An Amazon fulfillment center. (Bing Guan/Bloomberg)
key takeaways:
- Amazon sold $25 billion of bonds on July 7, its latest US dollar debt offering to finance general corporate purposes.
- Demand reached $62 billion, about half of March’s $37 billion deal and below this year’s average for U.S. high-end offerings.
- While the deal meets Amazon’s US dollar funding needs through 2026, further sales are expected to be opportunistic, the people said.
When Amazon.com Inc. When China sold its biggest-ever bond earlier this year, investors flooded in with orders amid hype about a boom in artificial intelligence. This time there is less fanfare.
Peak demand for its latest $25 billion offering reached $62 billion, according to people with knowledge of the matter. That’s about half the orders it attracted for its previous $37 billion deal in March.
This indicates that there is a limit to how much money can be spent on debt, even for the highest rated hyperscalers. As Amazon increases spending on AI infrastructure, the deal will take its total bond issuance over the past year to more than $100 billion.
Bloomberg-compiled data shows credit markets are flooded with AI-linked loan sales, with the July 7 deal bringing this year’s total globally to about $335 billion, or more than double the level seen in 2025. The rapid increase in supply has stoked concerns of investor fatigue, with Amazon’s offering weakening tech bonds outstanding in the secondary market.
Amazon, like its larger technology rivals, has been spending heavily on data center infrastructure to expand computing capacity for itself and its cloud customers during the AI boom and has turned to various corners of the debt market to finance the spending.
The company, which is expected to spend about $200 billion this year, has used a variety of currencies to fund its plans. The latest deal covers Amazon’s US dollar funding needs through 2026, and any further debt sales in the currency would be opportunistic, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing private details.
Amazon last tapped the US dollar debt market in March, when it raised $37 billion in the fourth-largest US corporate bond sale on record. It sold ¥14.5 billion ($16.6 billion) in euro-denominated bonds at the time, followed by bonds denominated in Swiss francs in May and Canadian dollars last month, also a record.
Demand for the July 7 deal is less than three times its size, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, which is about four times less than the average for U.S. high-end deals overall this year.
Amazon is selling the new loan in eight tranches ranging from three to 40 years, the people said. Pricing for the longest part of the deal – a note maturing in 2066 – tightened by 0.2 percentage points to about 1.25 percentage points over Treasuries.
Barclays, Goldman Sachs Group, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley are managing the transaction. The person said the proceeds from the sale will be used for general corporate purposes, which could include loan repayments, acquisitions and capital expenditure.
Amazon is ranked No. 1 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest logistics companies in North America, No. 15 on the TT Top 100 list of the largest private carriers, and No. 1 on the TT Top 50 list of the largest global freight companies.
Representatives for Goldman, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley declined to comment, while representatives for Amazon and Barclays did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Chip-making giants Nvidia Corp and SpaceX each raised $25 billion from the sale of high-grade US bonds last month. New AI-linked issuances have generally received strong demand from investors. SpaceX’s first bonds weakened significantly in secondary markets, leaving some bond traders stunned.
Written by Brian Smith, Michael Gamble and David Barbuscia
