Ed Zitron Writes Where's Your Ed At, a newsletter on the AI industry's finances, and hosts the Better Offline podcast covering the same territory in audio.

“The problem is that they're no longer dealing with equity investors. They're now dealing with the bond market, which is a lot meaner. … The way I described it to a mate of mine in fixed income is that the stock market measures how excited you should be and the bond market measures how scared you should be.”

Better Offline · Tech Strategy & Big Tech · November 2026

Context

The hosts were discussing a report that Anthropic expects a below-investment-grade rating and how much AI companies will need to borrow. Zitron argues that AI firms' funding needs now put them in front of debt investors rather than the more forgiving equity and venture crowd.

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Transcript

Better Offline Around 35:27 into the episode

Ed Zitron

What the fuck are they? They're going to be borrowing at 10%. It may as well go on fucking SoFi.com, not SoFi. They've been borrowing

Ed Elson

at 15%. That's what Coreweave is borrowing at. Well, I mean, Corey's

Ed Zitron

just not borrowing at the moment. It's just multiple stories. But that's the thing, though. This entire industry on investor sentiment, sure. But the problem is, is that they're no longer dealing with equity investors. They're now dealing with the bond market. Exactly. The bond market, which is a lot meaner because you can pump. Well, the thing, the way I described it to a mate of mine in fixed income Ella Mike is that it's the stock market measures how excited you should be and the bond market measures how scared you should be. And I think the and I think that it's well, I mean, it's obviously because, yeah, you actually need to pay back the bond market. You can do all this dodgy shit, talking up your stock and your book, all you want. But in the bond market, you actually have to pay someone.

Ed Elson

Yeah.

Ed Zitron

And I don't know. I don't think that, well, Anthropic, when they were raising for this Broadcom chip lease deal a few months ago, were refusing to share their financials with some investors. You can't play this charlatan shit in the bond market. And so it's not impossible for them to raise debt.…

Ed Elson

Yeah. It's the most crucial detail in the entire document. And it's not there. And it's exactly. And it's not there. It's kind of there, but not really. But just to your point, the stock market measures how excited say that again.

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

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