Tech Giants Ramp Up AI Infrastructure Spending with $121B Debt Issuance
Tech companies are leveraging massive debt markets to fund an unprecedented AI infrastructure buildout, with $121 billion in new debt expected by 2025. OpenAI's Sam Altman emphasized the scale at a Texas data center site: "This is what it takes to deliver AI." The Stargate program alone represents a near-$850 billion investment across multiple locations.
CFO Sarah Friar noted the Abilene campus could eventually exceed one gigawatt of capacity—enough to power 750,000 homes—as Nvidia's next-gen accelerator chips come online. "What we see today is a massive compute crunch," she said, with shovels already in the ground for 2026-2029 capacity.
The arms race extends beyond OpenAI. Meta's Hyperion project in Louisiana will consume more energy than New Orleans, while Google breaks ground on Arkansas facilities. Altman summarized the industry's constraint: "We would be way bigger now if we had way more capacity."
