Risk is rising as big tech companies like Oracle — the ultimate financial source of the Ellison media empire — need to turn to the bond market for staggering sums to finance AI data centers.

The shift toward debt financing highlights the massive capital requirements for building out artificial intelligence infrastructure. Oracle's reliance on bonds signals that even cash-rich technology giants are facing funding constraints as they race to expand data center capacity.

Investors are closely watching how these bond issuances perform, as they reflect broader market appetite for financing the AI boom. The scale of borrowing needed underscores the intensity of competition among cloud providers and enterprise software vendors to secure computing resources.

As demand for AI workloads accelerates, the bond market is becoming a critical pipeline for tech firms seeking to maintain their infrastructure advantage without diluting equity.