Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle have collectively racked up roughly $121 billion in new bond issuance in 2025, fueling their AI infrastructure investments. This figure towers over their previous annual average of $28 billion, meaning these hyperscalers borrowed in one year what once took over four years.
The borrowing spree accelerated sharply late last year, with over $90 billion hitting the market in the final quarter alone. As a result, their combined debt has nearly doubled over five years, now reaching an estimated $350 billion.
Investor Concerns Grow Amid Concentrated AI Debt
AI-related bond issuance now accounts for about 30% of new investment-grade bonds in the US market. This concentration raises alarms since nearly a third of supposedly diversified corporate debt bets on the success of AI infrastructure within a tight timeframe.
The funds are primarily directed toward building data centers, GPUs, and server farms, the key hardware behind generative AI advancements. However, by mid-2026, some investors grew uneasy about the risk, especially regarding how these tech giants finance their capital spending programs.
A Chicago Fed report highlighted increased bank exposures to AI-related sectors, though delinquency rates remained low through late 2025. The bigger concern lies not in the failure of any single company, but in the entire investment-grade bond market being heavily leveraged on AI’s success.
