US Corporate Bond Sales Reach $1.69 Trillion as Yields Climb, Reversing a Decade-Long Pattern

Since our Oct. 11 reporting on record 2026 stock sales and the surge in tech fortunes, new data show the AI buildout bending the bond market too.

For a decade through 2025, high-grade debt sales moved opposite to borrowing costs, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. When financing got pricier, companies pulled back, and investors got a breather from new supply.

This year that relationship has flipped. Companies have sold $1.69 trillion of US corporate bonds, up about 30% from the same point last year. Average yields rose about 1.2 percentage points to 5.97% as of Thursday's close, Oct. 8.

Borrowers who don't flinch at higher yields

Scott Schulte, global co-head of investment grade debt syndicate at Barclays, said hyperscaler capital spending is expected to run around $1 trillion next year. "AI bond issuance isn't going to slow down despite the higher-rate environment," he said.

Schulte also flagged investor worry about absorbing the supply, "especially when several European elections coming up may push global yields higher."

The worry showed up in credit derivatives and risk premiums on many tech companies, which broadly rose Wednesday and Thursday after talk of additional large financings from SpaceX and Broadcom. Neither company has announced a deal.

The case for the borrowers is straightforward. OpenAI expects annualized revenue of $70 billion or more by the end of the year, and the hyperscalers argue the returns on data centers and chips justify paying up.

The size of the buildout

Economist Stijn van Nieuwerburgh of the Brookings Institution projects total investment in data centers and related AI infrastructure will reach $10.3 trillion between 2025 and 2032, averaging 3.6% of GDP a year. Goldman Sachs, using a different method, puts US AI investment at 1.9% of GDP in 2026 alone.

By van Nieuwerburgh's math, that tops every earlier single-industry buildout: railroads from 1870 to 1890 averaged 2.24% of GDP, the interstate highways 1.13%, and the telecom and fiber boom of 1996 to 2003 1.1%.

FactSet's analyst consensus has Google, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Oracle spending a combined $4.2 trillion over the four years ending in 2029.

Van Nieuwerburgh also said tech companies often borrow through off-balance-sheet entities tied to banks and private-credit firms. Those arrangements come with little public reporting, he said, which makes the scale of the financial risk hard to gauge.

Crowding out other building

Commerce Department figures show private data center construction spending hit $37 billion through July, about $9 billion more than a year earlier. Private construction spending on everything else ran roughly $46 billion below year-earlier levels over the same seven months.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond has reported that data center construction is straining labor availability in its region. Site-selection consultant Didi Caldwell, who works with heavy industry, said the boom is "crowding out manufacturing."

A person familiar with the decision-making told the Wall Street Journal that a proposed aluminum smelter, estimated at 1,000 permanent jobs, went to Oklahoma instead of Mississippi last year. A data center announced near one candidate site, near Vicksburg, had tied up the electricity the smelter needed, that person said.

Power is the scarce input. U.S. purchases of land for future data centers hit about $6 billion in the first half of 2026, up 79% from a year earlier, according to Avison Young. In Northern Virginia, entitled land without power sells for roughly $4 million an acre, against at least $6 million for powered land, said Avison Young's John Andril. He cautioned that entitlements and infrastructure also affect those prices.

"The biggest thing right now is speed to power," Andril said.

What the Senate investigation alleges

A year-long Senate investigation concludes that some developers have misled the public about what data centers deliver, according to reporting by Time. Developers routinely cite construction jobs, but many have declined to say how many permanent jobs their projects create. The few that gave figures pointed to roughly one permanent position per megawatt, meaning a 100-megawatt site would employ about 100 people.

The investigation also found that sales-tax exemptions on computer equipment are often more lucrative than the property-tax breaks that draw attention during approvals. It estimated that 39% of a 1-gigawatt data center's spending goes to GPUs.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said, "Congress must hold Big Tech accountable so these companies pay their fair share." Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said working Americans and local communities are "footing the bill" while the companies "continue to operate without transparency."

The companies surveyed were Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, CoreWeave, Digital Realty and Equinix. They said they will pay direct costs but should not carry the larger investments, such as new power plants and transmission lines, that could also serve other customers. That is despite earlier pledges to "pay their own way."

Efforts to write the ratepayer protection pledge data center developers signed earlier this year into law have failed so far.

Who ends up paying for the grid upgrades these campuses require remains unresolved. Many developers have not disclosed permanent job counts, and the pledge remains voluntary.