JPMorgan forecasts technology bond sales to exceed $500B in 2026

Technology companies are on track to flood the bond market with more than half a trillion dollars in new debt this year, according to JPMorgan. That $500B figure would make tech responsible for roughly 20% of all US bond sales in 2026, a share that eclipses even the sector’s 14% peak during the dot-com boom.

The difference between now and 1999? These companies are actually generating enormous cash flows. They’re just spending even faster.

The AI infrastructure arms race is driving the borrowing binge

JPMorgan’s forecast sits within a broader projection for the US investment-grade bond market, which the bank expects to hit a record $1.81 trillion in total issuance this year. That would top the previous high of $1.76 trillion set in 2020, when companies rushed to secure cheap pandemic-era financing.

Three forces are converging to push tech firms toward the debt markets at this scale. The most obvious: capital expenditures tied to artificial intelligence infrastructure. Building data centers capable of training and running large language models requires spending measured in tens of billions per company, and even the richest firms on earth are finding it easier to borrow than to fund everything from operating cash flow alone.

The second driver is refinancing. More than $1 trillion in existing corporate debt needs to be rolled over, and tech companies hold a meaningful slice of that total.

Third, mergers and acquisitions activity is picking up. Large tech deals frequently involve bond issuance to fund the purchase price, and a more active deal environment means more paper hitting the market.

JPMorgan’s earlier projections from late 2025 pegged tech issuance at around $250B, with the broader Technology, Media, and Telecommunications sector estimated at nearly $400B. The jump to $500B for tech alone signals that AI-related spending plans have only accelerated.

A very different kind of tech borrowing

In the late 1990s, many of the companies issuing debt were pre-revenue or barely profitable. The 14% share tech held in the bond market at that point was built on optimism and not much else. Today’s tech borrowers include companies sitting on hundreds of billions in combined cash reserves. Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta aren’t issuing bonds because they’re desperate for funding. They’re issuing bonds because it’s often more tax-efficient to borrow than to repatriate overseas cash or liquidate investments.

A decade ago, tech bond issuance was frequently tied to shareholder returns: borrowing cheaply to fund buybacks and dividends. Now the primary use case is capital investment. These companies are building physical infrastructure at a pace not seen since the telecom buildout of the early 2000s, except the dollar amounts are significantly larger.

What this means for the bond market and beyond

A single sector accounting for one-fifth of all US investment-grade issuance creates concentration risk that fixed-income investors can’t ignore. Bond index funds and ETFs that track the investment-grade market will mechanically increase their tech exposure as new issuance shifts the index composition.

Credit spreads in the tech sector could face pressure from the sheer volume of supply. When $500B in new bonds needs to find buyers, even strong-credit issuers may need to offer slightly wider spreads to clear the market.

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