THE CRUNCH
PIMCO chief executive Emmanuel Roman told the 2026 Global Financial Leaders' Investment Summit in Hong Kong that there will be a downturn in the AI market "and then things are going to break." His warning lands amid a debt rush: Meta drew $58 billion in orders for a bond offering expected to be $15 billion to $20 billion, Oracle said it needs another $20 billion in bonds, Alphabet is selling €6 billion (about $6.7 billion), and Microsoft sold $25 billion of bonds, its first such sale in a decade.
Roman estimated the AI buildout could create $2 trillion in financing needs over the next five years, against a total US bond market of roughly $12 trillion. He singled out US rate hikes, war or a eurozone crisis as potential triggers that could flip the market.
The warning carries extra weight because PIMCO itself has been a major player in the AI debt trade, from the first CoreWeave chip-based financing in 2023 to roughly $2 billion in paper gains on $29 billion of Meta bonds last year, and a $4 billion SpaceX bond purchase last month.
PIMCO is not alone in urging caution. Apollo Global Management president Jim Zelter told analysts that while he expects society to use "dramatically more computing power in the future" and AI is improving quickly, significant uncertainty remains. "What we don't know is how pricing and economics will evolve." Meanwhile, Wall Street banks financed $63 billion in debt for Anthropic, and the strong demand for Meta's bonds suggests the market is not at a peak.