Absolute Power and $25B in Debt: Google Centralizes AI Development in California

Alphabet’s management structure has undergone a historic transformation. On August 7, 2026, the corporation officially moved its AI decision-making center to Mountain View. Demis Hassabis took over as Chairman of Google DeepMind and Alphabet Chief Scientist, while Sebastian Borge’s coding team was urgently relocated from the UK to the US. Operational management was handed to Koray Kavukcuoglu.

This move signals the end of fragmentation and a shift toward strict commercialization of the Gemini models. To fund this race, Alphabet entered the bond market on the same day, offering $25 billion in debt. Investor demand exceeded $115 billion. The raised capital will cover the astronomical 2026 CAPEX (estimated at $195–$205 billion), which is being entirely burned in the furnaces of AI infrastructure. Google is proving to Wall Street: the company is willing to go into debt and shake up its top management just to maintain its leadership in the Agentic AI era.

Source: Financial Times / AI Weekly