Blackstone Group Inc

Two competing private equity consortiums have emerged for GFL Environmental, setting up a bidding war over a target carrying $28 billion in combined equity value and debt, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday evening. KKR & Co., Energy Capital Partners, and Blackstone Inc. have formed one consortium, while Brookfield Asset Management and IFM Investors have teamed on a rival offer. GFL carries a market capitalization of roughly $18 billion alongside approximately $10 billion in debt, implying a total enterprise value approaching $28 billion. CEO Patrick Dovigi said on Bloomberg TV that he is open to taking the company private at a higher valuation than its current stock price and would roll his entire ownership stake into any transaction. GFL's special committee, formed in July after the company retained advisers following preliminary takeover interest, is expected to take time evaluating the competing proposals and could ask bidders to sharpen their offers, with a decision possible within weeks. At roughly $28 billion in enterprise value, a completed GFL transaction would rank just below the AES Corp. takeover, currently the largest announced North American LBO of 2026 at approximately $33 billion including debt.

Crux AI, the cloud venture backed by Google and Blackstone, has secured $22 billion in debt financing to buy Google-developed Tensor Processing Units, according to Bloomberg. Ten banks are reportedly providing the financing, including Goldman Sachs, Barclays, BNP Paribas and Bank of Nova Scotia, with the debt backed partly by the value of Google's TPUs and partly by customer contracts signed by Crux AI. Blackstone has separately committed an initial $5 billion in equity. Crux AI plans to bring its first 500 megawatts of data-center capacity online in 2027, a test of whether customers will adopt Google's chips on a much larger scale outside Google's own ecosystem. The $22 billion solves part of the funding problem, and investors will be watching how quickly Crux AI fills that first 500 megawatts.

Broadcom CEO Hock Tan said on Mad Money on Sep. 14 that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's call for an intentional slowdown in advanced AI development does not change Broadcom's AI semiconductor forecasts. Amodei published an essay titled "We Must Pace the Frontier" on Sep. 12, 2026, drawing endorsements from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk, and AVGO fell over 4.8% on Sep. 14 while the iShares Semiconductor ETF dropped 5.6%. Tan said demand for compute infrastructure for AI development, frontier models and inference remains very strong and durable, agreed that AI needs governance and safeguards, but pushed back on the framing that AI poses existential risk at current capability levels, saying it is not a live animal that will run wild by itself. Broadcom reported Q3 fiscal 2026 AI semiconductor revenue of $16.7 billion, up 221% year-over-year and 54% quarter-over-quarter, with total consolidated revenue of $29.6 billion, up 86% year-over-year, and free cash flow of $13.7 billion, or 46% of revenue. Q4 guidance calls for AI semiconductor revenue of $21.7 billion, up 236% year-over-year, and consolidated revenue of $34.8 billion, up 93% year-over-year, while full fiscal 2026 AI revenue is now expected to be $58 billion, raised from prior guidance of $56 billion. Tan guided fiscal 2027 AI semiconductor revenue to approximately $115 billion, doubling to approximately $230 billion in fiscal 2028, and reiterated confidence in exceeding $30 in EPS by fiscal 2028, with Anthropic on track to become Broadcom's largest XPU customer in 2027-2028 with visibility to 10 gigawatts of deployment by 2028. Tan also helped establish a $35 billion AI special-purpose vehicle platform with Apollo and Blackstone to support Anthropic's one-gigawatt deployment.

Blackstone is seeking to raise at least $8B for its private credit fund focused on renewables and digital infrastructure investments, according to a Bloomberg News report. The fund, the fourth iteration of the strategy, will provide loans to companies in the energy transition marketplace, including energy security, power and utilities, data centers, and chip financing. Separately, TXNM Energy, the parent company of PNM, and Blackstone Infrastructure said they have filed a motion with the NMPRC seeking authorization to file a revised version of their merger application. The draft revised application more than doubles direct customer rate credits, strengthens workforce commitments, and includes a nearly $5B commitment to invest in New Mexico's electric grid. The revised draft includes $220M in direct customer rate credits, more than doubling the direct rate credit commitment included in the original application.

