The corporate bond market is about to get very, very busy. Morgan Stanley projects that US investment-grade corporate debt issuance will land between $2.2 trillion and $2.46 trillion in 2026, a figure driven overwhelmingly by one thing: the insatiable appetite for AI infrastructure.
The AI debt machine
Morgan Stanley estimates that global AI-related debt issuance will exceed $500 billion to $570 billion in 2026. Through May of this year, $236 billion in AI-linked debt had already been issued, a substantial increase compared to the same period last year.
The biggest borrowers are exactly who you’d expect. The so-called “Big Six” hyperscalers, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle, have historically accounted for a considerable share of tech-related bond issuance. Their combined capital expenditure plans now exceed $500 billion to $600 billion annually.
Morgan Stanley’s breakdown gets more granular from there. Roughly $200 billion of technology corporate debt issuance in 2026 could be directly attributed to AI infrastructure investments. On top of that, the firm expects an additional $150 billion to flow through securitization efforts, including asset-backed securities and commercial mortgage-backed securities tied to data center properties.
