Financing the AI boom: Capital, commitments and credit risk

The AI buildout is the largest single-sector capital allocation in credit market history — and it's spreading through every corner of the debt market. The whitepaper maps this cycle across six chapters:

• Chapter 1: Capital allocation into AI credits — the hyperscaler issuance wave across IG, HY, ABF, private credit and non-USD markets.
• Chapter 2: Risks of massive AI commitments — GPU-backed financing, private market data centre debt, and where the credit risk is now sitting.
• Chapter 3: Winners, losers, and the great software repricing — which credits AI is rewarding, which it's repricing, and which sectors are picking up structural tailwinds.
• Chapter 4: New economics of SaaS businesses in the world of AI — seat compression, consumption-based pricing, and the Jevons paradox.
• Chapter 5: Private credit's AI explosion and implosion — layered leverage, PIK toggles, SRT circles of risk, and what happens when algorithms start trading credit back.
• Chapter 6: 9fin AI in practice — the Sullivan & Cromwell hallucination case, the direction of travel for AI in DCM, and what a credible AI stack for credit markets looks like.

Edited by Will Caiger-Smith (VP Content) and Max Frumes (Global Head of Distressed & LevFin), this report was produced in collaboration between 9fin's team of analysts, reporters and lawyers, using 9fin AI Chat to synthesise data drawn from 9fin's proprietary reporting.