JPMorgan lifts tech bond forecast to $540B on AI spending
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- JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) has revised its 2026 corporate bond issuance forecast for the technology, media, and telecommunications sector upward from US$450 billion to US$540 billion, projecting total annual volume to exceed US$500 billion.
- The revision reflects accelerating capital expenditure by large technology companies as part of the ongoing artificial intelligence infrastructure investment cycle, according to a report released by the bank on Friday.
- A team led by JPMorgan strategist Erika Spear identified chip-backed financing as the "next major frontier" for supporting artificial intelligence infrastructure buildout, adding that its scale could "expand to trillions of dollars" by the end of this decade.
JPMorgan has identified seven investment-grade data centre financing opportunities that have not yet secured funding, in addition to six projects that have already closed financing arrangements.
Four of the identified upcoming financing opportunities are expected to originate from Oracle and OpenAI, reflecting the significant capital requirements of large-scale artificial intelligence data centre development.
JPMorgan projects that Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) will return to the corporate bond market following the release of its third-quarter earnings report, adding to the expected volume of technology sector debt issuance in the second half of 2026.
Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) has been identified by JPMorgan as the "biggest wildcard" among major technology issuers, with the bank noting that the company may access the bond market for the first time since 2017 to fund its artificial intelligence and infrastructure commitments.
The combination of rising AI capital expenditure, data centre expansion, and the potential entry of Microsoft into the bond market for the first time in nearly a decade underpins JPMorgan's materially higher sector issuance forecast for the full year.
