Artificial intelligence runs on data centers, chips and electricity, bought on a scale few companies have ever paid for at once. Every large cloud company now has to decide how to fund that spending, and the answer shows up in its accounts long before it shows up in its profits.
Amazon pays for its data centers, chips and servers mainly from three sources. The first is the cash its own business brings in, the second is money it borrows by selling bonds, and the third is leases, which let it use buildings and equipment now and pay for them over many years. Borrowing now carries a much larger share, and Amazon has sold no new shares to pay for the build.
That shift shows up in the company's own filings. In 2023 and 2024, cash from operations exceeded spending on property and equipment, net of sales and incentives, by more than $36 billion each year, and Amazon sold no bonds in either year (source: Amazon 2024 Form 10-K). Since then its spending has grown faster than the cash its operations produce, so the gap is filled with bonds, some sold in dollars and some in euros, Swiss francs, Canadian dollars and pounds. For anyone holding Amazon, or tokenized Amazon through the AMZNX/USDT Spot pair, the borrowing matters because interest comes out of the same profit that the share price rests on.
How much debt does Amazon have?
Amazon owed $133.0 billion of long-term debt at face value on June 30, 2026, almost twice the $68.8 billion it owed six months earlier. Counting its leases as debt adds a further $109.8 billion (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). It has borrowed more since then, in dollars in July and in pounds in September.
Almost all of that debt is bonds. In July Amazon sold $25.0 billion of new bonds in dollars (source: Amazon term sheet, July 7, 2026). In September it sold £4.25 billion more in sterling (source: Amazon term sheet, September 9, 2026). A bond is a loan that a company splits into pieces and sells to investors, who can then trade them. Amazon's filings call its bonds notes. Each note has a face value, which is the amount Amazon must repay when the note comes due.
You will see different totals for Amazon's debt, because each one counts different things. All of them come from the same filing.
Measure, June 30, 2026 | Amount | What it counts |
|---|---|---|
Long-term debt at face value | $133.0 billion | $132.1 billion of notes (bonds) plus $0.9 billion of other long-term debt, at the amount Amazon must repay |
Long-term debt on the balance sheet | $128.9 billion | the same debt, less $3.3 billion due within a year and $0.8 billion of unamortized discounts and issuance costs |
Lease liabilities | $109.8 billion | today's value of the payments on leases already running |
Long-term debt plus leases | $242.8 billion | both, for anyone who treats a lease as borrowing |
A total that counts the $109.8 billion of lease liabilities is far larger than the $133.0 billion of long-term debt alone (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). That is one reason published figures for Amazon's debt differ so widely.
Where the money for the AI build comes from
Amazon's business brought in $161.4 billion of cash in the twelve months to June 30, 2026. It spent $173.0 billion on property and equipment, mainly on technology infrastructure, the majority of it for AWS, its cloud business. Borrowing filled the gap, since Amazon raised $81.9 billion of long-term debt (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q).
The same spending also paid for capacity in Amazon's fulfillment network (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). The cash-flow statement shows where each dollar went, and the build is only part of it. Over the same twelve months Amazon also spent $42.0 billion on buying and investing in other companies. In the first half of 2026 Amazon put $28.7 billion into OpenAI's preferred stock and $10.0 billion into Anthropic's, and it paid a further $21.3 billion to OpenAI after June 30 (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). So the borrowed money also paid for stakes in AI companies, including Amazon's stake in OpenAI.
Twelve months to June 30, 2026 | Amount |
|---|---|
Cash from operations | +$161.4 billion |
Long-term debt raised | +$81.9 billion |
Long-term debt repaid | −$5.0 billion |
Purchases of property and equipment | −$173.0 billion |
Acquisitions and investments in other companies | −$42.0 billion |
Assets taken on under leases (no cash paid up front) | $24.9 billion operating, $4.0 billion finance |
Rise in property and equipment received but not yet paid for | $29.3 billion |
Leases and unpaid bills for property and equipment are easy to miss, because no cash moves when the asset arrives (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). A lease lets Amazon use a building from the first day and pay rent over the years. Equipment received but not yet paid for is ordinary supplier credit, a fourth source: the property and equipment has arrived, and the bill sits in accounts payable until it is due. At the end of 2025 that bill stood at $27.0 billion, up from $16.8 billion a year earlier (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K).
On Amazon's own measure, free cash flow for the same twelve months was an outflow of $7.6 billion (source: Amazon Q2 2026 results release).
Amazon's bond sales in 2025 and 2026
Amazon sold bonds seven times between November 2025 and September 2026, in five currencies. The largest sale, on March 10, 2026, raised $37.0 billion in eleven parts, due between 2028 and 2076 (source: Amazon term sheet, March 10, 2026). Before November 2025, its last bond sale was in December 2022 (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K).
