NEW YORK: The world's richest companies can no longer rely on their massive cash piles alone to stay in the artificial intelligence race and have suddenly started borrowing massively in a shift that is sending repercussions across the world.
Rising US interest rates, including on the Treasury bonds that anchor the global economy, are sending tremors through the financial world, and some analysts point to the AI borrowing bonanza as one of the culprits.
From next to nothing in 2024, tech sector borrowing has reached around US$500 billion in the nine months since January, as Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and others raise debt handover first to finance the chips, servers and data centres that power AI.
