AI spending boom pushes Amazon and Alphabet into global bond markets

Amazon and Alphabet have borrowed about $60 billion across multiple currencies over the past 12 months as their artificial intelligence buildout pushes technology financing beyond the U.S. dollar market. The shift signals that the heaviest AI spenders are no longer relying only on operating cash flow, but on a wider mix of debt, currencies and maturities to fund chips, cloud infrastructure and data centers.

Amazon’s March euro sale raised €14.5 billion, or $16.88 billion, in an eight-part deal that became the largest ever in the euro corporate bond market. Demand was even more striking in the United States: Amazon’s earlier dollar deal drew about $126 billion in orders, a reminder that investor appetite for Big Tech credit remains deep even as issuance scales up. The euro bonds carried maturities ranging from two years to 38 years, stretching Amazon’s funding profile far beyond near-term needs.

Alphabet has moved just as aggressively. On May 15, it sold 576.5 billion yen, about $3.6 billion, of yen-denominated bonds, the largest-ever issue by a foreign company and the first yen debt sale in the company’s history. Before that, Alphabet had already tapped markets in euros, sterling, Canadian dollars and Swiss francs, and it also sold the first 100-year bond from a tech company since 1997, an unusually long-dated bet on the staying power of the AI race.

The borrowing surge tracks a capital spending wave that analysts expect to reach roughly $725 billion across hyperscalers in 2026, nearly double the level seen in mid-2025. Alphabet has flagged capital expenditure of as much as $190 billion this year. Bankers are pushing issuers into foreign-currency markets and more complex funding structures to avoid flooding U.S. investors with too much supply at once, while companies finance trillions of dollars in planned AI infrastructure over the coming years. That widening footprint shows how quickly the AI boom has become a credit-market test, with vulnerability likely to surface first if demand for these bonds cools.