Via fastcompany.com
The AI buildout is turning tech's most cash-rich companies into some of the credit market's biggest borrowers, and the implications ripple far beyond Silicon Valley.
Citadel Securities is projecting more than $500 billion in additional public and private debt issuance by 2028, all earmarked for one thing: the chips powering artificial intelligence data centers. The forecast lands at a moment when credit markets are already digesting record-breaking borrowing from tech companies, and the appetite shows no signs of slowing.
The numbers behind the AI debt machine #
Citadel Securities estimates AI capital expenditure spending will climb to roughly $600 billion in 2026, up from approximately $400 billion in 2025. That 50% jump in a single year is staggering even by tech industry standards.
Morgan Stanley’s projections paint an even wider picture. The firm estimates the private credit market for AI data centers could reach around $800 billion by 2028, forming part of a total projected financing gap of $1.5 trillion against a $2.9 trillion global data center capex outlook.
The velocity of recent issuance tells its own story. Hyperscalers collectively pushed out about $75 billion in bonds and loans during just September and October 2025, all directed toward AI data center construction.
On the secured debt side, US data center debt hit $25.4 billion in 2025, a 112% year-over-year increase. And individual chipmakers are joining the party too. MediaTek recently approved a $5 billion financing package specifically to boost production capacity for AI data center chips.
Why cash-rich tech giants are suddenly debt-hungry #
The buildout required for competitive AI infrastructure is so capital-intensive that even companies generating tens of billions in annual free cash flow can’t self-fund their way through it. The result is a structural pivot toward debt financing, with workloads that were previously covered by surplus cash now requiring external capital.
Off-balance-sheet financing arrangements are becoming increasingly popular as tech firms look for ways to absorb the pressure without cratering their balance sheet metrics.
What this means for crypto investors #
Many of the same GPU chips being financed through this debt binge are architecturally similar to the hardware underpinning crypto mining operations and decentralized AI compute networks. Projects like Render, Akash, and other decentralized compute protocols are essentially competing for the same silicon. A supply chain increasingly optimized for centralized AI data centers could make decentralized alternatives more expensive to build and operate.
The return-on-investment question looms large over all of this. Tech companies are making a massive, leveraged bet that AI revenues will materialize fast enough to service the debt. If those returns disappoint, the resulting credit stress could trigger broader risk-off sentiment that hits crypto markets hard.
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