How Big Tech’s AI Ambitions Are Fueling a Borrowing Boom

For the past few years, the largest US technology companies have been in a costly race to develop advanced artificial intelligence systems while at the same time providing computing power to a burgeoning field of startups. To chase these goals, they have radically changed how they finance their growth. Long reliant on rich revenues and share price increases, Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Meta Platforms Inc. and other tech giants now are borrowing heavily to build the technology that makes chatbots run.

In early March, Amazon.com Inc. sold bonds in Europe for the first time, raising €14.5 billion ($16.7 billion), the biggest ever corporate deal in the currency. The retail giant also borrowed $37 billion in the US bond market, in the fourth-largest US corporate bond sale on record.