AI spending lifts borrowing costs worldwide as SoftBank’s next fund tests the doubters

Bloomberg Opinion argued that SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son’s attempt to set up another $100 billion AI-focused venture capital fund will only give the doubters more to work with, and that it underscores Ray Dalio’s AI warning¹. Son is asking Gulf investors for the money on top of his OpenAI bet, and last month the company tapped the bond market for $11.1 billion, the largest high-yield corporate bond sale ever recorded⁶.

The cost of that financing is now a macro variable. One account reported that AI spending is pushing up borrowing costs around the world, with Wall Street estimates putting this year’s AI-related investment-grade issuance at a figure the excerpt does not complete². The same outlet wrote that AI borrowers now dominate half of America’s investment-grade market, in a sentence the excerpt cuts off³.

Why it matters to investors

The official sector has started putting a number on what the buildout must earn. Bank for International Settlements president Pablo Hernández de Cos said in a recent speech that AI investments are being made on a basis the excerpt does not finish, in coverage framed as AI data centres facing a $6 trillion revenue challenge⁴. Against that, Microsoft, Meta and Google AI capital spending has reached $725 billion, and the hyperscalers are effectively betting that AI infrastructure is too big to fail, a framing the investor Michael Burry has used⁵.

The accounting is the part that reaches ordinary portfolios. Aswath Damodaran argues that AI capital spending is distorting earnings and cash flows, naming Meta, Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft as the builders of the architecture whose spending will have an effect the excerpt does not state⁷. A separate commentary argued that the physics of corporate finance cannot sustain the current burn rate⁸. Both are arguments about reported profit rather than about chips.

What to watch

The equity signal came first. Memory chip stocks dragged the Nasdaq-100 into a correction this week³, which is the part of the complex closest to the capital spending itself.

Then the credit signal, because it is the one that prices everything else. If AI borrowers are half of the investment-grade market³ and the issuance is still rising², the marginal buyer of a non-AI corporate bond is being asked to compete with a data centre. Third is whether the Gulf money arrives at all: the fund is an attempt, not a close^1,6.