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Latest Amazon bond demand cools after March debt sale
$25 billion offering drew $62 billion in orders, about half the March total
Key Takeaways:
- Amazon sold $25 billion in bonds July 7, its latest U.S. dollar debt offering to fund 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-grade offerings.
- The deal completes Amazon's U.S. dollar funding needs for 2026, with any further sales expected to be opportunistic, people said.
When Amazon.com Inc. sold its biggest-ever bond earlier this year, it was inundated with investor orders amid hype about the artificial intelligence boom. This time around, there’s 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 prior $37 billion deal in March.
It signals there’s a limit to the amount of money sloshing around for debt of even the highest-rated hyperscalers. As Amazon ramps up spending on AI infrastructure, this deal would bring its total bond issuance to more than $100 billion over the past year.
Credit markets have been flooded with AI-linked debt sales, with the July 7 deal boosting this year’s total to about $335 billion globally or more than twice the levels seen in 2025, the Bloomberg-compiled data shows. The rapid increase in supply has fueled concerns of investor fatigue, with Amazon’s offering prompting outstanding tech bonds to weaken in the secondary market.
Amazon, like its big technology rivals, is spending heavily on data center infrastructure to expand computing capacity for itself and its cloud customers during the AI boom and has turned to different corners of the debt market to help fund the spending.
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The company, which is expected to spend almost $200 billion this year, has tapped different currencies to fund its plans. The latest deal completes Amazon’s U.S. dollar funding needs for 2026, and any other debt sales in the currency would be opportunistic, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing private details.
Amazon last tapped the U.S. dollar debt market in March, when it raised $37 billion from what became the fourth-largest U.S. corporate bond sale on record. It also sold 14.5 billion ($16.6 billion) in euro-denominated bonds at the time, followed by bonds in Swiss francs in May and Canadian dollars last month, which was also a record.
Demand for the July 7 deal is less than three times its size, falling below the average of about four times for U.S. high-grade deals overall this year, according to Bloomberg-complied data.
Amazon is selling the new debt in as many as eight tranches, ranging from three to 40 years, the people said. Pricing for the longest portion of the deal — a note maturing in 2066 — tightened by 0.2 percentage point to about 1.25 percentage point above Treasuries.
Barclays, Goldman Sachs Group, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley are managing the transaction. Proceeds from the sale will be used for general corporate purposes, which may include repayment of debt, acquisitions and capital expenditures, the person said.
Amazon ranks 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 those for Amazon and Barclays didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Chipmaking giant Nvidia Corp. and SpaceX each raised $25 billion from U.S. dollar high-grade bonds sales last month. New AI-linked issuance has typically received strong demand from investors. SpaceX’s debut bond weakened significantly in the secondary markets, stunning some bond traders.
Written by Brian Smith, Michael Gambale and Davide Barbuscia