Canadian Prime Minister Carney is aiming to attract investment in more than 160 projects as a key to weathering the trade war with the United States. According to the Prime Minister's Office, Carney, a former Goldman Sachs executive, held one-on-one meetings on the 14th with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and Blackstone President Jon Gray, among others. According to government sources, the summit, mainly to be held on the 15th, will feature discussions on future investment, but it could take 12 to 18 months before large-scale deals materialize. Carney has pledged to attract 1 trillion Canadian dollars, or 721 billion US dollars, in investment over the next five years through deregulation and the promotion of mining, energy, technology, and infrastructure projects. At a welcome reception on the 13th, Carney said that some of the world's largest investors, who manage more than 120 trillion Canadian dollars in assets, are now looking at Canada differently than before.

Enbridge Inc. has agreed to buy Blackstone-owned Tallgrass Energy's crude oil business for $2.55 billion in cash, expanding its presence in the U.S. liquids pipeline market. The deal includes a 75% stake in the 1,050-mile Pony Express Pipeline, a 51% interest in the Powder River Gateway system, around 8.4 million barrels of storage capacity and crude marketing operations. Pony Express can move roughly 460,000 barrels of crude per day between the Rockies and the Cushing, Oklahoma, hub, and the acquisition also gives Enbridge greater exposure to major producing regions including the Bakken, Powder River and Denver-Julesburg basins. Enbridge expects the assets to generate significant free cash flow and says the transaction should add to distributable cash flow per share in the first full year after closing, fitting its broader strategy of growing fee-based energy infrastructure backed by its C$41 billion secured growth backlog. Reuters reported that Enbridge plans to partly fund the deal through an equity offering, which could dilute existing shareholders, and the deal is valued at roughly 10–11 times forward EBITDA.

Brookfield is in advanced negotiations to acquire Indian glass-packaging company PGP Glass from Blackstone for between $1.3 billion and $1.5 billion, The Economic Times reported, citing multiple people familiar with the matter. The deal would mark an exit for Blackstone, which acquired PGP Glass, formerly known as Piramal Glass, from the Piramal Group for approximately $765 million in 2020 and has been exploring options since early 2024. Blackstone had also been preparing the company for a potential initial public offering in India this year, appointing Axis Capital, Bank of America and HSBC as lead bankers in February for an offering expected to raise between $400 million and $500 million, and separately appointing Jefferies to explore a sale. Brookfield previously competed with Platinum Equity for PGP Glass in a 2024 sale process that ended without an agreement, but has since returned to negotiations. PGP Glass designs, manufactures and decorates glass packaging for the cosmetics and perfumery, pharmaceutical, food and specialty beverage industries, with cosmetics and perfumery accounting for 37.5% of revenue in fiscal 2025 and specialty food and beverage packaging representing 41%.

Blackstone Inc. is reportedly finalizing a full exit from Bumble Inc. after roughly doubling its money on the dating app, even as Bumble's shares have fallen about 96.1% since its 2021 IPO. Blackstone and venture firm Accel invested $2.1 billion in 2019 to acquire a majority stake in Bumble's parent company MagicLab at a $3 billion valuation, and Blackstone generated a 98% internal rate of return by systematically reducing its exposure, according to a Business Insider report. In late 2020 the firm used Bumble's debt to issue a $334 million dividend to itself, then cut its stake from 83.6% to 53.2% at the IPO, netting nearly $2 billion, and sold another $1 billion of stock in 2021 when shares traded above $50. A deal with UBS allowing sales of just under 5% of the company each quarter positions Blackstone to exit fully by early next year, and its remaining 22.4 million shares are now worth approximately $66.75 million, versus the $1.084 billion a similar volume of shares yielded in 2021. Blackstone has also vacated its two board seats, with Jonathan Korngold stepping down in June and Martin Brand in August, while Bumble faces a 16.4% year-over-year decline in paying users; M Science analyst Chandler Willison told Business Insider that a private equity group is the most obvious potential buyer for Bumble.

