Nvidia is aiming to raise at least $20 billion in debt, according to sources with knowledge of the matter, in the chipmaker’s first bond sale since the start of the AI boom.

In a filing with the SEC on Monday, Nvidia disclosed plans for the capital raise but didn’t include the dollar amount. Earlier this year, the chipmaker said it could raise up to $25 billion through issuance of unsecured commercial paper notes. The debt sale could end up closer to $25 billion, said the sources, who asked not to be named because the numbers aren’t public.

Nvidia shares rose 3,5% on Monday and are up about 14% this year.

The chipmaker is the latest tech company tied to the artificial intelligence trade to tap the capital markets. Alphabet announced plans earlier this month to raise $85 billion in equity-related offerings after securing more than $55 billion in fresh debt since November. And last week, Super Micro announced $7 billion in equity-related financing deals to help to cover the cost of hardware component purchases.

Amazon, meanwhile, raised roughly $54 billion in debt earlier this year in U.S. and European bond sales, and announced plans last week to raise about $10 billion in a Canadian debt sale

Nvidia has about $7.5 billion in long-term debt and another $1 billion in short-term debt. In its last debt raise in 2021, Nvidia brought in $5 billion, with notes maturing as late as 2031. But Nvidia was a much smaller company then, generating revenue in fiscal 2022 of about $27 billion, compared to sales of $216 billion in fiscal 2026.

The launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022 was a major catalyst for Nvidia’s historic rate of growth that followed, as AI model companies and hyperscalers started gobbling up as many of the company’s graphics processing units as they could.

An Nvidia spokesperson said that the company intends to use the proceeds from the offering for general corporate purposes, including repayment and refinancing of existing debt.

Nvidia announced an aggressive capital return program in May, when it raised its dividend from a penny a share to 25 cents and said it planned to repurchase $80 billion in shares. Nvidia generated $49 billion in free cash flow in the latest quarter, up from $35 billion in the same period a year earlier, and reiterated plans in its latest earnings call to “return roughly 50% of free cash flow to shareholders this year.”

WATCH: Wedbush analyst says Nvidia is undervalued

The U.S. national debt grew past 100% of gross domestic product last month, putting the country on the path to beat the record of 106% of GDP set in 1946, coming out of World War II. That record is on pace to shatter around 2029, just as Donald Trump‘s presidency is ending, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates. 

Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has identified a culprit for what might otherwise be a grim legacy, he said at a Trump administration anti-fraud event Tuesday.

“I believe based on what I’ve seen and what I’ve heard is that we could balance the federal budget if the only dollars that went out of the Treasury went to individuals who were properly lawfully correctly eligible to receive them,” Miller said. 

Miller’s figures far overstate the federal government’s published estimates for misspent funds, and overlook that immigrants generally help improve, not worsen, the budget deficit. But the problem isn’t just misleading math. The Trump administration’s inability to take the deficit seriously is worsening Americans’ affordability crisis today and threatening a debt crisis down the road. The deficit is the difference between what the federal government takes in from taxes and other revenue and what it spends on. That adds to the cumulative federal debt.

Miller was building on his prior comments that put the nation’s spending problems at the feet of immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally, don’t buy into the American system, or both. Stolen or otherwise misappropriated benefits have “fleeced” the taxpayer of hundreds of billions of dollars, Miller said Tuesday, or even trillions, as he put it in March. 

“The extraction of wealth from American taxpayers to people who don’t belong here is the primary cause of the national debt,” Miller said alongside the president on March 16.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Miller’s remarks.

The national debt stands at $31.4 trillion. Presidents and members of Congress from both parties have committed to unbalanced spending in the decades since President Bill Clinton briefly managed to balance the budget in the 1990s. But recent years have seen a sharp acceleration of debt-financed spending. Trump slashed taxes in his first term, only to begin a Covid spending frenzy that culminated in a vast stimulus package under President Joe Biden. That spending staved off a recession at the cost of overheating the economy, contributing to the inflation that still plagues Americans. 

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said before being picked for that job that he wanted Trump to get the deficit to less than 4% of GDP by the end of his term. There is still time, but the trajectory doesn’t look good. The deficit ran to 5.8% of…

The Venezuelan government announced Wednesday that it has begun a “comprehensive and orderly process” for restructuring its enormous sovereign and state oil company debt.

In a statement, Venezuela’s economics and finance ministry said the intention was to “put the economy at the service of the Venezuelan people and free the country from the burden of accumulated debt.”

“Venezuela demonstrated solvency throughout the years, fully complying with all its international obligations. This capacity and willingness to meet our financial commitments was impeded from 2017 onward as a result of financial sanctions,” the government said.

“For too long, the country has been deprived of normal access to financing, and its economy lost the capacity to invest in health, electricity, water, education, infrastructure, productive recovery, and the well-being of its population.”

The restructuring process aims to guarantee substantial debt relief, officials said, which will be used to benefit the country and its population.

“Venezuela will fulfill its commitments sustainably and will do so under the conditions that the Venezuelan people deserve, building a solid path to recover well-being, justice, and social equality,” the statement said.

In 2017, during his first presidential term, Donald Trump slapped financial sanctions on Venezuela in a bid to restrict the Maduro regime’s access to capital.

In January, an extraordinary U.S. military operation saw American troops capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. He was brought to the U.S., where he was indicted on narco-terrorism conspiracy and other charges alongside his wife Cilia Flores.

Both Maduro and Flores have denied any wrongdoing.

Foreign sanctions have severely impacted Venezuela’s economy over the past decade, with the country defaulting on its debts and public sector liabilities ballooning.

