Amazon can borrow up to $80 billion against the AI hardware it buys

Amazon has disclosed a new secured loan facility of up to about $80 billion to pay for technology infrastructure, according to its quarterly report for the period ended September 30, 2026, as Bloomberg reported. Amazon can borrow from early 2027 through the third quarter of 2028.

A five-year loan secured on the equipment itself

The terms come from the debt note in Amazon’s Form 10-Q. The filing calls the arrangement a “Loan Facility” under supplier financing arrangements and says the size is up to approximately $80.0 billion, subject to variability based on purchase orders and pricing terms.

• Timing: borrowings are at Amazon’s discretion, from the first quarter of 2027 through the third quarter of 2028.
• Maturity: each borrowing matures five years after the date it is drawn.
• Interest: variable rates.
• Collateral: Amazon will grant a security interest in certain purchased assets. The filing does not say which assets.
• Accounting: amounts outstanding will be classified as long-term debt, and principal repayments will appear as repayments of long-term debt.

The filing does not state any amount outstanding under the facility at September 30, and it does not name the lenders or suppliers in the passages we read. The margin over the variable rate is also not given. Bloomberg’s own article could not be opened by us, so the details above rely on the filing and on other coverage, not on Bloomberg’s text. The Information first flagged the disclosure in a brief.

Borrowing is already running far ahead of last year

The facility lands on a balance sheet that is changing fast. A FourWeekMBA analysis of the 10-Q puts the face value of Amazon’s long-term debt at $68.8 billion at the end of 2025 and $180.9 billion at September 30, 2026. It also lists a separate $17.5 billion unsecured term loan drawn in September. The same analysis reports purchases of property and equipment of $77.3 billion in the third quarter, which makes the $80 billion ceiling roughly one quarter of current spending. That ratio is the analysis’s own arithmetic, not an Amazon figure.

Free cash flow was negative $42.4 billion for the twelve months to September 30, against positive $14.8 billion a year earlier, per that analysis of Amazon’s reconciliation. Investing.com reports the same free cash outflow and says Amazon’s total commitments, including debt, interest, leases not yet started and equipment obligations, reached $883 billion at the end of September, up 36% in three months and more than double a year earlier. Its shares fell about 2% at midday in New York on Friday, according to that report.

AWS chief executive Matt Garman told Bloomberg Television: “When we see such a really large opportunity in front of us, we’re looking for ways to also responsibly fund that.”

A new tool for Amazon, while rivals already borrow

Investing.com notes that Amazon has mostly paid for data centers and chips from cash generated by its cloud and retail businesses, plus its largest corporate bond sales so far. It had not used structures such as joint financing with investment groups or leasing chips bought by other entities, which competitors have used. A loan secured on the purchased hardware sits between those options: Amazon keeps ownership and records the debt, but pledges the equipment.

The move fits a wider pattern of AI spending moving onto credit. Microsoft is weighing a bond sale of $25 billion or more, which would be its first of that kind since 2017, as we covered in our report on how far AAA credit can fund AI. Microsoft, though, backs its spending with a reported $677 billion backlog, as shown in its latest quarterly results. Nvidia has also been reported as considering credit support for the debt of an Nscale site that Anthropic plans to use, per our earlier article. Amazon’s facility differs in that the pledged collateral is the hardware itself and the ceiling is tied to purchase orders.

For readers, the practical meaning is about pace. A facility sized against purchase orders suggests Amazon expects to keep buying servers and chips through 2028, and that it prefers to spread the cost over five-year loans. The filing does not say that, and it does not give the share of purchases the facility will cover. Whether Amazon draws the full amount is also open: the borrowing is at its discretion, and the size can change with orders and pricing.

The figures about Amazon’s debt and capital spending come from third-party reading of the filing and were not checked line by line against it. The facility terms in the list above were checked against the filing’s debt note.