The biggest names in tech have been hitting the bond market like it owes them money. Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, and Oracle have collectively issued approximately $244 billion in bonds globally so far in 2026, more than double the $108 billion they raised in all of 2025. The goal: fund an AI infrastructure buildout so massive it makes the dot-com era look like a rounding error.
Demand is cooling, fast
The clearest signal that the market is getting full comes from cover ratios, which measure how much investor demand exists relative to the bonds being sold. In February, hyperscaler bonds were attracting orders at roughly 5x the amount on offer. By July, that number had dropped to around 2x.
Bonds are being sold at progressively wider premiums to compensate for the weaker appetite, and secondary market spreads have widened accordingly. The result is underperformance relative to broader US corporate bond indices. Fidelity, one of the world’s largest asset managers, has reportedly started shifting core bond fund allocations away from new AI-related deals.
Why so much debt, so fast
