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SE Steve Eisman Steve Eisman Investor known for betting against the subprime mortgage market before the 2008 financial crisis, a story told in Michael Lewis's book The Big Short.

“Their business model is basically: we raise debt, we build AI data centers. That's it. That's the entire business model. And if they can't raise debt, they can't build AI data centers.”

Prof G Markets · Money & Markets · October 2026

“Their business model is basically: we raise debt, we build AI data centers. That's it. That's the entire business model. And if they can't raise debt, they can't build AI data centers.” — Steve Eisman, Prof G Markets

Context

Asked what else to watch in AI, Eisman pointed to the price of CoreWeave's debt, which he put at around 15%. He suspects that rate is already prohibitive for building data centers, unless NVIDIA steps in to backstop the company.

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Transcript

Prof G Markets Around 18:16 into the episode
Speaker 3

…when people, you know, some people they'll always say, it's in the price. It's in the price. And I always want to say, how did you know? Like, who did you ask? Did you take a poll? Like, like, on what basis do you say that? But people say this all the time. And I, and I always say, I don't know.

Ed Elson

Just as we start to wrap up here, any other things that you're looking at in AI world, things that you think are especially important that we should keep track of? Well,

Speaker 3

the other big thing to keep track of, obviously, is the price of Corweave's debt. You know, it. 15%. I think, although I can't prove it, I think it's prohibitive for them to raise debt at 15% and build AI data centers. But, you know, if it gets worse, then they're really out of business. You know, their business model is basically: we raise debt, we build AI data centers. That's it. That's the entire business model. And if they can't raise debt, they can't build AI data centers. That's really the now. Maybe, you know, NVIDIA will come in and backstop the whole company. You know, it's totally possible. But barring that, you know, I would be watching the debt markets.

Ed Elson

Steve Eisman Isn't the legendary big short investor and host of the Real Eisman Playbook, which is a great podcast. I highly recommend it. Steve, always appreciate your time.

Speaker 3

Thank you.

Ed Elson

After the break, the state of play in the autonomous vehicle race. And for even more markets insights, you can subscribe to my weekly newsletter. Simply put, go to edwardelson.substack.com.

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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