Firmus announced a September 8 agreement with OpenAI to contract dedicated computing capacity from two Malaysian sites under a multiyear partnership, a deal that connects fresh computing demand to two distinct public-market exposures. Firmus said its total contracted capacity across all customers now exceeds 900 megawatts, a figure the company cautioned must not be mistaken for the size of OpenAI's individual commitment. The company distinguished two operational sites from five under development, targeting availability over the next 24 months. Firmus plans to deploy NVIDIA Vera Rubin across Asia-Pacific, though the announcement provides no NVIDIA order value or revenue schedule. Blackstone's connection comes through financing: in February, Firmus announced a $10 billion debt facility led by funds managed by Blackstone Tactical Opportunities, Blackstone Credit & Insurance and affiliates, supported by Coatue, for the next phase of Project Southgate in Australia, a facility that does not specifically finance the new Malaysian sites.

Nvidia is partnering with Apollo Global Management, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs, and KKR to raise over $500 billion in third-party capital for AI infrastructure, as Bank of America warns the sector may need about $1.2 trillion of external finance to support AI capital expenditures forecast to exceed $5 trillion between 2026 and 2030. Bank of America says major chip suppliers are taking on an unexpected role as credit intermediaries, helping remove financial risks that make massive AI data centers difficult or expensive to finance through minimum revenue commitments, take-or-pay contracts, and residual value guarantees. Broadcom's AI XPV Platform has secured senior notes and the remaining value of chips covering $31 billion of an initial $35 billion loan package arranged with Apollo and Blackstone, nearly 87% of the debt package, with the guaranteed portion priced at 5.75% against 8.5% for an unsecured second lien. In August, Nvidia said it would provide finance assistance for land, electricity, and construction at SB Energy's PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Ohio, with a first rollout of 4.25 gigawatts of AI factory capacity expected to be used by OpenAI, and Nvidia also said it was investing $1.5 billion in SB Energy. Broadcom on Sept. 2 reported $16.7 billion in AI semiconductor sales for its fiscal third quarter, up 221% from a year earlier, and CEO Hock Tan said the company expects AI semiconductor revenue of about $21.7 billion in its fiscal fourth quarter, an increase of 236% year-over-year.

Anthropic is preparing to go public later this fall in a debut that will test the artificial intelligence boom, with the AI model maker having raised $130 billion from 300 institutional investors, according to PitchBook data. Anthropic notched a $965 billion valuation in May, and bankers have discussed a deal that could surpass SpaceX's June listing as the world's largest, raising as much as $100 billion at a $2 trillion valuation, according to an August Wall Street Journal report. Amazon has deployed approximately $18 billion into Anthropic via preferred stock and convertible notes while retaining access to an additional $15 billion contingent on commercial milestones, and said in July the carrying value of its various Anthropic investments totaled $190.4 billion. Alphabet has invested $13.3 billion in Anthropic with another $30 billion in commitments contingent on milestones, and Anthropic has committed to purchasing five gigawatts of computing from Google Cloud. Salesforce's Anthropic stake carried a value of approximately $5.1 billion as of July 31, up by $3 billion since February, while Nvidia and Microsoft both joined Anthropic's Series G round in February and have committed up to $10 billion and $5 billion respectively. Other investors with billions riding on the listing include Menlo Ventures, United Arab Emirates sovereign wealth fund affiliate ATIC, the venture arm of Zoom, and Blackstone, which PitchBook estimates could make several billion dollars from the debut.

