The scramble to bankroll artificial intelligence is making investors nervous across America's more than $10 trillion corporate debt arena, setting off a fresh assessment of danger surrounding several of the largest technology firms — a shift visible in surging prices for credit protection, elevated swings and sagging performance.

Major players such as Oracle Corp., Broadcom Inc. and SpaceX rank among the borrowers that sold close to half a trillion dollars of fresh debt this year to fund the infrastructure driving artificial intelligence, based on figures gathered by Bloomberg. That figure is broadly anticipated to balloon by multiples in the months and years to come. Broadcom by itself could raise roughly $600 billion to fund computing capacity in the years ahead, according to Bloomberg estimates.

The speed and sheer magnitude of the borrowing, paired with uncertainties surrounding the technology and climbing interest rates, is placing mounting strain on the industry. Tech has ranked among the weakest performers across credit in recent months, leaving investors carrying losses, while average daily trading volumes for tech names in the bond and credit derivatives markets have surged.

Over recent days, word of a potential new wave of massive AI deals from SpaceX and Broadcom, possibly exceeding $100 billion, pushed credit derivatives tied to hyperscalers and chipmakers up to levels implying traders perceive a rising chance of default within the next five years. For Oracle, that figure now sits above 20%, for SpaceX it is roughly 16% — and even Nvidia Corp., the most valuable company in the world, is assigned a more than 7% probability of default over that period.

"Every new financing announcement feels like another entrant in an auction for investor balance sheet, and that's creating a level of spread volatility that would have seemed hard to imagine a year ago," said Mark Clegg, senior fixed-income trader at Allspring Global Investments. "Some days it feels like the market is holding an emergency meeting every few hours to reprice the size of the AI buildout."

So-called mega transactions running into the tens of billions of dollars once were rare, and syndicate banks would take months signaling the deals before launch, with most of the enormous deals set aside for mergers and acquisitions. This year, nine US high-grade deals of $25 billion or more have been completed, the most ever, with most of them in tech.

The US high-yield market, in the meantime, is on course for one of its busiest years on record. And while debt markets have taken in the record supply relatively smoothly, investors are beginning to seek greater compensation to lend to the industry, especially as financing needs stretch past the so-called hyperscalers into chip financing, data centers and other structures, according to Steven Kohlenstein, fixed-income portfolio manager at T. Rowe Price.

"One concern is the growing concentration of exposure to a relatively small group of companies and ultimately the same underlying AI investment cycle, even as that risk gets distributed across different issuers, sectors, and financing structures," said Kohlenstein. "That creates the potential for correlated risks that may not be fully reflected in current valuations."

For the time being the problem is less about genuine weakening in credit quality than about market saturation. Most of these large borrowers are profitable, with dependable cash flow and earnings momentum. And their softer performance hasn't spread into the wider market, which has remained relatively resilient.

These borrowers are also reaching into as many pockets of demand as they can, borrowing in global markets and testing various debt structures to help cushion risks. Yet even so, the flood of debt in such a comparatively brief window hands investors at least some leverage to press for greater compensation for taking on the debt. And there are unknowns about the AI rollout, the possible payoff and the risks tied to the technology, all of which could destabilize valuations.

Among expected borrowings that have recently surfaced, Broadcom is mapping out plans for its next blockbuster deal only days after it rolled out a $60 billion debt financing to help fund Anthropic PBC's artificial intelligence buildout, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. Broadcom's five-year CDS widened by 3 basis points to a record 136 basis points on Thursday, according to ICE Data Services.

Oracle, widely viewed as a key gauge for assessing AI-credit risk, is in discussions with Apollo and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to arrange money for a purchase of chips, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. That could potentially involve a structure in which outside investors fund a separate special purpose vehicle that buys chips and leases them to Oracle instead of Oracle funding a large chip purchase upfront with unsecured debt, according to some market participants.

The structure would likely reduce Oracle's other near-term borrowing needs and ease pressure on its credit rating. Still, the uncertainty is unsettling investors. The cost of guaranteeing Oracle debt against default climbed about 10.5 basis points Thursday to a record close of 261 basis points.

Meanwhile, a measure of SpaceX's credit risk is trading at a record for a second straight day after reports the company is in talks with banks and investors to raise $40 billion to buy chips from Nvidia Corp.

In many ways, the repricings reflect a market that is at a crossroads. Companies have immense and growing funding needs to pay for the computing capacity required to keep scaling up the technology. But revenue growth is at risk of becoming less extraordinary as competition and potentially regulation grow, according to Andrew Dassori, chief investment officer at Wavelength Capital Management. The potential market swings that result can create opportunities for traders, he said.

"Markets are adapting to these conditions and you see this in how spreads move and through the lens of volatility," said Dassori.