Citadel forecasts $500B in debt for AI chip funding by 2028

Citadel Securities, the market-making powerhouse run by Ken Griffin, projects that more than $500 billion in new public and private debt will be issued by 2028 to fund artificial intelligence chips and the sprawling data center campuses that house them. AI capital expenditures are projected to hit roughly $600 billion in 2026, a 50% jump from the approximately $400 billion spent in 2025. The cash burn has gotten so severe that hyperscalers are hitting the debt markets at a pace that would make a leveraged buyout firm blush. The debt machine is already running During September and October of 2025 alone, hyperscalers issued about $75 billion in bonds and loans earmarked for AI data center construction. US data center debt hit $25.4 billion in 2025, a 112% year-over-year increase. Morgan Stanley estimates the private credit market for AI data centers could balloon to around $800 billion by 2028. That sits within a broader financing gap of $1.5 trillion against an expected $2.9 trillion in global data center capital expenditures. MediaTek, the Taiwanese semiconductor company, has approved a $5 billion financing package targeting AI chip production capacity. Why crypto investors should ...