AI's boom runs on debt: the financing chain behind the compute buildout
An analysis republished by 36Kr (originally from Yuanchuan Research Institute) argues AI infrastructure is being financed heavily with borrowed money: Tencent is reportedly weighing up to $5bn in offshore bonds, ByteDance has a $29.6bn syndicated loan from 30 banks, and Alphabet and Amazon issued tens of billions in bonds this year. It says Anthropic must spend $125.2bn leasing compute over five years, with Broadcom lending up to $42bn to fund it, and cites Morgan Stanley's estimate that roughly $450bn of AI-related debt was issued by September, more than double all of last year. The piece also cites FT-reported OpenAI internal roadshow materials projecting $840bn cumulative 2026-2030 revenue against $856bn of spending and negative $278bn cumulative free cash flow, while SoftBank raised $11.1bn in high-yield bonds (up to 9.75% coupon) and has invested $64.6bn for a 13% OpenAI stake.
It explains why leading AI firms keep raising money even as revenue grows: compute and data-center spending lands years before the revenue it is meant to serve.