Each sale is split into parts, called tranches. The tranches come due in different years and pay different interest rates, so one sale can reach investors who want their money back within a few years and others willing to lend for fifty years. The March sale's tranches include two whose interest rate floats with a benchmark rate instead of staying fixed (source: Amazon term sheet, March 10, 2026).
Sold | Size | Repayment dates |
|---|---|---|
November 2025 | $15.0 billion | 2028 to 2065 |
March 2026 | $37.0 billion | 2028 to 2076 |
March 2026 | €14.5 billion | 2028 to 2064 |
May 2026 | CHF 2.8 billion | 2029 to 2051 |
June 2026 | C$14.0 billion | 2029 to 2056 |
July 7, 2026 | $25.0 billion | 2029 to 2066 |
September 9, 2026 | £4.25 billion | 2029 to 2045 |
Five of the seven sales came before June 30, 2026 (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). The dollar sale was priced on July 7 (source: Amazon term sheet, July 7, 2026) and the sterling sale on September 9 (source: Amazon term sheet, September 9, 2026). On September 24 Amazon registered the four sterling notes for trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market (source: Amazon Form 8-A, September 24, 2026). On June 30, 2026 the euro, Swiss franc and Canadian dollar notes stood at $16.6 billion, $3.5 billion and $9.9 billion of face value. Those dollar amounts move with exchange rates (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q).
Amazon also arranged a $17.5 billion term loan with a group of banks in June 2026 (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). A term loan is a bank loan for a fixed amount and period. This one could be drawn only once, on or before September 30, 2026, and is repaid three years after that. None of it had been drawn on June 30, 2026 (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q).
What Amazon pays to borrow
The interest rate on Amazon's new bonds rose between its March and July 2026 sales. Its notes due in 2036, for example, were priced to yield 4.900% in March and 5.341% in July. Most of that rise came from higher US Treasury yields (source: Amazon term sheet, March 10, 2026) (source: Amazon term sheet, July 7, 2026).
The extra yield Amazon pays over Treasuries is called the spread. It is measured in basis points, and one basis point is a hundredth of a percentage point. Roughly, the spread is the extra return lenders ask for lending to Amazon instead of to the US government, while the Treasury yield is the base rate that fixed-rate dollar bonds are priced from. Between March and July, Amazon's spread widened on every maturity both sales offered from 2033 onward.
Notes due | March 10, 2026 yield | July 7, 2026 yield | March spread | July spread |
|---|---|---|---|---|
2029 | 4.004% | 4.610% | 40 | 40 |
2031 | 4.286% | 4.829% | 55 | 55 |
2033 | 4.581% | 5.103% | 65 | 70 |
2036 | 4.900% | 5.341% | 75 | 80 |
2046 | 5.698% | 6.046% | 95 | 100 |
2056 | 5.840% | 6.147% | 105 | 110 |
2066 | 5.970% | 6.297% | 118 | 125 |
Spreads are in basis points over the benchmark Treasury named on each term sheet (source: Amazon term sheet, March 10, 2026) (source: Amazon term sheet, July 7, 2026).
Say you add up the coupons, the fixed interest each note pays, on the seven fixed-rate notes from July. They total $24.25 billion at an average rate of about 5.39%, so they cost Amazon about $1.3 billion a year (source: Amazon term sheet, July 7, 2026). The eighth note, $750 million, pays SOFR plus 0.58%. SOFR is a broad measure of the cost of borrowing cash overnight against Treasury securities (source: New York Fed, SOFR).
The quarterly accounts show the cost arriving. Interest expense was $1,314 million in the second quarter of 2026, against $516 million a year earlier (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). Amazon's cash and marketable securities still earn interest, $1,295 million in the same quarter, so its net interest cost was only $19 million. A year earlier it had earned $569 million more than it paid. The notes also carry no financial covenants, the conditions, such as a minimum level of profit, that some loans require a borrower to keep (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). Interest rates are one of the forces that move Amazon's share price, and at this level of borrowing they reach Amazon's profit as well.
Amazon's credit rating and interest coverage ratio
Moody's rates Amazon's bonds A1, S&P rates them AA and Fitch rates them AA-. Those three ratings appear on the term sheets for its March, July and September 2026 sales (source: Amazon term sheet, September 9, 2026). A credit rating is an agency's opinion of how likely a borrower is to repay on time.
A lower rating usually means lenders ask for more interest, and for Amazon the link is written into a contract. The $17.5 billion term loan charges a margin over the benchmark rate of between 0.625% and 0.875%, and where it sits in that range depends on Amazon's credit ratings (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). Amazon's own quarterly report adds that higher borrowing could raise its future borrowing costs.
