U.S. corporations have issued more than US$ 200 billion in bonds this year to finance infrastructure tied to artificial intelligence, marking a dramatic surge in debt market activity tied to AI rollout. The wave of issuance includes heavyweight deals such as Meta Platforms’ US$ 30 billion bond package, which drew order books totalling approximately US$ 125 billion —said to be the largest for a U.S. investment-grade corporate bond on record.
This flood of issuance is reshaping the corporate credit market. Analysts at Goldman Sachs estimate that AI-related bonds now account for more than a quarter of all U.S. investment-grade corporate issuance this year. Issuers such as Oracle Corporation, which placed US$ 18 billion of bonds in September to build new data centers and lease capacity to the AI ecosystem, illustrate both the scale and the strategic intent behind the funded capex.
Yet the build-out raises significant risks for credit investors and the broader market. As described by fund managers at Barclays and others, the sheer size of the issuance could divert investor demand away from other sectors, heighten concentration risk in the credit market and increase sensitivity to interest-rate changes given the longer maturities involved. Moreover, the payoff from these massive AI investments remains uncertain. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that while the AI investment boom is large, it is not yet built on debt-heavy methods in general.
From a market-structure perspective, the issuance spree comes amid historically tight credit spreads and strong fund flows into corporate credit. But regulators and central banks are beginning to express concern. For example, the Bank of England recently flagged that if investor sentiment about AI sours, markets could face a “sharp correction”. AI is reshaping corporate strategy, but because it is reshaping how that strategy is being financed, and with it the risk profile of the credit markets.
