US companies have issued more than $200bn worth of bonds to finance huge artificial intelligence-related infrastructure projects this year, as analysts predict the splurge will “flood” the broader market and store up new debt risks for credit investors.
The tech giants that provide the cloud computing on which the internet is run at first financed their huge investments in data centres and related infrastructure primarily through their strong earnings and hefty balance sheets.
But they have increasingly begun to tap debt markets to cover the mounting upfront costs of colossal new AI data centres, particularly as returns from the technology are still years away.