Please stop asking me when the AI bubble will pop

Please stop asking me when the AI bubble will pop. I’m getting some real mixed messages here, boys!

请别再问我人工智能泡沫何时会破裂了。伙计们，我在这里收到的信息真的很矛盾！

People, including on this staff, keep asking me with varying degrees of excitement or trepidation when the AI bubble will burst. I’ll tell you what I tell them: If I knew that, I would make a life-changing bet on the market, levered up as far as I could, and then, after I made my money, go retire on a beach somewhere. Maybe run a cat sanctuary, who knows.

人们（包括我们内部的工作人员）总是带着不同程度的兴奋或不安问我，人工智能泡沫何时会破裂。我告诉他们的话，现在也告诉你们：如果我知道答案，我早就押上全部身家去市场博一把了，我会尽可能地加杠杆，赚到钱后就去某个海滩退休。也许去经营一家猫咪收容所，谁知道呢。

What I can tell you is that I read with interest a story in Bloomberg this morning: “Wall Street CEOs, Big Money Managers Divided Over AI Risks.” The story itself is a roundup of stuff said at the 2026 Global Financial Leaders’ Investment Summit in Hong Kong. Here’s what caught my attention: The CEO of Pacific Investment Management Co. — that’s PIMCO, the legendary bond firm — told listeners that there’s going to be a downturn in the AI market “and then things are going to break.”

我能告诉你们的是，今天早上我饶有兴致地读了彭博社的一篇报道：《华尔街CEO与大型基金经理在人工智能风险问题上产生分歧》。这篇报道汇总了2026年香港全球金融领袖投资峰会上的发言。引起我注意的是：太平洋投资管理公司（PIMCO，那家传奇的债券公司）的首席执行官告诉听众，人工智能市场将会出现低迷，“然后事情就会崩盘”。

The astronomically expensive AI buildout has swamped debt markets — making it harder to raise cash. But there’s still more debt coming, and people still want to buy it. For instance, Meta drew $58 billion in orders for a bond offering that’s expected to be $15 billion to $20 billion, Bloomberg reported today. Oracle said Monday it would need another $20 billion in bonds, on top of its existing steep commitments. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is selling €6 billion (or about $6.7 billion) of bonds. Even Microsoft recently sold bonds, for the first time in a decade — $25 billion of them.

天价的人工智能基础设施建设已经淹没了债务市场，使得筹集现金变得更加困难。但更多的债务仍在涌入，而人们依然趋之若鹜。例如，据彭博社今日报道，Meta的一项债券发行计划规模预计为150亿至200亿美元，却吸引了580亿美元的订单。甲骨文周一表示，除了现有的巨额债务承诺外，还需要再发行200亿美元债券。谷歌母公司Alphabet正在出售60亿欧元（约合67亿美元）的债券。就连微软最近也十年来首次发行了债券，规模达250亿美元。

The PIMCO CEO — his name is Emmanuel Roman, but his job is what matters here — has estimated that the AI buildout could create $2 trillion in financing needs over the next five years. The entire total US bond market is about $12 trillion.

PIMCO的首席执行官——他的名字是伊曼纽尔·罗曼（Emmanuel Roman），但在这里他的职位更重要——估计人工智能建设在未来五年内可能产生2万亿美元的融资需求。而整个美国债券市场的总规模约为12万亿美元。

I am harping on PIMCO because it has been instrumental in the AI trade. It was among the group of financiers that did the first CoreWeave chip-based financing in 2023. It made a quick $2 billion in paper gains from $29 billion in Meta bonds, meant to support the AI buildout, last year. It bought $4 billion of SpaceX bonds last month. If PIMCO’s CEO is publicly sounding the alarm about a bubble popping, that’s a big deal — especially since the company just sold a bunch of its AI debt.

我之所以反复提到PIMCO，是因为它在人工智能交易中一直扮演着关键角色。它是2023年首批参与CoreWeave芯片融资的金融机构之一。去年，它通过支持人工智能建设的290亿美元Meta债券，迅速获得了20亿美元的账面收益。上个月，它还购买了40亿美元的SpaceX债券。如果PIMCO的首席执行官公开对泡沫破裂发出警告，那绝对是一件大事——尤其是考虑到该公司刚刚抛售了一大批人工智能相关债务。

It’s not just PIMCO urging caution. Apollo Global Management, which lately had been talking with SpaceX about a $40 billion chip deal, is also warning of AI risk. Apollo president Jim Zelter told analysts today that while he expects society will use “dramatically more computing power in the future” and that AI is improving quickly, there is still significant uncertainty. “What we don’t know is how pricing and economics will evolve.”

不仅是PIMCO在呼吁谨慎。最近一直在与SpaceX商谈400亿美元芯片交易的阿波罗全球管理公司（Apollo Global Management）也在警告人工智能风险。阿波罗总裁吉姆·泽尔特（Jim Zelter）今天告诉分析师，虽然他预计社会“未来将使用大幅增加的计算能力”，且人工智能正在快速进步，但仍存在巨大的不确定性。“我们所不知道的是，定价和经济模式将如何演变。”

The sheer volume of interest on Meta’s bonds suggests we are not at the top of the market. But there have been reports from China that its AI bubble burst some time ago. Meanwhile Wall Street banks were tripping over themselves to finance $63 billion in debt from Anthropic — not even a hyperscaler.

Meta债券所吸引的巨大兴趣表明，我们尚未处于市场顶峰。但有来自中国的报道称，其人工智能泡沫在一段时间前就已经破裂。与此同时，华尔街的银行正争先恐后地为Anthropic（甚至还不是一家超大规模企业）提供630亿美元的债务融资。

This is what I mean when I say “I don’t know.” I do think, though, that something major — PIMCO’s Roman singled out US rate hikes, war, or a eurozone crisis as potential triggers — could flip this market. We’re not in go-go-go territory now. Maybe that will change; it’s possible Anthropic’s IPO will go blockbuster and it’ll be like when someone rolls up to a party that’s running low on beer with a 24-pack. But as more people are expressing caution — and particularly after the disaster at Situational Awareness — the best part of the party might be over.

这就是我为什么说“我不知道”。不过，我认为一些重大事件——PIMCO的罗曼特别指出美国加息、战争或欧元区危机是潜在的触发因素——可能会颠覆这个市场。我们现在已经不再处于那种“全速前进”的阶段了。也许情况会改变；Anthropic的首次公开募股（IPO）可能会大获成功，就像有人在派对啤酒快喝完时带了一箱24罐装的啤酒进来一样。但随着越来越多的人表达谨慎态度——特别是在“情境感知”（Situational Awareness）项目遭遇灾难之后——这场派对最精彩的部分可能已经结束了。