The AI buildout is increasingly being financed with debt, and Amazon just added the biggest single tranche yet. On July 7, 2026, the company launched an eight-part bond offering to raise at least $25 billion, most of it earmarked for AI infrastructure and data centers.
The sale
The benchmark offering spanned eight parts. Demand peaked at about $62 billion before orders were pared to roughly $41 billion once the banks managing the deal trimmed the spread offered to investors — still heavily oversubscribed, if with less fanfare than Amazon's March sale. Amazon told its underwriters it will not issue any more debt this year.
The capex behind it
The borrowing funds an extraordinary spending year. Amazon projects capital expenditure of about $200 billion in 2026, up from $131 billion in 2025, with most going to data centers, chips and equipment for AWS and its own AI ambitions. The company had already raised roughly $54 billion in US and European bonds earlier this year, plus $10 billion in Canada in June.
An industry on credit
Amazon is not alone. Morgan Stanley expects global AI-related bond issuance to approach $570 billion this year, as Meta, Oracle and others tap debt markets alongside long-term lease commitments like Anthropic's $19 billion deal with TeraWulf. The shift from cash-funded to debt-funded capex signals confidence — and adds leverage.
The read
For now, the bond market is happily underwriting the buildout; the oversubscription says investors want the paper. But rising leverage across the hyperscalers concentrates macro risk on a single wager — that AI demand keeps compounding fast enough to justify the spending. The widening gap between committed capex and realized AI revenue is becoming the number to watch.