Private equity giant Blackstone is positioning itself at the center of the AI infrastructure boom, and its leaders are pushing back hard against growing fears that the mountain of debt financing the buildout could trigger a credit crisis.
Speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt, Blackstone veteran Jas Khaira — who now leads the firm's new BXN1 AI hub in San Francisco — acknowledged that rising interest rates and widening credit spreads have spooked markets. Shares of CoreWeave dropped over 20 percent in recent days, and Australian GPU provider Firmus scrapped its planned IPO. But Khaira insisted the underlying fundamentals remain sound.
"This doesn't feel like something where you've got 2008 banks that are shaky credits," Khaira said. He pointed out that the vast majority of data center debt is ultimately backed by hyperscalers — "the most creditworthy companies in the world." Blackstone pioneered the GPU-collateral lending model with its 2023 CoreWeave deal, analyzing committed customer contracts from Microsoft and Meta rather than relying on hardware value alone.
Beyond data centers, Blackstone launched a $1.5 billion joint venture with Anthropic called Ode, which deploys engineers to help portfolio companies adopt AI. Khaira conceded that ROI from AI remains "uneven," describing adoption as moving in a "sawtooth-type pattern" that can look like oversupply before demand catches up.