CoreWeave's Debt Could Sink the AI Data Centre Boom

Market selloff, rising rates test AI data centre deal boom

A market selloff and rising rates are testing the AI data centre deal boom, and Hacker News commenters see echoes of the dot-com era. Analyst Gil Luria calls CoreWeave "the subprime tranche" of AI, warning its stock could go to zero if it cannot service expensive debt. Others argue the Fed's rate hikes may not cool inelastic AI spending, and that private markets extract value before dumping the husk on public investors.

Private markets extract all the value and then dump the husk on the public.
  1. mattbrewsbytes

    An interesting difference between the AI boom and the dot com boom is that back then companies would IPO to raise capital and might have been forced to IPO when they were beyond 500 investors incl employees. These days these companies have already raised capital via private equity and the laws changed which allow them to not count employees with equity and have much higher investor counts. An IPO by either of the frontier labs companies is really a cash-out and payback on the capital they have borrowed. My thinking is the stock price would go down, possibly significantly, after an IPO.

    Oracle's credit rating is hovering just above junk bond level. I think the capital agreements are similar to an Adjustable Rate Mortgage and monthly so if there's another rate increase from the Fed and Oracle can't find anyone to buy their bonds and/or their free cash flow continues to be negative then maybe that is a pin-prick in the stock bubble? Its sort of like if you keep bouncing around from 0% credit card offer for 12 months to another and then you stop getting 0% offers, then its time to face the music (those usually have a 3% transaction fee, at least a long time ago they did).

  2. mizzao

    It sold off 1% yesterday and then went back up 0.5% today, hardly a signal.

  3. vatsachak

    Ed Zitron might be too dismissive of the potential of LLMs but he seems to be the only popular journalist holding the companies accountable for wonky reports on their profitability.

  4. PowerElectronix

    Looks like this time wasn't different after all.

  5. feverzsj

    AI midterm is coming.

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