Credit Markets Signal Rising Doubts Over AI Buildout

Authored by Richard Abbey and John Authers via Bloomberg,

Investors have awakened to the financial risks of the artificial intelligence buildout, and they have a deep well of precedent to draw on. Like all transformational technologies, it must be financed with borrowed money long before it can generate a return. More than 150 years ago, financier Jay Cooke’s ambitious campaign to fund the Northern Pacific Railroad began to unravel not because railroads were a bad idea, but because the bonds financing it traded at steep discounts for months. His firm’s collapse triggered the Panic of 1873. As Alberto Gallo of Andromeda Capital Management points out, history is full of worthy projects that weren’t worthy investments:

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