A Scale That Exceeds Venture Capital

Morgan Stanley projects up to $15 trillion in cumulative spending on AI infrastructure over the next decade. Its CEO, Ted Pick, estimates that the largest hyperscalers could commit between $800 billion and $1 trillion per year over seven to twelve years. These are projections, not observed results. Their order of magnitude is enough, however, to frame the issue: these amounts belong to equity and debt markets.

IPOs and Debt on the Front Line

The file contains no venture capital statistics: no fundraising rounds, no deal counts, no valuations. What it does reveal is where financing is shifting. The investment banks steering major IPOs, including that of Anthropic, believe the window remains open, as investors are still willing to fund the theme. Meanwhile, AI-linked bond issuance is proliferating to the point that some fear a crowding-out effect on European debt markets.

The Mechanism: More Supply, More Risk Premium

The logic is simple. The more AI-related paper floods in, the more investors demand in return. DBS CEO Tan Su Shan observes that the cost of capital is being repriced, especially in the United States, for AI, data centers and chips. She sees bottlenecks in energy, memory chips and capital itself. Credit spreads are widening, and the Nasdaq lost 810 points on October 30 after Intel's results weighed on chipmakers. More expensive financing hits the entire chain, including younger companies that depend on the same lenders.

Contradictory Signals

Opinions diverge. State Street's chief, Ron Hanley, finds it hard to call it a bubble: data centers, in his view, respond to real orders, and deployment remains early-stage. Emmanuel Roman (Pimco) and John Connaughton (Bain Capital) conversely warn of bubble risk and a possible reversal. Schroders' chief fears above all stress on credit markets and earnings disappointments at the major players. Tan Su Shan notes a rotation out of chip stocks into other sectors, and no longer sees concentration risk after the correction.

What Can Be Concluded

AI deeptech is being financed at a scale that mobilizes capital markets, and the price of money is being repriced. The exact role of venture capital in this movement does not emerge from the available data, nor does the situation of deeptech outside AI. Caution is warranted: the recent correction may just as well be a healthy adjustment as a first warning.

This article was written with the assistance of artificial intelligence and verified by our editorial team.