Blackstone president calls for more equity to fund AI buildout as debt risks mount

Blackstone president Jon Gray says the scale of the AI infrastructure buildout is pushing the financing mix away from debt and toward more equity. In his remarks at the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s Global Financial Leaders’ Investment Summit, he argued that lenders are increasingly exposed to the same companies driving the buildout, creating concentration risk. He also noted that debt investors have limited upside beyond interest and principal repayments, which can make the risk–return profile less attractive as issuance grows.

Pimco CEO Emmanuel Roman added a market-absorption concern, warning that the scale of AI financing could be “too much” for markets. The article cites an estimate that AI-related capital expenditure could reach around $10tn over the next five years, alongside a figure of about $550bn of AI debt issued so far this year. It also references Goldman Sachs work calling for roughly $8.5tn of capital spending on global data centres over the same period.

For FX traders, the relevant transmission is through financial conditions: if credit creation related to AI faces capacity constraints or concentration concerns, funding and credit spreads can shift, influencing risk appetite and cross-border capital flows. What to watch next is whether investors’ concern translates into tighter lending standards, changes in the mix of structured transactions versus traditional debt, or evidence of stress in broader credit markets.