The wave of AI debt financing in the US heats up and may attract market attention in September

Comparatively, the US Treasury recently relieved the pressure on the US bond market by expanding the long-term treasury bond repurchase program, but a wave of corporate bond financing driven by artificial intelligence infrastructure construction is heating up.

As investment in data centers, high-end chips, and AI services continues to expand, tech giants such as Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, and Oracle are increasing their bond financing efforts. The market anticipates that the issuance of US investment-grade corporate bonds will peak after Labor Day in September, and the scale may reach 200 billion US dollars.

According to the data, US investment-grade corporate bond issuance has increased 38% year over year since 2026, and the annual issuance scale is expected to reach a record 2.1 trillion US dollars. The large amount of new supply is related to AI capital expenditure.

In the past few years, tech giants have mainly relied on cash flow to support AI layout, but with the escalation of industry competition and the rapid expansion of long-term capital demand for data centers, electricity, computing power equipment, etc., companies have begun to rely more on bond market financing.

The market's focus is also shifting from whether AI can generate profits to whether huge infrastructure investments can generate sufficient returns. Some investors are concerned that the expansion of AI debt is changing the allocation of capital in the fixed income market, and that new capital competition between technology corporate bonds and US Treasury bonds may form.

Andrzej Skiba, head of fixed income at RBC Global Asset Management, said that the current AI-related bond supply is close to the limit of not disrupting the market.

Analysts pointed out that if future AI revenue growth cannot cover huge investments such as data centers and chip purchases, some capital expenses may face the risk of insufficient returns. The market is also beginning to compare the current AI financing boom with the internet bubble around 2000, wary that capital is being invested faster than the business model is being realized.

Although the US Treasury Department's repurchase program helps improve the liquidity of the treasury bond market, it cannot change the trend of simultaneous growth in government debt and corporate financing needs. The large-scale issuance of corporate bonds in September may become a new stress test for the US bond market.