Who Lent the Fifty Billion

Inspector Hale: CoreWeave; about fifty billion dollars of debt. Insuring it costs twelve hundred basis points. Wren: who lent it? The Ledger: private credit, my dear, loans backed by the chips themselves; and the interest bill? Up one hundred twenty-one percent! Nightjar: Carlyle says set limits before, not after. Wren: they still lend, just dearer.

Behind the slide in CoreWeave's bonds is a borrower built on private credit: it has about $50 billion of debt by LSEG's count, raised in facilities of $2.3 billion, $7.5 billion and $8.5 billion backed by its chips, its interest bill for the first half of 2026 was $1.176 billion, up 121%, and insuring its debt now costs about 1,200 basis points; Carlyle says private credit could be asked to fund roughly $1 trillion of the AI build-out, more than half the industry's assets, and warns lenders to set concentration limits before the build-out accelerates, not after.

Starring

Inspector HaleWrenThe LedgerNightjar