AI debt sales surge

Investors kept buying debt tied to artificial intelligence projects in early April, even as broader credit markets buckled under war and inflation fears. (finance.yahoo.com) Bloomberg reported on April 11 that Wall Street assembled tens of billions of dollars of recent financing for the build-out, and Morgan Stanley kept its 2026 estimate for high-grade debt issuance tied to hyperscalers and other artificial-intelligence spending at $400 billion. (finance.yahoo.com) Oracle, Alphabet and Amazon had already raised more than $80 billion of dollar debt in the first quarter, and bankers told Bloomberg jumbo bond sales from hyperscalers alone could top $100 billion over the rest of 2026. (finance.yahoo.com) This borrowing wave is paying for the physical side of artificial intelligence: data centers, power contracts and the computer chips that run models. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas said on February 10 that estimates for data-center investment run between $3 trillion and $5 trillion over the next three to five years. (dallasfed.org) The Dallas Fed said roughly $500 billion to $600 billion had already been spent since 2023, much of it initially funded from retained earnings, but companies have increasingly turned to public bonds, private credit and other debt structures as projects got larger. (dallasfed.org) The demand stood out because the rest of credit was shaky. LSEG Lipper data cited by Bloomberg showed more than $5 billion left United States high-grade bond funds in the final week of March, the biggest weekly outflow since April 2025 and the first since November. (finance.yahoo.com) The money is not coming from one market. Bloomberg said CoreWeave sold $1.75 billion of junk bonds, Pacific Investment Management Company was preparing to sell part of its $14 billion debt financing for an Oracle data-center project in Michigan, and banks were marketing $3 billion of loans for a Meta-backed Ohio facility. (finance.yahoo.com) By late 2025, Bank of America estimated roughly $93 billion of artificial-intelligence-related debt had already come to the investment-grade market, nearly triple the sector’s average annual issuance of $32 billion from 2015 through 2024, according to Neuberger Berman. (nb.com) Private markets are filling in the gaps as campuses get bigger and more expensive. CNBC reported on April 6 that private infrastructure data-center deals were consistently above $10 billion in 2025, and Preqin data showed the largest deal reached $40 billion. (cnbc.com) Lenders are still not treating every borrower the same. Bloomberg said investors took comfort from large cash balances and low leverage at companies such as Meta, while analysts at Neuberger Berman warned that smaller, niche borrowers deeper in the build-out could be where credit problems emerge first. (finance.yahoo.com)