Funding rounds and IPOs are raising 11-figure sums, while blockbuster bond sales span three continents, as tech companies rush to invest in data centers and investors fork over cash through all possible means.
Alphabet's $85 billion equity raise is just the latest example, with SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI poised for public listings that could make this year the biggest ever for money raised through IPOs.
The so-called AI hyperscalers - Alphabet, Amazon.com, Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle - have issued $159 billion of bonds globally this year, up from $108 billion last year and $17 billion in 2021, according to Dealogic.
Despite concerns that the AI build-out could get messy, with companies overspending and Wall Street eventually weeding out the losers, demand from investors has generally defied the skeptics so far.
Tech stocks in the S&P 500 remain up 31% this quarter, with many citing encouraging fundamentals, such as businesses' surging spending on AI tools and the recent news that Anthropic would turn a quarterly profit ahead of expectations.
Spending on data centers and other AI infrastructure by just four big tech companies this year is expected to total more than $670 billion, a larger investment as a share of the economy than even the railroad expansion of the 1850s.
