(Reuters) - Nvidia said on Monday it would raise $25 billion through a U.S. bond issuance, as it taps the debt market to increase liquidity for the first time since 2021.
The debt financing was more than initially planned, Reuters had reported earlier on Monday, citing two sources.
Investor demand for the bond sale hit $85 billion, one of the sources familiar with the matter said, declining to be named as the plan was still private. It was initially looking to raise $20 billion, the source had said earlier.
The bond consists of seven tranches of notes, maturing as late as 2056, according to a term sheet seen by Reuters.
Demand was mainly domestic, the first source said, adding that bond issuance came as a surprise to investors as the company said little ahead of time.
The AI chip leader has not accessed the investment-grade bond market in five years, previously raising $5 billion in June 2021, the source said.
A company spokesperson said Nvidia aims to use the proceeds for general corporate purposes, including the repayment and refinancing of outstanding notes. The main reason, according to one of the sources, was to establish a liquid benchmark to its cost of credit - more so than funding capital expenditures.
The chipmaker capped the bond issue at $25 billion to keep low credit spreads and in contrast with the hyperscalers funding their investments in AI, one of the sources said.
Big Tech companies have signaled that spending on AI would not slow down, with combined outlays set to surpass $700 billion this year, up from around $400 billion in 2025.
Meta in October filed for its largest bond offering of up to $30 billion, while Alphabet last month disclosed its plans to sell Japanese yen-denominated bonds for the first time.
While Nvidia has not been building large-scale data centers, its chips, which are used in those servers, enjoy red-hot demand from companies looking to train, and run increasingly advanced models.
In order to keep pace with the fast-evolving AI sector, Nvidia has been investing heavily in building the most advanced processors, now releasing a new family of chips every year, each with higher AI capabilities than the last.
The company has $13.24 billion in cash and cash equivalents as of the quarter ended April 2026. Nvidia shares closed up 3.3% on Monday.
Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley are the bookrunners.
Reporting by Saeed Azhar and Tatiana Bautzer in New York, Zaheer Kachwala in Bengaluru and Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Arun Koyyur, Deepa Babington and Anil D'Silva
Source: Reuters