After months of heavy borrowing, investors are reassessing industry risk as technology companies raised far less new debt last month to fund costly artificial intelligence projects. According to Sina Finance, Morgan Stanley data showed global AI-related debt issuance fell to $23 billion in September, less than half of August's volume.

Issuance has declined steadily since June, when AI-related borrowing hit a record $113 billion. Morgan Stanley said the drop in new debt mainly reflected the large-scale borrowing completed earlier this year, while investors have also grown more concerned about long-term returns and rising resistance to U.S. data center construction.

According to Sina Finance, U.S. blue-chip technology companies issued about $306 billion in the U.S. investment-grade bond market from January through August, while AI-related bond issuance in that market nearly stalled in September. Morgan Stanley also said companies have issued about $466 billion in AI-linked debt so far in 2026, compared with $101 billion in the same period last year.

The shift in sentiment comes as Wall Street banks work on large financing packages for Broadcom and Anthropic and as SpaceX negotiates to raise $40 billion to buy Nvidia chips. Meanwhile, Oracle's Project Jupiter data center campus in New Mexico has become a focal point of local opposition, and a source said related loans recently traded privately at about 85 cents on the dollar.