US companies have sold $1.7tn of investment-grade bonds in 2025, a near-record sum stoked by a rush of borrowing to fund AI infrastructure that has spurred concerns over a debt glut.
This year’s issuance — closing in on the $1.8tn issued in 2020 as businesses rushed to shore up their finances during the Covid pandemic — has come as companies took advantage of relatively low borrowing costs to refinance their debt.
But the debt sales, tracked by trade body Sifma through to the end of November, also reflect an AI borrowing boom, as Big Tech groups including Meta, Alphabet, Amazon and Oracle tapped bond markets to fund data centres and the energy systems needed to power them.