AI firms account for nearly half of UK corporate bond sales

AI hyperscalers accounted for 47% of sterling corporate bond sales so far this year, the Bank of England said.

The Bank’s Financial Policy Committee (FPC) revealed the figure in the record of its 25 September meeting, published on Wednesday (30 September).

Corporate bonds are debts that companies sell to investors in exchange for regular interest payments.

Hyperscalers are the largest cloud and AI infrastructure companies, which build and run the data centres that power AI services.

The FPC said AI firms still sell far fewer bonds in sterling than in US dollars or euros, despite their large share of the UK market.

Global AI-related debt issuance reached around $450 billion by early September, according to estimates from investment bank Morgan Stanley cited by the Bank.

That figure is more than double the total AI-related debt sold across all of 2025.

The Bank expects global AI-related debt issuance in 2026 to exceed the amount that countries such as the UK borrow.

JP Morgan analysts estimated that AI companies will fund around $4.1 trillion of spending through debt between 2026 and 2030, the Bank said.

Private credit, where investment funds rather than banks lend directly to companies, will also play a growing role in funding AI.

Morgan Stanley analysts expect private credit to finance $700 billion of data centre spending between 2026 and 2028.

The FPC warned that rising debt, a lack of transparency and circular financing deals between AI firms could make risks harder to assess.

These factors could also magnify losses if AI fails to deliver on expectations, the committee said.

It added that economic growth forecasts and government budgets now depend partly on AI delivering major productivity gains.

A downgrade in those expectations could therefore hit government debt markets as well as AI company valuations, according to the Bank.

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