Big Tech is borrowing hundreds of billions for AI, and bond investors are getting cautious

The companies that used to fund everything out of their couch cushions are now taking out loans. Hyperscalers, data center operators and chipmakers are borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars to pay for the AI buildout. AI-related debt issuance for 2026 is estimated at between $450 billion and $570 billion. That is a striking number for an industry long famous for sitting on enormous cash piles. The borrowers are familiar names: Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta and Oracle, plus chipmakers like Nvidia and Broadcom. The shopping list includes data centers, servers, GPUs and the power capacity needed to keep all of it running. The numbers behind the borrowing binge Goldman Sachs projects that hyperscaler capital expenditures will land between $600 billion and $820 billion in 2026, with spending potentially topping $1 trillion in 2027. The bond issuance is already piling up. Goldman Sachs has noted that gross corporate-bond issuance by hyperscalers in the early months of 2026 has already surpassed the total for all of 2025. AI-related debt issuance in 2025 reached $100 billion to $121 billion. That figure was more than three times the average of prior years, and 2026 estimates sit s...