Nvidia (NVDA) is looking to raise at least $20 billion in the bond market, turning the AI chip giant into the latest company to tap Wall Street for the boom it helped create.
The company is marketing bonds in seven parts, with maturities running from two years to 30 years, according to Bloomberg. It would be Nvidia’s first corporate bond sale since 2021.
This is not a distress signal. Nvidia is a cash machine. But the deal shows how large the AI build-out has become. Even the biggest winners are using capital markets — the markets for raising money through stocks and bonds — to preserve flexibility.
Nvidia’s planned bond sale comes shortly after Alphabet’s (GOOG, GOOGL) planned $80 billion stock sale, which showed the same pressure from the equity side. That deal would be the largest equity raise in history — bigger than SpaceX’s $75 billion IPO.
The way these companies are raising money differs. Alphabet is using stock. Amazon (AMZN), Meta (META), and Nvidia are using bonds. Oracle (ORCL) and Supermicro (SMCI) have turned to a combination of both stocks and bonds.
The message is the same: The AI trade is becoming a funding story.
Part of the issue is capital expenditures — the money companies spend on long-term assets such as data centers, chips, servers, and power infrastructure. Yahoo Finance recently found that AI infrastructure is taking up a rising share of hyperscalers’ operating cash flow, with Amazon now spending nearly all of the cash it generates from operations on capital expenditures.
For Nvidia, the official use of proceeds is general corporate purposes, including repayment and refinancing of notes. So Nvidia is not borrowing directly for AI capital expenditures — but it now belongs to the wider AI financing wave.
The AI trade is no longer just about who has the best chip or model. It is also about who can keep paying for the machines behind it.
Jared Blikre is the global markets and data editor for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on X at @SPYJared or email him at jaredblikre@yahooinc.com.
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