Tldr:
- Hyperscalers have committed $725 billion in capital expenditures for 2026, up 77% from the 2025 record of $410 billion set just one year ago.
- Non-USD bond issuance rose from zero in 2024 to 48% of ultra-expansion financing by mid-2026.
- Alphabet has set borrowing records in the yen, Canadian dollar, Swiss franc and British pound through a single calendar year, 2026.
- Global AI debt issuance is expected to reach US$570 billion for 2026, nearly four times the total level of 2022.
Hyperscale companies are reshaping global bond markets as their spending on AI infrastructure reaches unprecedented levels. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta have committed $725 billion in capital spending for 2026 alone.
This number is up 77% from the record $410 billion set in 2025. Goldman Sachs expects combined capital expenditures from 2026 through 2031 to reach $7.6 trillion. The scale of this spending has pushed tech giants into foreign currency debt markets at a record pace.
Non-dollar bond issuance rises across major currencies
In 2024, Over scaling Issuing zero bonds in currencies other than the US dollar. By 2025, all new issues other than the US dollar are entirely new territory. Now, non-USD currencies account for 48% of ultra-large bond financing in 2026.
The euro leads this segment with 52%, followed by the Japanese yen with 15%, the Canadian dollar with 14%, the British pound with 12%, and the Swiss franc with 7%.
Bank of America confirmed that companies with significant expansion doubled their share of non-dollar bonds to 30% of total issuance this year. As Milk Road AI notes, this shift has moved so quickly that it has strained the US bond market’s ability to absorb it. The US market simply cannot absorb the full amount of debt these companies now need to raise.
Individual trades reflect how quickly this trend is accelerating. In May, Alphabet issued 576.5 billion yen, or roughly $3.6 billion, of yen-denominated bonds. It was the largest yen bond ever sold by a non-Japanese company, surpassing Berkshire Hathaway’s 2019 record.
alphabet It has now set records for borrowing in the yen, Canadian dollar, Swiss franc and British pound within a single calendar year. This is a level of multi-currency debt activity rarely seen from any single corporate issuer at this pace.
AI debt issuance is on track to double its levels in 2022
Amazon It entered the Canadian bond market in June with a C$14 billion issuance, the largest corporate bond ever sold in that market.
Investor orders reached nearly C$28 billion, nearly double what was eventually sold. The deal surpassed Alphabet’s Canadian record of C$8.5 billion set just weeks earlier in May.
Morgan Stanley expects euro borrowing by highly expanding companies to reach €50 billion in 2026. This would make the United States the largest source of corporate debt in the entire eurozone, ahead of France. This shift has wide-ranging consequences for European fixed income markets.
Global AI-related debt issuance is on track to reach $570 billion for all of 2026, according to Morgan Stanley. This represents more than double the pace recorded during the same period last year. It is also nearly four times the 2022 level.
Even companies with more than $1 trillion in cash combined, including Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta, have concluded that self-funding such a build is not possible.
the Artificial intelligence infrastructure Sweat has become so capital intensive that even the richest companies in the world cannot finance it independently.
