CoreWeave’s debt is becoming the whole AI industry’s problem

CoreWeave’s debt is becoming the whole AI industry’s problem. Does anyone else hear that ticking sound?

CoreWeave 的债务正在成为整个 AI 行业的问题。还有其他人听到那阵滴答声吗？

CoreWeave had a bad week last week. Its bonds slipped into distressed territory by a common definition — when investors demand 1,000 basis points more in yield than they’d get from government bonds. Last Tuesday, Chamath “SPAC King” Palihapitiya noticed the distressed debt, and also asked whether the AI buildout was a private credit bubble. Its shares are down more than 20 percent since Tuesday’s close, which is kind of a lot! There even seemed to be some collateral damage in the market on other AI companies, too.

CoreWeave 上周过得很糟糕。按照通常的定义，其债券已陷入困境——即投资者要求的收益率比政府债券高出 1000 个基点。上周二，“SPAC 之王”查马斯·帕里哈皮蒂亚（Chamath Palihapitiya）注意到了这些不良债务，并质疑 AI 的建设是否是一个私人信贷泡沫。自周二收盘以来，其股价已下跌超过 20%，这跌幅相当大！市场上其他 AI 公司似乎也受到了附带损害。

Now, I have also asked if the AI industry is a bubble, but when the SPAC King echoes concerns held by a lady whose ongoing question about AI is “How are we planning on affording this, champs?”, that’s a very different signal. When I say “yikes,” it’s one thing. When Elon Musk says it, that’s something else.

虽然我也曾质疑 AI 行业是否是一个泡沫，但当“SPAC 之王”也表达了与我同样的担忧——我一直以来的问题是“各位冠军，我们打算怎么负担这个？”——这发出了一个截然不同的信号。我说“糟糕”是一回事，但当埃隆·马斯克这么说时，意义就完全不同了。

To make things worse for CoreWeave, Brannin McBee, one of the company’s cofounders, told the Financial Times — also last week, on the same day as Palihapitiya’s post — that the company wants to have its debt be investment-grade, rather than junk, so that it can borrow from insurers, as their capital is, in his words, “unlimited.” This is not entirely unreasonable — earlier this year, CoreWeave secured its first investment-grade chip loan. But when you talk about wanting to tap into the enormous sums of money that insurers have, that’s the kind of thing that makes investors afraid that CoreWeave — already a massive debtor — is going to borrow even more.

更糟糕的是，CoreWeave 的联合创始人之一布兰宁·麦克比（Brannin McBee）在上周（与帕里哈皮蒂亚发帖同一天）告诉《金融时报》，公司希望将其债务评级提升为投资级而非垃圾级，以便从保险公司借款，因为在他看来，保险公司的资本是“无限的”。这并非完全不合理——今年早些时候，CoreWeave 获得了首笔投资级芯片贷款。但当你谈论想要利用保险公司拥有的巨额资金时，这会让投资者担心，本已背负巨额债务的 CoreWeave 会借入更多资金。

“The problem is not that credit profiles have changed in the last year, it’s that we’ve got another year and a half of supply coming,” Bloomberg quoted John Yovanovic, co-head of leveraged finance at MetLife Investment Management, as saying.

彭博社援引大都会人寿投资管理公司（MetLife Investment Management）杠杆融资联席主管约翰·约瓦诺维奇（John Yovanovic）的话称：“问题不在于过去一年的信用状况发生了变化，而在于未来一年半内还将有大量供应涌入。”

I have seen people suggest that this means the AI bubble is bursting. I am not so sure. A plunging stock price is not necessarily financial doom. Stocks are an expression of confidence in a company’s future, not a reflection of day-to-day business. But CoreWeave has a lot of very expensive debt, and if that debt gets more expensive, that makes it even harder for CoreWeave to turn a profit.

我看到有人认为这意味着 AI 泡沫正在破裂。我对此并不确定。股价暴跌并不一定意味着财务末日。股票是对公司未来的信心表达，而非日常业务的反映。但 CoreWeave 背负着大量昂贵的债务，如果这些债务变得更加昂贵，CoreWeave 实现盈利的难度将进一步加大。

CoreWeave is the poster child for AI debt, and as of its second quarter earnings, owed more than $35 billion. That’s partly because it pioneered GPUs as collateral for loans, and partly because CoreWeave doesn’t have a real business beyond selling compute, a business on which it does not make money — the company lost more than a billion dollars in the first half of the year.

CoreWeave 是 AI 债务的典型代表，截至第二季度财报，其欠债超过 350 亿美元。这部分是因为它率先将 GPU 作为贷款抵押品，另一部分是因为除了销售计算能力外，CoreWeave 没有真正的业务，而这项业务本身并不赚钱——该公司上半年亏损超过 10 亿美元。

So why am I not ready to do a victory lap on this? After all, I have suggested that this business is long-term unsustainable. The answer is “remaining performance obligations” from its customers — $103.7 billion of them as of the second quarter. About 40 percent of that money is due to CoreWeave in 2028, and the companies who’ve agreed to these contracts can’t cancel them except under some very limited circumstances. Its biggest customers are Microsoft, OpenAI, and what is probably Nvidia, though CoreWeave doesn’t disclose who its third-biggest customer is. Those three generated almost three-quarters of the company’s second quarter revenue.

那么，为什么我还不准备为此庆祝呢？毕竟，我曾暗示这项业务长期来看是不可持续的。答案在于其客户的“剩余履约义务”——截至第二季度，这一数字为 1037 亿美元。其中约 40% 的款项将于 2028 年支付给 CoreWeave，且签署这些合同的公司除非在极少数特定情况下，否则无法取消合同。其最大的客户是微软、OpenAI 以及可能是英伟达的公司（尽管 CoreWeave 未披露其第三大客户是谁）。这三家公司贡献了该公司第二季度近四分之三的收入。

Microsoft and Nvidia are probably good for the money — at least, as long as it benefits them to be good for the money. (I suspect they realize that if CoreWeave goes belly-up, there will be plenty of collateral damage in the market, so they are unlikely to push the company over the edge themselves.) OpenAI is shakier, but unless OpenAI is in significantly more financial distress than we all realize, CoreWeave is probably fine for a while. As long as it can continue to pay off its debt, the music keeps going. Only when the AI boom falters are we going to find out if it’s actually a viable business.

微软和英伟达大概有能力支付这笔钱——至少只要这对他们有利。我怀疑他们意识到，如果 CoreWeave 倒闭，市场上将出现大量的附带损害，因此他们不太可能亲自将该公司推向深渊。OpenAI 的情况则更不稳定，但除非 OpenAI 的财务困境比我们预想的严重得多，否则 CoreWeave 短期内应该没问题。只要它能继续偿还债务，这场游戏就会继续。只有当 AI 热潮消退时，我们才会知道这是否真的是一项可行的业务。

Still, the angst around CoreWeave has made things shaky for other companies that have taken out significant debt in the AI buildout — Oracle’s shares, for instance, which have fallen almost 10 percent in the same timeframe. There’s been a sell-off in Oracle bonds, too. The anxieties investors have around CoreWeave are, in fact, present for all neoclouds. It’s just not clear the bare-metal business is a good one. Anyway, some people are buying the dip.

尽管如此，围绕 CoreWeave 的焦虑已经让其他在 AI 建设中背负巨额债务的公司变得动荡不安——例如甲骨文（Oracle）的股价在同一时期下跌了近 10%。甲骨文的债券也出现了抛售。事实上，投资者对 CoreWeave 的担忧同样存在于所有新兴云服务商身上。目前尚不清楚“裸机”业务是否是一门好生意。无论如何，有些人正在趁低吸纳。