According to independent financial think thank OMFIF, Venezuela’s defaulted debts total at least $150 billion, or over 200% of its gross domestic product. The country stopped making payments on its public debts in 2017 as it entered hyperinflation.

But under interim…

Credit card balances fell in the first quarter of 2026, decreasing by $25 billion, to $1.25 trillion, according to a new report on household debt by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York released Tuesday. Still, that’s a 5.9% jump from a year earlier.

At the same time, mortgage debt, auto loans and home equity lines of credit were all higher, the New York Fed found.

Overall, “household debt levels rose slightly, with modest increases in most debt types offsetting a seasonal decline in credit card balances,” Daniel Mangrum, a research economist at the New York Fed, said in a statement.

Near the end of the year, credit card debt often ticks higher as consumers increase their spending during the peak holiday shopping season. Then it typically falls in the first quarter.

Despite the decrease in credit card debt, soaring gas prices have increasingly strained household budgets.

A gallon of regular gas averaged $4.50 nationally on Tuesday, up from about $3.14 a year ago, according to AAA.

A separate New York Fed report from earlier this month found that while high-income households maintained their level of spending in March, low-income families were forced to cut back on their gas consumption and still felt increased financial strain.

“Spending growth overall has been going up,” the New York Fed researchers said on a press call Tuesday. However, there is evidence of the “K-shaped” economy in credit card balances, they said.

“Americans are generally on pretty stable footing, overall, but we do see some weakness in lower-income households,” the researchers said. “We do see some of this in our delinquency rates,” they added, referring to the share of borrowers falling behind on payments.

In an increasingly bifurcated economy, this divergence is likely to persist, according to Christian Floro, market strategist at Principal Asset Management.

“A subset of consumers, primarily subprime borrowers, has driven most of the increase in delinquencies, while prime borrowers have experienced only a marginal deterioration in credit performance,” Floro said.

However, “the latest gasoline price shock could push delinquencies higher,” he added.

Last week, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said that spending on credit cards was an indication that consumers had more money in their pockets.

“Credit card spending is through the roof,” Hassett said to Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business. “They’re spending more on gasoline, but they’re spending more on everything else, too.”

More than half — 53% — of consumers carry credit card balances to cover essential expenses, according to a report released Tuesday by debt management company Achieve.

“For many households, higher balances are less a sign of economic optimism and more a sign that wages and savings are struggling to keep pace with essential expenses like groceries, utilities and housing,”…

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon on Tuesday warned that rising government debt levels could trigger a crisis in the bond market, urging policymakers to act before markets force their hand.

Dimon’s statement was in response to a question about whether he was worried about rising levels of government debt “around the world and in your country.”

“The way it’s going now, there will be some kind of bond crisis, and then we’ll have to deal with it,” Dimon said at an investment conference held by Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the largest in the world.

“I’m not that worried we’ll be able to deal with it,” Dimon said. “I just think maturity should say you should deal with it, as opposed to let it happen.”

Dimon, who runs the world’s largest bank by market cap, said history has shown that today’s growing mix of risks could combine in unpredictable ways. While the timing is uncertain, failing to address those pressures increases the odds that adjustment comes after upheaval rather than deliberate policy moves.

“The level of things that are adding to the risk column are high, like geopolitics, oil, government deficits,” Dimon said. “They may go away, but they may not, and we don’t know what confluence of events causes the problem.”

A bond crisis would likely mean a sudden jump in yields and a breakdown in market liquidity, where investors rush to sell and buyers recede, typically forcing central banks to step in as buyers of last resort.

A recent example is the 2022 UK gilt crisis, when yields surged and the Bank of England had to step in to stabilize the market.

In the wide-ranging interview, Dimon addressed risks he saw in the credit cycle and the pace of artificial intelligence adoption and his insights into setting corporate culture.

A new era of higher defense spending has prompted the International Monetary Fund to warn of an emerging “guns versus butter” trade-off, with governments expected to face tough choices on debt and public spending.

The so-called “guns versus butter” dilemma refers to the trade-off governments face when allocating resources between defense spending and social programs.

In its latest World Economic Outlook, the IMF said approximately half of the world’s countries have raised their military budgets, noting that arms sales by the biggest global defense firms have doubled in real terms over the last two decades.

These trends appear set to persist as geopolitical tensions intensify, the IMF said, raising serious questions about whether higher defense spending could crowd out other outlays such as social spending.

Citing analysis of 164 countries’ experience since the end of World War II, the IMF warned that history shows defense spending booms typically weaken fiscal and external balances, and tend to be followed by sharp increases in public debt and large reductions in social spending.

French Finance Minister Roland ‌Lescure acknowledged that the defense versus social spending trade-off poses a backlash risk to the government ahead of the country’s 2027 presidential election.

He stressed, however, that higher defense spending can create a “double dividend” by shoring up sovereignty and creating more domestic jobs.

“We have to rethink war. Obviously, drones and new forms of combat have erupted — and we need to address them,” ‌Lescure told CNBC’s Karen Tso on Wednesday on the sidelines of the IMF and World Bank Group Spring Meetings in Washington this week.

“I don’t think we’re missing any social spending in France; I think we have the highest level of spending. And this is good. This is our model,” ‌Lescure said.

“If defense spending is also an industrial strategy that creates jobs, including in areas where people have felt disenfranchised from globalization, they felt left aside from the big movement towards digital innovation, where we’re going to have a double dividend of defense spending, which is more sovereignty, but also more jobs,” he continued.

“If we don’t do that … we’re going to have a backlash. We don’t want that.”