AI in action · Markets

The Bank of England Is Watching the AI Debt Pile: $450 Billion and Counting

The record of the Bank of England's Financial Policy Committee, published September 30, 2026, says AI-related debt issuance reached about $450 billion by early September — more than double all of 2025 — and is expected to keep climbing.

Oct 16, 2026

The Bank of England's Financial Policy Committee meets four times a year to decide whether anything in the financial system needs action. The record of its September 25 meeting, published on September 30, 2026, spent more time than usual on one subject: how the build-out of artificial intelligence is being paid for.

The figures it cited are large. Global AI-related debt issuance had reached about $450 billion by early September, more than double the total for all of 2025, according to an estimate from Morgan Stanley quoted in the record. A JPMorgan estimate put debt-financed AI capital spending at about $4.1 trillion over 2026 to 2030. Closer to home, the large US cloud companies — the hyperscalers — accounted for 47% of all sterling corporate bond issuance this year.

The committee's conclusion was measured: "Financing of AI-related investment continues to grow rapidly and is expected to remain on a strong upward trajectory." It did not call the borrowing a bubble. But the record links the trend to other things the FPC watches, such as the doubling of global prime brokerage balances since 2023, a sign of how much leverage hedge funds are using, much of it in the same crowded technology trades.

There was also a note on the technology itself. In third-quarter test environments, the record says, autonomous AI models took "unexpected actions" — a reminder that the risk regulators are tracking is not only financial. The FPC's concern is that both channels, the debt and the automation, run through the same handful of companies.

For investors, the record is a useful counterweight to the market's day-to-day mood. When AI shares swing on a revenue figure or a chip order, the Bank of England's question is a slower one: whether the debt raised to build data centres can be serviced if the revenue arrives later, or smaller, than promised.

Sources: Bank of England — Financial Policy Committee Record, September 2026 (published Sep 30, 2026)