An Amazon office in Vancouver. (Isabella Falsetti/Bloomberg)
Key Takeaways:
- Amazon sold C$14 billion of Canadian dollar investment-grade bonds June 8 in five tranches from three to 30 years, people said.
- Orders topped C$28 billion, making it Canada’s biggest corporate bond deal and helping push spreads as much as 0.03 percentage point wider.
- Amazon said proceeds are for general purposes including business investment, future capital expenditures and repaying debt as cloud giants fund AI infrastructure.
Amazon.com Inc. sold C$14 billion in high-grade bonds, the largest corporate debt offering on record in the currency, after drawing about twice that amount in demand.
Investors placed more than C$28 billion of orders for the offering, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
The cloud-computing giants at the center of the artificial intelligence boom are scouring global debt markets for funding as they plan to invest hundreds of billions of dollars on data centers, chips and other infrastructure. Amazon, which is expected to spend around $200 billion this year, has now borrowed more than $82 billion since the start of 2025, including debt sales in euros and Swiss francs.
Amazon on June 8 sold senior unsecured notes in five parts, with maturities ranging from three to 30 years. The longest portion was priced at 1.10 percentage point more than government bonds, or about 0.05 percentage point less than initial discussions, people said, asking not to be identified because details are private.
The transaction was the largest for a company tapping the Canadian dollar bond market, breaking a record set just a month ago when Alphabet Inc. raised C$8.5 billion from a four-part bond sale. The flood of debt on June 8 was enough to weaken corporate bonds relative to government securities, with spreads widening by as much as 0.03 percentage point following the sale, according to people familiar with the matter.
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 clients. The firm’s return to the bond market “suggests its AI investment is on a trajectory in 2027 that’s meaningfully higher than the $200 billion anticipated in 2026.”
Amazon plans to use the proceeds for general corporate purposes, which 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 immediately respond to a comment request or provide a comment.
Amazon sold 10- and 30-year bonds at a time when investors were looking for such debt. Investors were expected to receive coupon payments totaling more than C$20 billion in the first half of the month, according to a CIBC Capital Markets report, giving them money to invest. At the same time, the duration of one of the most common benchmarks in the market, the FTSE Canada Universe Bond Index, is extending about 0.165 year in the first half of the month, as bonds mature. That’s a relatively high figure, which can spur investors to buy longer-term bonds to extend the maturities of their portfolios.
Canadian investors’ embrace of hyperscaler debt is in part driven by demand for diversification and exposure to the technology sector. Last year’s inclusion of notes by non-Canadian companies in the FTSE Canada Universe Bond Index also means more demand from investors seeking to match the composition and duration of the index.
Amazon ranks No. 1 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest logistics companies in North America, No. 15 on the TT Top 100 list of the largest private carriers and No. 1 on the TT Top 50 list of the largest global freight companies.