Bond investors haven’t been rattled as they’ve watched AI giants rack up $270 billion in debt this year. But on Tuesday, Amazon gave them a shake.
The company plunked what Bank of America called a “surprise” $25 billion bond sale on the market on July 7, bringing the amount of debt issued by the tech giant to $92 billion this year—surpassing the amounts that Alphabet’s Google, Meta, and Oracle have each issued this year.
To get the deal done, Amazon had to sweeten the terms, offering 18 to 21 basis points of extra yield on its longest bonds. Yet even with sugar on top, Amazon’s debt offering drew the weakest demand with orders at just 2.5 times the bonds on offer, down from 3.2 times in March. According to BofA, Amazon’s overall new-issue performance was the weakest for any hyperscaler since Meta’s $30 billion bond sale in October 2025
“Investors are pushing back,” BofA wrote in its note. “The deal should also inject even more uncertainty into the hyperscaler/AI supply outlook.”
Amazon still had more buyers of its investment-grade debt (credit agency Moody’s rates it AA, its third-highest rating; S&P rates it S1, its fifth highest) than it sold in Tuesday’s deal. But the slowing level of demand could be a warning sign about the future of the AI boom.
