Another Finance Bubble Leaking, This Time It's AI

A number of financial commentaries have begun to focus on the AI bubble leaking air—or in this case, debt. Bloomberg carried one on June 17 with the title, “Hyperscalers drag down bond gauges on global markets,” which essentially described the data center bonds of the biggest so-called “AI firms” as junk bonds. On every world market, said Bloomberg, debt issued by the largest data center builders exhibit falling prices, wider spreads above landmark Treasury securities, underperforming bonds in the red, “among the worst performers in the indexes for this year.” Meta, Alphabet, Amazon—just under 80% of the bonds issued since the start of 2025 are below the price at which they were issued (by an average of 3.3%, with wider spreads relative to benchmark rates.