Bond giants are positioning themselves in advance for the AI bubble to burst: buying credit bonds that can weather deep economic cycles.

According to Mars Finance, on June 7th, DoubleLine Capital and Oaktree Capital are preparing for a potential bursting of the AI bubble by carefully selecting bonds that can survive a deep credit cycle. Robert Cohen, a fund manager at DoubleLine Capital, stated at the Bloomberg Global Credit Forum that "the probability of an AI bubble is probably 100%." He believes that as tech companies continue to pour huge sums of money into the market, it will undoubtedly reach bubble levels in the coming months or years. Cohen defines a credit bubble as investors providing financing to companies that need real growth to repay their debts, a pattern that has historically led to the collapse of technological booms. Therefore, he advocates seeking assets that can survive through structural arrangements or strong balance sheets, rather than relying on future growth expectations. The scale of debt in the AI industry has expanded unprecedentedly. According to Barclays, the global issuance of unsecured bonds by US mega-tech companies this year has exceeded $155 billion, more than 45% higher than the total for last year. Bloomberg Intelligence predicts that corporate AI capital expenditures will reach approximately $5 trillion over the next five years, a significant portion of which will rely on debt financing. This week alone, Hut 8 issued approximately $4 billion in investment-grade bonds to finance Nvidia's data center projects, which were oversubscribed fourfold. Anthropic's $36 billion chip procurement bond is also nearing completion. Christina Lee, co-portfolio manager of private credit at Oaktree Capital, stated that data center financing opportunities are vast but must be carefully selected, "because it's truly unclear who will win and who will lose." Dan Ivascyn, chief investment officer of PIMCO Group, is more cautious, believing that AI is not suitable for overweighting, but precisely because of its huge financing needs, it can unlock value while maintaining a defensive stance, while warning that losses in the event of default could exceed historical experience. Bridgewater Associates' Ray Dalio cautioned that large-scale technological revolutions are always accompanied by excessive speculation, leaving companies facing the dilemma of "either spending heavily to seize market share or not spending enough to relinquish it."