Blackstone Inc. has offered to sell up to 25% of India's Knowledge Realty Trust, a real estate investment trust it backs with local partner Sattva Group, in a deal that could raise as much as $1.3 billion. The floor price of 108 rupees per unit represented a 4.7% discount to the prior close and a 13% discount to net asset value. The offering, which ran for institutional investors on August 31 and retail investors on September 1, was fully subscribed and upsized, making it the largest share sale by a private shareholder in India via this method. If the oversubscription option is fully exercised, Blackstone's stake will fall to about 21.5% from 46.5%, making Sattva Group the trust's largest shareholder at 32%. Knowledge Realty Trust owns 29 properties across six Indian cities and has gained roughly 10% since its August 2025 listing.

Institutional investors are beginning to allocate capital to the evergreen private market funds that Blackstone and KKR originally built for wealthy individuals, according to the Financial Times. Evergreen funds allow investors to access capital at set intervals rather than locking it up for a decade-long private equity fund life. Blackstone's wealth business has seen institutions begin allocating to its evergreen products, though they currently make up only a small proportion of the capital raised, said Joan Solotar, who leads that business. KKR has separately raised the share of deals its evergreen K-Series funds can take from a longstanding 7.5% cap to as much as 20% in some cases, including its $8 billion European Fund VI. This institutional adoption could help Blackstone and KKR expand their wealth-management businesses beyond traditional individual investors, though institutional flows remain modest and may weaken if traditional private equity improves its ability to return capital.

Blackstone has joined Waymo's first major debt financing, a $3 billion deal that marks the autonomous driving company's debut in the debt market, and is also preparing its hotel platform, Hotel Investment Partners, for a public listing in Spain. These moves extend Blackstone's reach into technology lending and public market monetization of hospitality assets. The asset manager, with a market value of about $171.2 billion, is leveraging its private credit and balance sheet capacity to tap into AI and infrastructure themes, while the HIP listing aims to crystallize value from its hospitality platform and recycle capital into areas like AI-focused assets and private credit. Execution risk remains a concern, as these complex deals need to land cleanly to offset analyst worries about earnings quality, leverage, and dividend cover.

Nvidia is investing billions across the AI industry that ultimately buys its chips, and prominent economist Tyler Cowen says that could make the boom more durable rather than proving it a bubble. Cowen told the Prof G Markets podcast that Nvidia acts as a kind of lender or buyer of last resort for the sector, with Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta playing similar roles. He argued that new technologies often need help getting off the ground, and the huge capital flowing into AI gives it a better chance of succeeding. Nvidia has committed up to $10 billion to Anthropic and, in August, partnered with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs, and KKR on platforms to mobilize over $500 billion for AI infrastructure. It also agreed to guarantee up to $105 billion of OpenAI-linked lease obligations at SB Energy's Ohio data-center campus and invest $1.5 billion in SB Energy, becoming the exclusive AI compute provider there. Cowen dismissed the bubble debate, comparing the boom to automobiles in the 1920s, and said investors should ask whether the product works, to which the answer is clearly yes. He cautioned that debt-financed data centers could cause bad macro consequences if the boom reverses, but the fallout would likely fall well short of the 2008 crisis.

Broadcom met Wall Street's revenue expectations in Q2 CY2026, with sales up 85.5% year on year to $29.59 billion, but its Q3 revenue guidance of $34.8 billion came in 1.1% below analysts' estimates. Non-GAAP profit of $3.32 per share beat consensus by 2.5%. CEO Hock Tan highlighted that AI semiconductor revenue grew 221% year on year and 54% sequentially, driven by custom XPU shipments to customers like Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI, with XPUs representing 73% of AI revenue. However, management cautioned about supply chain bottlenecks, including substrate and memory capacity, and infrastructure hurdles such as land, power, and data center readiness, which could affect the pace of growth. CFO Amie O'Toole noted that as XPUs become a larger proportion of revenue, gross margins will face pressure, but operating leverage should sustain operating margins. The company also launched the XPV financing platform with Apollo and Blackstone to support over 20 gigawatts of compute infrastructure for OpenAI and Anthropic by 2028.

