US investors are showing a voracious appetite to fund the AI race and put cash to work, agreeing to dole out more than $100bn in the span of a few days, even as anxieties about global growth and the Iran war loom in the background.
The $75bn initial public offering of SpaceX — the largest flotation of all time — and $35bn debt financing for Anthropic point to an investor willingness to absorb a torrent of supply. Bankers are in the final stages of cobbling together more than $40bn of debt for Paramount to pay for its takeover of Warner Bros Discovery, with their equity capital markets colleagues turning their attention to the looming IPOs of Anthropic and OpenAI.
The deluge of debt and equity issuance shows investors are moving cash off the sidelines and looking past surging inflation that could ultimately weigh on economic activity and prompt central bank policymakers to lift interest rates.