{"text":[[{"start":10.75,"text":"Chipmaker Nvidia is planning to sell $25bn of investment-grade debt in the US on Monday, its first bond sale in five years, in a test of investor appetite for further exposure to the AI sector."}],[{"start":23.6,"text":"In a marquee seven-part bond offering, the company will issue a wide range of maturities from two years to 30 years, according to a term sheet seen by the FT. "}],[{"start":33.8,"text":"The issuance was upsized from $20bn after receiving more than $85bn in orders by early afternoon in New York, according to people familiar with the deal. "}],[{"start":43.9,"text":"Thanks to robust demand, the 10-year portion of the bond was expected to yield 0.5 percentage points above US Treasuries, down from 0.75 percentage points during initial discussions, one of the people said."}],[{"start":57.2,"text":"Favourable market conditions after the US-Iran deal are allowing Nvidia to raise debt at a relatively low cost, said Lauren Wagandt, a portfolio manager at T Rowe Price. "}],[{"start":67.75,"text":"“It’s a very high-quality company at the end of the day,” said Wagandt. “And it doesn’t come to the market as often as the other tech names.”"}],[{"start":75.35,"text":"The issuance by the semiconductor group, the biggest beneficiary of Big Tech’s trillion-dollar spending spree on AI infrastructure, comes as tech groups race to secure funding amid an intensifying AI arms race, but also as Wall Street faces a torrent of new equity and debt issuance, including SpaceX’s record $75bn initial public offering. "}],[{"start":98,"text":"“We intend to use the net proceeds from this offering for general corporate purposes, including repayment and refinancing of outstanding notes,” Nvidia said. "}],[{"start":107.9,"text":"Monday’s offering is at least three times larger than Nvidia’s previous bond sale in 2021 during the coronavirus pandemic, when it raised about $5bn. When completed, it will more than triple Nvidia’s debt outstanding to about $30bn from the current level of $8.5bn. "}],[{"start":126.55000000000001,"text":"Early signs of market fatigue have prompted some tech companies to find alternative avenues for financing. "}],[{"start":132.8,"text":"Anthropic has turned to private credit investors to seal a $35bn deal backed by Broadcom. Google’s parent Alphabet decided to issue equity for the first time in more than two decades, bringing in $85bn in fresh capital earlier this month. "}],[{"start":149.3,"text":"Nvidia’s position as the AI industry’s go-to supplier of the powerful chips needed to build large language models such as OpenAI’s GPT has proven extremely lucrative for the Silicon Valley company, with its free cash flow in the year to January leaping 59 per cent to $96.6bn."}],[{"start":169.65,"text":"However, after its valuation peaked at about $5.7tn in May, its shares have fallen alongside the wider semiconductor market in recent weeks, with its market capitalisation dropping below $5tn at the end of last week. "}],[{"start":185.6,"text":"While reaping huge profits from AI spending, Nvidia has also become a significant investor in AI companies, committing a total of more than $90bn to developers including OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI, and suppliers including Coherent, Marvell, Lumentum and Corning. In some cases, it has also agreed to act as a backstop or financial guarantor to customers building cloud computing services using its chips, including CoreWeave and Nscale."}],[{"start":216.54999999999998,"text":"The increasing use of financial guarantees and the interdependence of AI companies has raised concerns about concentrated risks among bond investors, said Tom Murphy, global head of investment-grade credit at Columbia Threadneedle Investments. "}],[{"start":230.6,"text":"“The market has started to get worried about these circular financings, because if somebody in that ecosystem is having a problem, then the whole thing could be a problem,” Murphy said."}],[{"start":240.45,"text":"Nvidia has a double-A credit rating, the third-highest score. More indebted AI player Oracle sits just two notches above a junk rating. "}],[{"start":248.45,"text":"Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley are active bookrunners of the transaction."}],[{"start":262.9,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1781568437_9226.mp3"}