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Market research · October 14, 2026

AI Data Center Debt Financing Statistics: 2026 Report

By Darin ten Bruggencate, Founder, AI Industry Reviews

Much of the new AI data center capacity is being built with borrowed money. Alongside the largest tech companies, data center developers and companies that rent out AI chips are borrowing heavily. A handful of these borrowers hold most of the debt, and they pay very different interest rates. So we looked at who is borrowing, how much and on what terms.

Our analysts collected every debt financing of $500 million or more by 12 data center developers and GPU cloud companies from January 2025 through October 7, 2026, using SEC filings, company press releases and the SpaceX prospectus. For each one, we recorded how much the borrower raised, when, and at what interest rate. We also compared this borrowing with the bonds sold by Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and Oracle over the same period.

Debt financing here means bonds, convertible notes, term loans, construction loans and credit facilities. The 45 dollar-denominated instruments in the study total $131.28 billion, and CoreWeave alone raised 26.2% of it.

In the following sections, we total the debt by borrower and by quarter, compare interest rates, list every deal, and set the borrowing beside the hyperscalers' own bond offerings.

AI Data Center Debt Financing by Borrower

The AI Industry Reviews research team totaled the debt by borrower to show which data center developers and GPU cloud companies have borrowed the most to build AI capacity since the start of 2025.

The 45 dollar-denominated instruments total $131.28 billion. CoreWeave also sold EUR 2.00 billion of senior notes in June 2026, which is listed separately and left out of the dollar totals.

AI Data Center Debt by Borrower, January 2025 to October 7, 2026

• CoreWeave raised $34.34 billion across 11 dollar instruments, 26.2% of the total. Its largest was an $8.50 billion delayed draw term loan in March 2026, priced at SOFR plus 2.25%.
• The $27.30 billion Hyperion bond is the largest single instrument in the set. It pays 6.581%, matures in May 2049 and was rated A+ by S&P, according to IFR. Meta's press release says PIMCO and other bond investors bought the notes in a private offering, with Morgan Stanley as sole bookrunner.
• Nebius raised $14.25 billion of its $15.02 billion through convertible notes, in four offerings of two series each.
• For investors, AI data center debt is concentrated in a few borrowers, which concentrates risk too. CoreWeave alone raised $34.34 billion, 26.2% of the total, and Meta's Hyperion bond was the largest single deal at $27.30 billion. Lenders' exposure will depend heavily on how these few companies perform.

AI Data Center Debt Financing by Quarter

Grouping the deals by quarter shows how quickly borrowing for AI data centers picked up and whether the pace has held in 2026.

Quarterly totals use the deal date in each filing or press release.

AI Data Center Debt by Quarter, 2025 to 2026

• No deal of $500 million or more was disclosed in the first quarter of 2025. The first was Crusoe's $7.10 billion construction loan for phase 2 of its 1.2 gigawatt Abilene campus, announced May 22, 2025 and led by JPMorgan.
• The fourth quarter of 2025 was the largest, at $42.80 billion. Without the Hyperion bond, it would have been $15.50 billion.
• AI infrastructure borrowing has settled into a steady pace after a late-2025 spike. Each 2026 quarter came in between $17.10 billion and $18.83 billion, with $53.42 billion through October 7. If that pace holds, 2026 will end around $70 billion, below 2025's $77.86 billion.

AI Data Center Debt Financing Rates

The interest rate a borrower pays shows how much risk lenders see in it, and for AI data centers those rates vary widely from one borrower to the next.

Rates are the coupon on fixed-rate notes and the spread over SOFR, the US benchmark lending rate, on floating-rate loans. The construction loans and credit facilities from private borrowers did not disclose rates.

AI Data Center Debt by Instrument Type and Rate

• Senior secured notes were the most used tool by dollar volume, at $51.04 billion. Eleven of the 12 were sold by a subsidiary or joint venture set up for one data center project or one GPU fleet. All except the Hyperion notes, which run to 2049, mature five to six years after issue.
• The median secured note coupon fell from 7.50% across six deals in 2025 to 6.44% across six deals in 2026. The highest 2026 coupon was Galaxy Digital's 9.875% on its Helios notes in July.
• xAI paid the highest rates in the set: 12.50% on $3.00 billion of secured notes and a $1.00 billion fixed-rate loan, and SOFR plus 7.25% on a $1.00 billion floating-rate loan. The SpaceX prospectus says all three were repaid in March 2026 from a $20.00 billion SpaceX bridge loan, with a $518 million prepayment penalty on the notes.
• CoreWeave's term loan spreads ranged from SOFR plus 2.25% (March 2026) to SOFR plus 5.50% (August 2026). Its unsecured dollar notes paid 9.00% to 9.75%. Only xAI and Galaxy Digital paid more than 9.75% on secured notes.
• Borrowing costs for AI data centers are easing, but riskier borrowers still pay much more. The median secured note coupon fell from 7.50% in 2025 to 6.44% in 2026, while xAI paid up to 12.50%. If lenders stay confident, well-backed projects are likely to keep borrowing more cheaply.

AI Data Center Debt Financing Deal Table

Each financing has its own lenders, maturity and project, and seeing them one by one makes it easier to follow a single borrower's history.

Borrowing entities in parentheses are subsidiaries set up to hold a single project.

AI Data Center Debt Financing Deals, January 2025 to October 7, 2026

Hyperscaler Bond Offerings, 2025 to 2026

Bond sales by the largest cloud companies give a sense of scale for the data center borrowing figures.

Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and Oracle also sold bonds in the same period. Each prospectus supplement says the money is for general corporate purposes, so this debt cannot be tied to data centers deal by deal. It is listed separately and kept out of the totals above. Microsoft filed no bond prospectus with the SEC from January 2025 to October 7, 2026.

Hyperscaler Bond Offerings by Company

Hyperscaler Bond Offerings, January 2025 to October 7, 2026

• The four companies sold $249.75 billion of dollar bonds in 12 offerings, 1.9 times the $131.28 billion raised by the AI borrowers above.
• Amazon's $37.00 billion offering on March 10, 2026, in 11 tranches, was the largest single offering, $9.70 billion more than the Hyperion bond.
• Alphabet sold bonds in five currencies: dollars, euros, pounds, Canadian dollars and yen. Its yen offering totaled JPY 576.5 billion.
• Hyperscalers can borrow far more, and more cheaply, than the specialist AI firms they compete with. The four sold $249.75 billion of dollar bonds, 1.9 times what the AI borrowers raised. That gap is likely to keep favoring the largest cloud companies in the race to build capacity.

What AI Data Center Debt Financing Trends Mean for 2027 and Beyond

A large part of the AI data center boom is being paid for with borrowed money. A handful of companies have taken on most of it, so the health of the buildout rests on a few balance sheets, and the borrowers with weaker credit pay much higher interest to get it.

The debt only works if customers keep renting the computing capacity it pays for. If AI demand slows, the companies that borrowed the most at the highest rates would struggle first, and lenders would grow more cautious with everyone else. If demand holds, borrowing costs could keep easing and more projects could get funded.

So if you hold bonds or shares in AI infrastructure companies, check how much each one has borrowed and at what rate, because those numbers decide who gets through a slowdown.