AMD has flogged $4.75 billion in bonds as its AI data centre ambitions start chewing through serious cash.
According to The Motley Fool, AMD just completed its largest bond sale yet, raising $4.75 billion in senior notes across four maturities. That is more than triple the $1.5 billion it raised in March 2025.
The timing is interesting, since AMD ended its second quarter with $13.1 billion in cash and short-term investments. It generated $2.4 billion in operating cash flow during the quarter, but still decided borrowing was the smarter move.
The reason is sitting in its roaring data centre business. Second-quarter revenue hit a record $11.5 billion, up 50 per cent from a year earlier, while data centre sales more than doubled to $6.7 billion and made up 58 per cent of total sales.
AMD chief executive Lisa Su said, “We enter the second half with strong momentum as EPYC demand accelerates, Instinct deployments scale and Helios begins to ramp.” Helios is AMD’s rack-scale AI reference design, which means cash goes out for capacity, parts and inventory long before customers pay up.
The new debt is not exactly painful. Investors accepted spreads of 0.43 to 0.9 percentage points above comparable US Treasuries, with notes due in 2029, 2031, 2033 and 2036 carrying coupons from 4.6 per cent to 5.5 per cent.
Annual interest expense should land at about $240 million, which AMD can cover from recent cash flow without reaching behind the sofa. The proceeds are for “general corporate purposes, which may include the repayment of debt,” giving the outfit plenty of wiggle room.
The raise puts AMD in the same spending scrum as other AI-hungry tech giants. Alphabet sold $25 billion in bonds in early August, while Intel raised nearly $20 billion through a common stock offering to bolster its manufacturing and technology roadmap.
AMD’s balance sheet still looks fairly tidy after the deal, with debt rising from about $3.2 billion to roughly $8 billion while cash remains higher. The real strain falls on shareholders, since the stock recently traded around $514 and carried a price-to-earnings multiple above 130 times trailing earnings.
The cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street will now be watching to see whether Su spends the money on Helios inventory, manufacturing agreements, refinancing, or something more interesting.
