AI’s $3 Trillion Build-Out Spurs Debt Boom and Creates New Risk

More than $3 trillion. That’s the staggering price tag to build the data centers needed to prepare for the artificial intelligence boom.

Not even the world’s biggest technology companies—not Amazon.com, not Microsoft or Meta Platforms—are prepared to foot the bill with only their own cash. The massive equity investments in private companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic don’t come close to this Industrial Revolution-size cost. And government payments and subsidies can ease the financial burden only so much.

So where will the money come from? Debt markets.

Which ones? All of them.

Blue-chip bonds, junk debt, private credit ...