NEW YORK: Amazon.com Inc is set to sell C$14bil (US$10bil) of investment-grade bonds, the largest corporate bond offering on record in the currency, in a deal that drew around twice that amount in demand.
Investors have placed about C$28bil of orders for the offering, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter.
The cloud-computing giants at the centre of the artificial intelligence (AI) boom are scouring global debt markets for funding as they plan to invest hundreds of billions of dollars on data centres, chips and other infrastructure.
Amazon, which is expected to spend around US$200bil this year, has already borrowed more than US$70bil since the start of 2025.
This includes debt sales in euros and Swiss francs.
For Amazon’s latest offering, the company has launched the sale of senior unsecured notes in five parts, with maturities ranging from three to 30 years.
The yield on the longest tranche is expected to be 1.10 percentage point more than government bonds, or about 0.05 percentage point less than initially discussed levels, people said, asking not to be identified because details are private.
The transaction is the largest-ever for a company tapping the Canadian dollar bond market.
It broke a record set only a month ago when Alphabet Inc raised C$8.5bil from a four-part bond sale.
Amazon’s sale would make the company one of the 10 largest issuers in the Canadian investment-grade corporate bond market, based on index-eligible debt outstanding, according to Bloomberg index data.
“Accessing Canada’s market after Alphabet’s recent deal suggests more borrowing in alternative currencies or equity, as data-capacity spending accelerates,” Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Robert Schiffman and Alex Reid said in a note to their clients recently.
The firm’s return to the bond market “suggests its AI investment is on a trajectory in 2027 that’s meaningfully higher than the US$200bil anticipated in 2026”.
Amazon plans to use the proceeds for general corporate purposes.
These may include “supporting business investments, funding future capital expenditures, and repaying debt”, a company spokesperson said by email.
The banks running the deal, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of Nova Scotia and Toronto-Dominion Bank, didn’t respond to a comment request or provide a comment. — Bloomberg