The interest coverage ratio is a simple test lenders use. You divide operating income, the profit from running the business before interest and tax, by interest expense. The higher the result, the more easily profit pays the interest.
Coverage rose each year from 5.2 times in 2022, when operating income was $12.2 billion (source: Amazon 2024 Form 10-K), to 35.2 times in 2025 (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K). It fell in 2026 because interest expense rose faster than profit. Even so, operating income paid the second quarter's interest about 21 times over (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q).
Period | Operating income | Interest expense | Interest coverage |
|---|---|---|---|
2022 | $12.2 billion | $2.4 billion | 5.2 times |
2023 | $36.9 billion | $3.2 billion | 11.6 times |
2024 | $68.6 billion | $2.4 billion | 28.5 times |
2025 | $80.0 billion | $2.3 billion | 35.2 times |
First half of 2026 | $51.3 billion | $2.1 billion | 24.3 times |
Second quarter of 2026 | $27.5 billion | $1.3 billion | 20.9 times |
Amazon's net cash and net debt since 2021
Net cash is the cash and marketable securities a company holds minus its long-term debt. Amazon had $54.2 billion of net cash at the end of 2025. On June 30, 2026 it had $10.0 billion of net debt, so it owed more in long-term debt than it held (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q).
The last time that happened at a year end was 2022, and then only by $0.5 billion (source: Amazon 2022 Form 10-K). At the end of 2023, 2024 and 2025, Amazon's cash and marketable securities exceeded its long-term debt (source: Amazon 2024 Form 10-K) (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K). The gap was widest at the end of 2025, at $54.2 billion (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K).
Date | Cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities | Long-term debt at face value | Net cash (net debt shown as minus) |
|---|---|---|---|
Dec 31, 2021 | $96.0 billion | $50.6 billion | +$45.5 billion |
Dec 31, 2022 | $70.0 billion | $70.5 billion | −$0.5 billion |
Dec 31, 2023 | $86.8 billion | $67.2 billion | +$19.6 billion |
Dec 31, 2024 | $101.2 billion | $58.0 billion | +$43.2 billion |
Dec 31, 2025 | $123.0 billion | $68.8 billion | +$54.2 billion |
Jun 30, 2026 | $123.0 billion | $133.0 billion | −$10.0 billion |
The cash figure stayed at $123.0 billion through the first half of 2026 while the debt almost doubled. The money raised went out again in spending and investments during the same months.
Net debt feeds into enterprise value, the measure used alongside the share price to compare companies, and how Amazon stock is valued shows how much the answer changes when leases are counted too.
A swing from net cash to net debt reaches AMZNX/USDT only through Amazon's share price, and the spot fee on each trade depends on your account tier in the BloFin fee schedule.
Amazon's leases, including those signed for later years
Leases are Amazon's second way of paying for buildings and equipment over time. On June 30, 2026 it owed $109.8 billion on leases already running. It had also signed $137.2 billion of leases that had not yet started, more than twice the $61.6 billion at the end of 2024 (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q) (source: Amazon 2024 Form 10-K).
Amazon leases fulfillment centers, data centers, offices and stores, as well as servers and networking equipment, aircraft and vehicles (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). The commitments table does not split the unstarted leases by type. A signed lease that has not started is not yet a debt on the balance sheet. It is listed among the company's commitments, because Amazon has already agreed to pay it.
Amazon's total contractual commitments also count long-term debt principal and interest, energy and content contracts and other purchase obligations. They grew by $210.4 billion in the six months to June 30, 2026, from $439.7 billion (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K) to $650.0 billion (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). Long-term debt principal and interest were $112.1 billion of that growth (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K) (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q).
Dec 31, 2024 | Dec 31, 2025 | Jun 30, 2026 | |
|---|---|---|---|
Lease liabilities, today's value | $90.2 billion | $101.5 billion | $109.8 billion |
Leases signed but not yet started | $61.6 billion | $96.4 billion | $137.2 billion |
All contractual commitments | $333.0 billion | $439.7 billion | $650.0 billion |
Leases cost money every quarter as well. Operating lease cost, the rent charged to the income statement, was $4.1 billion in the second quarter of 2026, against $3.4 billion a year earlier (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q).
What Amazon's borrowing means for a shareholder and an AMZNX holder
Amazon has paid for the build without selling new shares, so the borrowing has not diluted what each share owns. Shares outstanding rose 0.48% in the first half of 2026, from 10,731 million to 10,783 million, because of stock awards to employees (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). The cost reaches a shareholder as interest instead.
