The International Monetary Fund has warned that high debt and inflation risks could push government bond yields up in a "disorderly" way. It also flagged a new source of financial fragility: a set of circular financing arrangements among artificial-intelligence companies.
Since 2023, 14 publicly disclosed deals have channeled roughly $300 billion in equity from large technology firms into weaker AI companies, alongside $650 billion in debt. In return, investors received about $1.4 trillion in promised future revenue from services or chip orders. The IMF's Jason Wu said those revenue commitments make the deals unusual and create circularity.
If AI commercialization disappoints, the effects could hit together: equity values fall, debt becomes harder to service, and revenue commitments fail to materialize—what Wu called a "triple whammy." The report also notes that the financing and revenue promises are concentrated in a small number of AI firms, meaning problems at those nodes could spread to the broader market.