Waymo, the self-driving vehicle business under Alphabet, is in the final stages of negotiating its first-ever debt financing, raising more than $3 billion from leading financial institutions such as Pacific Investment Management Company and Blackstone. The funds will be used to expand its fleet of self-driving taxis and cover rising artificial intelligence development costs. The loan, which is unrated, may carry an interest rate spread of more than 5 percentage points above the benchmark rate. Waymo has partnered with Goldman Sachs on the deal and aims to finalize it within the coming days. This fundraising comes amid intense competition in the robotaxi business with rivals such as Amazon's Zoox and Tesla. Earlier in February, Waymo raised $16 billion in a new funding round, boosting its valuation to $126 billion, nearly tripling in less than two years.

Lottomatica has agreed to acquire Spanish rival Cirsa in an all-share deal that will create the world's second-largest listed gaming and sports-betting operator. The transaction values Cirsa at about €2.8 billion, or roughly $3.2 billion, with Cirsa shareholders receiving 0.668 newly issued Lottomatica shares for each Cirsa share. Upon completion, current Lottomatica shareholders will own about 67.5% of the combined company, while Cirsa shareholders will hold around 32.5%. Blackstone, which controls Cirsa, is expected to own about 24% of the enlarged company and will appoint two directors to the 13-member board. The merged business will keep the Lottomatica name, remain headquartered in Rome, and maintain a secondary base in Barcelona, with listings in Milan and expected trading on Spanish exchanges. The combined group is projected to generate around €2 billion in pro forma adjusted EBITDA and more than €4.4 billion in annual revenue, with about €115 million in annual pretax cash synergies. Cirsa plans to pay a €262 million extraordinary dividend before the merger, and Lottomatica plans to propose a further €744 million capital return after completion, targeting up to €4 billion in total capital distributions over the first three years. Completion is expected in the second quarter of 2027, subject to approvals.

A Broadcom-backed financing vehicle is in talks to raise $70 billion to $80 billion in debt for a chip-financing deal supporting AI companies like Anthropic, with the total arrangement potentially reaching $100 billion. The proposed structure includes a junior tranche of around $30 billion to $35 billion and a senior tranche estimated between $45 billion and $60–70 billion. This funding scales up a model Broadcom unveiled in June to enable 20 gigawatts of AI computing capability, equivalent to the output of 20 nuclear power plants, for clients such as Anthropic and OpenAI. In the earlier version, Apollo and Blackstone led the financing, with Broadcom backstopping portions of the senior debt to achieve investment-grade ratings. Meanwhile, Broadcom's credit default swaps have widened significantly despite a muted equity market reaction, and hedge fund ownership of Broadcom fell slightly from 173 funds in the first quarter to 170 in the second, with Fisher Asset Management holding a $5.7 billion stake.

Nvidia has announced partnerships with Apollo, Blackstone, BlackRock, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs, and KKR to launch compute financing platforms aimed at raising over $500 billion for AI infrastructure, with CEO Jensen Huang saying Nvidia could backstop up to $125 billion, or 25%, of potential deals. Blackstone President Jon Gray said on CNBC that AI compute will be seen as a financeable asset class, similar to how mortgage lenders assess homes. The move comes amid rising skepticism about AI spending, and Nvidia shares fell after the deal was first reported, erasing more than $70 billion in market value. Blackstone, one of six partners, has seen AI compute demand across its portfolio companies surge sevenfold this year and has prior experience financing AI infrastructure for companies like Anthropic. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink compared this moment to the creation of mortgage-backed investments in the 1970s, but commentators have flagged circular financing concerns, and Moody's has warned that heavy capex is squeezing free cash flow and pushing tech giants toward more debt.

