Built on Borrowed Chips

Word arrived of a borrower built on borrowed chips. Ambrose: CoreWeave owes about fifty billion dollars; its half-year interest rose one hundred twenty-one percent. Pim: borrowed against chips? I'd have eaten them. The Toll Keeper: Carlyle says private lenders may fund a trillion of this. Prudence: lenders still lend; they just charge more.

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

🎙️The NarratorAmbrosePimThe Toll KeeperPrudence