A.I. Is Running on Borrowed Money (NYT, 7/17/26)

[highplainsdem]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/17/business/ai-spending-oracle-stocks-bonds.html

Wealth from Oracle, the giant tech company founded by Larry Ellison, is enabling Larry and his son, David, to become media moguls. Thanks to backing from Larry’s Oracle billions, David has taken control of Paramount and is now engaged in a hotly contested $111 billion bid to take over Warner Bros. Discovery, too. They are trying build a media behemoth containing two big movie studios, multiple streaming services and the news networks CNN and CBS News, all under one enormous corporate roof.

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But what hasn’t received nearly as much attention is another important development, the downgrading of Oracle debt. It now stands just one notch above junk bond status. That happened on July 9, when S&P Global said that Oracle’s finances had been deteriorating. Oracle has also been hit hard in the stock market, reducing the value of Larry Ellison’s holdings since September by about $230 billion, according to my calculations based on FactSet data.

What has damaged Oracle’s debt rating and disturbed its finances is the elephant stomping throughout financial markets: colossal spending on artificial intelligence.

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At this point, a major source is firms like Oracle, which has gone on an immense spending spree on A.I. data centers, increasingly selling bonds to raise the money. Oracle is not alone. Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta are giant investors in data centers, too. (The industry jargon is “hyperscaler.) But their underlying finances are stronger than Oracle’s, and their expenditures have not landed them in the same level of trouble in the markets.

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[SamuelTheThird]

1. between ai, iran war, and climate change we are truly cookied

[Starbeach]

2. Greedy

This tech glutton may hit a wall. After they ate our free press.