Lancium announced a strategic collaboration with NVIDIA to deploy NVIDIA technology across its portfolio of gigawatt-scale AI factory campuses, with NVIDIA also making a strategic investment in Lancium. Lancium, a Blackstone portfolio company, has 4 gigawatts of leased capacity and a development pipeline exceeding 15 gigawatts of powered land that will serve as deployment sites for NVIDIA's full-stack AI factory platform. The companies will use NVIDIA DSX reference designs, including DSX MaxLPS to enable up to 40% more GPUs within the same power budget and DSX Flex to adjust power consumption with the grid. Michael McNamara, CEO and Co-Founder of Lancium, said the partnership ensures every campus in the portfolio will be deployed with the industry's most advanced technology.

Nvidia is set to report second quarter earnings, with Wall Street expecting adjusted earnings per share of $2.09 on revenue of $92 billion, according to Bloomberg analyst consensus estimates. That would mark a 96% year-over-year jump in overall revenue and a continued quarter-over-quarter acceleration. Data Center revenue is anticipated to top $85.4 billion, up 107%, with hyperscaler revenue expected to reach $43.5 billion and ACIE sales projected to reach $41.7 billion. The report comes as chip stocks struggle to hold gains following July's steep declines over concerns about returns on AI investments. Nvidia also recently announced a $500 billion capital pool with BlackRock, Blackstone, KKR, Apollo, Brookfield, and Goldman Sachs to securitize its GPUs, and is backing SB Energy and OpenAI's efforts to build an 8-gigawatt data center in Ohio with up to $150 billion.

Broadcom Inc. is negotiating with a group of lenders to secure more than $60 billion in debt financing for an artificial intelligence chip deal that would support Anthropic PBC and other companies, Bloomberg reported Thursday citing people familiar with the matter. The financing package, which remains under discussion, may include an additional junior debt tranche of approximately $30 billion, bringing the overall financing to as much as $100 billion. Broadcom would reportedly guarantee part of the senior-secured tranche under the proposed arrangement, which could total between $60 billion and $70 billion. Blackstone Inc. and Apollo Global Management are in discussions with Broadcom to join the chip financing, building on a partnership the three companies formed in June to fund computing infrastructure. The deal would provide companies including Anthropic with access to chips and other essential AI infrastructure, and the structure could resemble the $35 billion debt agreement that launched the group's AI XPV partnership.

Earn Your Leisure hosts Rashad Bilal and Troy Millings framed NVIDIA's $500 billion AI investment partnership with Apollo, Blackstone, BlackRock, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR as 'almost like a digital infrastructure bill,' signaling private capital now backs AI buildout. Jensen Huang cited $1 trillion in Blackwell and Rubin revenue visibility through 2027, and he projected AI infrastructure spending at $3 to $4 trillion annually by decade's end. NVDA carries 58 Buy ratings and an 85% Polymarket probability of a new all-time high, but 27 recent insider transactions trend toward net selling.

The SEC has issued guidance that removes key risk-retention requirements from certain data center debt structures, supporting Nvidia's push to mobilize $500 billion in third-party capital for AI data center construction. The SEC sided with law firm Latham Watkins, concluding that data center securitizations fall outside Dodd-Frank risk-retention rules because data centers, unlike mortgages, do not qualify as self-liquidating assets. Attorneys said the guidance, while only a staff opinion, would open the door to more flexible and capital-efficient data center financing and attract more securitizations. Nvidia last week announced partnerships with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs, and KKR to assemble capital pools for AI compute hardware.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unveiled a $500 billion AI data center financing plan on August 10, standing alongside leaders from Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Blackstone, KKR, Apollo, and Brookfield. The group says it will raise the funds, and potentially more, from outside investors to build new AI data centers. KKR's head of digital infrastructure, Waldemar Szlezak, described the shift as a revenue stream. Nvidia previously announced a plan to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI for data centers needing 10 gigawatts of power, but that investment never fully materialized. No money has been raised yet, only memos of understanding between the firms.

