Silicon Valley’s AI barons are flogging foreign debt like there is no tomorrow to keep their data centre dreams alive.
According to the Financial Times, big tech groups have gone on a global borrowing spree to fund the AI arms race. They are trying to diversify funding beyond the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street as capital spending runs riot.
Google parent Alphabet had no foreign debt until last year. In recent months, it has sold the equivalent of more than $40bn in overseas bonds across euros, Swiss francs, British pounds and Canadian dollars.
On 15 May 2026, it wrapped up its first yen-denominated bond deal worth ¥576.5bn ($3.6bn, about €3.1bn). US bankers worked through the night to pitch investors in Tokyo, according to people familiar with the matter.
The global debt binge shows how Silicon Valley’s biggest outfits are chasing fresh funding as their debt piles grow.
Big tech groups recently lifted their estimated AI spending to $725bn this year. That leaves them with their lowest free cash flow in more than a decade.
JPMorgan co-head of global investment grade financing John Servidea said the hyperscalers building huge data centres for flashier AI models were now exploring all available currency options.
“Raising debt in foreign currencies lets them leave longer intervals between tapping the US market and build some scarcity value”, Servidea said.
The wave of AI-linked debt sales from US companies has started to swamp investors. Some have become choosier and have demanded higher yields for deals they reckon look riskier.
Alphabet’s move to borrow in euros and Canadian dollars last week was partly driven by Meta’s recent $25bn bond sale. That deal drained investors’ appetite for similar tech borrowers, according to a person familiar with the decision.
Currencies such as the Swiss franc and the euro offer cheaper borrowing costs due to lower policy rates. Bankers said some borrowers were looking at debt in Australian and Singaporean dollars too.
Bank of America head of investment-grade syndicate Dan Mead said: “some may consider leaving a portion of the proceeds in local currencies and swap a portion back to dollars”.
Foreign-currency debt now accounts for about 30 per cent of hyperscalers’ overall borrowing, according to Bank of America.
On Tuesday, Amazon followed Alphabet into the Swiss market with a bond sale raising about SFr2.8bn ($3.6bn, about €3.1bn). That came weeks after it borrowed €14.5bn ($16.9bn) in its largest Eurobond sale so far.
Morgan Stanley global co-head of investment grade debt capital markets Teddy Hodgson said tech groups were moving quickly into foreign markets. These markets are smaller than the US debt pool and can run out of appetite fast.
“It’s not a pleasant position to be in if your peers have already exhausted the capacity for hyperscalers when you want to pivot,” Hodgson said.
In markets such as the UK, tech borrowers can lock in extremely long-term capital. Alphabet sold a rare 100-year sterling bond in February.
Barclays global co-head of investment grade debt syndicate Scott Schulte, whose bank underwrote Alphabet’s century bond, said tech companies prefer long maturities to avoid constant refinancing.
“They are arguably the modern-day railroad. It makes sense for them to issue longer maturities because AI is a long-term infrastructure,” Schulte said.
