling bond, the first "century bond" from a tech major since 1997, signaling investor confidence in Alphabet’s multi-decade AI roadmap.
Investor Demand: The offering was upsized from $15 billion after drawing a record-breaking $100 billion order book, allowing Alphabet to tighten spreads to near-sovereign levels (T+95bps for the 40-year tranche).
Infrastructure Strategy: The Gigawatt Scale
Alphabet is moving away from traditional hyperscale sites (10-50 MW) toward Gigawatt-scale AI campuses—facilities consuming as much power as a city of 750,000 homes.
Vertical Integration: To support this, Alphabet acquired clean energy developer Intersect Power for $4.75 billion in January 2026, gaining direct control over solar and storage assets to bypass grid bottlenecks.
Energy Resilience: Partnering with NextEra Energy, Alphabet is co-developing campuses with dedicated "grid-independent" power, including plans to restart the Duane Arnold Energy Center (Iowa’s only nuclear facility) to provide 24/7 carbon-free baseload power.
Project Ironwood: The Heart of the Midwest Buildout
A cornerstone of the 2026 budget is the "Project Ironwood" initiative. While the name refers to Google’s seventh-generation custom Ironwood TPU (Tensor Processing Unit), it also designates the specialized Midwest facilities built to house them.
TPU v7 (Ironwood): These chips provide 2x the performance-per-watt of the previous "Trillium" generation and are optimized specifically for "The Age of Inference"—running live AI agents at massive scale.
The "AI Hypercomputer" Architecture: Project Ironwood facilities utilize Direct-to-Chip Liquid Cooling as the standard cooling protocol to manage the extreme heat of clusters scaling up to 9,216 chips per superpod.
Networking Dominance: To link these massive clusters, Alphabet is deploying 1.6T Ethernet switches and custom Optical Circuit Switching (OCS) technology, allowing the entire 1GW campus to act as a single, reconfigurable supercomputer.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Project Name | Alphabet 1GW Global AI Infrastructure Expansion Project |
| Location | Multi-campus (Global rollout managed from Mountain View, CA, Council Bluffs |
| Status | Scaling / Under Development |
| Commissioning | Phased Go-Live 2026–2030 |
| Total IT Load | 1,000 MW+ (Gigawatt-scale targeting trillion-parameter models) |
| Total Capacity | 10.8 GW (Aggregate renewable energy-backed capacity by 2028) |
| Tier Level | Tier IV (Fault Tolerant) |
| Project Type | Hyperscale AI Data Center |
| Header | Details |
|---|---|
| City Name | Council Bluffs |
| Population | approximately 62,230. |
| Urban Agglomeration | about 300,000. |
| City GDP | GDP is approximately $30 billion, |
| Per Capita Income | Council Bluffs' per capita income is estimated at about $27,000. |
| City Tier | Tier 3 city |
| Key Strengths | Location & Infrastructure: Situated near Omaha, Council Bluffs enjoys proximity to major transportation routes, including interstate highways, rail, and the Missouri River. |
| Header | Details |
|---|---|
| Developer / Operator | Google Cloud |
| Strategic Infrastructure Partner | Intersect Power (Clean Energy), Nvidia, Broadcom |
| Construction Contractor | Bechtel / Fortis Construction (Project Specific) |
| MEP Engineering | Syska Hennessy Group / Jacobs |
| Network Connectivity | 1.6T Ethernet spine platforms & low-latency subsea cable links |
| Power Infrastructure | Direct-to-chip liquid cooling & on-site BESS (Battery Storage) |
| Header | Details |
|---|---|
| Power Capacity | Up to 1 GW per major regional hub |
| UPS Redundancy | 2N+1 |
| Cooling System | Standardized Direct-to-Chip Liquid Cooling & Rear Door Heat Exchangers |
| Connectivity | High-bandwidth inter-site links supporting tens of Tbps |
| PUE Target | 1.10 |
| Energy Mix | 100% Carbon-Free (Solar, Wind, and Small Modular Reactors) |
| Header | Details |
|---|---|
| Announcement | February 10, 2026 |
| Construction Start | Q1 2026 |
| Phase 1 Go-Live | H2 2026 |
| Full Buildout | 2030 |
| Header | Details |
|---|---|
| Total Investment | $185 Billion (2026 Annual Budget) |
| Funding | Corporate Bonds ($20 Billion) and Operational Cash Flow |
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