Asset management stocks delivered a very strong second quarter, with the five companies tracked by this analysis beating revenue consensus estimates by 8.4% on average. Ares reported revenues of $1.28 billion, up 25.6% year on year, in line with analyst expectations but with a narrow beat on AUM estimates, and its stock is up 15.6% since reporting to $143.45. Carlyle posted revenues of $1.11 billion, up 13% year on year, beating analyst expectations by 20.7%, though its stock is down 2.6% since reporting to $49.35. Artisan Partners reported revenues of $307.9 million, up 8.9% year on year, exceeding expectations by 2.3%, with the stock up 3.6% to $42.35. Blackstone reported revenues of $3.83 billion, up 23.8% year on year, beating expectations by 10.9%, and its stock is up 17.5% to $144.36. TPG reported revenues of $610.4 million, up 24.7% year on year, topping expectations by 7.8%, with the stock up 9.3% to $53.54.

Nvidia's $500 billion infrastructure financing platform is set to support the AI investment boom. The deal involves Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs, and KKR & Co. mobilizing over $500 billion of third-party capital for AI infrastructure buildout. Nvidia will act as a marketplace, helping customers access compute at scale and build DSX AI factories. Goldman Sachs notes corporate profit margins have climbed rather than eroded, distinguishing the current AI boom from the dotcom bubble. Nvidia reported FY26 revenue growth of 65% year-over-year to $215.9 billion and operating cash flow of $102.7 billion.

Nvidia is taking on a new role as the lender of last resort for AI infrastructure by offering seller financing to its biggest clients, according to a discussion on the All-In podcast. Fund manager Gavin Baker of Atreides Management said Nvidia is becoming the central bank of AI, setting terms such as residual value guarantees and revenue shares while private capital from firms like Goldman, KKR, and Blackstone does the underwriting. The arrangement lets hyperscalers and neoclouds borrow to buy GPUs and repay lenders from rental or inference revenue, with Nvidia's guarantee on residual value after three to four years making GPUs financeable like aircraft. Baker said this is asset-backed lending against real cash flows, not circular financing, and compared it to mortgage-backed securities. He warned the thesis could break if an oversupply of compute emerges, similar to dark fiber after the dot-com bust, but said regulatory friction on data-center buildout reduces that risk.

Intel priced an upsized $20 billion public stock offering this week, selling over 210 million shares at $95 each and expecting net proceeds of about $19.7 billion to fund AI-related growth opportunities. Super Micro Computer closed 19% higher on Wednesday after issuing fiscal first-quarter guidance well above Wall Street forecasts, while Lumentum rose 14% on strong fiscal fourth-quarter results and outlook. Workday jumped nearly 18% on Thursday after Reuters reported private equity firm Silver Lake is in talks to buy the software company, with Needham analysts estimating a potential takeover price of $240 to $250 per share. NVIDIA confirmed it is working with a consortium of lenders including Apollo Global Management, Blackstone, BlackRock, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs, and KKR to raise $500 billion for AI infrastructure, signing a memorandum of understanding to establish first-of-their-kind compute financing platforms at global scale. AMD filed a mixed shelf debt offering that could raise up to $5 billion in four tranches, and Argus upgraded Sandisk to Buy from Hold with a $1,600 price target.

Broadcom shares fell more than 5% on Friday after BofA analyst Tom Curcuruto estimated the chipmaker's AI chip-financing vehicle could reach $370 billion of senior debt by mid-2029 at a 20-gigawatt scale, including roughly $150 billion of new issuance in 2027 alone. The financing vehicle, not Broadcom itself, would raise the debt, but Broadcom has agreed to backstop some customer lease obligations, with maximum exposure of up to $29 billion on the initial transaction. The structure began in June when Apollo and Blackstone led a $35 billion financing for Broadcom's AI XPV Platform, funding more than 1 gigawatt of compute capacity for Anthropic, while the broader platform is designed to support more than 20 gigawatts for frontier AI labs through 2028. Broadcom generated $10.8 billion of AI semiconductor revenue last quarter and has guided to $16 billion for the current quarter, with Polymarket traders giving a 94% chance of topping $15 billion and a 78% chance of exceeding $16 billion.