On October 21, 2026, TechCrunch reported that Jas Khaira, head of AI at Blackstone, addressed market concerns about the surge in AI‑related infrastructure debt at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, stating that these risks have been severely overstated. Blackstone has deeply engaged in building the AI ecosystem through its San Francisco‑based AI hub, BXN1, covering data‑center loans, neocloud investments, and the development of cutting‑edge models and applications. The firm emphasized that its financing model relies on a dual safeguard—high‑credit customer contracts paired with GPU hardware collateral—setting it apart from traditional venture‑capital approaches.
Kaira pointed out that Blackstone is currently the world’s largest holder of computing power outside the hyperscalers, with investments spanning new cloud platforms, data centers, and chip companies such as Etched. A landmark example was its 2023 $2.3 billion loan to the nascent cloud startup CoreWeave—then generating just $30 million in revenue with meager profits—but which secured Blackstone’s backing thanks to pre‑signed contracts with blue‑chip clients like Microsoft and substantial Nvidia GPU collateral. This structure subsequently became an industry standard, prompting Blackstone and its peers to extend follow‑on credit totaling billions of dollars to CoreWeave, Australia’s Firmus, and others—including, this year, a joint $10 billion credit facility established with Coatue for Firmus.
Despite CoreWeave’s debt having swelled to roughly $50 billion, and recent factors—including September’s interest-rate hike, inflation exceeding expectations, and a wave of AI‑related bond issuances that have widened credit spreads and driven up financing costs—triggering a more than 20% weekly plunge in CoreWeave’s stock price and prompting Firmus to cancel its $30 billion ASX IPO, Kaira still insists that risks remain manageable: the vast majority of its AI data center customers are investment-grade clients such as Microsoft and Meta, and its debt is effectively backed by some of the world’s strongest credit entities. “This isn’t like those shaky banks from 2008,” he said.
In addition to infrastructure financing, Blackstone has teamed up with Anthropic and Hellman & Friedman to establish a $1.5 billion joint venture called Ode, providing on-site engineering support to its 280 portfolio companies to help them deploy AI solutions. Kaila acknowledged that the ROI of AI applications remains uneven, with technology adoption following a “sawtooth” pattern—short-term computing capacity may outpace actual demand, yet the overall momentum for expansion remains undiminished. The report also noted that it had previously misquoted the views of Altimeter Capital’s founder and has since corrected the error.