The world's largest technology companies are turning en masse to the bond market to fund the race for artificial intelligence. Within a few days, Meta, Microsoft, Alphabet and Oracle raised nearly $57 billion in bonds — and Apple joined the queue this week.
Apple joins the queue
The latest move comes from Apple: on Wednesday (5), the company filed a preliminary prospectus with the SEC to issue seven series of bonds maturing between 2028 and 2036. According to Bloomberg, the target is to raise about $7 billion, with investor orders already totalling around $31 billion. Unlike its rivals, however, Apple's filing makes no mention of artificial intelligence: the proceeds would go to general corporate purposes, such as share buybacks, dividends, acquisitions and debt repayment.
Meta leads the wave
Meta led the wave: on Tuesday (3), the owner of Facebook and Instagram raised $15 billion in US dollar bonds, split into five tranches with maturities of 5 to 30 years, with orders reaching $58 billion. The company then debuted in the European market with a €9 billion issue (about $10 billion) — its first in euros. Meta expects to spend $135 billion to $145 billion in 2026, mainly on data centers and computing capacity, and S&P cut the company's credit outlook last week, citing the pressure of AI spending.
Microsoft completed a $25 billion issue in recent days, its first since 2017, while Alphabet raised €6 billion (about $6.7 billion) on Monday (2), in its second euro issue this year. Oracle also raised $10 billion the same day. According to Dealroom, Alphabet, Meta, Oracle and Amazon have already issued nearly $90 billion in bonds since September.
The cost of the bill
The borrowing comes at a moment of market nervousness about the cost of AI. As Geekiki reported, the Nasdaq entered correction territory this week on fears over the cost of AI infrastructure, and Nvidia fell about 8% in a single day. According to Bloomberg, Big Tech bond spreads versus other investment-grade debt are at their widest levels since 2003 — a sign that investors are charging more to fund this expansion.
The numbers show the scale: Bloomberg Intelligence estimates that hyperscalers and AI-focused cloud providers will invest about $4.5 trillion over the next three years. Meta alone is projected to spend more than $740 billion. The question the market is now asking is whether the returns on these investments will keep pace with the spending — and for now, the answer is being financed on credit.
Image credit: photo of server racks in a data center, by Tony Webster, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Sources: 9to5Mac; CoinEdition; Seoul Economic Daily (Bloomberg); Cryptopolitan; Dealroom.
Transparency: this article was produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence, cross-checking public posts on X and sources on the internet. We recommend consulting the original sources for more details.
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