Say you hold the equivalent of 10 Amazon shares, through the stock or through AMZNX. In the second quarter of 2026, Amazon's interest expense came to about $1.22 for every 10 shares, on the quarter's average share count. Its operating income came to about $25.50 for the same 10 shares (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). Interest is still a small slice of profit, but a year earlier it was about $0.49 per 10 shares.
Amazon's own quarterly report says that selling new shares or convertible bonds would dilute shareholders (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). Alphabet, which is financing a similar AI build, chose that route in June 2026, agreeing to sell new Class A and Class C shares to underwriters and to an affiliate of Berkshire Hathaway (source: Alphabet Form 8-K, June 4, 2026).
AMZNX follows the Amazon share price, so the borrowing reaches a token holder through the share. Each quarter, three lines in the quarterly report show whether the borrowing is still growing: the debt note, the interest expense line and the table of leases not yet started. The interest line matters most, because it comes straight out of profit. Holding the token and trading the AMZNUSDT Perpetual are two ways to take that exposure, and the choice between AMZNX or the AMZN perpetual comes down to cost and risk.
Looking to gain exposure to Amazon? To get started, you'll need to first create a BloFin account, fund your account with cryptocurrency, and navigate to the AMZNX/USDT Spot trading page or AMZNUSDT Perpetual page.
Frequently asked questions
What is Amazon's debt-to-equity ratio?
Amazon's long-term debt was 0.24 times its shareholders' equity on June 30, 2026: $133.0 billion at face value against $551.6 billion of equity. Counting its $109.8 billion of lease liabilities as debt raises the ratio to 0.44 (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). At the end of 2025 the ratio without leases was 0.17, on $411.1 billion of equity. Equity grew in 2026 partly because net income included large gains on Amazon's investments in other companies, which keeps the ratio lower than the borrowing alone would suggest.
When does Amazon have to repay its debt?
Amazon's notes had an average of 14.2 years left before repayment on June 30, 2026, and the longest run to 2076 (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). Its commitments table at June 30 showed $2.4 billion of principal and interest due in the rest of 2026, $14.1 billion in 2027, $17.1 billion in 2028, $13.5 billion in 2029, $11.1 billion in 2030 and $162.2 billion after that. The July and September sales, which come due between 2029 and 2066, are not in those figures.
Will Amazon borrow more in 2026?
Amazon's quarterly report for the three months to June 30, 2026 said it expected to undertake additional financing in 2026 (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). When the July sale was announced, CNBC reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that Amazon had told its underwriters it would not issue more debt that year (source: CNBC, July 7, 2026). Two months later, on September 9, it priced £4.25 billion of sterling notes (source: Amazon term sheet, September 9, 2026). The next quarterly report will show any borrowing since June 30.
Why does Amazon borrow in euros, Swiss francs, Canadian dollars and pounds?
Amazon's filings say its foreign-currency notes, like its dollar notes, were issued for general corporate purposes. Some of them also do a second job. On June 30, 2026 Amazon had designated $20.7 billion of its euro and Canadian dollar notes as net investment hedges, meaning the notes offset changes in the dollar value of its businesses abroad (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). Currency gains and losses on those notes are held in equity until the foreign operations are sold or substantially liquidated, instead of passing through profit each quarter.
Is Amazon financially stable?
Amazon held $123.0 billion of cash and marketable securities on June 30, 2026, and $37.5 billion of committed bank borrowing it had not used: $20.0 billion of revolving credit lines and the $17.5 billion term loan. It can also issue up to $30.0 billion of short-term notes under two commercial paper programs, and none was outstanding (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). Amazon says that its cash flow, cash and borrowing arrangements will be enough for its operating needs for at least the next twelve months. It adds that any projection of future cash needs is subject to substantial uncertainty.
Researched and written by the BloFin Academy editorial team with AI-assisted drafting. All facts independently verified. Primary sources include Amazon's annual reports for 2022, 2024 and 2025, its second-quarter 2026 quarterly report and results release, the term sheets for its bond sales of March 10, July 7 and September 9, 2026 and its Form 8-A of September 24, 2026, all filed with the SEC, Alphabet's Form 8-K of June 4, 2026, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's SOFR page and CNBC, current as of September 28, 2026.
Nothing in this article constitutes financial advice, and nothing in it is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold Amazon in any form. Amazon's long-term debt rose from $68.8 billion to $133.0 billion in the first half of 2026, and its quarterly interest expense more than doubled from a year earlier. A company that owes more in long-term debt than it holds in cash depends on lenders staying willing, and each new bond at a higher rate takes more from profit. AMZNX follows Amazon's share price, so a holder carries that risk through the share. Past performance does not indicate future results. Do your own research and consider your risk tolerance before you trade on BloFin.